DaViD´82

An effing and blinding version of Yes, Minister / Yes, Prime Minister with a hint of the Office for the twenty-first century in a satire that is so aptly true and chilling that in fact it isn’t even funny. So this definitely is no classic Britcom, but more, how should I put it, a “politofuckcom". And the effing (not just) leaves Malcolm’s lips with a tempo that a Kalashnikov could be jealous of. Too bad that in this country it came out with disastrous subtitles by Petr Šaroch which were more a version of how he would have done political satire, rather than (even a very free) translation of what is said.

Cold enough to freeze the balls off an iron monkey, craggy fjords, huge icebergs and blue yonder as far as the eye can see... This dismal, bitter cold, “miles from anywhere" atmosphere means that you will be glad of a nice warm blanket while watching it. And maybe not just the one blanket. Otherwise, the environment and the atmosphere are the only things that elevate this otherwise rather run-of-the-mill spy thriller with a standard, interchangeable plot with the standard twists that you have seen a hundred times before to an excellent genre gem.

If Stiller had not tripped himself up so unsportingly immediately during the New York part when Walter’s over the top stories are like something out of Tropical Storm and so completely at odds with the mood and atmosphere that it is trying for (successfully from the moment when they set off on their journey) my impressions would have been much more positive. Even so, this just couldn’t shake off the label of “the movie that tried so hard, but so hopelessly for two hours to achieve what they achieved incomparably better in the first trailer".

A space opera in dirty garb that is equally clever, topical, mirror holding, epic, fateful, provocative and riveting as it is naive, amateurishly acted, full of filling, moralizing and full of moments that get the audience’s eyes rolling. In any case, at its better/best moments it’s really really good and at its feeblest it is really really bad, but never unwatchable; this is also thanks to the fact that the first situation described occurs considerably more often than the second.

The introduction is like something from Melville; determinedly taciturn, protracted, male, a robbery analytically planned to the smallest detail... Simply marvelous. And then it all goes sour, because this has to remain a serious crime thriller, while Belmondo stylizes it into a comedy with “escapades". And it doesn’t work at all. It doesn’t help either that Belmondo’s daring stunts in his movies are, apart from exceptions proving the rule, the icing on the cake, topping the already good movie and plot foundations. The Burglars is the exception proving the rule. Everything here is a vehicle to present the incredibly frequent, interminably long stunt scenes. Which isn’t good. All the stunts are very impressive in themselves, but they should have appeared in a better movie.

Black Mirror presents a chattily heartfelt, melancholic and, due to its topic, also pretty chilly feature length special When Teddy met Siri which fits nicely between episodes The Entire History of You and Be Right Back in terms of topic and approach. In any case it must be sci-fi, mainly because a guy that looks like Groucho Marx is courted by (true, in different forms) Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde and Kristen Wiig. And then also because of the worry design of men’s pants of the future; whoa… For my own sake I hope that this aspect of Spike’s vision doesn’t come true.

The worse and stiffer Smith is as an (non)actor, the funnier and more gifted he is as a story teller. It’s just that he tries to be funny at all costs, but you have to admit that when he is funny he is hilarious. In other words, the almost three and a half hours in his company are not boring even though they could be edited down to fit a two-hour “best of". The first thing that could be thrown out are the unnecessary dividing scenes with the crowd answers to “why they came". It’s not the length which does the movie the worst service, but it’s mainly the “dude and pussy" audience. At some gigs, the school youth is just too annoying, almost intolerable and it’s like something from some awful teenager comedy; to this day I’m shaking my head over the reaction of that herd to Smith’s mention of beer.

Before the end of time storyline from last time comes to an end, it’s as awful and unworthy of the Davies/Tennant duo as the first episode was. It is only bearable thanks again to a few quieter moments (the conversation about weapons). Luckily it ends sooner than you might have expected (a thousand thanks!) and the entire closing part is devoted to nostalgic looking back and melancholic farewell with (not just) the Tennant and Davies era as such. And it works, a whole lot. So much so, that one asks oneself whether it really had to be preceded by about an hour and a half of excessive embarrassment.

I get the impression that Davies doesn’t want to hand over his pen to anybody else, and so he’s behaving like a spoiled kid “if not me, then nobody can". And so he’d rather destroy what he (sometimes more, sometimes less) carefully nurtured for so many years. Unnecessarily convoluted, dumb (Obama? Like really, Obama?) and like a rally where one senseless deus ex machina is chasing another; and what’s more, with the Master thrown into the position of unbearable cousin to the not so unbearable Muppet-like jovial devils. For most of the movie I tended to react à la Tennant. Even so, here and there we see the sparkle of good old Davies (particularly the scene in the café, or the Ood), which help to make this more or less in the realm of watchability. In any case, the atmosphere at the end is about as foreboding as Putin is meek and humble, so not at all.

Yup, when one day H2O goes wild on parched Mars, you are as they say, in the shit... Too bad they don’t focus more on the dark side of the Doctor’s soul very often in this series, because it’s that conflict between “an enchanting, good natured man, helping across space, time, whoever, whatever" who carries inside him the potential to become the exact opposite when it comes to “omnipotence" that is the most fascinating thing about that character. He realizes that; those surrounding him, not so much; apart from bright exceptions like Adelaide Brooke. And seeing as Davies had already prepared them so beautifully for the final, oppressive scene, he should have followed it through and let her do what is on offer. For one thing, without it, this ends up fizzling out, and it would have had the advantage that Davies could save him and Tennant the resulting convoluted and humiliating ending to the last double episode of their era.