CherryBlossomBoy Reviews

Dune (2021)

Pretentious bore

[6/10 · 30 July 2022]

I've tried to read Frank Herbert's "Dune" and made it to the page ten. After that I got bored by the uninspired writing and dismayed by the conceit of it. I didn't throw the book away, though. It's stored in my smartphone, so it would've been a waste of a good smartphone. So, I'm keeping it for a possible future attempt at finishing it. But it most likely won't happen.

In any case, kudos to David Lynch for making it work on screen. People complain that he didn't follow the source material very closely, but his film made for a captivating and enthralling watch. I must have watched it a dozen times. People also complained that it's very campy, but... why does the camp always have to be a bad thing?

Denis Villeneuve's version much more closely follows the source material. Apparently he's a fan of the novel and he wanted to do it justice on the big screen. And he's spot on. His take is solemn and serious - and nearly as uninspired and conceited as the novel itself. Those who complained before are probably satisfied now, and I can see by the ratings that it is the case. But I'm not one of those people.

I did watch the film through, though, but I sure did wish it ended already, several times over the course of it. Admittedly, the visuals are stunning. Most of them, anyway. That's what Villeneuve always brings to the table and that's what makes the film watchable and that's what's created all the buzz in the trailers.

What Villeneuve never brings to the table are the sense of pace and the work with actors. He's got no time for that. He spends all of his time trying to make his set-pieces look as cool as possible. After he's milked them for all the awe they're worth, just before we completely lose attention, he moves on to the next one and so on and so forth. In the end all his films are like that: a string of overly long set-pieces without much in the way of coherence and motion. Some films and stories benefit from this kind of treatment, but "Dune" needs motion and exploration. There's none of that here.

The cast is completely lost in all of that and the director didn't help them along. The only one that seems fit and prepared for his role is Timothee Chalamet, but his job is easy: just do a Kyle MacLachlan all over again, but act more fragile and sensitive. Of the others, Zendaya just plays Zendaya and Jason Momoa just plays Jason Momoa because nobody told them to try anything else. Rebecca Ferguson is just crying and acting distressed in every scene. Oscar Isaac is gratuitously naked in one of his scenes and that's the high point of his performance. Stellan Skarsgaard gives a surprisingly bland and insipid villain. Perhaps it's got something to do with the generic villain look he sports throughout, as well.

For conclusion, I don't see anything in this rendition that justifies stretching the story over two parts. Not in an artistical sense. The novel itself is a single volume, so what gives? There are more novels in the "Dune" series, but that's another story. Here, it's all about milking the fans for more money over this first novel. Villeneuve is only here for his ability to make that unnecessary stretching look meaningful. No doubt, if the "part two" is a success, they'll film the rest of Herbert's opus in multi-part money-milking formats.

Won't be my money, though. I've seen all I needed to see in this "Part One".

Flipping Bangers (2017– )

Quite enjoyable if you don't think hard about it

[8/10 · 29 July 2022]

This show is best described as a continuation of the "Wheeler Dealers" series, but with two different guys hosting it, instead of Mike Brewster and Edd China. The concept is, at the core of it, the same: every episode the hosts of the show buy a decrepit old vehicle ("banger"), restore it, breathe a new life into it and sell it on for a bit of profit.

Just as in the "Wheeler Dealers", we get to see the entire process, all the way from the purchase, which is always spiced up with a bit of haggle; over the restoration, where there's a lot of informative DIY stuff to learn, albeit at the most superficial level because the 30 minute format doesn't allow for much more; to the selling of the restored and improved vehicle off to a keen buyer, again with a bit of haggle.

There are natural differences to the "Wheeler Dealers". The hosts in this one, Will Trickett and Gus Gregory, both do all the phases together, because they act as partners. Both are equally adept at the economical and the mechanical aspect of the job. Unlike Mike Brewster, none of them comes across as sleazy or bullish, when it comes to purchasing and selling, which is a good thing, nor is either of them an eccentric know-it-all car mechanic genius, like Edd China, which is any way you take it. They pose as common, down-to-earth blokes that just love the job they do, nothing more, nothing less. They are also quite likable, particularly Will with his wild mutton chops, and that is enough to make for an enjoying half an hour of watch per episode.

