DaViD´82

The opening two thirds, riding on a wave of the intimate heist genre with a pick-and-mix band of villains, are excellent, self ridiculing and, in the current deluge of “let’s save our city/world/space/existence" DC/Marvel cartoons, refreshing. However at the very end, the hitherto absent Batman for some reason takes the reins and suddenly this turns into a standard “let’s save the innocent by doing a lot of pow, pow, bam". But when the action begins (and it isn’t bad at all), else is forgotten; and so that opening two thirds simply fade into nothing. In any case, it is nicely maturely uncompromising (within the bounds of a mainstream superheroes cartoon) and, for fans of the DC movie and comic universe and Rocksteady games, full of references and tributes.

This is no Dirty Dozen, but it trying very hard to be like the Dirty Dozen. But instead of finding its own way toward achieving that, he it merely copies its elusive role model blow by blow. And although it is worse than its prototype in every respect, this is still an entertaining, unrealistic wartime action movie which is considerably better than the official sequels to the Dozen.

Equally original and ingenious as it is unpolished, languishing in its aimless weirdness and with an unusually annoying voice-over that goes on and on, while not saying anything at all. You wouldn’t hear so much meaningless prattle even drinking coffee at a two-day Mills and Boon fans convention. Does the previous sentence seem senselessly convoluted, trying to be funny while saying nothing at all? If so, welcome to the world of Mike Hodges’ Pulp. Only Michael Caine holds it back from toppling over the edge of endurability.

To the depths of wartime madness along a Conrad-style journey to the parched, vast horizon and beyond. It is mainly Isham’s background music that is fascinating; it’s like straight out of a creepy horror movie from the 80’s which together with wide-angle shots of the awe-inspiring stony desert create a captivatingly and disturbing atmosphere that helps us to understand the impulsive (and often also illogical) behavior of the characters balancing on the edge (and in some cases dangling over the edge) of sanity. The only criticism maybe just the thick American accents in the mouths of the Soviet heroes and the first third of the movie after an excellent prologue which is standard to the extent that it borders on dullness.

The equivalent of a garden party clown you know exactly what to expect from. Nothing miraculous, but solidly performed craft where you know and can see through every magic trick, but that’s also what you are expecting from it and that’s what you are getting. But with Woody Allen you might expect him to pull something of Copperfield-type dimensions out of the hat after all and not to satisfy himself with something cute and trivial. Maybe in the next show.

Even though you find out the authors’ opinion on nuclear energy pretty soon on, this is more than just a cheesy protest movie. Quite to the contrary, it uses paranoia and conspiracy quite sensitively according to the motto “the more minimalistic, the more intense". Most of the movie looks (I repeat: “looks" not “is"; from a technical point of view in fact it isn’t and doesn’t pretend to be) so true to life (and in the end more disturbing because of it) that if there was a caption saying “based on true events" many would jump at the bait; and they couldn’t be blamed for that.

The Wire² in Naples. Roberto Saviano stirs up stagnant waters with Gomorra. What the book was lacking in literary quality was made up for by the urgency of trying to change something, supported by the informational value of this insight behind the scenes of the Camorra. And he was rewarded for this by a public death threat. I don’t even want to imagine what threats the Camorra makes to the crew making this series (in terms of story the series and the book have nothing at all in common, but in spirit this is still the most faithful of adaptations). This trip to the dark side of Naples where we see everybody from the pawns up to the top dogs on the social ladder is, in its unembellished, bleak reality, much more powerful than the very best documentary. In fact, this series frequently has aspects of a documentary. But heavily enhanced by a distinctly (but truly distinctly) movie-type look. Gomorra cuts to the quick and, despite the fact that it gets by without any frills, it is unprecedentedly rough, dirty, uncompromising, with a remarkable sense of detail, often hypnotic but still in many aspects true to the rules of the genre. Nobody glorifies nothing, but nor does it pass judgement; it carefully avoids any evaluation, opinion or moralizing. It just shows things as they are. And maybe that’s why this is the purest (if not the best) mafia saga (although... in the others, the important thing is family, rules and honor; here the central theme is “business") of all. Season two becomes less documentary-like and concentrates much more on fate storylines and intrigues inside the mafia. Unfortunately it starts repeating what has already been said, but the final episodes more than make up for this shortcoming. Season three continues in the footsteps of season two. But although this series contains by far the most powerful moments and even episodes of the whole series, overall it shows that this didn’t necessarily have to be twelve episodes long. In places, again mainly at the beginning, there was too much talk for talk’s sake. | S1: 5/5 | S2: 4/5 | S3: 4/5 |

An unforgivable waste of potential. The most entertaining (because it’s the most crackpot, most absurd and the biggest sneer at classic superhero team movies) Marvel squad movie whose wings have been clipped by being grafted onto the standard template of an endless stream of Marvel movies “putting our money only on the tried and tested"; this time dressed up as a space opera with shamefully unremarkable action. Although they should have chosen a rather more revolutionary approach to the material. Maybe some time in the future; maybe with that already cult character from the post-credits scene.

The Prague Spring as the proverbial last straw after which Polish Col. Kukliński lost all his illusions about the USSR and over the course of several years he smuggles thousands of pages of essential files from technical specification to operation plans to the West. The movie depiction of his fate is primarily a genre movie through and through, secondly it is a great tribute and thirdly it is an attempt at reconstruction of the events of the time, but it is hard to treat it negatively, since the tension throughout the movie could be cut by a knife; typically during a conversation about nothing where they play a game like this: “he knows that that guy knows, but this guy just has suspicions, while the other guy suspects nothing." Too bad that, despite its genre-related and production qualities, this Polish filmmaker didn’t try to avoid genre clichés. This movie contains maybe all the clichés that have ever appeared in a spy movie. Most of them are presented with grace and serve their purpose, but it’s still rather a shame.

Gilliam’s Theorem must equal 5*. But, in its current state, Gilliam’s Theorem equals 3.42782*. To achieve the missing 1.57218*, it would need less exhibitionism from the filmmaker during the gratuitous Orwell-style prolog and greater focus on “the story I want to tell and what to hold up the critically aware mirror to"; as it is, it touches on various problems of the present and also some of the most fundamental questions about space and everything, but there is far too little of it.