Marigold

Wes and his animated woods, this time in a cabaret version of The World of Yesterday: Memories of a European. The film is best described by the quote dedicated to the main character: "His world came to an end long before he entered it." Unlike Zero, however, I seriously doubt that Anderson handles this paradox with grace. Unfortunately, I am already able to guess ahead of time the points and camera movements, and the cameos of the stars. The story is less inventive than Murder in a Parlor Car Compartment, and it's hard to tell if an alibi with nickel-and-dime novels will stand up (these are full of twists, which The Grand Budapest Hotel is not in its linear caricature). As soon as the enthusiasm for the artistically beautifully grasped retro faded away (if we can call a style retro that is freely reminiscent of something old, but does not even correspond to it), I found myself in a sequence of dynamic and loosely connected gags that float in an approximate intellectual goulash of references, paraphrases and winking. Anderson is so fascinated by the veneer of his toy industry that, when you finally make it to the melancholic finale, you are almost sorry that he has devoted so much time to characters and scenery that are beautiful but totally flat. The Grand Budapest Hotel captures an artist at the height of narcissism, who misses what is really interesting under the influx of colorful props and grotesque gags. No doubt more fun than the desperately overrated Moonrise Kingdom, but otherwise similarly meaningless.

I didn't understand this movie. Yes, 4:3 is a gesture, but a gesture of what? Neither Andrey Arnold's empathy and poignant lyricism, nor Amat Escalante's precise analysis of the banality of evil, nor the veristic accuracy of the Dardenn brothers. A film that observes characters, and it is not clear why. Apart from a story being told, there is nothing more to it. It is a model festival film with a "serious theme" from a non/over inspired filmmaker without talent. The motivations of a drastic act do not make sense to me other than as pure support of some dubious point. I grab my head full of Haneke and agree with Terman. Crime, crime, crime... youth.

It’s not that it’s free of pure WTF moments, supported by powerful, completely non-conceptual Czech post-synchrony (the etudes of Bishop Joseph feel like passages from Vatican porn). But if you are waiting for a naive tabloid sump like Catch a Billionaire / Kajínek, you will be disappointed, because this film was made by a) people who obviously have experience with the marketing and advertising environment, b) people who can write a solid dialogue here and there, c) people who can more or less make movies (I'm not saying that they do a good job at it). Formally, of course, we are talking about a very hard-working derivative on the border between cappuccino advertising and an imitation of Tony Scott. In terms of the screenplay, these are two very laboriously patchworked storylines, one of which feels more like a factory for humor and the promo for the voice and face of Michal Dlouhý, the other like a forced construction of a political thriller in realities that do not do it any good. It is an amorphous conglomeration of motifs that are individually interesting, sometimes even having certain critical potential, but together they seem like rash chatter about the essence of contemporary political marketing, and so on. When you decipher the individual layers and filter out the nonsense, you are left with a trivial story with a very trivial message. Candidate tries to pretend that there is something more to it, but it is best captured by the "nonsense" of the following SPOILER connection: the Slovak Kennedy and a descendant of Štúr. The film simply behaves similarly to the main character - it does everything with effect, and where the effect doesn't help, it takes on even more effect. The characters often give the impression that they don't actually react to the world around them and move on simply because the script requires them to (it is as if Coppola’s The Conversation completely gave up the main character's mental suffering and focused only on the content of the wiretaps). As a result, the superficiality has no critical / ironic corrective. I never once felt that Candidate was insulting my intelligence, but I also never felt that the film was stimulating it in any way. The most positive thing I can say about the film is that in the given genre, there’s probably nothing better that has been created in Czechoslovakia. And that's really too little.

The saddest film by the Coen brothers with their unrivaled, least sympathetic protagonist. It sounds like a bittersweet folk hit about a guy who was out of it his entire life. You know exactly where the verse, the chorus and the specific rhyme belong. And that's the power of a simple song that crept under my skin like frost and the purring of a cat. Nothing profound, just a beautiful experience that needs no explanation / defense. [85%]

This film could serve as a demonstration of how contemporary Hollywood sometimes bets on the brain drain of progressive personalities from other cinematographies and then tries to tame them in the machine. Padilha’s "action social drama" manuscript is there at the beginning, and seeing the editing and shooting from "another world" is, of course, a refreshing but sedentary rating, a bit of enigmatic magic with musical dramaturgy as a result, and the surprisingly extinct kinetics of Carvalho's camera just turn the action into padding. The creators also sometimes provocatively associate it with demanding conversations about the essence of the main character. The new RoboCop is actually a bit of a radical and staid conversational drama about a man from whom remains only a piece of his face and several organs. Most of the violence from the original moves from the streets to the body of the protagonist, who spends more than half of the film dealing with his identity, family, and getting used to the suit. Thanks to well-written dialogues and great actors, it works. Ideologically, the film evokes the irony of the original through a right-wing talk show and a parody of the marketing abuse of Murphy / RoboCop as a product for the masses. There is also a noticeable shift in the acceptance of a globalized perspective and the transformation of the corporate sphere from "sharks in suits" to a casual field of philanthropists in cool outfits. While Verhoeven once made a film that can be consumed as a perfect product of American culture and as its harsh parody, "liberal fascist" Padilha and his team are much more literal. Some people still have a problem deciphering it, but the critical storyline pointing to the mechanization of war and justice is quite understandable. Combined with thoughts about transforming man into a machine, it becomes quite a productive thing to think about. The new RoboCop will never offer the total "blood, shit and mud" pleasure of the original, which it tries not to refer to too ostentatiously (and when it does, then it does so ironically - the use of Poledouris’ motif as the signature tune of a right-wing agitation show). It looks for its own way to get to the topic. Therefore, despite the wheels falling off and the somewhat dubious gradation of the second half, it makes sense. Special thx to always fabulous Oldman, easygoing armyJobs Keaton and the very precisely vulnerable Kinnaman. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for it, but it will probably just pass us by like (the little more problematic) Elysium. I just hope that we will see the day when the ratio of realized and unrealized ideas in the fights between producer and inventive creator goes the other way. [75%]

