tamaspolgarpixeldog Reviews

Kalashnikov (2020)

The tale of an unremarkable hero

[5/10 · 19 January 2024]

I'm pretty sure the screenwriters had a difficult time. Mikhail Kalashnikov was undoubtedly a true hero of the Soviet Union (and received the appropriate medal to certify this fact), and the poster child of talented engineers and gun designers all around the world. His merits are beyond dispute. However, one thing he was not: a protagonist in a particularly exciting story. This is something neither him, nor the filmmakers can be blamed for.

Apart from his WW2 front service, Kalashnikov rarely did anything that would look spectacular on the silver screens. For most of his life, he just held a job in which he performed exceptionally well. Good for him, but at the end of the day, apart from the product he worked on, he was just living an engineer's life. The backdrop, which is the Soviet Union, may make his personal story mildly more interesting, but that's pretty much all there is. Everything beyond that would turn the movie into a technical documentary. There is no drama, no tension, nothing. So much that the film doesn't even go beyond 1949, when the AK-47 was introduced to frontline service.

So, spoiler alert, the movie goes like this: Young soldier with a somewhat unhealthy obsession with designing guns gets wounded at the front. Gets sent to the rear to recover. Wants to design a gun. Designs a gun. Receives praise, but gets rejected. Designs another gun. Receives more praise, but still rejected. Gets married. Designs another gun, and gets accepted. AK-47 was born. The end.

Well, it's almost perfectly historically accurate. Well done, nicely made. But there isn't much to watch. If you're a gun nut, you might find amusing to see how he (may have) designed his first guns, or how his competitors fared in the test range where the AK-47 emerged triumphant. Beyond that... it's an OK movie, but nothing particular to see or remember.

Foglyok (2019 TV Movie)

A very good movie, worthy of Hungary's best cinema traditions

[8/10 · 26 July 2023]

There's a thing about Eastern European film industry. Hungarians, Czechs, Serbs, Poles are brilliant at depicting the worst times of their history on the silver screen, no matter the genre. We make the best sour comedies, dramas, love stories, mystery thrillers or even kids' movies set in the darkest times. That's how deeply the ordeals of our parents and grandparents run.

(On the other hand, we suck at traditional Western genres, such as action movies. We just don't like shootouts and superheroes. We don't understand America. We understand ourselves.)

Captives is a prime example of these filmmaking traditions. It's another movie set in the terrible 1950s, when Hungary was pretty much like North Korea, only with way less Koreans. As it's really the umpteenth movie about how terrible the Rakosi era was, one may expect it to be a forced and tired retelling of the same story. After all, even Hollywood ran out of anything new to say about WW2 since 'Saving Private Ryan'. But guess what? 'Captives' isn't tired at all, and it's definitely not boring. What's outright shocking is that the story isn't even fictional.

However, there's a certain and noticeable difference between the "vibe" of 'Captives' and classic movies set in the Stalinist era, such as 'Never, Nowhere, Nobody' (Soha, sehol, senkinek), 'Whooping Cough' (Szamárköhögés) or 'Lucky Daniel' (Szerencsés Dániel).

This movie was made by the millennial generation. This is not to say it's a bad movie: far from it. However, it's palpable how the creators, and also most of the actors, are from the first generation who neither experienced Communism, nor heard first hand accounts from those who were already adults during the worst times. After all, someone who was a young adult around 1950-55 would already be past 90. Most Hungarians rarely make it past 75...

This somehow makes this movie different. As excellent it is, it's somehow not as immersive and deeply shocking as some of the older movies were. You feel like peeking through a curtain into a long gone era, like a time traveler, and you know you can take a step back any time if you can't stand he horrors. In the 1980s you couldn't do that. The 1950s were still around us, its shadow haunting us. Today we're much more distanced from them.

If you find it difficult to understand this distinction, it's perhaps because you aren't an X-gen or Hungarian. But just look at movies about World War II. You will find how modern WW2 movies are very different from those made in the 1960s, 1970s, and not in a technical sense.

This is not the filmmakers' fault at all. They did their very best to deliver an amazing piece of cinema, and boy, did they deliver! But still: different era, different vibes. This is just my two cents about it. It's not even a bad thing. It means we finally stepped over the shadow of the 1950s, and buried our dead. Just like we did after so many other terrible events before. Good riddance. Let this movie stand as a memento to what we shouldn't ever allow to happen again.

Better Call Saul (2015–2022)

A good show, but not good enough

[5/10 · 16 February 2023]

I finished Better Call Saul with mixed feelings. It definitely doesn't live up to the glory of Breaking Bad, even though there are moments when it catches up with it. Generally though, it's a very slow paced, often outright boring soap opera, with an occasional true crime element sprinkled in. I often found myself leaving it to go to the kitchen, or leaving it in the background and doing something productive instead. I still never missed anything.

