DaViD´82

A spin-off that could have taken a step aside and "grounded" the franchise from overblown CGI escapades that squander the undeniable testosterone potential, into less overblown macho action with a top-notch central duo that has a workable "dude bro" chemistry between them. It could have been a blockbuster in the style of Tango & Cash. The result, however, is a behemoth with cyborgs, Transformers bikes, programmable viruses, even more overblown scenes with a green screen behind Rock and Statham, Spectre/Hydra and an overblown running time. This is G.I. Joe III more than anything. And on top of that, the central duo, whom the filmmakers let squirm in one "I've got bigger balls than you" position for the entire film, they are (childishly) funny at first, but they squander it over the course of more than two hours. Still, it has a few solid moments, a few glimpses of guilty pleasure scenes and especially in the first half it moves along, before things get good for an hour in Russia and Samoa.

The essence of sterility. Beautiful yet pointless. I wonder what Favreau's role as director was. It couldn't have been more than sending out two mass emails: one to the actors "put on The Lion King and say the same thing", and the other to the thousands of hopefuls behind the rendering computers "put on The Lion King, forget the emotions in the faces and otherwise do the same thing using CGI and share the result with me in a few years". There is not a single ounce of invention, no interpretation, let alone an original idea. On the other hand, the glitz is so intoxicating and the original material and music so catchy that if you have to take your kids to see it, at least it won’t a complete waste of time.

A meta-narrative mockumentary that furiously combines good and bad ideas. The potential is undeniable, but it needed to be tightened up. This format is more suited to dry British humour, but it can be enjoyably bizarre in its better moments. It’s a shame that in the worse moments it is annoyingly stupid.

Nobody wanted Aja to make Jaws with a crocodile, but… This mess, which is neither serious and suspenseful enough to be, well, "serious", nor is it stupid and over-the-top enough to work at least as guilty pleasure (such moments are, unfortunately, very rare), is nothing more than a genre dullard seen hundreds of times without any charge, idea or adrenaline.

"Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid." One of those historical events that you think you know about, but you actually don't, even if you have read Alexijevic and watched Zero Hour. Much (if not everything) could be written and praised about Chernobyl: from the procedural focus to the horror styling, the cinematography, the actors' unforced, unintentionally ridiculous "as if Eastern" diction, to the impact on knowledge and emotion. The way the creators combine genres, with education, warnings, subtexts and tributes, is unparalleled in cinema or quality TV. The way… Well, I already mentioned that much could be written and praised, but there is no reason, because the result is an experience that gets under your skin and you just can't get it out of your head. It’s not 5/5, it’s 15,000/3.6.

What happens in Street Fighter, stays in Street Fighter. A stable partner relationship where passion is dulled by years of childhood, career, responsibilities, routine. As you can see, Black Mirror can handle a "definitely not a gay thing" entry with a suitable leisurely pace, as well as a no-holds-barred moral conflict full of ambiguous questions like whether it's infidelity, whether it's gay, or whether it's simply the equivalent of watching porn.

“My job ain’t to follow the law. My job is to interpret it, than enforce it accordingly.” If you follow up the open ending of a series with a film after more than a decade, you inevitably run into the situation of whether to make it stand alone and accessible to viewers unfamiliar with the original material, or whether to make it purely for the original audience and hope that some of them still remember at least the key lines and conflicts. The result is a hodgepodge that tries to be both. And so, the opening few dozen minutes are a display of undignified screenwriting attempting to mask the eye-popping exposition grafted onto the fact that each character "sort of subtly addresses the past ten years" in conversations with the others in a way that hurts quite a bit for a series that always relied on character and dialogue. It's basically the thirteenth and fourteenth episodes of the third season, but the creators don't want to admit it – apparently not even to themselves. Plus, if you are expecting the centerpiece to be the complicated relationship of Bullock, Swearengen, and Hearst "for the soul of Deadwood", well... Yes, but again only after first devoting time to all (yes, all, except perhaps Welliver) of the characters from the original series, often unnecessarily, unjustified and purely as fanservice. But once this passage is over (it lasts longer than it should; until the 40th minute) and it is no longer about "what was", but "what is and what will be", it becomes good old Deadwood, about the unadorned face of the inevitably disappearing Wild West. The big asset is that Bullock isn't quite as annoying as he used to be, Olyphant is unashamedly channeling his Raylan Givens. The second half is a worthy (though not memorable) conclusion, which can be forgiven for coming a few years later than it should have.

