DaViD´82

More sophisticated movie than one would expect from the purely second-rate shallow controversial teaser of "Goro the white dog is killing Afroamericans. Fuller's great victory is that it works on both intended levels. In the first half of the genre, from "her point of view" it is a traditionally built disturbing thriller of old-fashioned style, which is in many respects a better adaptation of King's Cuja than the film Cujo itself and fully satisfies the slowly built atmosphere, long shoots, exposed gob here and there, chilling growl and ingeniously saddened Morricone background music. In the second metaphorical half "from his point of view", it is a multi-layered allegory of racism and xenophobia, which is more complex, disturbing and impressive than many "kind of serious" films addressing the same subject. The icing on the cake is the relativizing ending, which gets deep under your skin.

A series that is struggling to decide what it really wants to be. It would like to be a serious, complicated dramatic series on corporate law à la Damages. But it would also like to be about the charismatic alcohol wreckage that does not take herself so seriously that faces trauma and middle age crisis à la Californication (or now more like BoJack Horseman) and her family and relationship escapades in LA. In addition, a bit of sitcom,i.e. "lawyer and his whores are doing business on the fly" and to make matters worse, it would also like to reflect on something "social" through an insight into the private arms industry. And last but not least, it wants to be a series with a Bond style burnt überbad villain, who is watching the whole city through the cameras from the seclusion of his cave, pulls the strings, being arrogant to everyone, is burnt and has his own flunkies. Combining Damages with Californication on a paper is not a bad idea at all, but no matter how well the two lines work here, they work well only independently and not together as part of one whole. The legal one is like from a fairy tale, because a similar case would never have taken place within days/weeks and, of course, it would not be even miles away from the courtroom, but it does the job. That´s for sure. Dimension with bad corporations and Dr. No does not work at all. It´s a pure guilty pleasure. But ... It´s great to watch, the theme song is magnificent, every episode is fast-paced, weak moments are overshadowed by the duo Thornton / Arianda, strong culminating unrealistic (out of) court sequences full of personal resentment and vendetta. You won´t become bored by watching Billy Bob getting drunk, don´t giving a damn about everyone around him and using legal jargon at the same time. In other words, the movie would only benefited from a greater script unity and in that case it would be really entertaining. But only providing that you have already finished watching all those twenty other law series. | S1: 3/5 |

he middle part of Lumet's free trilogy (Serpico, toto and Q&A) about fighting against corruption in the police. This time freely based on career of Robert Leuci, a well-known corrupt cop and squealer, who once ruined the entire New York anti-drug department and made a career at old age as an author of decent harsh crimes books and as a professional film consultant. The film adaptation of "his" life story is, thanks to this, an rather slow, detailed and realistic view of the drama, kind of "traitor of the loved ones". Despite the fact that it starts out as a stylish dirty crime story, this line ends (too) soon for logical reasons. It becomes a personal drama and in the end a procedural film of years of bureaucratic machine with convictions and interrogations. Thus, even though there are legitimate objections to how the whole story is built, I can´t deny that it works. And works perfectly. But there is another fundamental problem, namely Treat Williams in the lead role. e is suitable for a certain type of role, but a complex role of once macho, who ruled the whole districts and who was really good at making the right friends with mafia, junkies, drug dealers, prostitutes, colleagues, his boss etc. and being torn apart from the inside, self-pity rat who everyone look down to, including the loved ones, former and current colleague, mafia and most of all he doesn´t respect himself. He´s just not a good fit for this kind of role. Which is even more obvious because everyone else in the movie is absolutely excellent. What makes it even worse is the fact that the script offers him every ten minutes really grateful, “Oscar aspiring scene", when he is to "run amok and collapse in Al-Pacino style", moralize and scold everyone. And this is exactly where he completely fails. It´s not entirely embarrassing or ridiculous, but the fact that this actor whose job was to perform such a nice role let every one overshadow him, clearly required a lot of (I don´t mean is as a compliment) effort. However, it doesn´t change the fact that this movie is amazingly shot and that it provides a fascinating insight into the averted side of the fight against drugs.

Much better 80s, true, Amblin movie than a horror movie, which is a problem, because it was supposed to be both Amblin and regular horror movie (by the way the music addresses this distinctive dual dynamics perfectly), but it is more of a dark fairy tale for adults than a combination of " Gonnies versus Freddy Krueger". It might have been the intention to show a noticeable possible shift in stylization between the children's and adult part. In any case, it looks largely like a feature-length Stranger Things. Which is quite paradoxical considering that they are based on It and Stand by me. The movie not afraid to address the tricky passages of the original, and yet it faithfully captures the original central atmosphere of a party (great cast) of overlooked children on the threshold of puberty united by the common fight against primary evil unseen by adults. Rather than on horror, the movie is based on the ubiquitous disturbing atmosphere, where behind every other corner there may (and may not) hide the embodiment of your innermost fears or, worse, nemesis in the form of bullying youth. In this regard, I have no objections. The problem comes up when Pennywise plays with its prey and this (un) fortunately happens quite often. Although Skarsgård is absolutely excellent (however Mendelsohn that was considered for this role would have been even better), and especially what he does with his voice or his "dead" squinting eye are ingeniously disturbing details, but apart from the prologue, we never see him in a scene where he would slow down and tried to get out of one of the Suckers´ mind in other way than through the scaring everyone. Either is after them to the fullest "ouch" in a geronimo way or he's not on stage. Nothing in between, there is no creeping gradually graded fear of the unknown. All the scenes of materialized nightmares are intense and some even damn impressive and memorable, but they are not even spooky, let alone terrifying. They are simply action attractions in daylight. Everything is terribly fast, that the only thing that remains in the footage is directly related to the fears of one of the Suckers. And nothing more. The move doesn´t beat about the bush, no scene within their families, nothing with adults, no sleepless nights because of experienced trauma, just a few references to kingversum nada. It's fully stripped. Although it´s a nice watch, but you can´t shake the feeling of missed opportunity of something more than "only" the best king movie in recent years. That´s for sure. Seems the movie requires some clothes too.

