Lima

There’s been no one like Vláčil. He was a man with a huge imagination, renowned for his exacting pedantry in terms of the believability of the cinematography and the impact of the image, cruel yet tender, raw yet poetic; he was unique. Although all his life he was tormented by the demon of alcohol, even late in life he did not lose any of his creative and sharp mind. The documentary doesn't tell you much about him, rather it is overwhelmingly devoted to excerpts from films, between which Vláčil occasionally says something thought-provoking, but I would have expected more. Our greatest director is still waiting for a proper, informationally valuable portrait. Along with Ridley Scott, my favorite filmmaker.

Gorgeous. With the very first shot and the first notes of the piano, I was captured and only released with the closing credits, emotionally enriched. It's hard to see a film so well directed, so easily narrated and so wonderfully acted. Artistically, too, it is flawless – thoughtful composition of images, imaginative cinematography, elaborate sets and costumes, here the Oscar nominations are very appropriate. Same with Keira Knightley, she doesn't really appeal to me as a woman (see Tetsuo's comment), but here she was divine, in both her acting and expression. And I can hardly imagine a better Mr Darcy than Matthew Macfadyen's either. In short: for the first time in a long time, a film that struck a chord with me. PS: I'm getting really interested in Jane Austen adaptations, I'm going to look for Lee's Sense and Sensibility.

Rather than Tarantino, this is closer to a shabby Ritchie, unfortunately after a slight lobotomy. Too bad about the dumb explanation at the end, too bad about the repetitive dialogues between Tangerine and Lemon, which often weren't actually very funny, even though they tried to be very cool. Ritchie wouldn’t make those mistakes. But, given the director's name, you shouldn’t expect a new John Wick, the full-contact fights don't have that much juice and idea, and I could certainly do without the overdone conclusion with the shinkansen, where I just expected Tom and Jerry to come out of somewhere and start hitting each other with frying pans. But otherwise, the story was brilliantly conceived, it had a surprising twist, it all made sense by the end, and some of the scenes were so incredibly absurd and absurdly plotted that they were actually fine. Interesting postmodernism, which I wouldn't expect from a former stuntman. Of the actors, Aaron Taylor-Johnson shone the brightest, he's walking masculinity with acting talent.

Austin Butler looks nothing like Elvis, he doesn't have his unique charisma (no one does), but he’s a total magnet for women with his knockout looks, so he's a clear casting hit. Unlike the overrated Bohemian Rhapsody, which was held under the authoritative thumb of Brian May and where Rami Malek only played Mercury, Butler became Elvis for two and a half hours with his movements, his sexy deep voice, and the sparkle in his eye, which Malek didn't have. The first hour is a roller coaster ride, the timing of the scenes, the blending with the comic book panels, the craziness of the female fans, the riveting live performance where Elvis was arrested, the editing is fantastic. But there’s one big BUT. From the moment the Beatlemania fatally interferes with Presley's career, the film loses traction and, rather than focusing on the first ten years or so of his career, when he influenced rock 'n' roll like no one else, the story focuses on the last phase of his work and life, which is no longer so crucial and interesting. I would cut short everything that revolved around his career winding down at the International Hotel in Las Vegas. PS: Tom Hanks is perfect as the backstabbing manager. This is where I'm sure at least an Oscar nomination will clink.

A bit of a better made-for-TV movie. The few panoramic shots try to give the impression of visual richness and grandeur à la National Geographic, but for the vast majority of the time it's just a visually poorer film that doesn't belong in the cinema and the streaming format suits it. It doesn't lack a few neatly severed heads, what it lacks the oppressive atmosphere of the first one, which is on a completely different level. The Indians lack believability, and when I compare it to the likes of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, which literally worked wonders with a comparable budget in terms of period authenticity and visual gore, I almost want to cry. A female protagonist in a predator franchise is an interesting idea, unfortunately in a film where only the bear scene stands out from the average. And no, the heroine's final fight, which turns the Predator into an incompetent moron, I really didn't buy that one. Arnold could beat such a naive slob with just his farts.

