Isherwood

Unlike the first film, the director "bothered" to outline at least a little bit of the vision of the post-apocalyptic world. It's nothing groundbreaking, and a rough cut of war scenes from documentaries is the easiest way to go. The script is also certainly not groundbreaking, and thus the pile of clichés may not be to the taste of the contemporary viewer and even the more tolerant individuals will struggle to swallow the overly theatrical dialogue. Fortunately, all of this is balanced by completely unique action sequences, which are unthinkable to film nowadays because some of the special effects numbers would make Hollywood insurance people throw a fit. Cinematographer Dean Semler excellently shot a vast desert wasteland and dusty trajectories trailing behind the cars are literally pouring from the screen onto the audience. Mel Gibson stepped up in the lead role and the soundtrack isn't quite as annoying. The cheesy B-movie aspects have shifted to a crazy romp (the costumes were stolen by the filmmakers from an S&M parlor!), yet it has no dead spots from first to last minute and watching it is actually perverse fun.

The lack of a denser and more spirited plot could be excused by the fact that this is a film for children. But when a little boy of about six, who was sitting behind me in the movie theater, asked his mother questions like "Why are they going there?" and "What are they doing there?", it was clear to me that the second installment of Ice Age was nothing more than a safe bet. It’s a safe bet that throws in one gag after another, interspersed with more "action-oriented" scenes, mammoth (literally) prodding, and very (and I mean very!) poor and awkward attempts at a few little quotes from other films (M:I-II, Saving Private Ryan). Ice Age: The Meltdown is a terrible film that hasn't changed a single pixel, let alone the plot, so the adage that you can only make a single tea out of one tea bag is more than spot on here.

Plot-wise, Carpenter's films have never been anything innovative, so the uninhibited B-movie theme of a pragmatic insurance agent confronted by a weird horror writer is a very enjoyable tease for all lovers of one uncrowned "king" of written horror. The director's unmistakable set construction, which pushes aside all possible distractions and uses the camera to go into essential detail, is the perfect basis for building the cramped small-town atmosphere. While the performances match the depth of the characters prescribed by the script, Jurgen Prochnow is sufficiently demonic and Sam Neill is more than decently expressive, and they are able to bear some of the plot’s missteps, which more or less culminate about 15 minutes before the end when Carpenter has to add in all that latex. Yet even the biggest portion of mistakes is forgivable thanks to the tightly-held atmosphere throughout the entire runtime and especially the masterfully open ending, which is filled to the brim with pessimism and in which Carpenter made the maximum fun of himself.

Considering the age of the film and taking into account my age, any talk of "nostalgia" is unthinkable. If Monster from a Prehistoric Planet had lasted an hour, we could talk about a sympathetic "guilty pleasure." However, even the relatively short 84 minutes makes for quite a long watch in this case. Particularly the opening half hour, packed with imbecilic dialogues and exploration of a mysterious island (where a volcano is spouting at full speed and the inhabitants around it are acting like nothing is happening), is absolutely boring. That’s because a walk among the cardboard, in which the greatest experience is the cameraman's epilepsy, meant to evoke an earthquake, is only going to excite masochists. The trampling of the city, tanks firing, or fighter jets being shot down is a bit more fun, but everything gets boring after a while and in this case, even ten minutes is too much. Monster from a Prehistoric Planet is a bad film and it's a pretty unfortunate choice to watch as your first classic kaiju film.

The fact that this is a ninety-minute revenge movie with a prologue of over an hour is, unfortunately, the result of the film's directorial unevenness. It is unable to rely on a simple script but rather focuses on the arrangement of chases between a motorcycle gang and the police. There are plenty of them in the film, but their quality is highly inconsistent. Some of the shots with clearly predictable camerawork look a bit rough nowadays. Still, hats off go to the professional drivers and stuntmen who did an excellent job. The cheapness is acknowledged in this film, so we can’t be angry about it and, given its budget, we must simply nod in approval. However, the soundtrack is as annoying as ever.

