Marigold

Newell is good with actors – the mischievous and sparkly Gyllenhaal / Arterton duet is a pleasure to watch – but Newell is desperate not to do it with epic sauce. Even in Harry Potter, it was noticeable when some of the conversations were the funniest and most impressive things about the film. Prince of Persia is putting on a sterile crown. Futile fancy magic with a "game-like" camera, parkour walled in by the editing, and duels that are wooden and lack anything. Some of the images are unbearably plastic instead of fabulously magical. Nevertheless, I had a very satisfying time with the film. As a fairytale it works (thanks to the actors), only the feeling of plastic harmlessness of the environment limits the fantasy. The Prince of Persia is such a nice Disney figure who doesn't offend. Sometimes he delights, sometimes he jumps around without even plucking out of lethargy. Too bad, the potential was there, and it was considerable. I will miss Jake's veal conception in action fantasy.

This movie still kills years later because its cartridge case of stupidity is endless and the boot hood is indelible. It's fascinating to watch how demented catchphrases, combined with Arnie's demented speech, create a kind of magical cult of trash. Likewise, I'm still thinking about by how the film is arranged so Arnold can undress at the right moment and perform some bodybuilding poses – in fact, everything is subject to it. Anyone who wants to understand what the previously hideous seductiveness of the 1980s lies in must understand Commando. And the only way you're going to understand it is when you have this terrible trauma in your living memory that all your classmates have seen it before, and your mom's put a stop to it.

Men in Rut, written into a more layered score of a film about a documentary about record-breakers of the people. Again extremely civil, believable, funny with not much speech and courageously satirizing by Czech standards. Again, in places it loses a bit of pace and falls into a kind of condescending philosophizing of few words and few feelings. However, Sedláček's (self)ironic charm prevails, as well as the overall (and thought-based) modesty of the film and the fairly solid complexity (one plane answers the questions from the other). The Greatest Czechs is a film about records, loneliness, immovability, Czech cinema and contemporary society. There are pieces of all of it in the film, but together they reliably satiate.

Season 1: I have to say that I haven't had the pleasure of seeing such a well-executed update in a long time. Formally, the BBC series is made according to all the rules of modernity, but there are moments that seem unusually old-fashioned, and which seem to return the world of contemporary London, with all its proprieties, back to the dark and winding streets in which all sorts of scum can be found. Sherlock remains at its core the most traditional detective story for which action and dynamism are a means to irony (a stroboscopically chaotic brawl at the Planetarium in the Great Game, earthy grains in a Chinese circus in The Blind Banker, etc.). The main weapons of the character, brought to life with brilliant incisiveness by Benedict Cumberbatch, are deduction and sarcasm. And the main weapon of the series is the breathtaking Watson-Holmes duet, which surpasses Ritchie's more famous roster by two levels. At the same time, however, both the characters and the cases are extremely faithful to the spirit of Doyle's work, without limiting them in the foxy pop culture. It is boundless pleasure to see Holmes subdue and reinterpret modern series mantras, and it gives you the impudent opportunity to see how the Hound of Baskerville, played by this creative group, would turn out. Sherlock simply brings back the dark and bewitching mystery that has always been part of traditional detective stories, and the series manages to do so without having to go back in time. Which, from my point of view, is undoubtedly genius.

Rambo destroying computers with a shower of lead is one of the most beautiful mementos of the 1980s, as if Stallone was taking revenge on what would destroy his beloved genre. Paradoxically, in terms of psychology and ideas, the second film doesn't seem so far behind the (already quite retarded) first film, even though, instead of subjective nostalgia, programmable agitations are coming out of Rambo's mouth at the end. Cosmatos's film fits much more into the archetypes of the action 1980s and is irresistibly wooden and theatrical (or entertaining) in the most heated moments. The number of explosions is enormous, the pilot of the largest possible Soviet helicopter has not one red star on his helmet but two (so there is no confusion), and a POW with a machine gun in his hand, as if to remind the viewer of the beautiful ideological mishmash that ruled action Hollywood at the time. Can such a film not be loved even a little?

This is a kind of timid oscillation between action and psychological thriller, which can be watched with a certain amount of nostalgia - even though the action parts have become outdated and the psychology therein has never been a focal point. It’s a neat little monument to the 1980s that is still worthy of maintenance.

Paradoxically, it should have been even duller and more straightforward. The film is particularly damaging by the pursuit of a sophisticated motivation for a lifelong killer who wants to save at least a piece of his empty soul. In Rambo IV, Stallone drowned it in blood and bulldog focus, here the film struggles with it and has trouble explaining to the viewer why the characters are where they are and why they do what they do. Regardless, The Expendables looks like disparate testosterone action sketches and a spelling-book of "meta-movie" catchphrases (the more you know the map of the 80s, the more you enjoy them). The event is solidly physical, but confusing in places for my taste – those attempts at "Greengrass kinetics" – and rushed. The film is also lacking the 80’s drive in the style of "you killed my uncle, so I’m going to hurt you now". I had a good time, but I couldn't shake the feeling that Stallone didn't cross the magic line and fall into that retro river completely. Sometimes he seems to try to "talk" his way into it unnecessarily when the door needs to be kicked in. That's why I'm hesitating about giving it a fourth star.

A bloody band aid on the helplessness, suffocated hatred and frustration one experiences when watching more and more haunting scenes of genocide. Sly knows the artery of the action genre well and knows that when a person cuts into the right place, then the spilled blood and the lively flying intestines can have a strong therapeutic effect. All the more so because their authorship is the work of a man for whom war was the only known home. I appreciate how little Rambo bets on nostalgia – such conceived action in the 1980s would stand up only in the dream of a mad butcher – how little excess psychology we find in the film, and how few moral questions we can find. It's as bloody as the Old Testament, ethically, of course, completely crazy, yet cleansing and literally pressurized by the most idiotic and most seductive heroic romanticism. Rambo looking down on the battlefield (and his out-of-war defeat) is one of the best images of the series. The series went through some correctness to mature into a delicate meat cut, which is best described by John's "fuck the world". It's all about feeling, and mine was very euphoric watching Rambo. It's completely idiotic at its core, but it's not really about the core.

After a long time, a film where Bale's integrity did not upset me, probably because it was perfectly matched by the integrity of Russell Crowe. But how do you make a film where a good farmer and an evil outlaw stand against each other while maintaining integrity on both sides? Unfortunately, it is not without a certain awkwardness and playing for effect (especially in the end), but otherwise Mangold directed a stylish, raw and attractive genre spectacle. Moreover, sympathetically bearded, sweaty and old-fashioned.

A film that is controversial in the most banal and brutal way I can imagine. A film with a solid momentum, but at the same time with a dizzyingly romanticizing image of Kajínek as a Czech James Bond. It is almost impossible to believe that this person is a member of the Czech underworld, as rather he looks like the post-revolutionary Mirek Dušín. I find that unequivocally questionable. The affected attempt at lyricism also got on my nerves, whether in the overstretched music of Václav Bárta or in the traditionally opulently empty camera of F. A. Brabec. The pinnacle of the movie? A famous and without question riveting performance by Lavroněnko, who made Kajínek into a character with whom the viewer will very easily identify and will feel sorry for/admire... Well? I doubt it.