Marigold

A very elegantly shot black comedy, which, with its rough poetics, evokes certain Quentin Tarantino moments, but thanks to its very distinctive design and cut, it maintains its own style. Although the plot is quite trivial, Guy Ritchie managed to break it down with various tricks (the most important of which is the shifting narrator and the editing) so that the film keeps the viewer on his toes until the last right hook comes from a really surprising side. In some passages, Snatch suffers from typical Tarantino awkwardness and self-purpose (maybe let's call it cool violence), but in others it has excellent characters (Brad Pitt is amazing again!), decent gags or top-notch situations. The film also has stylish and great-fitting music that is able to channel the atmosphere – a great example is the song “MASSIVE ATTACK", which freezes the smile on your lips a little. In short, Guy Ritchie was able to handle the genre much better than most other gangsta poetics worshippers and made a film that is a joy to watch.

Director and screenwriter Petr Zelenka returned to his emblematic theme - stories of small human "derogations" to deviations, in the award-winning play “Wrong Side Up". After the response at the Dejvice Theatre, he moved the fates of his heroes to movie theatre screens and the question arises as to whether he did the right thing. Most of those who have seen the play say no. In fact, I am not surprised by this view, even though I did not have the pleasure of seeing it. The film version has a very strong and impressive skeleton in the form of the central characters (the excellent acting performances of all involved of course!) and several really brilliantly written episodes, and then a bit of excess muscle composed mainly of things that were forced in by film processing. An excess of image at the expense of the point, unnecessary lengthiness and loss of concentration, which is crucial to the story of one normal fool. Towards the end the film loses intensity and immediate viewer-character contact, which until then especially the excellent Ivan Trojan is able to maintain. Nevertheless, the result is a rather impressive combination of typical Zelenka sarcasm and sense of absurd and "everyday" tragedy. In my opinion, however, Wrong Side Up does not achieve the qualities of the slightly similarly tuned Buttoners, which was somewhat more cinematic.

One must admire Anderson, because he managed to keep this strange patchwork of pseudo-documentary, infantile D adventure and intimate drama together with the ease of a master. This is greatly aided by the music, especially the postmodern remakes of David Bowie into Portuguese and intimate songwriting, which have a special rhythmic impact on the overall somewhat unbalanced tempo of the film thanks to the regular cuts to musician Seu Jorge. An indispensable specificity of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is the stylized camera, especially the composition of images, which often resembles a group photo from a traveler's diary (or scenes from children's hero games – as you can see, they are close to each other). However, the main driving aspect of the film is undoubtedly the acting performances (I have to mention the phenomenal Willem Dafoe and especially Bill Murray, who is at the imaginary peak of his powers!), thanks to which one overcomes the vertigo of confusion in the opening parts of the film and, with a little luck, finds the path to Steve Zissou's bizarre aquarium... The risk of him running out of oxygen in the depths is still present, but despite this fact, this film is worth betting on.

A rather amusing Western farce with Asian "Indian" Jackie Chan and other strange things that quite accurately fit into Western customs, thus gently bringing them down, but also nostalgically exalting them. The action scenes are fine (seeing the high kicks in the saloon is an interesting experience), the story doesn't bother you and the Chan-Wilson duo works... Pleasingly above average within the genre.

"I have never felt such a strong desire to join our people's democratic army among comrades as I have by just watching this film. I mean, what's missing from such a comrade in arms? It has adventures, friends, women and hens! And fresh air! And serves its country! And there's no falsehood, no bullying, no humiliation. Yes, that's our people's democratic army!" ... A decent normalization comedy with good actors and a slightly musty agitation subtext, but luckily the smell is not repulsive, rather slightly funny in all its naivety and bucolic stylization. By the way, Petr Hapka's soundtrack is really terrible, so terrible that it's going to stay in your head.

