Malarkey

Agatha Christie couldn’t have gotten a better adaptation of her famous mystery novel. The people from BBC have obviously shot this with an incredible effort not to offend and of the author’s diehard fans and it was an A+ success. The simple story is complemented by the individual characters’ flashbacks, which should tell us about their previous actions and they have adapted them so well that there can’t really be any talk of filler shots. Now add an amazing atmosphere of one of the islands that tries to pass off as a part of the Hebrides and a solid amount of proper British actors. The results simply can’t be disappointing.

Probably the saddest poetic Czech movie story I've seen so far, and also a movie in which Rudolf Hrušínský played one of the main roles – once again beautifully. As always, after all.

This sensitive Italian drama, which is not unnecessarily exaggerated, knows what it wants to show and, above all, it knows when to properly finish this interesting story. While watching, I tried to understand the main character, and I was really lost in their thoughts. However, the final scene is so strong in a genuinely human way that it raised the final rating.

I feel that Iceland isn’t as fond of harsh family dramas as the rest of Scandinavia is. But this film is an exception and I must say I broke out in quite a cold sweat. However, I personally think that it’s a shortcoming that there were so many characters in the movie that I got lost in them. On the other hand, everything was saved by a polar night and the frozen environment that made me cold through the screen and so it made for a decent atmosphere.

KVIFF 2016 – Municipal Theater in Karlovy Vary, practically full, Marek Eben is standing on the stage with his show Na plovárně and with the band “Lucie”. It was very difficult to manage all four band members on a single stage, but Marek Eben handled it well and we had quite the laugh. By the way, the documentary itself has also managed that well, but I think that its only negative is that it shows various moments of the band’s life by leaps and bounds. The question is: how much material was there and how much was filmed later for the document. However, the band apologized and life goes on. They finally tore off the veil of mystery and confirmed or refuted many things. The documentary therefore served its purpose.

I was only interested in this movie because it was starring Robert De Niro. But he played a mobster in it who you’re not gonna exactly like. Furthermore, the film offers an array of scenes with a bus just like inSpeed that the story and most of the scenes in the movie depend on. But on the other hand, it’s shot quite well and the action scenes also look much better than most American action movie scenes today, so it’d be a shame to condemn this movie so quickly. And if you last until the end, De Niro fans mayreally enjoy one thing. I know I did.

The nice thing about low-budget movies is that they can at least be a surprise. This one was. And “only” thanks to an atmosphere of the post-apocalyptic world of which you can only see the forest, the cottage and its interior. There is not much talking, nothing extra essential is happening, but you still stare at it for an hour and a half and hold your breath, wondering what will happen in the next five minutes; even if you suspect that you will have to wait at least another five minutes because of the slow storytelling. But in the end, it was worth it. Four stars as deserved.

The first time I met Wayne’s World was via a VHS in a local movie rental store where I must have watched everything there was to watch. I didn’t really remember this one and so I thought I was probably too young for this kind of humor back then. And as luck would have it, Cinemax has opened up this little irresponsible window to assure me that I didn’t remember it on purpose. The bad jokes that are intentionally cringy have evoked sadness instead of joy. Another “legend” I’ve crossed out in my mind.

The director Hřebejk is capable of shooting an ultimate trove of psychology called Honeymoon and then shooting a dialogue window into the world of gossiping hens all within a single year. I have nothing against those actresses, I’d even like to see Hana Vagnerová in proper movies more often. But what they were capable of once they got together was too much for me. When I see bimbos like this in a pub, I usually get up and leave because they’ve spoiled my entire evening at that point. Here at least I was only sitting on my sofa, that’s their only luck. I’m just hoping I won’t ever get to see it a second time.

The issue with this movie is that since war movies have been filmed for years now, this one hasn’t managed to come up with anything new. On the other hand, it tells a true life story. And those should never be forgotten. Especially because – although they’re very similar – they’re each very distinctive; not only the environments, also the individual characters that live their lives. The upside is especially the fact that it was shot in the Czech Republic and there’s a few Czech actors. That has outweighed the downsides, in my opinion, even though there’s lots of them. The most important one being that the director didn’t manage the movie well and it sometimes feels very B-grade. However, the environments and the apparent efforts of the Czech colleagues to fit in as much war atmosphere as possible pushed my rating one grade higher, because I felt like some aspects of the movie were bordering with perfection and it was apparent that they tried hard with certain things.