Othello

The second Hitman’s Bodyguard is more or less a sort of compilation of what I hate about contemporary mainstream cinema, namely an overabundance of characters, CGI out of laziness, pop culture giggles, Ryan Reynolds, and a fixation on nostalgia for old faces. But somehow I couldn't get angry at it, because it managed, I guess, to convey the mood of a place where quite obviously no one could care less and does whatever they want. It's written on drugs, acted on drugs, and the fee for Richard E. Grant's cameo must have kept the Croatian dealers busy for weeks. The upside is that this train doesn't stall and even when there isn't exactly an action scene going on, there is dialogue that is played with such nonsensical intensity and written so over the top that it comes across as an action scene. In any case, the gold digger Salma Hayek is utterly unbearable and undoubtedly deserving of a golden Anna Nicole Smith statue.

When you see this in the context of Besson's greatest creative lull, it strikes you as the best film in the world, even though it, like the Arthur trilogy, was made primarily to promote Besson's CGI production division Digital Factory. Fortunately, though, here he's returned to his conception of a world in which all the people are drunken children and the only ones who are remotely capable of any results are the active women, who as we know grow up earlier than the boys. And Bourgoin is wonderful as Adèle. This mad woman brings no shame to the other Adeles (Dinner for Adele, Blue Is the Warmest Color, Adelheid).

How it is when you're sitting in front of the screen, nostalgically reminiscing about, say, Saw IV, and you're miserable. But if you take into account the chronology of when the Saw franchise spawned that very trend of actual escape rooms (one of the most hellish challenges of the bourgeois lifestyle), which subsequently made its way back into cinemas, only reduced by macabre violence and that comical moralistic veneer, you'll find that you've actually found yourself in an escape room as the audience, tasked with not necessarily getting into every obviously profit-driven piece of crap just to keep your outlook on film up to date. But is it really that hard to find actors who maybe can't act, but can at least run? Or screenwriters who have ever been around what it looks like when two people are having fun?

It's utterly terrible in that Hallmark kind of way, but I somehow take it as a cheap alternative to those giant Pixar/DreamWorks productions, compared to which it's not as capable of masking what a terrible load of tripe it is. If David Bowie did the voice of Maltazard in the first one and Lou Reed in the second, I expect he could be dubbed in the third one by, say, Lešek Semelka.

It's not a comedy. Just a sensitive defense of the mundane, true to its subject matter in its guerrilla approach, with non-actors or debutantes filmed among real people on vacation who occasionally peer curiously into the camera. The film's strongest asset is definitely its familiar portrayal of the micro-life of family car camping in season, with all its traumatic details, including the ubiquitous Dutch. Every sound of a tent zipper unzipping makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

It would be a pleasantly meditative compilation of heretical settings if the set design didn't look like something out of a puppet show. The sharp multiple shadows on the styrofoam rocks and the corner rooms shot from only one angle unfortunately don't make the long, slow scenes feel increasingly funny. The funny thing is that when Cecilia Pezet takes off the nun's headdress, she looks exactly like the protagonist of the anime Paprika.

Poland's French Connection, which excellently blends period local specificity (the revaluation of communist state security agents in the new state regime seamlessly with the expansion of foreign mafia structures in the weakened new state) with clear genre rules. Pigs was one of a number of films with which Polish cinema tried to counter the onslaught of Western flicks that was attracting the audience of the time more than the post-revolutionary aggrieved works. When we realize that it was made for the same motives as, for example, Nudity for Sale, we have to realize how completely retarded we Czechs are even compared to Poles.

With every installment I think I've sufficiently girded myself, and yet I always stare in disbelief at how someone who can, for example, legally drive a car, could sign their name to something so horribly stupid. I'd like to say that DeMonaco can at least be acknowledged for how he manages to keep his finger on the pulse of the times and adapt that idiotic SAtiRe to current moods (criticism of the rich in post-crisis times, racial friction in the present), but there's no effort on his part to somehow clean up the scripts, make the characters at least something beyond inanimate pawns, or otherwise try to obliterate the pure fact that this is a mere money-grab, parasitizing on current social ills. And here's the problem – I don't actually know whether to be mad at him for this, because I don't think he has the capacity for anything better. Should I be angry at the stupid man in power or at the society that elected him there based on his stupid slogans? Likewise, I wonder, should I hate the stupid DeMonaco or the viewing public that has caused the fourth sequel of the most nonsensical and contrived plot ever to hit theaters? (Not to mention that technically, from the digital flames and blood to the horrible color-grading, it totally looks like Asylum).

I was more interested in this in the context of how much my socks were knocked back then by the live Rammstein: Paris. Lindemann doesn't have as strong an audio-visual concept as Till's alma mater, but it's more of a fun project where you can hear Tägtgren's hand almost exclusively in the composition, especially his band Pain. That's not a bad thing in itself, but this music can’t defend 90 minutes of running time. The show itself is also more of a romp than the sophisticated and over-realized antics of Rammstein. And then I have a moral problem with it, too, where Lindemann is a project that benefits greatly from pushing the edges of certain taboos in the discussion of where art ends and kinky pornography begins, yet chooses a bigoted environment for live viewing where they have to censor the projections until virtually nothing remains or they'll go to jail. What then plays into the live action is my personal affinity for Till Lindemann, with whom I find it incredibly entertaining just to watch how he stands.

A misty forest beyond whose elusive edge the war ends. And with that, a situation arises for the actors where meeting practically anyone is a death sentence. While Coach to Vienna suffers from declamatory, unbelievable finales and its share of unnecessary overacting, the excellent cinematography for its time, the wonderfully depicted environment of the dark forest, and the unique setting from it make for a pretty functional nightmare in the end.