DaViD´82

Everything you wanted to know about this fancy French family-run three-Michelin-stars restaurant, but were afraid to ask. Meticulous, without the slightest exaggeration riveting (yes, watching the routine performed by proper professionals for four hours of footage in this rendition can indeed be, and is, riveting), all revealing insight as if you were standing right there working with them (to the point that after completing those four hours you are entitled to be paid for a half shift worked). Frederick Wiseman keeps a watchful eye on everything from food preparation, debates over the investment wine list, the work of the journeymen as well as the managers, the clientele, the suppliers, the interconnectedness of departments and activities... A heaven for process analysts, and anyone else who is interested in "how and why things get done". I went into this with the expectation that I would inevitably watch parts of it, but I ate it up like a raspberry. There are so many interesting areas to delve into in even greater detail that, as much as that enormous running time seems like an unbearable obstacle, it is the only blemish on the beauty in the finale. It could have done with an hour longer director's cut.

"It’s not how much you do that counts, it’s what you get done." Michael Mann's pilot episode does the series a disservice by offering something different from the rest of the series. I'm not saying that it's better or worse, but it's vastly different. For one thing, at first glance it's right in his typical "handheld digital camera" visual style, and then it sticks to the template word for word. This is paradoxical, because the rest of the series forges a different visual style, using the template only as a supporting skeleton on which it isn't afraid to build its own stories and character fates. In any case, what remains from the source material is an investigative look behind the curtain at the turn of the millennium in (not only) Tokyo, at the details of the clash between Western and Eastern mentality, socio-political themes, the penetration of corruption into state power, detailed analyses of "how things works in practice", etc. On the other hand, the addition of the excellent yakuza storyline as seen through the eyes of one of the smaller clans is essentially the best possible adaptation of the iconic "Yakuza/Like a Dragon" video game series, and some of the characters who get minimal space in the book are among the series' driving forces and mainstays. While it's a representative of its genre, it's not exactly a crime drama. The fates, characters, cultural specifics, and neon genius loci of Tokyo's alcohol-soaked late-night Kabukicho play a clear role over crime and investigation. The result is a series that is at first somewhat detachedly cool, gradually excellent and creepingly heart-tugging in its characters, and repeatedly, often outright phenomenal, that demands that the viewer invest time in it, go along with it in many ways, and best put it together as one film. It proudly follows the unmistakable "it's not TV, it's HBO quality slow TV" legacy and manages to repay that considerable viewer investment with interest. | S1: 4/5 | S2: 5/5 |

When the concept is the strongest asset as well as the biggest liability. Twenty contestants, including three or four traitors playing against them, the traitors get to take out whoever they want, and the innocent ones get to take out one of the contestants they believe is a traitor, that is an awesome concept. The problem is that it's not polished and well thought out... First of all, the classic "Survival" team competitions for money are devoid of ideas and tension, are in no way connected to the "traitor/loyal among us" concept, and feel like camp competitions. The one thing that makes it interesting is the quality and skills of the traitors, they solely make the game, the others dance to their tune. Unless they're dullards (which they mostly aren't), they adopt a strategy of "we'll save the murders for capable opponents who would have the ability to expose us" and let the "less capable" ones promote themselves through a mixture of paranoia, Kafkaesque accusations, feelings, alliances and emotions. It comes to this, then, that the most interesting passage is the middle of the series, when a few capable players are still in the game, and it's a joy to see what approach and strategy the traitors choose to survive. If they succeed, it's basically anticlimactic until the finale, when it's a case of seeing if luck happens to smile on the morons too. In fact, it may come to a situation where those who pulled it off get nothing and the win falls, without any reward, into the hands of the cannon folder whose only asset was that they were incompetent, gullible, easily influenced, and basically sticky fish with no assets and that's why they lasted so long. I fully understand why this particular reality show has raised such a furore, why one national variation after another is being produced, why it's a hit everywhere, and that those who don't get a license for it are producing their own variations of the same thing. And inevitably, one of them will be better because it will pick up on those shortcomings. After all, if only they had combined this with The Mole, it would have been an absolute blast. | S1: 4/5 | S2: 4/5 |

A 90s-style "we're on a plane and we're screwed" disaster flick that arrives two decades too late. Anyway, at the top of the imaginary list of "I definitely don't want to see in-flight while someone is coughing next to me" movies. Putting topicality aside, this is proper genre work. Despite the excessive running time, it good pace, it can be adrenaline-pumping as well as thrilling, and nicely uncompromising at times. And though it's not afraid to embrace more than one cliché as its own, it stays within the waters of believability.

