D.Moore

After the second and first film, this one is my third favorite of the series. Clouseau is once again on a rampage, and the opening visit to the lunatic asylum, where the (chief) inspector has driven the poor Dreyfus, suggests big things. The best thing about this film is that Peter Sellers virtually never disappears from the picture (and when he does, it's not for long), gags abound, and the script has such perfect trumps up its sleeve, such as the investigation at the Fassbenders' house, the conquest of the castle, or the dentist disguise. The opening credits are traditionally great, not to mention Mancini's music.

A stylish spectacle full of suspense and culminating in a heart attack finale in a church tower. Orson Welles is even more unsympathetic as the escaped Nazi than as Charles Foster Kane (and that's saying something), and his character behaves beautifully unpredictably. As a director, Welles managed to keep me perfectly glued to the screen for an hour and a half. The poor picture quality didn't hurt the film either.

A successful comedy. Not Belmondo's best (it is not better than Animal and The Man from Acapulco, and the following year it was topped by Hold-Up), but still very, very good. And even though the humor relies mainly on conversational shootouts (they are already funny when listening to the dubbing, but in the original and with subtitles they are often completely different and even funnier), I laughed the most from the time I hit the (plexi) glass until the dinner. I didn't mind the final drink-offering to Belmondo's action stunt fans at all.

This film was unfortunately not as good as Henry Fonda was in the lead role. The demonic beginning seemed rather ridiculous, then gradually alternated between interesting moments, more or less inappropriate humor and dramatic moments that sometimes succeeded and sometimes failed on the actors. Actually, it seemed to me that almost nobody, except Fonda, understood how suffocating and hopeless the mood of Welcome to Hard Times was supposed to be; on the contrary, many of the actors seemed to try to make light of it... And I'm afraid that it was at the behest of the director.

Another very nice fairy tale by Vlasta Janečková. This time a bit "darker". I was especially interested in the innkeeper, played by Vladimír Brabec - his touching monologue about his missing daughter beautifully shows the difference between these TV fairy tales and contemporary ones. Nowadays, I have the impression that making films for children doesn't encourage actors to have a great performance. And that's a shame.

If there's a Clouseau in the frame who's incredibly demolishing something or unwittingly testing how patient the people around him are (very, very, very patient), this Panther, filmed after a ten-year hiatus, is not without its faults. My problem, however, comes with Christopher Plummer, an otherwise likable character who just doesn't quite fit the role inherited from David Niven. Admittedly, he's the only thing I can fault in The Return of the Pink Panther, but considering how much room his Sir Litton is given by the film in places, it's pretty substantial. But hey, even the title diamond has a little blemish, right?

Although I could easily criticize Philosophical History for being too patriotic, I will not do so. It was written a year before the fall of Czechoslovakia, at a time when things were bubbling beyond the border (not only), and so it says a lot about the onset of the Second World War and the fact that the Czechs were even then stirring up and strengthening their national pride as much as they could. Through literature, theater, movies. Otakar Vávra handled his debut well and many scenes are impressive - the student celebration smells and breathes of spring, while Špína's departure to the monastery is appropriately bitter. Of the cast, we must praise Jan Pivec, Jindřich Plachta and Zdeňka Baldová, but I also liked the charming Karla Oličová. The scene of the suppression of the rebellion was well done by Vávra, except that it is underlined by the inappropriate "jubilant" music (but maybe that was the intention).

It all started in 2005, when Aardman and DreamWorks planned another collaboration - the stop-motion comedy Crood Awakening, which was to star a prehistoric inventor and was written by... John Cleese. What happened next, I don't know. Anyway, there is no stone left unturned from Cleese's script (haha), and that's a great pity. I'm not saying The Croods is bad, not at all, but the plot lacks any originality. But what is bursting with ideas is the processing. The digital prehistoric world looks beautiful and is captured by a digital camera, which (as in the case of Rango) was handled by Roger Deakins, music by the excellent Alan Silvestri plats to it, and above all the world is inhabited by irresistible creatures that even a mad paleontologist could not imagine in moments of greatest boredom. Birds crossed with rams, land whales, parrot turtles, crocodile pigskunk, flamingos crossed with piranhas, two lemurs connected by one tail... There are a lot of ideas like that and they make Croods a good watch. But I didn't see anything "Monty Python-esque" or "Cleese-esque" in the film at first, unfortunately.

Say "Inspector Clouseau" in front of me and I'm very likely to recall a scene from this very film. The exit from the car into the fountain, the fall from the window, the devastating interrogation of the suspect (devastating for the inspector's suit), several rides in the police car, billiards, a series of attempted murders, the final confrontation between everyone, during which the protagonist just looks helplessly into the camera... Peter Sellers is phenomenal, and you can easily believe his character could bring a tube of pills into a mental institution.

Contradictory. On the one hand, great space scenes, a feast for the eyes, on the other at times a very futile "are you serious?" scenario that spoils moments of impressive emotion with moments of laughter. I admit that I probably didn't understand a lot of things, because the film threw so much information at me at several moments that I simply couldn't take it all in, let alone think about it. Maybe the second time will be better. Of course, the second time will be on DVD, not in IMAX as I originally planned.