Then there are contrivances by the show makers, aimed at really setting "Flipping Bangers" apart from "Wheeler Dealers", which are really unneccessary to my mind, because, when I start thinking about them, they take away from the show, instead of adding to it.

The first one is that Will and Gus try to pose as good friends, which is ridiculous. Everyone can see that there is no real chemistry between the two and any type of banter between them, such as Gus picking on Will for humourous effect, just feels staged and forced, and falls flat. The second device is all that business with making tea and having tea all the time, but with no follow up. I'm aware that it's England and all, but does the tea have to be mentioned every five minutes, without us ever even seeing the blokes actually sipping it, enjoying it or discussing the taste?

The third device is their so-called "business model" for which they had "quit their day jobs", and making it seem real-life. Apparently, they buy one "banger" per week, allocate one day of their time to procure it, four days to restore it and one day to sell it on. They invest their own cash into the car and into all the neccessary reparations, and they have no time to do anything else because the car consumes all their time. They cash-in between 500 and 1000 pounds of "profit" after every sale, then they move on, buying the next car with the money they've earned previously.

It's really ridiculous when you think about it. The sales make in total between 2000 and 4000 pounds monthly to split between the two. I doubt you can live in England on 2000 pounds a month. And that's without counting in the running costs: the rent for the garage, the electricity, the tools that break and need to be replaced, the storage of cars they don't sell off right away? Not to mention taxes. These things all eat away the "profits", don't they? On top of that, it so happens that they manage to buy a completely different brand of car every single episode. Who in real life does that? In real life people concentrate on only a couple of brands, preferrably ones they can "flip" quickly, and they do the same chosen brands over and over again. That's how you make your job better, faster and more viable. It's a fantasy to think you can quickly move from a Beetle to an Alfa, then to a Lada, then to God-knows-what in a matter of days, especially when it comes to vintage models, which they all are in this series.

There's no reality in any of these contrivances and the only reality is that the show makers create them to keep the audience engaged somehow. It does nothing for me, other than making me deduct two stars from what would've been a ten-star rating. To me it would have been enough if they just kept it educational. Education is what I expect when I turn on a documentary channel. Entertainment is secondary. And I certainly don't care for those Yank-type "reality TV" tropes.

Hulk (2003)

Hulk speaks to all of us

[10/10 · 9 May 2022]

Even as a kid just reading comic books, I found Hulk the most captivating superhero of all of them. Because even kids can relate with someone who's got so much pent up anger stored inside him that the slightest trigger can result in an epic mayhem around him. It's in fact the childhood when we know this firsthand, because we're still allowed to release some of that anger with relative impunity. But, as we age, we become more and more like Bruce Banner, who starts out putting up with frustration and trauma of his existence with a stiff upper lip. Then, after a freak accident in his laboratory, his inner self, through Hulk, becomes his outer self. And he answers our adult question for us: what if I just go berserk on everyone one day? Because Hulk does and does it in really awe inspiring manner. As a monstruously strong green creature of uncontrollable rage, he smashes everything in his path to pieces as long as this state of his lasts. All the while, and I'm talking about the comic books, he remains very introspective and precocious about what he has become, and guilt and shame quickly take the place of rage and destruction. Then something triggers him again and the cycle repeats on and on.

"Hulk" from 2003 is about the fairest and deepest portrayal of the character of Hulk to date. It follows the source material not only in content but also in form. The director Ang Lee has really put some effort in innovation and gave us the film that not only covers the inner Hulk as well as the "smash" Hulk that most want to see, but also looks like a comic book itself. And that makes for a refreshing and artful visual experience. The cast must have recognized the value in the script and they didn't just go ahead and phone their perfomances in.

It's a captivating and memorable experience and it's too bad the owners of the rights to Hulk chose to go different avenues after this. As of late Hulk has been relegated to an ineffective and cliched sidekick in a bigger story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the character really deserved better. "Hulk" from 2003 was better.

