3DD!3

Of course, the book is in a different league altogether, and if Game of Thrones had stuck to it would been better. I was honestly worried that we'd miss out on the awesome scenes of the floating army or the slicing of the ship, but no, they just ruined the characters we love from the books, and worse still they made them all buddies, so the theme of outcasts and weirdos went out the window. Not only are they multinational, babbling about morality and always consoling themselves, they're multiple characters in one. I can see why it's easier to go in that direction, but then they all behave illogically when they're projecting several different perspectives on the problem at hand. The acting is weak. Some are almost fine (Benedict Wong), but it's still not the same. There's a lot of missing from Beijing, China in general, and how the problem is solved. P.S: I was surprised that there are already important pieces from the second and third books, and I'm afraid it dilutes the story arcs. Hopefully the next season will be more faithful and that the future will be worth it.

Doug Liman made an 80's B movie for fun and they wouldn't even let him put it in theaters! A smiling Jake Gyllenhaal hurting bad people and obviously having an incredible time doing it. Conor McGregor is perfect as the evil, disagreeable asshole. The romance line works, the cast is likeable. Definitely could have used a little trimming, though, the middle drags a bit. The action is decent, the fights are oddly shot in places, but fine for me. The music is great and there are beautiful shots of the Florida Keys. I'll have to go there sometime.

This detached, austere, almost documentary reconstruction of the life of the diver/cashier/porn star Andrea Absolonova surprises with its quality. Natálie Císařovská doesn’t give a toss about the audience's expectations of porn cinema and rather observes, doesn't comment, doesn't judge. There is no great dramatization, not much is said, and the disapproval of the profession is shown only through sarcasm and disdain. Natalia Germani's performance is fantastic. I don't know if she hit her mark (I'm not familiar with her work), but she handles the rise and fall with aplomb. The audiovisual aspect is first class, too.

Dracarys. An enjoyable and mainly imaginative TV fairy tale about a dragon, which turns into a survival thriller where everything is saved by glow worms. Millie Bobby Brown plays the princess in distress brilliantly and manages to convince you that she's a damsel in distress under all that makeup. The visual effects are pretty average, but it is saved by the awesome atmospheric music, which adds that extra star.

Impressive scale, a strong story that goes brutally against all modern trends and a young cast in top form (Austin Butler is demonic). It looks gorgeous, the polished design (a black and white planet!) where they paid attention to every detail surpasses the benchmark first film in places, and Hans Zimmer has taken the score to an even higher level. I liked the first part of Dune a bit more, though. It was more meditative and fresh. Here we're playing it safe and the cinemas are bursting at the seams. SPOILERS: It's interesting that a film about a colonizer who infiltrates a terrorist organization of religious fanatics and declares Jihad (it's interesting that they avoid that label) on the entire world order to avenge the death of his father gets this kind of space. Prophetic? We shall see. Denis Villeneuve has been mum about the third installment so far, and he's doing well because the leap to Savior is huge. Much more personal and the scale is smaller. The ending is bleak.

I hope I don't start having nightmares about Hanus now! I'm going to be generous in my rating, because for a Czech film it's not bad, but for a foreign one it has more crap than that messed up space loo. Adam Sandler is not a skinny little man and the final journey to the cloud from the beginning of the universe looks cheap, to put it politely. That wouldn't matter if his relationship with Lenka was worth something and didn't consist of trite, almost austere dialogue exchanges straight out of an old movie. The design and interiors of the ship match this. The creators of Chernobyl do not put themselves to shame. The music is nice, Sandler is mesmerizing.

Great cast, focused direction, old-fashioned sci-fi feel. Unfortunately, it's a bit bland in the end. It doesn't make use of the interesting themes it presents. There’s no catharsis, nothing. Adam Driver is woefully underused, and so is Sam Shepard. The comparisons to E.T. are spot on, but it doesn’t win your heart. Jeff Nichols seems unsure of what he wants to say.

I laughed till my stomach was in knots. Right at the beginning, I realized I didn't remember a thing from the first part. Well, maybe Jason Statham was singing that happy song... So I was surprised to see something being mined in some kind of thermal fissure... a trench that's home to giant squid and bloodthirsty... iguanas? A good half of the film consists of goofing around under pressure (Statham just needs to breathe properly and he won't implode!) and bantering with Jacky Woo for the delight of the Chinese audience. Then the final romp on Fun Island is thoroughbred bloody fun. Statham harpooning a helicopter rotor blade takes on an almost Conan-like mythos. He announces something about dolphins, the credits, the song. Good for me.

The writing is two levels worse than Pizzolatto. The unsatisfying ending and the stilted linking with the first series are actually more distracting than enjoyable. The creepy atmosphere is solid as well, and the final reveal is quite original. Unfortunately a lot of the motifs are just for show and have no justification other than to create that creepy atmosphere. Too bad. An environmental point driven to awkwardness the moment the creators decide not to reveal what was the cool thing the guys actually found there. Jodie Foster plays an unlikeable wannabe badass, Kali Reis is pretty cool, but those face piercings probably didn’t feel too nice in the freezing cold. The family relationships and trauma were almost useless, and if Night Country had been a movie unrelated to True Detective, they would have done better. I think I'll put Matthew and Woody back on to fix my appetite.

Such nice people. Such a nice movie. I last played football in high school and I'm about as good a player as Michael Fassbender, but still, Taika Waititi's laid-back comedy worked wonders for me. The bizarre episodes of exploring American Samoa and the training montages are topped, unsurprisingly, by the first game. Cool Runnings but with football. But the best and strongest thing Next Goal Wins is not the comedy. At the half-time speech, the film switches gears for a moment and, thanks to Fassbender's strong performance, also hits you incredibly hard; it brings out the darkness and unexpected cruelty of the world. The only way to combat this is by enjoying life and trying to have fun, not by spinning in a spiral of self-destruction. I think that's what Waititi meant.