DaViD´82

Krieg ist Krieg und Schnaps ist Schnaps. I have a soft spot for resistance pictures. Especially for those that aren’t afraid of going straight to the core, but avoid the problem of the black-and-whiteness of the characters on both sides of the barricades. So I was worried about Black Book for a long time. Needlessly. In fact, now I’m annoyed that I ignored it when it was showing at the movie theatre. This may not be quite as good as the zenith of this sub-genre, but nor is it overshadowed by it. Not even in the scene that looks it’s come straight out of Melville’s masterpiece. It’s true that this is easier to “like", not very realistic, but suspenseful like during extra time at the Superbowl. Faultless acting, plus a bold, “provocative Verhoeven-style" screenplay which takes off and begins to get interesting precisely at the moment when similar pictures put their tail between their legs and end. Verhoeven traditionally doesn’t shy from illustrating anything, but this time it doesn’t seem at all gratuitous. And that’s something I haven’t noticed in his movies for a long time.

I’m shocked. Where is that Dreamworks’ beating of a dead hose? You can see it’s “just” a bonus feature, and that it’s aimed at a younger audience, but it has plenty of style and entertainment. And even the schoolboy lessons are actually nice and bearable in this rendition.

This Strange Passion is like our premier, Paroubek. He also has the sexiest brain ever that knows that without believable characters, a picture like this just can’t work. It’s a sort of In a Lonely Place with more (much more) straightforward screenplay when the entire story is obvious in the first five minutes of footage, which is a great shame. At least it was partly made up for by the marvelous acting performances and exquisite camera that becomes all the more apparent because it shows “just" a regular intimate interior picture.

Like good old Futurama! But just for the first two to three minutes. After that, not very good, but still sufficiently funny, with a lot of puns. But the “scoundrels" part sends this movie straight to the grave next to Tolkien, which means that not just he, but also Futurama itself, will turn in their graves. Instead of the usual intelligent situation humor, here they play at “parodies" of disaster movies. A short, lame and old gag stretched out to fill a third of the movie. So you must excuse me, but I just don’t intend to laugh at anything like that.

I wouldn't be angry at all if it was a bit shorter, but the spark between Shirley and Clint is so strong that it's surprisingly enough for a good experience in itself. And that is even without a proper plot. And with a traditionally brilliant Morricone.

Current as anything; unclichéd, miles away from the regular movie perspective on terrorism. Nothing here is black or white. Maybe only the actors. This is a mix of the concepts of Sleeper Cell and The Believer. It’s low-key, worrying, rich in opinion, needlessly unsimplistic, down-to-earth and convincing, unfolds at a really relaxed tempo and due to that in places it’s almost un-movie-like. In spite (or perhaps because) of that my enthusiasm for it knew no bounds. At least in the first half, then after all it falls into the “one man against everybody else" genre rut. But it’s still excellent right up until the closing ten minutes. All of the above applies too, but in a completely opposite stance. I would have welcomed this with open arms in a Hollywood blockbuster, but in this case I feel like sending the person responsible to a work camp in Yemen. For life.

The only problem about this otherwise splendid action movie is that it just isn’t a Bond movie; not one bit. Which might piss double-o-seven fans off a little, but in view of the fact that I not a particular aficionado of the character, nothing stopped me from having a great time. For the first time since From Russia with Love. What Marc Forster gets away with in this commercial blockbuster is not only endearing, but often admirable. The action scenes are ingenious and fantastically edited together. And what’s the best thing about the twenty-second Bond movie? Well, I maybe repeating myself, but the simple fact that this isn’t a Bond movie, but “just" a gripping, honest-to-god action thriller, at last with an interesting, non-two-dimensional hero with a face like a pissed gorilla in a suit.

My favorite Allen movie of all. Three times cleverer than Einstein after reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, five times more efficient than the most productive Communist worker exceeding his quotas, ten times funnier than any number of the most humorous embarrassing moments in your life and a hundred times more thought through than the most dastardly of Baldrick’s plans. It’s just my darling.

It isn’t the best or funniest Woody, but it’s Allen just how I like him: thoughtful, truthful, apt and with just the right amount of wit and endearingly skeptical cynicism (as strange as that sounds). The fairy tale about the Statue of Liberty and women should be carved in stone.

A boring, calculated movie that turns an amazingly powerful life story about a stubborn journalist into a “Hollywood-style" pleasant biographical movie where everything is white (everything around Veronica), black (the Irish underworld and villains) or simply blackmailing on gut level (kids playing amongst syringes, oh, isn’t that awful, vicar). In terms of workmanship solid, but what good is that if the only real asset is, unsurprisingly, the Cate Blanchett and Ciarán Hinds duo. And they give more like their regular acting performances, rather than excelling especially. I would like to see the same story, preferably with the same cast, in an HBO production.