War Thunder (2013 Video Game)

Choking itself on ambition and greed

[3/10 · 11 January 2022]

Before I dig deeper into all the goods and the bads of this game, let me first warn the newcomers that this game is falsely advertised: the modern jets, choppers, tanks and ships that you see in the trailers - you don't get to play them right away. No, no. There are no entry points for the modern vehicles in the "tech tree". You need to start with the Spanish Civil War era biplanes and armored vehicles that only barely resemble tanks, and then work your way up from there. It will take you 2 to 3 months of dedicated gaming, if you're any good, to get to your first jet. The only way to get an advanced vehicle before time is to pay 30 to 60 dollars for one of the "premium vehicles", but then it ceases to be a free-to-play thing, which was also a part of the advertisement. So, one way or another, they're lying to you .

If you're a history or a warfare enthusiast, this game will be a lackluster experience or even annoy the hell out of you. I should know. The vehicles and the locations are utilized in an ahistorical fashion. Let's just call it alternative history or even steampunk. Tightly intertwined with what you'd normally expect, there are all kinds of bizarre scenarios: jets against props; boats against destroyers; Brits and Germans against Yanks and Japs; Russian planes against Italian planes over Midway; Swedish tanks against Israeli tanks in Vietnam... stuff like that. The military tactics is rudimentary: it's basically just point and shoot. There are sometimes points to be captured on the map, but they serve no meaningful purpose in a strategical way. They're just randomly placed there and are not even critical for winning the round. The teams are not assembled uniformly, because the matchmaker allows any faction and any vehicle, as long as it meets the required "battle rating" level.

Now a bit about the "good" in the game. The game is not "pay to win". I've held a paid subscription for a time and noticed no advantage over other players because of that. All you get is slightly larger rewards after the match and a slightly faster advancement through the "tech tree". The physics model is really, really good. Whether you're operating aircraft, ground vehicles or vessels, the feeling will be organic and natural. You won't even need specialised equipment to get a good experience: a simple mouse and keyboard will do just nicely. The vehicles are plentiful and are modeled in great detail. Really nice to look at. The overall shading is also very lovely - the lighting, the sky, the sea, the clouds and the special effects are very cinematic and exciting. The maps are huge and detailed. However, they are generally not pretty at all. And here's where the bad starts.

The vast majority of maps are well behind what's nowadays considered the standard quality for texturing and populating the scenery. There is an overwhelmingly pedestrian feel about most of them and some are just an eyesore, with jarring contrasts or unnatural shades of brown, gray and orange, and with dull multiplications of the same tree and the same house across the range. What becomes especially apparent in the ground mode are the numerous glitches in the scenery, such as flickering walls, disappearing and reappearing foliage and vehicles, buildings submerged below the water level (and I'm not even talking about the "Drowned City" map which is a special case of ugly) and so on. I've never played another game that's unpolished like that. For this game to still be unpolished, after 8 years of existence and constant updates, is a crime. The World of Tanks and The World of Warships are running circles around War Thunder in that regard.

The gameplay is also unpolished and unbalanced, to the point where one wonders whether the developers understand their own game anymore. New vehicles keep getting churned out all the time, without being tested and tweaked properly, which makes the matches increasingly uneven and leaves many players frustrated. To make matters worse, there are many cheaters and exploiters that ruin the game for everyone. They're most obvious in the tank mode, shooting you through acres of bushes across the whole map with ungodly precision. The developers don't like to admit the cheating issue, they sometimes even supress the talks of it in the official forums. But they're also banning hundreds of accounts over cheating on a monthly basis. So there is clearly a lot of that going on. If you try to lash out at a cheater during the game via the game chat and tell him what you think of his "skill", you're the one risking a ban. Because, despite violence being the theme of the game, crude language is not well tolerated, not even in the interface itself, as a matter of fact. As an example, the game doesn't inform you that your pilot is killed, he's "knocked unconscious". You know, by a projectile. So, there's that, but the sanitization goes beyond the language. There's no blood and gore, either, and all the Swastikas from all the WWII German vehicles are replaced with the Iron Crosses. You can purchase a decal that says "For Stalin", though. Make of that what you will, to me it's yet another proof of how political correctness is always drenched in hypocrisy.