Breaking Bad followed the descent of Walter White, a decent Midwestern school teacher into the world of sin and ultimately his demise. But White was doomed from the start, as he had cancer. We never expected him to get anywhere. He had no future, no hope and nothing else to live for but to leave his family in an acceptable financial state when he passes away. Jimmy McGill, alias Saul Goodman is a different story. An upcoming lawyer, a go-getter and a bit of a weasel, he has all the hope, and we want him to win. He's not a bad person, arguably not even a true criminal, just a little guy who constantly gets walked over by society. Both hypocritical and mediocre "good people" who never had had half the talent or the warm heart he had, and heavyweight criminals who keep dragging him out to the desert to put a gun at his head. Poor Jimmy breaks one day, and decides not to bow to either of them any more. This is how Saul Goodman is actually born.

Jimmy's story is a tragedy, but not like Walter White's. Jimmy never had the chance to be what he really was, and he was forced into the role of Saul Goodman by the ruthless and unforgiving society that kept pushing him down. Many praised the finale as "the best ending of any series ever", well, I strongly disagree. It's just a shred better than the ending of Game of Thrones. What Jimmy does at the end makes zero sense, completely goes against his character, and the fate he chooses is unimaginably cruel and dark. Worse though, there is no reason for him to do what he does. It's the most disturbing and depressing ending to any story I've ever watched. If you don't think so, then you need a mirror: you're one of those hypocritical people who force those far better than you into being Saul Goodmans.

Pain and Glory (2019)

Beautiful, pretentious and boring

[5/10 · 21 July 2022]

Sometime halfway into the movie there is a scene in a small theater. If you see the faces of the audience all absolutely normal, well, this is THE movie for you. Not so much if you were gazing at the faces, and found them freaky.

This is a beautifully made movie about a world where there's no care, only what you make. You can see it as an uplifting story of a great artist. Or you can watch it with disgust, and ask yourself: is this really how some people live? Blind to God and decency, but spoiling themselves with material wealth they don't deserve and never worked a minute for it? Travelling the world with their gay lover, snorting cocaine, and dreaming of being creators of greatness like God?

What I see here, is an elderly degenerate whining about not being happy, despite his spoiled life. His greatest drama ever is to fix broken relationships from thirty years ago. All while snorting heroine. Absolute Weimar. Repulsive and boring. But beautifully made.

Sorry, I do not connect with this pretentious and fake word of eternal material pleasure-seeking. Sure, give Almodovar an Oscar, what do I care. If this is about his own life, he should be ashamed, and not proud of it.

I quit watching halfway, and I felt better instantly.

Death Note (2006–2007)

Great story and art, but the characters ruined it

[4/10 · 29 March 2021]

Death Note is a great story idea gone sour. A lot of great effort was lost for a lack of a little more. There was so much potential for a great story and it's all wasted on something a basement-dwelling, introverted teenager would make up under the shower.

Most of the characters make no sense at all. The Interpol is introduced a bunch of fumbling idiots who are just yelling at each other. All police detectives, FBI agents and other, supposedly professional law enforcement agents are helpless amateurs whose interaction with the world is mostly just being astonished and gasping. "Aaah... Oooh... Wow... Gasp!" All of them are easily fooled by a seventeen year old kid, even when his intent is blatantly obvious. Come on, an FBI agent or a veteran detective won't fall for silly lies, like said kid stating that he's working for a top secret police operation! Who the hell wrote these characters?

Then there's the mysterious L, who later turns out to be an unkempt and seemingly vitamin-deficient nerd, able to boss the world's police forces around. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN! That's even less likely than a Shinigami dropping a Death Note on your front yard right now. If someone told a high ranking police officer that a faceless, nameless guy is going to give him instructions through a laptop, he'll just laugh at it and send him to hell.

There are so many blatant plot holes that I can't even keep count. Just for one, if Light wants to stop L, all he needs to do is to threaten to kill world leaders. He can literally hold the world hostage, why bother to find out who's L? There are more powerful people who can stop him.

I frankly don't understand what's the hype around this stupid story. It's genuinely a terrible one. It may entertain a 10 year old, but it's just annoyingly stupid. The single good point is excellent artwork. Except footstep animations. They somehow couldn't get them right.

The Whiskey Bandit (2017)

Nimród, you really shouldn't have

[2/10 · 11 January 2021]

I'm quite disappointed with this movie. It was clearly made by someone who knows a lot about American movies and cinema in general, but nothing about Hungary in the 1990's. Oh yes, that's exactly Nimród Antal, the Hungarian filmmaker born and raised in the US. The result is a weird hybrid of a weak American crime story and a Hungarian movie.

