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Alien: Covenant (2017)
Pointless
Covenant is basically a comedy lesson in how not to plan a colony mission. Everything imaginable that the crew under no circumstances must do they go ahead and do anyway. On this level, the movie is entertaining in a dumb way, like a really poor horror film - how can a crew on such a critical mission go ahead and land on an alien planet, without safety suits, essentially with full complement of mission-critical people? When they're not even in actual danger? When they have a clear target planet elsewhere? And that's just the start. We've seen silly stuff from Scott in Prometheus, but this trumps it all.
It's absolutely not worth watching. The script is so bad it's a farce. If you are a movie maker or a visual artist, there's some nice scenery and imagery you might be interested in, but I suggest you fast forward through the movie to get to it, in order to save time as well as to avoid experiencing any part of the "plot". The final "revelation" of the origin of Aliens becomes completely obvious about halfway into the movie and is just as pointless as the whole film. Nothing new, nowhere, at all.
Hail, Caesar! (2016)
Nothing going on
Witty, pretty, with some great shots, fun acting and a few laughs, but ultimately, it feels like nothing ever happens. This is the most surprising thing about the movie: despite the conspiracy, the abductions, media machinations and long-winded confessions, there's just nothing really going on. Nothing, really.
For someone interested just in acting it might be worth watching, to see Clooney's wonderful performance and to see all the stars switching from the high-pathos acting of the depicted era to being civil. Scarlet Johansson's cameo is an absolute treat and Josh Brolin is, as expected, magnificent.
But for a casual viewer: the movie has essentially no plot, no character development... well, again, there's nothing going on. Ultimately, it feels rather disappointing.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)
Brainless indulgence
A strangely underrated, very stylish,occasionally funny and well-paced movie.
While perhaps not breathtakingly original, this movie is well-executed, well-directed, with some good acting and a few passable jokes thrown in. If that doesn't sound ecstatic, it's because this movie isn't exactly awesome, but it's still decent fun and it offers a somewhat fresh look at two genres at once (classic romance and zombie apocalypse). It might be a good point to start one's girlfriend's interest in the zombie genre if you wish.
My only real disappointment was that the one character from the original novel that I wished (and expected) to turn into a zombie didn't, but for the sake of spoilers, I won't divulge who it was (n't).
Lastly, cinematography, locations, sound and costumes (i.e. "looks and feels") of this movie are spot on. Again, in the age of so many inept, vapid films, this one doesn't deserve its low rating and might be worth a casual glance if you're looking for some, well... brainless... indulgence.
Jumper (2008)
Below average, desperately predictable
A run-of-the-mill sci-fi movie about a supernatural teenager being hunted by a fanatical shadowy organization. Sadly, that sentence sounds even more interesting than the movie actually is. It is clogged with clichés like lost love, lost parents, kid hanging around, weak kid growing strong, strong kid being suddenly confused and in pain etc. ad nauseam.
Main protagonist has no charisma, perhaps unsurprisingly, because he's played by Christensen. His love interest has no charisma. His allies are bland. His enemies have no personality and no redeeming qualities. The story has no drive, the twists are predictable, the action doesn't compensate for the sluggish tempo, the writing is boring and humourless.
This is a very poor movie, positively less entertaining than any of the the Divergents and Labyrinths. It certainly has both worse acting and worse action.
God Help the Girl (2014)
Unconvincing with great music
There really isn't much of a story here and the whole movie feels like a sequence of barely connected scenes. Wherever there is music, there is also entertaining choreography and good editing - those scenes are always great, no matter how slow and boring the rest of the movie feels. Acting is decent tho and Emily Browning certainly shows a lot of talent.
There might be a point in the stark contrast between the joy of the musical scenes and the slowly crushing boredom of the "mundane" ones, namely that it is used to show the main character's problem with accepting "real life" and her escapes from it to music. The result is unconvincing, especially for a mainstream viewer - the contrast between the two styles only adds to the general inconsistency of the movie.
I would not recommend this to a casual movie viewer, perhaps to people who really are into musicals or youth movies. It certainly helps to show that a good musical requires much more than good songs. The soundtrack, however, that you should get.
Pearl Harbor (2001)
Those are no pearls...