The "tech tree" and the infamous "grind" are another huge problem in the game. There's a lot of vehicles, but it takes a lot of time to get them: hours for the early vehicles and even weeks for the more modern era jets and tanks. Within every vehicle there's yet another "tech tree". That's right. You have to "research", or "grind", the same parts all over again for every new vehicle to be able to upgrade it to a full battle order. Until you do, you will participate in the matches with the rump version of the vehicle and get killed a lot. That's probably the most ridiculous aspect of War Thunder. Of course, if you pay the money you can speed up the process, but it would cost you up to 40 dollars per single vehicle, and there's hundreds of them, so good luck with that. In addition, there are dozens of other things you can buy in the in-game "market", such as various camouflages, colour schemes, props and decals, or so-called "rare vehicles" that are subjected to artificial scarcity, which can drive the price easily up to 300 dollars, in some cases 1000 dollars, per unit. There's only one letter of difference between "micropayment" and "macropayment"... but a whole lot of money. I can't think of any reason why anyone would waste potentially thousands of dollars on a single game, but apparently some players do. Then again, there are people wasting millions on the NFTs these days. Here you at least get "something" for your buck, if that's any consolation. To me it's a scam, but that's ultimately for the Hungarian authorities to decide. The game developer is based there. They used to be located in Russia, but they chose to betray and abandon the Motherland for the Western funny-money.

To conclude, I'll explain the title of my review. War Thunder started its life as a WW2 era combat flight simulator. Over time it expanded into the modern aviation era. But it also expanded into nations, or factions, that were not a meaningful part of the WW2 conflict. It also expanded into other modes of warfare - ground and naval. It's made free to play to attract the broadest swath of players possible. All that ambition has taken the toll on the gameplay and overall experience. The game is buggy, the players are frustrated, and the grind and the shady in-game payment schemes make the developers look arrogant, greedy and stupid. Which they probably are. Needless to say the atmosphere in the War Thunder community is rather dour and pessimistic because all of that, and there's a feeling that the game could have been so much better if it wasn't stifled by all these issues. But it is still addictive even the way it is. You get addicted on the physics engine and on the false sense of achievement provided by a successful "grind". If you are prepared to lose countless hours, even years on this, go ahead. You'll certainly regret it. You'll, unfortunately, also love it.

It's really like a bad marriage. This review is my personal filing for divorce.

Aussie Gold Hunters (2016– )

Australia, what happened?

[2/10 · 9 October 2021]

I grew up with an idea of Australia as an unwelcoming and dangerous but eternally sunny place, inhabited by people that always see the funny side of life. Undoubtedly, the cultural exports such as "Land Down Under" by Men At Work, the "Crocodile Dundee" franchise, Stewe Irwine and the sharks at Bondi beach contributed greatly to that idea. I never once thought it could be a depressing place. And it obviously is. The current events unfolding around the pandemic and the tyrannical course the Australian government took towards the citizens brought this new notion about with vengeance. But hints were there earlier, in the shape of two reality shows. One of them is the "Aussie Salvage Squad". Another one being this one. They seem like they've been made by the same production.

It starts out promisingly. The series follows several real life teams from all over the continent, at places where there's a chance to find golden nuggets in endless dirt. The teams range from amateurs, with nothing but a license and a couple of metal detectors, to organised professional crews equipped with seriously heavy gold-digging machinery. The first two episodes, whichever you pick to watch first, are fine. The scenery is gorgeous, the people are working hard, there are some shiny, sparkling results on the measuring scale...

...then it all goes down the drain. You realise they never find anything substantially big. There are infightings, there are problems with poachers, the machinery breaks down constantly, there are flies, there are runnings out of supplies, the weather changes abruptly and obstructs the works. You realise that none of the characters are very likeable, so their plight is not very relatable. To boot, they're constantly moaning and whining about every little thing. Some of that is probably scripted, to make for some suspense, but most of that is probably real. I mean, what could they do when they don't find anything but whine? Several of the characters have obvious drinking problems, even though they don't drink on camera. It's an unpleasant sight. One of them is gravely ill, yet he is there, toiling, "sacrificing" for his son-in-law who is also a partner. The said son-in-law soon becomes just a partner, because his marriage falls apart due to never being home and putting bread on the table. Another one keeps being quite rude to his wife, on-camera, and she just keeps putting up with it with a desperate smile. Long story short, you soon find out a lot of unwanted info about the characters and very little about finding and excavating actual gold. You find out that they're more miserable than yourself.

