Malarkey

For all the sickening, foul, nasty bastards, there’s the hilarious Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist that’s about as appealing as a roadkill. The entire movie, I was wondering how someone could even come up with something so deranged. After you finish watching this, it becomes beautifully obvious that if someone wants to film a cool party movie, it needs to have at least a bit of style, because this movie has got none.

It wasn't the kind of experience I had originally expected. It may have been up to par acting-wise, but the story was about as exciting as watching grass grow. And that’s something considering that the film largely took place at a roulette table, which can leave you on pins and needles in other circumstances.

Who thinks of making a movie about a spoiled American who doesn’t want to go home for Christmas, so his father suggests that if he arrives at the Christmas party on time, he will give him the keys to the new Porsche? Probably only the Americans, really.

The creator has based the entire movie on actors’ caricatures. Basically, the whole film stands and falls on those characters. What I liked the most, for example, was Frida, who looks like a classic Finn after five beers, not knowing what emotions mean anymore and at the same time not being able to count to five; and Frida was completely perfect. Then I liked her grandmother, who managed to find support in little Tom, and he was great, by the way. I couldn’t complain acting-wise and it was a pleasure to watch this film. But it seemed strange to me that although about 90%of the Icelandic nation worked on the film, it is spoken in Swedish. I felt as if I was watching a story from some unspecified environment in Scandinavia that has neither a name nor a specified timeline. It was simply created for the purpose of a tiny – but at the same time a very human – movie.

A German comedy that tries to rely on classic German humor. But while it works Suck me Shakespeer because every character in the film is unique, it doesn’t work here, because the only good character is the one played by Elyas M’Barek, just like in Suck Me Shakespeer. He has something to him that can pumpa comedy up to such a realistic level that it doesn’t end up being a farce. But his two colleagues actually managed to make a farce out of this one, and if it weren’t for him, it would have turned out even worse.

Death at the beginning; I’d connect this kind of negativism with the North, definitely with the Danish who are outright indulging in these emotional movies. Then, I’d go all the way to France, because it doesn’t really have that much in common with Scandinavian cinematography. It’s not epic enough to even come close and the CGI is at the lowest possible level. In the end, it ended up as French cinematography because it’s inherited its usual chattiness; it drags from the fifth minute until the end itself that is strangely put together and it reflects literally anything else but reality.

At first, I expected Paolo Sorrentino to film something more rough and more critical towards the Church. And he’s technically done it, although I don’t think that he’s offended the Church at all. He’s simply pointed out a certain state of it and he’s accepted everything else with humility, because Jude Law plays a fictional Pope character who is extravagant, but also conservative at the same time. He smokes, he likens himself to Daft Punk and openly claims that he doesn’t believe in God; because he’s the true God. And Sorrentino has filmed the entire show the way only he could – without a deeper story, but with strong moments, effectively, with the perfect soundtrack and at the same time, he managed to get maximum out of the actors. Thus the 10 episodes of this show won’t suck you in for the basically nonexistent story, but for the characters none of which is more relatable than the next one, but you can’t deny that they’re interesting. The Young Pope is an incredibly strange show and I’m fascinated that something like this can even exist. What’s more, I even watched till the very end. And I decided to ignore the people who view this show as an insult to the Church, because I personally didn’t find anything insulting about this, the opposite is true. It’s a very interesting project that – according to me – will get people talking for a long time and that will only amplify the fact that Sorrentino is a director unlike anybody else recently; and it will probably stay like that for a long time. And the Czech flags in the crowd as a response to the Czech National Symphony Orchestra were an overwhelmingly nice touch. :-)

The internet came to Tölz and along with it a murder by strangulation. The Prelate also figured out that he could squeeze a pretty penny out of people to use for the church repairs. For what else, after all? Definitely not his own pocket since he’s the Prelate. A standard episode that’s standardly pleasant to watch.

If you expect to go see something that will expand the universe you’ve identified with your entire childhood and that you still swear by to this day, you tread lightly – even on the cinema carpet itself. You have no clue just how enchanted you’ll be in the upcoming minutes. You do not make a sound and suspect that it all ends well. But suspicion isn’t automatically a win. Sometimes it all goes bad and it can be a real mess-up. But not in Newt Scamander’s case, who has originally introduced himself to me with zero emotions and via a book that I’d gotten as a Christmas gift that winter, that I haven’t touched since and that’s been collecting dust somewhere. But film studios are a superpower and money needs to come from somewhere. And when one brand is squeezed dry, another one must replace it and so Newt came to the stage, starting with movie number one and ending with god-knows-what number, all according to the earnings and creative possibilities, of course. But personally, I gotta say that Newt and the other characters have all left a mark on me. During the movie, I realized that once again, I was in the world of witchcraft and wizardry, just a few years earlier than before, which isn’t bad at all. I was also happy to watch Katherine Waterston and Alison Sudol, both of whom I hadn’t even known before. The muggle Dan Fogler also didn’t disappoint me and so didn’t Johnny Depp at the very end. I feel like I know the direction it’s all going to go and honestly, I’m glad Johnny Depp will be a part of it. It’s almost as if my childhood was coming back… And with these kinds of movies, that’s never a bad feeling.

The only thing I got from this movie was the finding that Meg Ryan isn’t as young as she was in previous movies.