“A lot of money to watch that shower of shite! No effort, no class, no fucking idea!” The absolute antithesis of all feel good ventures and the unofficial sequel to the quarter century old Premier Passions charting the Black Cats season. A socio-sports downbeat probe into the soul of a traditional football club on the decline from glory, going hand in hand with the decline in living standards and security of a once prosperous working class town. I would guess that at the beginning of the project the creators dreamed of a fairytale ending with a return to the Premier League and hope for a city where the only joy is football. Instead, they hit a golden documentary vein (that would last for a couple of seasons) in the form of a club whose owner has become disenchanted, disillusioned (yet loyal) fans venting their complexes due to, among other things, high unemployment, ubiquitous apathy, wage earners fed up with their fate and wanting get out of that hell as soon as possible and… And everything goes from worse to worse. The contrast of the opening episode, full of hope and plans, with the way everything crumbles under their hands, when it's clear to everyone what it's heading towards and no one is able to do anything about it despite their best efforts, is fascinating on the level of when you pass the clean-up of a nasty car accident – you know you shouldn’t look, but you can’t help it. The look behind the scenes of a (dys)functional professional club is of course the main focus, and if you have a soft spot for football (especially the traditional one from the Isles), this is a must. Of course, even if you don't care about sport, and "only" want to know why working class towns like this in Britain voted for Brexit (not directly addressed, but it answers the question better than anything else), there is no better choice. In any case, after watching it, I'd wager that the number of players worldwide who choose Sunderland AFC in Football Manager has increased – there is no greater football challenge in Europe at the moment. In the second series, the players' booth, the players themselves, the coaches, the preparation for the games, and to a large extent the games themselves are kicked to the back burner. It's entirely centred on one thing, the new owners, who themselves step by step are turning what was originally purely an investment from a sensible consideration into a passion, which isn't necessarily to the benefit of the cause. Of course they bring vision, enough finance to avoid bankruptcy, but not enough "to also make financial sense" and inconsistent crisis management (one practicing it, the other undermining it with passion) in an organization where nothing, but like nothing really works: the finances, the disillusioned fans, the facilities, the rickety player's cabin, the lack of confidence in the club, the jaded and annoying staff, all that is too much for a team with such a name and in such a situation, and the fact that they have to play nearly seventy games in their situation is, well, just nothing. This makes it more focused and even better than the previous series, especially thanks to the Donald-Methven duo. The only thing missing is a reflection on the feelings (and possible sale) of those last two or three players who don't belong in Sunderland and third division with their ability, name and price. | S1: 5/5 | S2: 5/5 |

Ten scenes of settled married life "after many years" that would fit a theatrical bill, but it doesn’t quite work in the form of a series. Also even though there's a line or moment in every episode that's dead on and you'll recognize yourself in it, instead of silence or annoyance, it seamlessly transitions into more theatrical nonstop chatter from the characters. Of course, it is watchable, both performers fit their roles, Hornby conjures up a line here and there that will make you laugh bitter-sweetly, but it still should have been on the theatre as a whole show and not a series with the runtime of a Saturday morning cartoon.

Anticlimax². The more lavish in design, production, scale and epicness unprecedented on the screen, the more moronic and tastelessly flinging and smearing the legacy of the opening four series, not to mention the source material. Martin must be spinning in his grave… no, bed. There is no denying that the final series has many moments, scenes and passages that are perfectly filmed and breathtaking. It's a shame that logic is not so much absent throughout it as it is committing ritual harakiri every second of the running time. If the eighth series were the culmination of the forgettable consumerist bland dark fantasy that library shelves are full of, it would be hard to have even one single complaint and I would be jubilant. But by being the climax of a series built on characters, sharp dialogue, twists and turns, uncompromising political pragmatism, the unspoken between the lines… It’s not worth talking about. There's not a single decent dialogue, everything is said at the top of its voice, deus ex macina is followed by deus ex machina, there’s no justified twist, no surprising moment, no logical progression, it's pure fanservice (ironically, not giving a crap about fans) of the coarsest grain, just nothing you wouldn't find in any generic "Chosen Child versus Big Very Bad Evil and the love of it" fantasy saga for teenagers. While the previous series still passed off as guilty pleasure, this time around there is a phenomenal display that is worth seeing as long as you can get past the fact that you want to smash your head on the coffee table.