An inexpressible acting and directing concerto, based on an excellent book and a great script. It's hard to say to whom to most "attribute" the suggestiveness of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, whether the actor ensemble, who spent several weeks behind the walls of the world of "abnormality" to absorb the color there (and they succeeded perfectly), or Miloš Forman, whose sensitive and basically inconspicuous but perfectly well-established direction give the film a touch of quiet, subliminal drama, which reaches its greatest intensity in the group therapy scenes... Perhaps the most appropriate conclusion is that One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a perfectly coordinated symphony of all instruments, dominated by the solo parts of Jack Nicholson (incredibly natural and truly manic) and Louise Fletcher (whose beautiful façade hides a minimalist, gruesome interior). The quiet struggle of these two elements – the noisy bon vivant and troublemaker McMurphy and the despotic ruler of the Ratched sisters perfectly complements the smaller but all the more respectable acting party of the department's inmates. Miloš Forman moves in the world of the "crazies" with absolute clarity, with a documentary overview and flawless feeling for the inner drama of the characters. Years later, this image of individual freedom and joy of living in the midst of a world that eats its inhabitants mercilessly is still much better than everything that has been filmed on the subject (including the calculated The Shawshank Redemption).

A cult film. True, it's basically an outrageous bucolic and a village idyll that imitates, for example, the cheerful “Zvonokosy", but I simply just enjoy this film. It has a relaxed atmosphere, cleverly written dialogues, good actors... And there's something really magical about football when you don’t just watch it from the comfort of your sofa...

This was this film that interested me eminently from Robert Altman's filmography, but I must say that our contact was strikingly similar to a head-on collision. I haven't seen a more boring film in a long time. I admit that the evocation of aristocratic emptiness, hypocrisy, and aimlessness worked out perfectly for Altman, as has the portrayal of the mimetic and ailments of perhaps an even more creepy world of their servants. Unfortunately, however, the depicted fates and the "ironic topography" seemed to me like a tourist detour around places that do not tell me anything. Similarly, the very conservative and rigid style of direction, which only accentuated the characteristics of the depicted world, could not evoke any stronger feelings in me. After an hour and a quarter, certain hysteria and constant pathos got on my nerves, and the murder that was supposed to create the illusion of a detective plot didn't bring much relief. The only part that was excellent for me was the ending, which had a touch of relief for both me and the unbearable snob world, which seemed to end with the death of Sir William and the end of the hunt... Despite respect for craftsmanship and recognition that Altman's creative intent was fulfilled to a great extent, I cannot forget that this film left me aristocratically cold.

An excellent synthesis of the raggedness and musical ferocity of Black Cat, White Cat, the visual symbolism of Underground and the civilian plane of When Father Was Away on Business. Although perhaps the above may seem a little disparate, Emir Kusturica was able to make it whole with his unique sense of image and its atmosphere in a truly masterful way. Life is a Miracle thus works as well as a crazy comedy, in which people's verbal humor is associated with the irresistible visual opposite of animals, a love story, the varying theme of Romeo and Juliet, as well as a testimony to one senseless war, conceived with traditional cynicism and shaped by disturbing symbolism. It's a pity that Emir is once again carried away by his temperament and somewhat forgetting his senses, which makes the film fly too far in different directions, and it loses pace several times. Yet it is a traditionally famous authorial film with almost Fellini picturesqueness, cruelly black humor and beautiful music. I give it **** 1/2.

Unfortunately, Homolka and Pocketbook is inseparably part of the Czech cinematography of the 1960s and I consider its normalization overlap to be greatly pointless, but which was saved only by the excellent acting etudes of the entire family and Jiří Hrzán. At the beginning of the film, Papoušek seems to maintain his economically satirical style, but over time the film melts into an annoying flicker of negative qualities of the working people, which is planted in vaguely reflected backgrounds of Revolutionary Trade Union Movement recreation... On the one hand, we can also find a very mild caricaturing of the obvious stupidity of "organized happiness", on the other hand, the tone of the film is not very satirical, and thanks to the cruel title song, rather typically like middle-current agitations. Only the resonance of Papoušek's talent and the wisely moderate tone of the script keep Homolka and Pocketbook above the level of a terrible normalization slag that was supposed to educate people to positively perceive the values of socialism... The documentary dimension and minimalist narrative style of the previous films have disappeared, and thus the film loses any testimonial value. Three stars out of nostalgia and respect for one great phenomenon.