The book already makes it clear that the author is into hard sci-fi, problems, questions, disputations, proceduralism, analytical procedures, etc., which makes it interesting, distinguishing it from genre peers, but he can't wrap it up in plot (the outline works, the details don't), construction (he repeatedly plays on "now I'll explain my convoluted plans in incomplete detail"), build vivid characters (they're more vehicles for ideas, traits or actions than flesh-and-blood characters). It's undeniably interesting, but not fun. It's closest to Ted Chiang, but the latter doesn't lack some literary talent. So when you map 3 Body Problem in a way that forecloses disputation over issues, that doesn't revel in procedural procedures and bureaucracy, that "postpones it," it's a wonder it didn't fall apart like a house of cards. Yes, it's obtuse, naive and one-dimensional in places (which is also true of the book), not saved by thought-provoking reflections and solutions to the big problems of yesterday, today & tomorrow (as in the book), but the "big narrative science fiction" veil manages to cover it up deftly. So much so that despite the slow pace and all the above, it doesn't bore for a moment. And in the best moments (the big revelations of "We See All the People", the slicing of the tankers, etc.), which are not so few after all, it can even excite. | S1: 4/5 |

"This is a village matter, we’ll settle it internally." When this is essentially the unanimous opinion of the village in a case of gang rape, battery and death threats against a minor within the extended family, you would expect them to take the matter into their own hands and talk to the people concerned with their firsts. Well, no, the solution would be to marry one of the rapists off to the rape victim, as long as nothing happens to the boys, it's her own fault anyway, and who would want her now, yet a bad light will fall on the whole community... The desperate struggle of parents who defy convention and want to get justice for their daughter, drag the police and the courts into the solution and demand justice. But neither the community nor the state authorities are prepared for this, so they go "against the grain" in many ways. The most woke, gender and NGO ridden documentary far and wide. And that's just as well. Many scenes will give you chills, the father's look of despair in scenes like with the visiting attorney simultaneously handling several hundred cases is telling. Compelling, committed, necessary, worthwhile.

Beavers; hundreds of shaggy beavers. A quirky, playful, imaginative (and above all bloody funny) romp working with the poetics of silent slapstick. The authors manage not to stay still, gradually and constantly pushing the concept and each and every joke.🎵La La La La La🎵

Karel Zeman for the 21st century, or the emancipation of the Bride of Frankenstein through an original "porn satire" that manages to cut to the quick again and again; sometimes literally. Emma Stone gives such a masterful performance that if I were her husband, I wouldn't be doubly sure if she doesn't top it at home as well.

Like a spaghetti western from Denmark's bleak moors meets a romance novel while waiting for Godot (here in the form of a sprouting potato plant). A bad guy that is as charismatic and sleazy as life truths facing the main "I can't see the forest for the trees" good guy, who isn't such a guy after all. It's a straightforward, genre film, a bit long-winded around the middle, especially in the first half, nicely uncompromising, well acted and... And that's it. Which is far from little.

The politics of appeasement as seen through the lens of (non)romance, where seductive glances, sentences of mutual affection or any confession of feelings are out of the question. All the tensions that create sensuality are hidden in the simple addresses of "mister/miss" and distant compliments of a job well done. A character study of an individual seemingly devoid of opinions, emotions and personal life, very well written and very well acted. An individual whose personality is "I am here to serve". A sophisticated and subdued "just so" look at the great themes of life and history. Despite its apparent coldness (or is it because of it?), it is first and foremost about vivid characters and steaming emotions. And that, ironically, without any emotions at all; let alone steaming ones.