MrHlad

Shoky and Morty are YouTubers whose careers are coming to an end, so they decide to try to make a documentary about a cursed bride who has been killing people for centuries, and maybe figure out what to do with their lives and their friendship. Andy Fehu delivers a bold and clever film that plays with genres and pokes fun at audience expectations. It manages to be scintillatingly funny, clever and real, and you're never sure what's coming next. Štáfek and Kozub are great, Magnusek is awesome, and Fehu is his own man.

Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt head into the Amazon jungle in search of a tree that can heal people. And most of the time they're running from something, whether it's Germans, animals or digital villains, and it's kind of fun. Jungle Cruise doesn't attempt any new things and relies on two charismatic stars, lots of visual effects, plenty of action and well-dosed humor. It doesn't excel at anything overall, but the result is a fine adventure film for the whole family. What Disney promised, it delivered.

So, this is what M. Night Shyamalan serves us spooky rocks after a spooky wind. Unfortunately, his new film is closer to The Happening than to The Sixth Sense, Split or even Unbreakable, at least in how confident it feels despite how stupid it is. Old is actually a useless movie, and I'm fascinated that no one realized this when making it. It works with one single idea that the trailers boiled down to and whoever avoided it unravels it after a few minutes – we're on a beach where people get old fast – and that's the end of it. Shyamalan can't create terror or dread or evoke a mysterious atmosphere. He just tells it like it is and then waits to see if it turns out good or bad. And the whole thing ends with the mandatory twist, but when it came I was already cringing because I was looking for the end credits instead. The main problem with Old, however, is its emptiness. There's really nothing except the aging. Any attempts at drama and the characters realising how little time they have to sort out the problems they don't talk about fade into nothingness. Instead, what has already been said three times is constantly repeated, and the rules of how the beach works and what actually happens on it are explained. Despite the fact that anyone who hasn't fallen asleep knows all of this already after an hour. Old is a good idea stretched out to a hundred minutes. An idea that perhaps no one has even tried to turn into a movie or a script that could work for those hundred minutes. It's boring, stupid, and sloppy stuff from a director who, for the second time in his career (or maybe third, if you count Glass), has become a prisoner of his own ego and his sense of being a narrative genius. Embarrassing film.

The origin story of the most famous member of G.I. Joe is a nicely simple and quite entertaining action flick that kicks Hollywood's average most of the time in terms of action, but occasionally manages to pleasantly surprise. Also, Schwentke doesn't skimp on the action, and if people are going to talk, at least it's in a beautifully kitschy "Japanese" setting full of neon and meditation gardens. A fun romp that knows it has to keep something going to keep you from getting bored. It's not in the first Hollywood league, but it's enough for a pleasant two hours in the cinema, if you know what you're getting into.

Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson and Salma Hayek must stop Antonio Banderas from destroying Europe, but they'll have plenty of work to do to keep from killing each other. The sequel to The Hitman’s Bodyguard brings back characters that were fun in the first one, but this time they've run out of gas. There's still plenty of action and it doesn't look bad, but when it's supposed to be funny, the film feels insecure and, more importantly, almost embarrassing in that it's built entirely on the fact that two people are yelling at a third for two hours. Significantly weaker than the first one, and a completely pointless film.

I was thrilled, about halfway through. Black Widow starts as an unexpectedly dark and adult comic book movie, presenting broken and hesitant heroes and heroines instead of jokes, and surprisingly gritty action that doesn't deny that the creators took inspiration from Jason Bourne and Mission: Impossible. It's also humorless, and for a while it felt like the most mature Marvel movie ever, unafraid of themes you wouldn't quite expect to find there. But then, somehow, it breaks. Halfway through, it's as if the makers decided that their audience probably doesn't actually crave something like this and went back to their old ways of playing it safe, give or take. Black Widow does even that well, and when you take away the not-so-good contact action scenes and the weaker Taskmaster, it's at least a solid job and an inoffensive Marvel average. It just felt a little too little when they went with a more mature yet fully functioning style in the first part. I don't want to make it sound like Black Widow is a bad movie. It's a well-done comic-book routine, but as a viewer, I'm not completely satisfied with that anymore. Especially when Scarlet Johansson and her crew managed to show me that they can do better.

Two pot dealers get the chance to sell their entire crop in one night, but someone stole it. There are also half-crazed cops, desperate musicians, seductive strippers, and the Bulgarian and Vietnamese mafia are on the rampage in Žižkov. This is gonna be a long night, and someone might get hurt in the process... The film is a variation on Guy Ritchie's gangster flicks and although it has its flaws and not all the plot lines work perfectly, there are enough ideas, humour and likeable characters to make it quite enjoyable in the cinema. Unexpectedly fine for a debut, and also proof that with a little effort, there can be other films than what we're used to from local filmmakers.

The trailers didn't do this action sci-fi flick a good service, and even when The Tomorrow War went straight to stream, you kind of assumed that you weren't going to be treated to a quality show. But it turned out unexpectedly well this time. The Tomorrow War is far from perfect, but the two and a quarter hours in front of the TV pass pleasantly quickly. They may be quite blatantly ripping off Edge of Tomorrow, Terminator, Alien, or even The Thing, but who could be mad at them for looking to the best for inspiration? Moreover, after a slow start, Chris McKay hits the gas hard and showers the audience with one action scene after another. In doing so, he makes sure not to dumb down the style and the setting, so after intense fights in the city and one not-quite-successful hunting trip, there's a spectacular shootout that would have been quite fitting for the big screen, and the whole thing is finished off a little differently. And it paces the whole thing well enough for one to overlook that it's pretty much just plain. Chris Pratt may play Star-Lord at first, but once the serious stuff starts happening he puts on a serious face and is quite good at it. The designers went truly bonkers with the monsters and I find myself wanting to watch a few scenes again a few hours after the closing credits. Who would have expected that after the crappy trailers?

This time the Purge did not end after twelve hours and all hell broke loose in America. Murderous lunatics are on the streets, killing anyone who gets in their way. Will the heroes find a place where they can be safe, or will they too be consumed by a Purge that should never end? The fifth installment of the action-horror franchise introduces new settings and new characters, but still relies on a combination of scares and shootouts in the burning streets of cities. It's been done a couple of episodes back, only this time it's a tad worse. Fans will probably be happy, as the decline from the previous films isn't too significant, but if you felt like you'd had enough of The Purge in the past, feel free to skip this latest one. You'll find only what was there last time, just a whole lot worse looking and less entertaining.

After a downright repulsive trailer, Mothers turned out to be an unexpectedly bearable film that can be quite good in some moments. It's just that the attempt to tell four stories over and over again, with the rather clumsy alternation of genres in addition to the protagonists, makes the whole thing feel not quite cohesive, but more like a bunch of episodes from the lives of four women. The disjointed alternation of comedy, drama and romance thus results in the film not quite holding together, and that's quite a shame. But within the confines of contemporary Czech commercial cinema, it's still one of the better ones and will please its target audience.