An unjustly neglected film of Lumet film making that is rich in high-quality elements. The movie is centered on corruption. Not only the material one, when someone takes a thick envelope for doing someone a favor, but above all the pragmatic one, when the superiors know that if they put some efforts they would also reveal the favor, but why would they do that if it brings no results. And where there are results, there are no questions. And so the whole system is becoming corrupt step by step and even more because Nolte's character sees how eyes are being closed so he begins to misuse the already corrupt system. n top of that it provides an insight into how it goes with the daily routine on the streets, non-violently (and even more impressively) incorporated socio-racial overlap and well-written and played (especially Assante) characters (the author of the original also wrote Carlito's Way), when fortunately the protagonist is not typical a naive nice guy losing panic illusions, but a former cop who just wants to be clean and wants the system to be clean too. Although this has already been leveled up in the department of series, in terms of films (at least until the upcoming adaptation of Winslow's masterpiece "The Force") it is currently hard to find a better unadorned image of the daily routine of dirty cops than Lumet's duo Prince of the City / Q & A. In addition, Lumet captivatingly captures the genius loci of the western Harlem nightclubs and is also good at showing a tangled intertwining of interacting street prostitutes, patrolmen, squealer, drug dealers, middle management (police, mafia, and gangs) to lots of top circles. It does not seem excessive or unfinished, but complex and thoughtful. The only minor problem for many will be the slower pace of the movie, but you will get used to it. It´s the part of it, but not for everyone thought.

Captain Blake from MI5, the world's leading professor / scientist Mortimer and the villainous Colonel Olrik are famous adventure comic book series characters (well-known in the West) that is kind of a more advanced version of Tintin. After all, their stories have been published in Tintin since the 1950s. It's on the same level and in the same style, only the absent elements so typical of Tintin's escapades are absent. After all, Tintin is a young man. His assistant speaks like a heave drinker. There´s a dog that always saves everything and the detective duo takes care of humor. There is no such thing here. It's an orthodox, seriously conceived “sestakov" movie, which is the main reason why, despite the fact that it is an animated series, it is not as much for children as it might seem at first glance. This series from the authors of the series Tintin (it can´t be surprise you) deals with nine stories from the originals and four created especially for the series. In principle, they can be divided into three styles; Indiana Jones treasure hunts, detective cases and espionage-style original Bond films. And this animated series captures the spirit of the original perfectly. It´s fast-paced, (the original is from today ´s perspective too chatty and descriptive) action, tension, great bad and bad guys. No episode is utterly bad, but the quality has its highs and lows too. In any case, the best of them belong to the hall of fame of the adventure genre.

It's hard to say if I'm more upset by how it looks down to and goes against its own rules (teleportation, untouchable heroes), logic. It lapses into to unrealistically cheap solutions and it has absolutely lost any previous consistency of character behavior (this applies to everyone, but especially to Tyrion and Malíček) or if I'm excited about how high-quality straightforward second-rate generic high fantasy came out of it. I have a purely ambivalent relationship to this series. On the one hand, I despise it with regard to how it ruins everything what was dutifully built over six seasons (I prefer not to mention the original altogether, but one is already reconciled with it for couple of seasons), on the other hand, I enjoy it very much for its epicness, battles, fire dragons, action, catch-phrases and a roaring soundtrack like no other. Yes, it certainly seems like the whole script team had to act as extras for those crowded scenes instead of writing the script (and they did not return to their work until the final episode), but I would be lying if I didn't admit that I enjoyed it. Although for completely (but COMPLETELY) different reasons than before, but I liked it. That´s true.

The original is a classic heist genre about the preparation and subsequent execution of a theoretically clever plan, which, however, is processed entirely through testimonies of witnesses, newspaper articles and especially transcripts of records from those tapes from different newspaper agencies. However, it is adapted as a traditionally conceived movie, which initially tries to incorporate a kind of social reflection of "Big Brother" into the heist movie, but it doesn't fit there at all (on top of that, there´s that annoying and overused early seventies sound of "electronics", ouch). Perhaps, it would have not been so annoying if it had been for a reason in the story line. But there´s no reason for this sound at all, because Lumet ens this line after about an hour anyway. Leaving aside this failed ambition, we are left with the civilian genre movie about ambitious robbery which did now go exactly according the plan with great cast that is nice to watch especially in the second half.

Jim Thompson adapted by Donald Westlak. It's a secret dream of a fan of rough crime movies completely ruined by the boring Frears´ direction, who makes the footage to seem twice as long. Movies by Thompson have always been short, striking and uncompromising. In any case, converting less than two hundred pages into almost two hours of footage means, as a result, completely preventing the movie from progressing, that has this subversive Oedipus complex (which, despite the setting is not a heist) on paper. In addition, it could (and should) have been more visually stylized into noir, no one will talk me out of it. In any case, it is not bad, especially thanks to the dialogs, which are often taken word for word from the book and the fact that the acting is brilliant.

A worse feature episode of Narcos, made in a relaxed but inconsistently executed style of The Wolf of Wall Street or the Lord of War. So, it never finds its own path and so it crouches in the shadow of the above. What would help is a better-built storyline, some emotions and a better executed shift to more serious department at the end, but purely as 80s stylized relaxed biographical nonsense, it's not really bad at all and it's definitely fun. Take my word for it. Especially thanks to Cruise, who is a great fit to this comic conceived role of a passive macho dude. Partly because he doesn't try to stylize himself into the real Barry Seal and he just plays himself.