Meat and metal classic. Verhoeven reinforced the action time with a bloated can with his favorite news shots, which, from the point of view of the whole, are actually completely unnecessary, but in addition to the classic spectacle, they construct a rather disturbing storyline of the collapsing world of the future. Motives such as the abuse of the police by the private sector and tensions between owners and unions do lag behind, but they also functionally complete the atmosphere. It's straightforward, but it digs so hard with its brutality and foresight that one still feels the slight stomach vibrations from the time when he devoured it like a child in silent amazement.

The film is largely asking for tabloid reading, so let's do it. Possible reasons for why is was created: a) Bolek Polívka's attempt to do something about his difficult financial situation, or b) Bolek Polívka's need to confess as a comedian who is no longer funny and can't even play himself as a clown (those who saw his sad performance in Ano, šéfe, probably know what I'm talking about). In the script, we don't find much connection to Věra Chytilová's subversive farce, except for the characters. It's more of a sentimental litany about alcohol, women and detachment from reality. The film does include a few jokes, but they are not particularly imaginative (situationally or verbally). The Inheritance or You Shouldn't Say That also deserves ridicule because it contains a few scenes in which Sedláček has stepped over the hitherto carefully observed limit of his popularity and fell into Troškov antics. I don't want to make fun of it. Watching people you feel sympathetic toward hit the bottom is not very pleasant, but on the other hand, if I strip away the fact that this film should have inherited something from Chytilová, it is in some ways a strangely authentic regretful confession of a man for whom the world ends in a fence with horses and badges on a vest, and who desperately longs for a kind of lost "cheerful innocence". It amounts sitting with a drunkard who has been humming wisdom and lamenting in your head for two hours... he’s pissing you off, but you have to admit that it fascinates you in certain ways. Due to the lack of points, I will add a few fragments that fell after the screening in the set Schmarc - Fila - Carpenter - Stejskal: "The Moravian Wolf of Wall Street", "A Film Beyond Good and Evil".

As a detective story it’s a little fail, because it uses a typical "cowardly candlestick model", it piles up distracting motifs, and you will only guess the killer if you involve experiences with a similar genre tactic in the game. Which I didn't really want to do, as I had hoped that this maneuver would be avoided by the creators. The construction of the figures, the level of episodic storylines and the concept of the main characters is at a higher level, and so is the elaboration, which uses rich color and light contrasts, gloomy half-details for the characters in the bleak landscape, and asymmetrical framing. Yes, Wallander and the Nordic detective story come to mind thanks to the model of the detective plot and the hidden motive. Broadchurch is at its best through its own unique aspects - a well-drawn community, a turbulent level of overly peaceful lives, ambiguous work with an incest motif and, above all, excellent detectives who honor the Nordic antisocial model, but also translate it interestingly into somewhat more sentimental island notes. Tennant's rat face is an exact match, as is the run-of-the-mill face of Olivia Colman. In the end, I get the irrefutable impression that Broadchurch works as a drama a little better than The Killing (above all, it is not looking for its own identity as much and offers more interesting perspectives on the psychological and the social level - media, community), but as a detective story it managed to assume its shortcomings in eight parts. The evasion is unfortunate, even if it is clearly defined by the format. Even so, I’ve moved into that town emotionally up to my ears. [85%]

An exciting and ambivalent topic reduced to an educational, touching and flat narrative about the history of the struggle for the emancipation of blacks. It is also ideologically horribly flat and the White House is, over decades, an almost idyllic space of justice, while the KKK in the south represents an excess that is gradually crushed. There is no war, peace everywhere. Yes, we can. Oh, really? Probably fine for schools, but as a film mapping the problem of "black and negro identities" it’s terribly banal. The good news is that the favorite for the Oscars is not this servile supplicant, but instead its slightly tougher black brother McQueen.

O. Russell annoys me immensely. His films are reminiscent of a showcase of clichés and conventions, and if all this worked well in Fighter, it changed from Silver Linings Playbook to empty glitz covered with an imitation of "something more". However, his mannerist preference for certain techniques and compositions is not even "nicely cheesy" and cool (exciting), but simply emptily self-serving. Completely in line with the never-ending "just enough so that you can't see much" show of Amy Adams's cleavage, which instead of excitement arouses, after a while, an inquisitive feeling about whether she is supposed to attract attention or distract the viewer. An absurdly rich selection of period hits, a showcase of idiotic hairstyles, dysfunctional parallel storylines and narrator voices, carried by Bale, who is already starting to forget that acting means more than periodically gaining and dropping 50 kilos. After The Wolf of Wall Street, this artificial attempt at an epic of deception and hypocrisy, folded into a would-be brazen and contemplative whole, feels even more unappealing. And the last Marty didn't get under my skin much. But at least I still have enough sense to recognize a hoax from the original. [50%]