D.Moore

A spectacle as intoxicating as the speed of a race car, perfectly filmed, with amazing sound... It's movies like this, that take me "right there" for a few hours, that make me love cinema the most. In fact, I knew almost nothing about the story of this famous race, and thanks to that it never ceased to surprise me from the beginning to the very end, entertaining me with its speed, insight, and relaxed atmosphere, and constantly seeming to say "It's not over yet, wait for the finale." I waited, and I have to say that this is to Le Mans '66 what a Live Aid concertis to, say, Bohemian Rhapsody – a huge spectacle, enthusiastic and enthralling. Christian Bale is an absolute standout (I realized I last saw him in 2012's The Dark Knight Rises and that's quite a shame) and he's as good with Matt Damon as, say, Robert Redford was back in the day with Paul Newman. James Mangold's direction is precise and the idea of the film is beautiful. I hope there's a book about Ken Miles now.

A very faithful adaptation of a book I enjoyed very much, that builds on one of the best films I've ever seen. The courage of the makers of Doctor Sleep was tremendous – to continue Kubrick's story, but at the same time be true to King and make more than an epilogue to The Shining. They succeeded brilliantly, thanks largely to Mike Flanagan, who straddled the line between King and Kubrick, standing firm, and I can only thank him for it. When you see all the original and very impressively executed mind travel (and combat), the atmosphere, which is much better than the trailers suggested and relies not on scares but on honest suspense... That's exactly how I imagined it when reading the book, and yet the book lacked the film's biggest trump card – the Overlook. I could find a scene or two to fault, but overall I'm so pleased with Doctor Sleep that I can't, or rather won't. The ending is a downright treat for anyone who has not only seen The Shining, but also read it... Notto mention the amazing Ewan McGregor.

I'm afraid that as long as Jiří Vejdělek writes his own scripts, he probably won't make a good comedy. The Last Aristocrat is just another spasmodic attempt to be funny, nothing more. The excellent book has lost its greatest trump card on the way to the screen, i.e. the narrator Maria, and much that beautiful verbal humor; the plot often makes no sense at all, and the sometimes good actors here are simply terrible because that's what they were obviously asked to do, and all of them are severely upstaged by the young Yvona Stolařová, and she's not even trying. If I ever laughed, it was always thanks to Pavel Liška – not his useless character, but really him, the actor Pavel Liška, who clearly understands humor better than Jiří Vejdělek.

It's coming. It's... What? Something big. Ozymandias gets better by the episode and his initial weirdness acquires motivation and depth, the main character dives into the past and we discover it along with her, the world of the Watchmen series gets more and more elaborate. I'm really enjoying it and looking forward to each new episode.

This initially promising script falls further and further into a morass of mediocrity, and one can't help but shake one's head at the actions of the protagonist and the killer; but the direction, even with its reasonable footage, manages to keep the viewer on their toes until the end. No great miracle, no great disaster.

I was kind of looking forward to a war movie with a classic cut, a big gimmicky spectacle to provide entertainment and escape, and not be completely stupid at the same time. Well, unfortunately, what I got was a very long and mediocre bore with a crappy script that didn't give a damn about almost any of the characters, overacting actors, and some surprisingly stripped-down stunts (they looked like backdrops during the attack on Pearl Harbor) and action scenes that only had juice here and there. Forget humor or anything fresh altogether, this is as much a disappointment from my beloved Roland Emmerich as 10,000 BC was the other day. Bay's Pearl Harbor is an order of magnitude better, though it's no gem either.

It's hard to say how many versions there actually are, I've seen the 50-minute one on Netflix and I have to go a little against the grain with the opinion that the stories could freelybe less developed, if only they had been longer. As it is, I've seen twelve stories of less than five minutes each, only a few of which I didn't feel like they ended prematurely and managed to tell me something other than that Prague is supposedly haunted. The best stories were probably the ones about Faust's house, about love on the castle stairs, and about the devil's stones; many of the others seemed to lack a punchline or even a followup (for example, at the end of the piece with the astronomical clock, a foreigner might think that there is no astronomical clock anymore, it doesn't work, and who knows if it ever existed and worked). The uncharismatic narrator doesn't help much either. But the animation is simply beautiful and allowed even the weaker bits to have atmosphere. Three and a half stars.

Another well-known character has returned, whose return is awesome, and we’ve learned something new about Ozymandias again (including confirmation that it's him, though that was probably obvious to most viewers), and with that we’ve raised at least one new question. It's also interesting that the series references the finale of the book and not the Snyder film... There are again some bits and pieces of the workings of the alternate present, which is already getting a pretty good outline, and again a perfectly constructed story – this time as a joke. It's clear that this is going to be more than a good series, right?

I had a better time than expected. Interestingly, though, it wasn't so much a credit to the obnoxious verbal shootouts (though even they were sort of irresistibly good), but to the great world in which the film is set. I had no problem believing that humans and stuffed animals live together naturally in it, just like the humans and cartoons in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and I enjoyed seeing what was different in that world, how things worked... In that respect, the filmmakers came up with a lot of ideas that were plain and simply great. That with such amazing backdrops, there's a pretty much classic film noir story about a former cop who makes his living as a private eye and, after a visit from a pretty damn seductive client with a secret, gets involved in something he couldn't even imagine... ? Some may take that as a minus, I take it as a joke on the other. Plus, Melissa McCarthy wasn't awkward here, and my favorite comedienne, Maya Rudolph, was more than a bonus in a charming secretary role.

Since "a ghost can be a memory", as one character says, this series is 100% ghostly. It's also such a throwback to the good horror days, with characters who, while not always shying away from cliché, were able to work it so cleverly that no one minded. I have to admire Mike Flanagan for the great, honestly old-fashioned atmosphere he was able to create, and for the way he tells it at the same time. The story is cleverly constructed, each episode and scene another stroke for the overall picture, the characters are perfectly written and acted to a tee – I couldn't help but think of Six Feet Under. And then there are the ghosts... the ghosts... they are definitely ghosts! The bowler-hatted long man quickly ranked among the best I've ever seen, not to mention the lady with the bent neck (brilliantly punctuated in episode five). The way they appear beautifully defies everything we've been served in horror films of recent years – no cheap boo and noise, just a chilling revelation of something that's suddenly there... and deal with it. I was really pleased with everything, and since Flanagan made it clear, especially in the final episodes, that he was very fond of Kubrick's The Shining, I'm convinced that Doctor Sleep is in good hands.