NinadeL

One of the many normalization films about youth, this time about a bricklayer's apprentice, who is affected by a guidance counsellor and a first love. The clumsy teen romance was entrusted to Langmajer and Vávrová (authentic teenage actors down to the smallest detail). The boy is precocious, but his neighborhood has already labelled him and there's no turning back. Nowadays, valuable are mainly the shots of the Prague realities of that time, the underground and Wenceslas Square, fashion, and various tricks; the Rubik's Cube has become a symbol of the generation of that time. The reactions of the youth to Štursa's 1905 statue Puberty are also great. It's not amazing, but it is another piece of the puzzle on the road to understanding our past.

This theatrical film has earned the so-called obligatory respect. It was made by the popular Zelenka, it paid tribute to the popular Schorm, it was made with the darlings of the Dejvice theater, and somewhere in the lower layers Dostoyevsky is as learned as a poem. It is therefore impossible not to like it. Simply impossible. No chance in hell.

Once the initial illusion was shattered, there was really very little good left in the series. I was looking forward to seeing the generational evolution of sitcoms decade by decade. But now it's just an unfinished gag.

In order to adapt the short story "The Case of Barnabáš Kos," it was necessary to wait almost a whole decade before the social situation changed. It was thus an awaited feature film, crucial to the direction of Solan's career in the years to come. After his first experiences, Solan becomes a confident filmmaker who is not afraid to take films to the extreme. He is greatly aided by Josef Kemr in the lead role, although the pre-recorded Slovak dialogue somewhat undermines his authentic performance.

Excellent material to analyze the despair of standardized Barrandov impotence. Incredibly weak, stupid, and tendentious. The seemingly modern contemporary story is more like a distant memory of something leftist from a time long ago. The disparate society of tenants of the Women's Homes defines their and their neighbors' destinies solely by their success in relationships. The golden grail is a husband who has all the necessities. The professions that affect the characters are quite scary - Vlasta Bezděková, a car repair woman (coping with the need for a new relationship after her husband flirted with emigration while trying to finish her high school diploma, the bland Ida Rapaičová), Anežka Faltová, a trade union official (she is more than willing to remarry her husband, she has already divorced once, the outright awkward aging Antonie Hegerliková), Zuzana Šmídová, a clerk at Čedok (lying while hiding as a married man's mistress for three years, the budding Hana Maciuchová), furniture saleswoman Soňa (a naive girl from the orphanage looking for a place in the sun, as always, the unreasonably ethereal Marta Vančurová)... It's hell for the audience. So why bother watching something like this? Perhaps just to complete the awareness of the overview of the work of 1974, to see the futile performances of the then pleiad of favorites and to be comforted by the small etudes of comic oldies performed by the neighborhood duo of Eva Svobodová and Maria Rosůlková. The whole idea was beyond the capabilities of Balik's non-existent talent.

The last series is set at the turn of 1930/1931. Like the second season, the third is a shortened, pleasantly compact season. The main storylines revolve around Maria and Jaroslav and the boxing clashes between the Sokol and Turner teams. Irena von Lippi was recast (which actually helped, because Anna Fialová was more adolescent and Katarína Šafaříková managed to portray Irena as a mature personality). However, the concentration on another crime plot made the series distant from the realities of the time, the construction of the studios at Barrandov was only briefly mentioned, and there was more talk about Max Schmeling, but no actor played him. No one knows what happened to the original idea of a family saga that would experience the entire First Republic. I consider Petr Vondráček's non-acting and the fear of showing key events that are talked about before and after but are not shown even in a short shot (not only Schmeling's hospitality match, but also Marie and Jaroslav's wedding) to be the biggest negatives. Somewhere on the borderline, there is an attempt to portray Veronika Arichteva's character as a female vamp even in the most banal scenes, while the better storylines include those of Petra Jungmanová, Jitka Schneiderová and Maroš Kramár, because they all have something to do and look good even in this light retro. Trnavský and Studenková’s lines were promising, but unfortunately there wasn't much room for them. The Dramedy creators left the series so that if they wanted to they could build on it, but if they didn't want to it wouldn't fundamentally matter. It could have been better, of course, but by the current standards of Czech Television, they still managed to make an interesting series whose message is obvious and not a waste of time. Those who have a deeper interest in this time period can easily find more information, and those who have never heard of the First Republic before can be inspired and imagine that time in a slightly different light.

Ultraviolet is one of those action movies that would benefit from less editing. Indeed, what remained in the cut scenes on the DVD literally changed the meaning of everything that remained in the main film. Otherwise, it's a pure genre film that stands and falls on how you feel about Milla Jovovich. I'd appreciate more mythology, but given the similarities to the current pandemic (which isn't exactly pleasant) I'll let the related anime Ultraviolet: Code 044 sit. Ideally until we stop wearing the face masks.

The phenomenon of film cuts of original series is an aspect of the normalized Barrandov, but it's too bad that even after all these years we can only watch the film versions. Because especially the original series of Tržiště senzací would have been more similar to the excellent mini-series Uctivá poklona, pane Kohn, while the cut produced two uneven films. Zuřivý reportér doesn't work very well, but Lovec senzací is able to entertain. Finally, the Jewish anecdote in which Samek (Leoš Suchařípa) from the stock exchange has to marry his daughter off to a local renowned pauper is quite spicy.

Ah, the golden '90s! Cieslar not only made a great thriller from Ladislav Mňaček's unpublished short story, but also his film company Happy Celluloid. The Taste of Death has a lot in common with War of Colours, which was also shot by Petr Hojda. The enchantment with Western thrillers in this Czech version is not in the least awkward, and it works well with the believable Kukra, who is complemented by the typical mannerisms of Šplechtová, Vašut for certainty, and the debuting Šrámek, who never became an actor, and last but not least the beautiful Ivana Christová, who never had as much self-confidence as Simona Krainová, but as an actress had much more talent. An attractive film, which today seems like a memory of a time that never really was, but for connoisseurs of one of the most interesting decades of Czech cinema, it is a fine film.

The viewing experience is exceedingly difficult, opaque, and uninteresting. But of course, the entire negative experience can be described in laudatory terms, for example in the context of the preparations for The Shop on Main Street, in the line of Slovak firsts. Yet it was already written at the time that it was a very Slovak film, more Slovak than anything made in the last decade. Yet that can also be perceived as an internal film that is so peculiar that it has very limited ability to communicate even with the western half of the country. Either way, Organ is an important milestone in the broader theme of depicting the Slovak state. The viewer, confronted so far only with Romeo, Juliet and Darkness, will be confused.