It's difficult to tell who was this movie made for. I imagine it was intended for a Hungarian audience, as hardly anyone outside our borders ever heard of Attila Ambrus or his shenanigans. After all, his story is hardly unique: a bank robber with a lot of luck, who was later captured, but escaped, then captured again and spent a lot of time in the slammer. Try telling this story at a party to non-Hungarians and they'll think you're tired.

The movie fails to capture the mystery of the real Whisky Bandit's story, which wasn't even really about the Whisky Bandit himself. He wasn't popular because Hungarians like criminals or bank robberies. His series of robberies revealed how impotent and corrupted Hungarian state authorities were. This might be very difficult to grasp for anyone who never lived in an Eastern European country, Nimród Antal included. Former Socialist states are still stuck in Soviet times when it comes to state administration. Authorities like the police are practically living on a legend of their invincibility and infallibility, while they're terribly underfunded, undermanned, corrupted and amateurish. Eastern Europeans perceive the police as an oppressive force, not a public service. When a cop walks up to you and asks for your ID, your stomach begins to sink. They aren't your friends, they don't serve you. They are bullies operating along odd policies that make little sense, often acting on a personal whim, frequently departed not only from the law, but reality and common sense. This is why common folk cheered the Whisky Bandit who made a fool of the police and revealed how worthless they were.

I have to give credit to the movie for one thing: it did attempt to capture this petty pursuit of power, so characteristic of law enforcement in Hungary. The scene where it's revealed that the detective is trying to push extra charges on Ambrus to compensate for his own failed life is very accurate and Eastern European. Indeed this is how they operate: if they can lay their hand on someone, they'll unleash their wrath and often make up excuses to completely destroy the suspect's life. Many and more people are in prison in Hungary who may have committed a crime, but not what they had been convicted for.

The scenes are full of serious anachronisms. There's almost always something out of picture: a car from a later era, a poster advertising a band that was only formed ten years later, objects and items alien from the time period. Locations are switched abruptly many times, and the characters take impossible routes around Budapest, jumping from one place to another. This may not be an issue for a foreigner watching the movie, but it pretty much ruins it for Hungarians, the audience this movie was intended for. It's difficult to understand how these blatant mistakes exist, while apparently the filmmakers took great care to arrange some miniscule details. For example the license plates of the cars all beginning with A to D, the letter in use during 1990's. I doubt, however, that even most Hungarians would know this. The effort is lost when we see completely out of place things and items, or see American movie clichés that are standing out like a sore thumb. I've just written more than 20 goof items, most of them anachronisms. In some cases they're so bad it literally hurts to watch.

The storyline is only loosely based on Ambrus' real story, and it's a very inaccurate depiction. This is where I have to take away at least four stars. They watered down the actual, quite intense story, as written by real life itself, to a simple, shallow series of robbery scenes. Literally 90% of the thrill is gone, and we get a mediocre film school thesis work instead. There was an excellent opportunity for a riveting climax if they just followed the real story. In reality the "Viszkis" committed several new robberies after he escaped, the police was mad, a manhunt was going on for months, but they couldn't catch him. The story of his arrests were also way more interesting in real life. The screenplay entirely skips these parts, we don't even see how was he caught for the second time. It just happens off-camera. No, I think I'll take away another star. I'm annoyed again just by typing this.

As for the acting, there's not much to speak of. We have a stereotypical detective, a shallow criminal with little character at all, some gal he's nailing, and some even blander supporting characters. Again this film school feeling, but this time the product is barely passing.

The result is an annoyingly bad movie which nobody can really enjoy. The only fun I had with it was to point out the mistakes and post them on this site. Even the real Whisky Bandit was really disappointed and said that it's not even close to his real story. Don't waste your time on it, either you're Hungarian or not.

The real disappointment is how many Hungarians are celebrating this movie as some masterpiece. Oh wow, a Hollywood movie about some Hungarian thing, gotta give it 11 stars! Why yes, if you're an average Eastern European prole who never saw anything better than painfully shitty soap operas on Hungarian commercial TVs, then 'The Whisky Bandit' will be an outstanding experience. But it's not because it's good - it's because you have the taste of a prole.

Game of Thrones: The Bells (2019) Season 8, Episode 5

Now this is just childish

[4/10 · 18 May 2019]

Somewhere in Hollywood there must be a hysteric five years old kid who thinks they're born an excellent screenwriter, and for some reason producers all around the word flock to this kid. We owe a lot of recent titles to this child prodigy including The Last Jedi, all-female Ghostbusters, and now Game of Thrones.

The entire show is going down the drain since they ran out of GRRM's books. Seriously, why not just hire a renowned manga/anime artist from Japan to finish the screenplays? The reason why more and more Western people are watching anime is excellent plots and lack of overused Hollywood cliches. If you come to think of it, Game of Thrones is actually a live action anime. If it was actually one, it'd be one of the most popular ones.