The locations change like on a treadmill, but the problem is that the you can’t see the 200 million USD budget at all. Most of the film takes place in dark interiors, so the viewer's eye doesn't feed and the few camera flyovers with drones don't save the day. And the action? There's little that's truly memorable and when there is it's dull, lacking any ideas or technical flourishes; Paul Greengrass should give these brothers some lessons in directing action scenes because the result here is dull. The only highlight is Prague and its several-minute tram rampage, but even that didn't raise my pulse, any action passage from Bourne has much more balls. The only bright spot is the one I wouldn't have expected: Chris Evans is excellent, and although his role might tempt one to overplay it, he holds back reasonably well until the end, which is more than enough for a psychopath par excellence, also, the porn-stache does its bit too. Netflix is slowly becoming a synonym of money dump.

I spent my entire youth in communist ugliness, but today I look at it like an exotic animal in a zoo somewhere. Foldyna and Kateřina Konečná probably shed a nostalgic tear at the sight of the Soviets honouring Stalin, but fortunately for the rest of us, our memories have been irretrievably swept away by time. The film thankfully doesn't get too caught up in politics and is aesthetically beautiful, I haven't seen such stunning black and white cinematography in a long time, it's a treasure these days. The love story is simple but touching, the protagonist reminded me of Léa Seydoux, charismatic and beautiful. And she sang beautifully, whether Polish folk songs, which also have something to them, or chanson. The ending is all the more crushing in its austerity, without any cheap tear-jerking.

I'm tired of Marvel movies, I'm bored of them, and Phase 4 is really going downhill, but here I let the pleasant nostalgia beat me down willingly and happily. Tobey and Willem Dafoe, hats off to you, always a pleasure to see you, Raimi knew how to do things.

Definitely the best Star Wars-themed series so far, especially since there isn't much competition. The broader story spread across Grogu and the Mandalorian contributes to the narrative, because it helps the universe take on a more coherent dimension. Temuera Morrison was pretty good, he's still got it, especially when it comes to charisma, and you can’t ask him at his age to move like an athlete. The natural face of Luke Skywalker in the penultimate episode is the temporary highlight of the 3D scanning, few bugs notwithstanding. The only weakness I see in Boba Fett's young gang members, they are supremely unlikeable, they look like teenagers aimlessly hanging out in a shopping mall.

Imagine the following: a man fresh from a car accident wraps his wife's severed head in a jacket, then runs several kilometres to a friend's lab to save the face and brain, delivering the body later. If you are able to accept this premise, you’re halfway there. This film is preceded by the reputation as one of the ugliest and bloodiest of the Golden Age of science fiction, and what's interesting about it is the tragic backstory of its creation. Producer Lex Carlton borrowed money from the Mafia to make it, spent six years trying in vain to pay it back, and then committed suicide after threats from the mob. The film didn't pay off in the box office because the distribution company, American International, found it so distasteful that it pulled it from theaters a few days after it was released. Considering that I know the context of the time, which was not yet used to crap like this, I don't really blame them. At first, the film gingerly tests the audience; there’s the talking head on the table, lying in a puddle of blood and hooked up to tubing, or the sight of the disfigured arm of one of the protagonists, and in the last ten minutes a spiral of violence unfolds with a severed arm spraying blood and leaving a mark on the wall. And the ending? What the monster does to the doctor's neck at the last minute must have had the same effect at the time as it did on the Czech viewer who, two decades later in this country, ran out of the cinema to vomit at the premiere of Alien, when the embryo unexpectedly pops out of John Hurt's stomach. I like it when a movie surprises me, so I’m happy. Another good thing is the fact that Virginia Leith, even though you can only see her head, plays it really well, she's awesome. The pleasant jazz music is fine, too, as the doctor picks out his victim on the streets and in the audience of a beauty contest, to which he would sew his wife's head. It doesn't hurt once in a while to indulge in this kind of pulp entertainment, approved by Tarantino and the Shockproof Film Festival.