Marigold

Full Metal Jacket for the new millennium – militant, cynical and predatory. A ballbusting documentary drama about a war-addicted people, about overgrown boys for whom normal life is far too normal. Bigelow loaded a cart full of naturalism, the hot Iraqi atmosphere and brilliant acting. This type of dynamically filmed war drama has been lacking since the days when Scott filmed Black Hawk Down. Like him, Bigelow leaves aside the moral assessment of the conflict and instead goes deep into the characters' psyche and adds a solid portion of irony (something that was missing in Black Hawk Down). There is great portion of raw fight scenes and sweaty dialogues of the average soldier for two solid hours. The Hurt Locker is not trying to get to the heart of the Iraq war, but rather simply capture the strange soul of a warrior. And in this respect, Kathryn Bigelow did a better and more responsive job than her male colleagues. In addition to balls, the film also has empathy... For me, The Hurt Locker is one of the American film highlights of 2009. Perhaps even the best.

Great acting is what it's all about. Unlike the author of the original version, Susanne Bier, the experienced Jim Sheridan unequivocally opted for a fluent and orthodox melodramatic style – the film Brothers is crafted and tight, is able to hit the first signal precisely, but after watching the film, a strange emptiness remains. The film hides nothing under its pretty facade except for a kind of careful pacifism and simple psychology. The music by U2 goes well with it. The fact that it’s well made and has decent moral appeals is easily interchangeable with ideological neutrality.

A hybrid between "dogmatic" naturalism and classical melodrama. The naturalism consists of a hand-held camera and the effort to be a careful observer of events, and the melodrama of a well made plot and impressive music. Sometimes both components exist in a pleasant symbiosis, whilst at other times one seems to undermine the other – Brothers is neither sufficiently corrosive nor sufficiently touching. Nevertheless, the film cannot be denied solid depth and craftsmanship. Moreover, the conclusion is very intelligent and impressive.

Slightly weaker than Haneke's best works... the radicality and precision of the surgical method of vision somewhat gives way to a more traditional concept and a chronological and clearly causal narrative. The film lacks gradation and the absorbing vagueness of The Seventh Continent, but on the other hand, the study of the individual characters is all the more detailed. More than in the debut and the subsequent 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance, in the film there is a certain conservatism and direct accusation against modern society. The more Haneke lets his method involuntarily eat away reality and does not try to use it as an active communication tool, the more his works affect me. This means that Benny's Video was about 50% impactful for me.

Haneke's return to the radical approach of his debut. An incoherently chopped stream of fragments, long, seemingly useless details of mundaneness, and documentary inserts in the form of news from massacres and wars. Another player appears in Haneke's cold and withdrawn world – coincidence. The director's fragmentary vision stands beside the analysis of the disintegration of modern values, and it is a vision that presents disjointed scenes to the viewer. Is there any motivation or interconnectedness between them? Does madness and decay spring from namable sources? Haneke's answer is chilling with its non-participation and absurdity. His small world is connected to the world of great history by a moment of moral crisis... continuous vessels in which blood, anger and hopelessness spill over. Although the cruelty of great events in history is not surprising, the small ones always get to us. At the same time, as Haneke shows, it is the same flesh, the same evil. The same creature. Mensch.

A precise vertical cut in one seemingly incomprehensible tragedy. Haneke composes with masterful abruptness sharp shards of long shots of mundaneness, which, for the most part evoke in the viewer an incomprehensible feeling of banality and a creeping distress, which is an omen of the third part. In it, Haneke carries out a frontal attack with image and sound and, from a hitherto unmotivated collage, he creates a surprising and brutal image of decay. His cold cynicism, professorial detachment, and rational arguments aimed at capturing the seemingly inexplicable show elements of refined sadism, with which the creator torments the viewer through hints and uncertainty. The hitherto vaguely suspected distress comes to a scathing climax, which reflects the immense creative discipline with which Haneke prepared the climax in its entirety. The Seventh Continent is a dark, cynical and misanthropic study of the despair that results from absolute prosperity and order. Michael Haneke's debut shows all the hallmarks of a well-thought-out and perfectly fulfilled method that cuts off fat deposits of clichés from reality, removes the facade of idyllic conception and lets bleed the irrational essence of human existence and the pandemic emptiness of "blissful" modern society.

This is either a lost episode of Czech Soda, from which someone cut out all the points, or some of the worst intellectual diarrhea in recent years. I don't want to offend anyone by saying that, but a couple of nice paintings blinded by thesis-like wisdom about God, love and human arrogance really don't make a summer. Especially since, in addition to successful shots, we find in this mess of a film a lot of shots that are much better suited to be in the music videos of metal bands from Dolní Bukovina.

Someone else wrote it… doesn’t make it any less true. A beautiful, nice, poetic and extremely brisk film, where romance can both caress and bite until it breaks the skin... just like in life. Perhaps the conclusion could have been a little less of a fairytale. However, (500) Days of Summer is a fairytale, but this fact does not take the cute banal force out of Webb's film. Probably the biggest surprise of last year from the American mainstream.

It flies by like an airplane, leaving behind a condensing steam of nice phrases, textbook truths, and encouraging statements. All we need is for Clooney to raise his eyebrows and the world seems to be a kind place where even the biggest loss has its positive aspects. However, like the hero Ryan, above all Reitman's film gives the viewer a treated motivational pat – I was not offended in any way, but truth be told, I also checked out.

Tight, urgent and impressive morality. Hollý built a rotten panopticon of the command of the Austro-Hungarian army, perpetuated a few very powerful scenes (in particular König's legal sermon to Hoferik is brilliant) and created a less bombastic analogy of Kubrick's Paths of Glory – a universal critique of militarism, cowardice and villainy of gentlemen who do not hesitate order their foot soldiers to the slaughter for their own benefit. I was only personally upset by the synthetics of Liška's musical track, which simply does not fit into an otherwise strictly period film.