A mainstay of disaster movie cinema, The Towering Inferno stands on all the well-worn clichés as firmly as the genre itself stands on this film. In just under three hours, director John Guillermin ratchets up the pace at the interval of the skyscraper's stairs to finally reach the very top in the form of the final "redemption plan." Even after more than 30 years, the action scenes directed by Irwin Allen have lost none of their impact, realism, and, most importantly, suspense. The work with pyrotechnics is flawless and thanks to the cinematography and editing it is elevated to a delicate affair for connoisseurs. In addition, the story itself, though full of what are nowadays trite lines, the psychological monotony of the characters, and overall dramatic construction full of the most diverse clichés, is absolutely engaging. Thanks to the impeccable performances of the actors, the entire film is elevated to a royal spectacle without a dead spot or any boredom whatsoever. The film is the textbook for the genre!

Serious perspectives of war as hell on earth abound throughout cinema. It's a bit harder to find lighter funny satires. Yet is it worthwhile to look at war without a drop of sentimentality and still maintain a sarcastic tone about how "war is an asshole" even when it's boring? Sam Mendes has undergone a genre metamorphosis and instead of family crises, he observes the negative effects of combat conflict on individuals without firing a single shot. Right from the introduction to when they are at the military staging area, which in a way paraphrases Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, through the uncompromising pouring of ideology into the brains of the soldiers, when it is necessary to declare to the public forever how important it is to fight for one's country, to the (non)encounter with the enemy itself. In this case they are not the Iraqi troops, but rather one's own frustration from unreasonable boredom and endless waiting. When Swofford thinks of his girlfriend, the viewer is tempted to go and pat him sympathetically on the back; when he cleans latrines as punishment, we prefer to turn away. And when the sky turns black and oil rain starts falling from the sky, everyone has to realize that things can't get any worse. Then memories of encounters with a lone horse or a column of Humvees wandering through the desert come to mind and we want to praise cameraman Roger Deakins. Finally, any Foxx - Gyllenhaal debate tells us that the current generation of actors has its aces. And I'm beginning to think that going to war wasn't the happiest decision I’ve ever made.

Although the direction is flawless, there are issues in the script, which in the end didn't avoid unsuccessful variations on classic genre clichés. Still, the director literally chips the tension out of more or less every shot and the work with the limited space of two seats on the plane is masterful and even the universally condemned ending doesn't lack proper gradation. Rachel McAdams sets herself up for a promising career as a pretty face with very developed acting potential, and Cillian Murphy already proved in Batman Begins that behind the face of an innocent-looking nice guy resides a villain of the heaviest caliber. It’s an absolutely minimized thriller from Phone Booth onwards, which would be perfect if it benefited from its originality throughout the entire runtime. Still, as it is, it’s a very above-average spectacle and many of its issues can be forgiven.

Tim Burton ignores the darkness and goes far beyond the kitsch of opulent color to literally create a breathtaking world made from the sweetest ingredients. He does a great job with the exaggeration, and such an overly pathetic story about family cohesion is in fact not awkward, but rather endearing. Johnny Depp's eccentric acting is just as entertaining as the little Oompa-Loompas, whose songs may be a bit self-indulgent, but what isn't in this film? Burton exaggerated everything so beautifully that I ate it up completely. And I very much enjoyed it.

In a way, Saw II is a pleasant surprise. The screenwriters managed to get rid of the holes in the logic in the first film, although it is true that they did leave a few of them in. In many ways, the filmmakers also managed to get away from the overly uneven parts, where one depicting the action in the room was excellent, with the others taking place elsewhere and the flashbacks being dull and grey. They manage to keep the atmosphere fairly balanced, though admittedly the whole thing is built more or less on a largely uncovered depiction of the functionality of the various tasks Jigsaw hands out to his victims. It is true that their originality is at times unpleasantly chilling, and some of them (the hole full of syringes) even made my stomach turn. Even so, Saw II is just a template thriller that has a relatively decent number of ideas and a decently dark atmosphere. On the other hand, it is also true that the hyperactive camera and clippy editing surprisingly take away from it a bit. A (non)standard above average film.