I was actually working part-time as a projectionist when this movie was released, and had to sit through 3 showings daily for four consecutive days. That's twelve Pearl Harbors, and astonishing 36 hours of incessant, mind-boggling, drab dialog, high-school amateur acting, atrocious plot, irritating musical chores and woefully happy endings. If you want to see where the blockbusters draw the line for too cheesy romance, too cheap patriotism, much too pointless violence and truly too long footage, don't watch this movie, since it's waaaaay past it. There are more worthy movies with Michael Dudikoff, I mean, at least he's got a funny name and a haircut to entertain you for two seconds.
It might be funny if you rented Pearl Harbor AND Team America and watched the two one after another, but otherwise... steer well off it. Stay sane.
Zítra vstanu a oparím se cajem (1977)
Tomorrow...
...I'll watch this film again. A side-splitting comedy with great puns, highly artistic visuals, and a plot that is a marvelous joke in itself.
Much funnier than you'd ever expect from a movie that starts with a multiplied "Heil Hitler" line, this flick features a band of aging Nazi émigrés that somewhere in the future decide to travel back in time to give a hydrogen A-bomb to Hitler. The shambolic plot is held together by some of the best Czech acting of the decade (all of the main protagonists were in fact extremely accomplished stage and movie actors) and a never-ending flow of visual jokes and puns. When the Plan goes horribly, horribly wrong, threatening to choke the future with countless clones of not-so-retired Nazis, the paradoxes are mostly solved by exterminating either the copies or the originals ("Now, I'm going to kill myself"). The moment where the chief Nazi opens his portable A-bomb suitcase in the presence of Hitler, only to discover that the box now contains lingerie, is one of the greatest comedy moments in Czech cinematography. I remember watching the conspirators' faces on slow-mo a dozen times again, and again, and I just couldn't stop laughing.
All the while, this movie has a touch of something greater than mere parody of time travel. As it is one of the last heirs of the inventive Czech New Wave, the movie's crew included many extremely skilled filmmakers, including T. Pistek, the maker of Amadeus' Oscar-awarded costumes.
Overall, if you think you can stand European cinematography, and don't require your average movie to feature Brad Pitt clones, you probably won't be disappointed. This is one of the 20-or-so Czech productions that I'd rank as world quality movies. See the quotes for some of the innumerable cool lines.
Suk saan: San suk saan gim hap (1983)
Crazed Chaos Warriors
This movie has it all: flashing blades, crispy punchlines, whirling monstrosities, fast paced-combat, incredible heroes and incredibly foxy heroines; it also has chaotic plot diversions, incoherent dialogues, some of the crappiest special effects to date (a great Chaos beast is actually a very recognisable red rug with metal plates attached), random explosions, more than one character that just vanish inexplicably, more than one character that learn to fly and save the world. It is a wonderful, frantic vision from a children's dream, where ordinary things come alive and threaten to eat us, where any component of the game can be immediately dismissed (preferably with a boom) in favour of whatever has just caught our attention.
If you like stories of swordsman army drop-outs who walk up the mountain with mentors who fight evildoers who bring up the great chaos beast which grows a double of the mentor that kills the mentor who gives his powers to his student who meets more swordsmen who join him to learn to fly up above the mountain to join the magic swords to banish the evil, this is your movie. Oh, I forgot about the temple where they tried to heal the master who got ill but the queen failed who got encased in ice when everything exploded... sort of. If you are appaled by an idea that a movie with this plot (not one part of it did I make up) could actually be made a have a cult following, then, well, you'd better not watch it. The chances of you enjoying it are truly minute.
Prince of Darkness (1987)
Prince of Fear
I remember this as one of my scariest pieces of movie experience, although this may have much to do with my Catholic background. The basic premise that there is a certain Satan locked in a crate in the basement was not the thing that got to me; it was the evil, evil revelation, which seems to have escaped most of the other reviews here, that sets this movie apart from all that Exorcist stuff... right, real SPOILER following:
There is nothing to Exorcise WITH. There is no good Force. The father of Satan is the Creator of our world, an immeasurably evil, insane being, which was somehow locked outside our world, and the Church has covered that fact by inventing some nice Jesus pap to dull the masses. There is nothing waiting at the end of our history, except for black insanity, as the world was made to be devoured. There is no nice God, no greater Power that somehow ensures there would be a universal happy end to everything. And all this got wrapped into a thrilling story with some nasty Carpenter horror effects to boot. Boy, I was not just scared, if you have the right mindset, this movie makes you think... and then think again. Thoroughly recommended to all Inquisition and Stomp-the-Heretic College students as the first tape to burn.
