Lima

Tim Burton's dumbest and most boring film, and I say that as a great admirer of his. So, let's summarize. Typical Burton goofy humour? There’s none of it. Burton's famous bizarre visual styling? Non-existent. The always so distinctive music of Elfman? I didn’t catch it. Immersive plot? Plot? What plot? So what the hell, at least some minor tidbits, like Barnabas's confrontation with modern times? Criminally underused. I'll let Barnabas's fangs bite me if I'm making this up, but these were my two longest hours at the movies in years.

Tarsem Singh is a misunderstood and underappreciated individual. Whatever could be said about his previous films is entirely true here as well. Singh once again captivates with visuals and bizarre ideas that are not to most people's taste, but I appreciate him all the more. This was a very playful and enjoyable film. That it sometimes descended into infantile humour? So what. And the Bollywood wink at the end made me very happy. PS: Phil Collins can be proud of his daughter.

Today's 3D screening at Imax only confirmed what every viewer probably already knows: Titanic will never get old. It’s still brimming with energy, moving and tragic, funny and technically epic as it was 15 years ago. And it has survived everything. Even the pastime back then of mocking DiCaprio, who at the time was the personification of posters and stickers in teen magazines, suffered from the adoration of whiny teenage girls, and is now one of the world's most respected actors. Cameron's Titanic has survived the rapid evolution in the field of visual effects and even today can stand proudly next to all sorts of visually lavish flicks, without getting get lost and or blushing with shame. And just as I enjoyed the technical precision of the reconstruction of the sinking itself before, I now enjoy the romantic storyline, which is definitely not a Pretty Woman type of thing, Cameron endowed it with lightness, wit and a pleasant feeling at the heart. And as time goes by, the film is appreciated (and cherished) by a new and younger generation of viewers. The proof is in FilmBooster itself, when I registered in 2002, Titanic had an average rating of 75%. And today? You can see for yourselves! Bugger me, it was awesome!

Poster tagline: NOT SINCE KING KONG HAS THE SCREEN EXPLODED WITH SUCH MIGHTY FURY AND SPECTACLE!!! Wretched. The 1950s and 60s saw several film variations of King Kong, whether by Hollywood, the Japanese studio Toho, or, specifically here, in Europe. If you were expecting an eye-popping spectacle based on the poster, you’d be terribly disappointed. The main character is a professor who keeps a chimpanzee in his laboratory and, using special injection solutions from exotic carnivorous plants, gradually enlarges it and endows it with boundless obedience and aggression. 90% of the runtime takes place in three cheap locations: the professor's apartment, his lab and a greenhouse with carnivorous plants. No tension is created through interrupted dialogues and the three murders, carried out by Konga in human size (on the professor's orders), don't save the day. All in all, the viewer "enjoys" the main character, Konga, for a total of about 10 minutes. In order to make the dull storyline at least a little more dramatic, the screenwriters added a love triangle (the professor, the student, her boyfriend) and when the escaped and now already giant Konga gets unleashed 15 minutes before the end, the viewer is not in for a visual effect fast. Konga just uses rear projection to walk between the buildings, always stopping for a moment, looking and walking again, without any interactions with people, demolished buildings, nothing. This is what a pointless remake looks like. But the poster is so beautiful!

Poster tagline: HAIR-RAISING EXCITEMENT IN THE ICY LAIR OF MAN-LIKE CREATURES ROAMING THE ROOF OF THE WORLD!!! And I would add this: “Girls, watch out. The yettis are dangerous, evil, and want to mate!” I don’t give Boo! ratings often, but this terribly cheap horror film is so incredibly poorly directed, acted and edited that I'm not at all surprised at the honorary inclusion among the "gems" of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. It's so bad that it's unintentionally funny at times, but those moments are unfortunately few and far between. Roughly a third of the runtime takes place in a tent, with chatter about the search for a lost brother (a girl searches for him with the help of two friends, and later with the assistance of the mysterious mountain guide Vargas and a professor who’s searching for the existence of snowmen). Otherwise there is constant climbing (the location shots are cut from a Mexican nature film) and climbing and climbing and ....climbing. Every now and then a yetti, ergo an actor dressed in a funny fur coat, peeks out from under the snow or behind a rock and the first contact with people occurs only 20 minutes before the end. Scenes that are supposed to be dramatically tense – the avalanche, the ambush in the cave – are so horribly executed that even Ed Wood would be ashamed. And when, towards the end, Vargas reveals his plan (to kidnap a girl to breed snowmen) and his ancestry ("5th generation yetti") – and unveils his manly chest with long white yetti hair to prove it, you're rolling on the floor laughing.