I was already crying out loud about the stupidity of the battle at Winterfell, but I'm just disappointed now. If there were more seasons to come, I'd just stop watching the show. It's not entertaining, it's not thrilling, it's just a CGI show butchering characters. Shame on you HBO, you ruined it.

Batman (1989)

The greatest disappointment of its time

[1/10 · 17 February 2018]

Yes, I gave it one star while everybody are jumping and cheering this "timeless classic". Here is why we in Eastern Europe utterly hate this movie.

It was 1989. Communism was crippling. We already saw its end ahead. The red stars were still up, the Soviet Union was still there, but there were talks of their troops leaving Hungary after 40 years, and that free elections are ahead. It was an ecstatic moment of history. Optimism was everywhere and the once feared old commies were nothing but toothless lions any more. We knew that freedom is just around the corner and we'll soon live like Austrians or West Germans. I was 13 at the time, and felt like opening a big gift which contains my future.

In these days this movie has arrived. It was the first one to have an American style marketing campaign. We've never experienced such a thing. Movies were played in the cinema, there were posters, maybe trailers on TV, and that's all. But this was something different now. It was more than just a movie. Batman was suddenly everywhere. They were talking about Batman on TV, there were Batman quiz shows on every radio, there were long educational sessions about who is Batman, how important he is to American culture. T-shirts, bags, stickers and everything else with the Batman logo appeared everywhere. You suddenly weren't cool if you didn't have at least one Batman item, at least a keychain. It was all like: OMG go and see this thing, BATMAN, you get it, BATMAN, your life isn't complete until you've seen BATMAN, how come you haven't seen BATMAN yet?! Remember. B-A-T-M-A-N. Got it?

Needless to say, after such a campaign the Hungarians flocked into the cinemas to see this unmatched wonder. Gee, it must really be something big! After all, we are experiencing big things these days. Lenin's statues are falling, János Kádár, the Commie dictator has just bitten the dust, the Russkies are leaving, a McDonald's has just opened downtown, all right, so now we get another awesome thing, Batman, right?

And then we left the cinema in eerie silence and utter disappointment. What the hell was this pointless clusterfuck?! A retarded show of banal tropes laced with wanton graphic violence. Who was the idiot who told us that this is a good movie? It was literally the worst thing we've ever seen!

Suddenly Batman disappeared from Hungary as if it hasn't ever been there, and only a few Batman school bags indicated that it was ever there. But it wasn't a good idea to use it to school any more, unless you wanted to embarrass yourself for the rest of your studies.

Batman turned out to be quite symbolic to us. The whole freedom thing was a similar scam. When we got it, we wished the Russians were back. And McDonald's turned out to be overpriced utter shit too, compared to the good old street burgers which were already sold everywhere by simple Hungarian businesses. Ironically, while their burgers were the symbol of change in the 1980s, now it's sold as "retro burgers" as a symbol of wishing those times back.

World War Z (2013)

Anyone who liked this is probably retarded

[2/10 · 28 October 2017]

My God, what an awful, retarded, pointless waste of time! Not only a very boring story with absolutely zero value, but a perfect demonstration of how mentally debilitated and inept today's society is. And no, don't even try to dismiss it with the usual "it's just a movie" bullshit. This movie is a test, and if you enjoyed it, I am sorry, you've failed. You're not a functional adult.

There are a lot of movies in which something extraordinary, or outright impossible is depicted. Dragons, flying cars, the Borg, Death Stars, we all love them. But we do on one condition. The impossible things may do whatever they want, but the possible ones, the things we know from our everyday life, must work as we know they do. There may be dragons, but still nobody should survive being impaled on a sword. Unless there is something magical about him. Miracles always need to have an explanation, otherwise it's just garbage.

World War Z utterly and repeatedly fails on this. Yes, we may believe the zombie apocalypse. OK, there is a virus, and it turns humans into ferocious killing machines in fifteen seconds. Right. Not a very original idea, but hey, this is what idiots want to see, and they pay good money, I get the point. But no, a pressurized airplane will not survive a grenade blast, it will not attempt a controlled landing, and even if it does, the heroes will not survive just by some miracle, but even if they do, nobody will just jump off from the top of the wreck while there is a piece of metal piercing his liver. Even if he is Brad Pitt, because that's not magical enough for this. (They should've cast Chuck Norris for this role.)

This is where I stopped watching this trash, and I can't decide whether I should regret the time I wasted on it or be grateful that I torrented it and didn't pay a dime. Yes, I'd be probably very upset if I paid for this crap. What have I thought on the first place? Hollywood garbage. I only give it two points because it looks good, and it was filmed in Budapest. But it wasn't worth messing up Nagymező street for this failure of a flick.