Marigold

A selection of the two best Marriage Stories diluted by the last act, which fully shows that Třeštíková's method is currently completely toothless and random. Where in the 1980s she was sharply able to capture the ordinariness of normalization and in the 1990s the tenacious effort to "survive her family and entrepreneurship", in the last third she introduces sparse speech therapy, a random collection of moments and increasingly self-serving intrusions into the private relationships of several people. Unease and helplessness are actually quite mild terms. A better word is impotence. It's a pity, I consider The Strnads to be the pinnacle of Marriage Stories, but their feature form does not come close to the penetration of two television documentaries.

The problem is the same. Impressive acting moments and moral dilemmas trampled by weary music and dysfunctional dramaturgy, which the motive for collaboration and national disasters seeks to strengthen with the connection with the year 1968, where the series feels even more rigid. Burian on the Radio = one of Javorský's best moments. But a lot of encumbrance besides that. Cutting intercourse and racial expression is, at the end, a cumbersome directing fail.

If I hadn't been fighting off sleep unnecessarily in the first two thirds and woke up for the last half hour, I would still believe that Spectral is a solid sci-fi that evokes a successful video game adaptation with how it imaginatively does the action. Unfortunately, I saw the paranormal Black Hawk Down too, so I didn't miss a bit of graveyard acting and screenwriting ectoplasm. It's a pity. Mathieu brought a sense of effective visuals from commercials and the production values are decent for "straight to VOD". Or maybe Budapest looks worse than I remember under Orbán.

Animals versus colonialism or the Swedish model makes Africa great again. When the creators are already pushing so hard on the racial and colonial aspect, the character of the scattered and theatrically very faint Aryan is very interesting, by which I do not want to suggest that anything from The Legend of Tarzan deserves to be taken seriously. Attempts at moralizing are as rigid as trying to tell two stories at once (both the "origin" and the new storyline drag on). Christopher Waltz could send his less talented double to the set to play the villainous roles, and David Yates confirms that he is a boring director, especially when the screenwriters don't give him brisk dialogues. Plus, it sometimes looks like some of the shots disappeared, so Samuel L. Jackson fires like a rich Texan. I can also forget that the film opens a meaningless amount of storylines and tells them very roughly, and sometimes not at all. Favreau didn't try a tenth of the "serious overlaps" in The Jungle Book, yet his film looks ten times more mature than this CGI nonsense. One then notices with fascination all the bullshit, such as the fact that a man living his whole life among gorillas is shaved like a real Dandy. Well, the nobleman's son won’t be denied.

How to commit commercial suicide. 1) Choose a theme that will be of interest to a few Igor Chauna fans, 2) have the screenplay written by the guys who ruined Dracula and let Vin Diesel hunt witches, 3) fill it with wooden actors and write absurd lines for those who are not wooden, and, just to make sure, dress them up in potato bags, 4) summon a director who dissolves the budget into a show of incredibly over-embellished digital sets where almost no camera movement feels natural. The rest will take care of itself. After an hour, I stopped having fun laughing at the hellish naivety, which had lost all of its charm. Even the parade of tanned busts and whitewashed Egyptian deities did not make it anymore merciful. The most absurd blockbuster of 2016, without a doubt.

13 Hours subjectively ends it, Michael Bay pulls one pathetic cartridge after another from his sleeve, there are bloody plastic bags and an American flag... Otherwise, this attempt to grasp the absurdity of the geopolitical situation through a realistic view is pleasantly cheesy. You would go for a beer and a fox hunt with most of the heroes-contractors. They are full-bearded, pert, simple and, unlike over-wise and re-educated operatives, they "know the map". But the action served in waves has balls, a gore factor and dynamics. At times, however, Bay forgets that he wanted to stay short and pulls out his typical mortars. The runtime is hard to defend, and ideologically, this work (like all of Michael's "more thoughtful" films) moves on a minefield of hardness... but it is quite fun, not as sharply cut and cohesive as Black Hawk Down, but it's still reliable enough to the title of the sweatiest and most sentimental macho film of 2016. Too bad Optimus Prime doesn’t emerge at the end. That would be expensive.

This is no longer eccentric, narcissistic, or convoluted. This is ... just a stupid scream fest. Please, no more family therapies, forgotten family members or dogs that used to be human. I hope that Gatiss and Moffat enjoyed their incest party and pass the creative reins to someone who can combine more than two identical elements and the "I'm someone else" twist.

Good acting (mainly Dlouhý and Javorský), sometimes brought down by acting that is almost amateurish (the wooden Vančura), a solidly evoked atmosphere smashed by incomprehensible music that disturbs the impressiveness of the period melodies. And a relatively interesting situation from the incoming protectorate which, for a change, are broken by unnecessary and awkward jumps to 1968. So far, in general, rather uncertain impressions. From the new production of Czech Television, however, it’s the only thing worth watching that at least raises some sensible dilemmas.

A well-constructed drama that diversifies the relatively straightforward story with a few cleverly timed changes in perspective. Eastwood directs conservatively and keeps pathos in check, which pays dividends several times in the process when we return from the "present" to the deck of flight 1549. The only problem is the character of Sully, who is so one-dimensionally humble, good and self-doubting, that in order for the film to function as a drama at all, it must demonize the NTSB investigators. Everyone around the miraculous flight does their job 100%, the film is literally an ode to ordinary working Americans who trust their asses more than computers or institutions. But I feel that making the NTSB into a group of biased, manipulative and unwilling suits is very controversial, even in the case of a "fictional dramatic reconstruction". Especially when among them are many former pilots and it is demonstrably usually very difficult for them to bear the failures of their colleagues. This way, it seems that the accident was surrounded by professionals, except for the investigators. Why this excursion? Sully is actually a very sparse and a single-stranded film. Entertaining but simple. But I wish it well - I could not tear myself away from it.

The tragedy of an ordinary person. In the best tradition of Dardennov verism and the Romanian new wave, but adjusted according to Bulgarian time. A scathing allegory / tragedy / farce about a man who stutters at the wrong time, in the wrong place, to get back a watch that goes neither too fast nor too slow. A screenwriting masterpiece supported by fantastic acting performances and a millimeter cut, which makes things last just long enough that the viewer cannot get an overly clear impression. The point? Devastating. Wake me when someone films something at least half as accurate and uncompromising.