Jing wu ying xiong (1994)
Legendary
One of the most applauded martial arts movies to date, this piece of art offers much more than flawless, thrilling action: plausible characters having real dilemmas and making actual decisions, based on their own moral codex. Each and every of the five-or-so protagonists is a human being with a set of values that he or she tries to follow, each and every fight is meaningful and serves to advance both the plot and character evolution. In this, Fist of Legend has achieved more than everything else that has been done in its genre and in fact transcended it, and should surely rank amongst the greatest movies of all time - much like Casablanca did for the classical melodramatic flick.
Set in the time of the Japanese occupation of China and revolving around Sino-Japanese lovers, Fist of Legend presents numerous conflicts of morally right and wrong action, such as national pride versus racial prejudice, misuse of power versus right for self-defense, limits of loyalty to an authority, limits of self-sacrifice for the sake of love. It is amazing how so much of it could be crammed amongst the grand amount of action, but the result is unparalleled, creating the single movie where every fight has deeper meaning than just the hero thrashing another bad guy. When everything is poised for the grand finale, Fist of Legend delivers a truly epic battle between a hero standing for humanity with all its faults and a being that has lost all human traits save for the physical shell. Never before or after can I remember having such a strong feeling that humans could, and should, actually punch through concrete when the time is right.
Unless you really, really can't stand Asian action cinematography or just hate movies that are not in English, there is no reason why you shouldn't enjoy this movie. Oh, and if you ever decide to watch only one, only ONE kung-fu pic, in your whole life, EVER... this has to be it.
The Producers (2005)
Glorious Bloom...
If only for the marvelous performances of Broderick, Lane and the sensual Thurman appearance, this one is worth watching. The two main characters are wonderfully introduced in the only longer conversational scene at the beginning of the film, and since then, it is an elevating ride of music, dancing, hilarious costumes and enjoyable punch lines. There is nothing deeper here, and there certainly are no moments of revelation, but it is the perfect movie to relax by. Hilarious, no. Soothing, yes. The musical scenes are the core of this movie, and what should be especially valued is how the rest of this film was made to support the really big proportion of those. Meaning, of course, that not liking musicals is a reason for not wanting to ever see this one. If you're thinking you could try musicals for once... I'd still go for Chicago first, or some of Disney's 90's animated films, say, The Lion King.
Still, another vastly underrated movie on IMDb, while the drab that is Transformers scores 7.4 - what a shame. I'd normally give The Producers a 7/10 score overall, but I'm punching eight stars here to push the rating up a dent. Really, this is in no way worse a movie for the general public than Transformers or The Two Towers are. Oh, and look out for the heiling pigeon dubbed by Mel Brooks himself.
Star Trek (2009)
Average action entertainment
I don't think I've seen many balanced opinions, people seem to either love or hate this movie. Personally, I don't see what the fuss is all about: I remember the original Star Trek always just made me laugh, whether Kirk was being seduced by people in ancient costumes or wrestling with green lizards that made Ed Wood saucers look fairly plausible; my nostalgic adherence to it comes solely from the fact that when I used to watch it, I was much younger and living in happier times. So, no, I wouldn't like to watch exactly this kind of product in a movie theater again, and I got nothing to mourn.
Yes, the new movie is as dumb as action movies go these days, with characters that offer as much depth as your average tea cup and a plot that defies the definition of plot in any explanatory dictionary. Still, I liked the way it looked, and the music is very solid. You really need to turn your brain off, tho. Expect a simple action movie. A bit better than XXX, a bit less credible, with approximately the same message: when you see a guy who says that he wants to kill everybody, you need to smash his face. Yep. Hope they hire some waaaaay better writers for the sequel, really. Know it's not going to happen.