Malarkey

Another one of the better episodes. It’s also mainly because Benno and his mother dare to go to Kitz, Austria and enjoy their holiday there. However, the ex-Miss Austria flirts with Benno the first night at a disco, and in the morning, he’s accused of a murder, because the local police find dear Marina face down in one mountain street, and unfortunately, it’s not because she drunk a bit more than Benno at the disco out of longing for her long-lost fame. Which isn’t really possible, because Benno is able to drink a wagon of beer and still leave on his own feet. However, we immediately meet the local investigator, who is as dumb as a post, so Benno helps her with the investigation. That goes on in a rather suspenseful way, and the plus is that Resi befriends Mr. Matuška, who likes booze and also likes to gamble away his money in poker. Resi is lucky in the cards and for a while, she’s winning. But only for a moment, so it’s only a matter of time before both her and the killer lose.

This movie once again confirms that transferring a quality book onto the big screen is not so easy. At first glance, everything seemed pretty good. The cast with the lead Michael Fassbender is great. The man in the director’s seat is adequately Nordic. What else could you ask for? If only the screenplay was a bit more logical. This way I pretty much  watched this film without much interest, even though there was a number of really interesting actors. For example, Val Kilmer, whom I have not seen for a thousand years and I will not need to see him for another thousand years. Or J. K. Simmons, who was possibly just a decoration in the movie as I cannot recall him doing anything at all. Well, he actually did do something, he was taking creepy pictures of women on his phone and consequently the screenwriter did not even explain why. And that was the same with everything, the schmuck. It is crazy that the main character Harry Hole, played by Michael Fassbender, seems like he just had a lobotomy, so it feels like he isn’t investigating at all, plus, what is even worse, you way too often realize that he does not speak at all. The cynical bastard Hole, whom all the people who’ve read the book love for the endless bullshit he says, utters at maximum two sentences in a row in the film. How could that make me like him? And the investigation? Just tell me, all of you who haven’t read the book, what was Val Kilmer doing there at all? Or why were the murders committed? Was it obvious from that conclusion? I didn’t feel that way. Overall, a terribly badly filmed crime film that was meant to tell the best story of Harry Hole and, in my opinion, killed the whole series. I haven’t been as pissed off for a long time as I was in the case of this movie. One of the worst crime movies I’ve ever seen. If it weren’t for the beautiful Norwegian locations, I would have left the cinema in the middle of the screening like the Czech film critic Mirka Spáčilová.

The movie undoubtedly has its charm. The leading role was played by Emir Kusturica, who can captivate the audience when sitting on the director’s chair, with a guitar in his hand and even in front of the camera as an actor. However, you have to reckon with an extremely slow pace, which is not helped by the length of the movie either. If you get into the story, which is not that difficult, you will be rewarded with an honest testimony about the espionage world of KGB and CIA. Honestly, the Hollywood-looking action movies where everything is ideal have nothing on this movie. This French espionage thriller couldn’t be more realistic. But count on the fact that with realism comes fewer action twists. On the other hand, the creators could spare us the boredom and add a little suspense into the premise. In this case it literally suggests itself. Not talking about the fact that it is clear right from the beginning where this espionage piece is going…

The only thing that is worth the interest is the cameraman. He truly enjoys the English countryside, far more than the rest of the crew.

I’m not at all surprised that Ang Lee with his directorial skills has risen to the position among the leading non-American directors shooting in Hollywood. Even in his first films that were shot in Taiwan with the USA support, it is apparent how skillful he already was. However, I had some reservations about this film that were really hard to ignore. On the one hand, we have an old man here, the chef Chu, who is the master of the knives and shows skills that are out of this world above the bamboo board. And on the other hand, we have his three daughters, who have problems with their partners, but also with their father, so there are some exemplary relationship twists that you can read about in any chick lit. Luckily, Mr. Chu is such a brilliant character that the actor Sihung Lung had to really put a piece of himself into the character. He shows emotion, is honest in life and a genius in the kitchen. The Chinese cuisine has never looked as interesting and tasty as in this film. It was a pleasure to watch the culinary art of Mr. Chu, who was probably indisputably happy that he could pass it onto future generations in the form of this film.

Michael Sheen plays an amazing but a bit silly character who lives in a world where it is simply given who is bad and who is good. Maybe too much, because in some moments this absurdity makes this road movie almost naive. Certain moments almost encourage it and the basic premise of saving his wife from a stinking, fat dart player only confirms it. On the other hand, on his way to his destiny, Colin meets a number of very human characters, most importantly Mark Strong, and also walks through a beautiful nature, so in the end you will even gladly forgive the film for its general naivety.

An episode that completely captivated me. The opening scene is worth an A+. The bride wakes up with a dead pig in her bed, then finds her newlywed murdered on the town square and the investigation is set in motion. During the investigation, Benno gets wasted several times. Not to mention that his first arrival to the murder scene is accompanied with a destroyed wire fence of a local farmer, as he is going there directly from a parthy, so his driving is not exactly straight. Halfway into the episode, he even gambles away his car in cards. Throughout the whole episode Benno is spied on by constable Pfeiffer, who snitches on him to his boss, for example, that he found Benno’s alcohol level to be 4.5 per mil and Benno still drove away in his BMW. Well, until he gambled it away.

The creators of Big Ben just can’t leave the German Catholic Church be. In this case, they dedicate a whole episode to it. In this episode, on the one hand, the church is helping the Turkish refugees, on the other hand, a murder of a priest is being investigated. What the episode lacks in humor, it gets in the amount of investigation. The conclusion is pretty shocking and clerics may not be okay with that. However, Pfeiffer is on the scene again and during his shift he eats supplies of the clerics from the local parsonage, which they otherwise bring to the refugees in the church. There is no need to add that he flushes it down with a bottle of beer. And the fact that he does it while driving is a proof that everyone would want to be a cop in Bad Tölz.

The thousand-first boxing story told in the thousand-first way. The boxing dramas are extremely similar, but they always come up with some minor thing that distinguishes it from each other. In this case, it’s the actors. Especially Miles Teller, who entertains me possibly in every movie where he shows up, and Aaron Eckhart, whom I wouldn’t even recognize here at first. His impersonation of a coach, who is an alcoholic, is absolutely amazing and he performs excellently right from the beginning. It was also thanks to these two acting performances that I had no difficulty in watching the film till the end. Even though it was clear what was going to happen and where the whole story was going.

The Englishmen (and in this case, the Irishmen) are never able to film any Jane Austen story well. Maybe it’s because her books are difficult to read even under usual circumstances.