Poster tagline: THE BLAZE OF THE SUN MADE HIM A MONSTER!!! This film is completely unknown in our country, but in America it’s a cult B-movie that received two parody remakes, one in the 80s and another one by a comedy group. It’s the story of a man who is accidentally irradiated while visiting a nuclear power plant and temporarily becomes a monster whenever he comes into contact with sunlight – half human, half reptile, with scaly skin and a "creepy" expression. The result is a bit of love story (with a chanson), a bit of drama, a bit of crime and a bit of horror, with a dramatically tense ending, where the hero, played by Robert Clark (also the writer and director), runs around an industrial complex and mows down one policeman after another. I would disagree entirely with my colleagues here that the monster mask was unused. Especially in the second half, the viewer enjoys it to the fullest, even though its "haunting potential" must be seen through the lens of that time; today it evokes a smile rather.

Poster tagline: MASTODONS! DINOSAURS! FLYING REPTILES! BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL – AGAINST BRUTAL, BESTIAL NEANDERTHALS! Pure, playful entertainment, something like a Zeman flick of its time. The premise is simple: after a comet collides with Earth, two rivals in love reach its surface of the comet, where prehistoric life thrives. The creators mixed all sorts of things: mammoths, dinosaurs, Neanderthals, Stone Age hunters, aggressive underground creatures with white wigs, etc. Thanks to the colourful production design and a very action-packed story, the film never gets boring. In the studio scenes, which make up 95% of the runtime, there's no direct interaction between the actors and the animals; the classic rear projection comes to the rescue, with an overgrown coati and its fight with a snake, a giant newt and an iguana, a dinosaur duel that is highly reminiscent of the one from Robot Monster and cut from the earlier 1940 film One Million B.C. There are also elephants with glued-on fur, one of which chases one of the actors across the desert, and a fight with a giant spider that gives Ed Wood’s octopus a run for its money. While the Neanderthals are really rough, thanks to the good make-up effects, the prehistoric women look like supermodels, with neat hairstyles, long manes and make-up. The open ending called for a sequel that never materialised.

Incredibly sweet, playful, a delight for the eye, the ear and the spirit of all old people, among whom I also count myself. The dance number at the end was so terribly cute that I was grinning from ear to ear. And if I were a woman, I'd kill for Jean Dujardin's irresistible smile. Since I'm a man, at least my platonic love for Berenice Bejo will have to suffice :o)

Quite a pleasant flick, I can’t say a bad word about it. Admittedly, the stop-motion animation of the lizards isn't of a very high standard (and can't compare to Harryhausen's), but the widescreen cinemascope format and bright colours favour the visuals, and the storyline isn't completely rubbish either, though of course it doesn't avoid a number of genre clichés. The humorous side is taken care of by an re-animated proto-human, confronted with the achievements of modern times (fridge, mirror, stove), the eye is delighted by nice locations, a duel of a predatory dinosaur with a brontosaurus or an excavator. Perhaps only the overuse of not very good rear projection can be reproached, and the interior jungle environment with artificial flora also occasionally lacks realism. Judging by the title and the year, I was expecting a cheap B-movie and what I got was an almost high-budget show that can be recommended with a clear conscience.

Poster tagline: WE WILL NOT PERMIT YOU TO SEE THESE SHOCKERS UNLESS YOU ARE TO RELEASE THIS THEATRE OF ALL RESPONSIBILITY FOR DEATH BY FRIGHT!!! The creators' somewhat exaggerated promise that this is the first pure horror musical is fulfilled only by the first half. It will be most enjoyed by viewers who love the frequent sight of girls in bikinis and oldie music in the style of the Beach Boys. The rest of the film is filled with frequent attacks by funny monsters (a kind of vague cross between chicken and fish), especially in the dark, when the most frequent victims are exclusively women, and there are such treats as a mass attack on a girls' dormitory, etc. But all in all, aside from dumb dialogue like: “Do you believe that kissing is unhealthy?” - “I don't know. I've never been...” - “You've never been kissed?” - “No, I've never been sick,” I was expecting something much worse. It can’t have been cheap. Everything was shot on location, the music is good and the frequent appearance of the monsters show prevented this entertaining B-movie to be awful.