I was wondering why the substantially succesful crews aren't being covered, surely they exist around, but then I realised that if you're successful in the gold mining industry you wouldn't want cameras around you. You'd prefer anonimity.

I guess you could be doing one of the most interesting and rewarding jobs out there, surrounded by beautiful scenery and still be miserable. It's all natural, we're all humans. Even the Aussies. But I don't have to watch that. I'll check up on the new season, though, to see if the attitude has changed some. Because it's better to be there in the outback and finding nothing, than to be at home in Sidney and finding yourself locked up by fascists.

Aussie Salvage Squad (2018– )

Wears out its charm really quickly

[3/10 · 23 August 2021]

One in the sea of line-of-work documentaries dressed up as reality shows. Salvaging wreckages sunk below sea or stranded on beaches is an interesting and worthy profession, to be sure, but I doubt one could milk more than an hour or two worth of watch out of it. Surely, every wreckage is a story of its own but once you get the gist of it there's no need to stick around as a spectator. Therefore the show banks on the likeability of the characters and interesting directing to stretch it over a season or more.

So are the characters likeable? Not really. And I'm not even sure if they're a genuine salvage crew or just actors. If they're just actors, all the worse for them. The main guy, who's also the boss, growls and speaks in thick accent so he's barely intelligible, which would be charming if there wasn't for his dour personality. There are two males in his crew: one is completely unnoticeable, while the other is supposed to be off kilter and funny, but only comes across as an irritating cliche. There are also two females: more an eye candy than useful in terms of salvaging. Their skimpy outfits are there to compensate for the fact that they're not given a lot of meaningful tasks. In terms of the profession, they could've done without the girls, but in terms of the show, they girls are salvaging it.

The director, editor and screenplayer try all kinds of trickery to present the job as dangerous, what with sudden zooms, cuts and contrivances. The characters narrate it in such a manner that you'd think terrible things happen to them all the time, but the camera just doesn't corroborate it. It probably is dangerous sometimes, but they can't really hide the obvious routine and mundanity behind all the occasional malfunctions of equipment and bouts of bad weather. There is an attempt to amp up the fun part of the job as well, but it boils down to watching the crew throw an occasional afterhour party or try pulling pranks on each other. Nothing that sets this particular profession apart from any other.

It would really be much better if it was presented straightforwardly, without all the makeup, the way documentaries used to be like. But nowadays everything has to be "exciting" and "intense" and "funny" and "MTV" and whatnot. I guess it's working for some since the series has entered it's third season already. But for this viewer it's just an uninformative waste of time - and a depressing watch, despite the gorgeous setting.

Dnevnik velikog Perice (2021–2024)

A cynical and sacrilegious tainting of the original

[1/10 · 7 May 2021]

"Dnevnik velikog Perice" (2021) is a TV series created and touted as a supposed successor to the 1970s film "Tko pjeva, zlo ne misli".

"Tko pjeva, zlo ne misli" (1970), directed by the late great Kreso Golik, was a film adaptation of the play "Dnevnik malog Perice", an escapist burlesque of the middle-class Zagreb of the pre-WWII period. It was a piece of comedy magic, something very rarely achieved in Croatian cinema. It was a huge commercial success at the time it was made, it has been fondly remembered by all generations ever since, and is indeed a part of the cultural heritage, no less, as the characters and the dialogue are cemented in the folklore. There is a broad consensus that it's the best Croatian comedy of all time.

A pretty high bar to match, as is the case with every classic. But someone was shameless and stupid enough to try. This 2021 TV-series takes up the name (albeit of the play version) in a clear attempt to leech off some of the appeal of the original, and puts the timeframe a few decades ahead, in the 1960s Zagreb, when the youngest character, Perica, who is now promoted to the central character, has become an adult man and the communists have taken over the society. The director of the series, Vinko Bresan, stated that the series is taking inspiration from - rather than trying to be a direct sequel to - the old classic. I can see why he'd say that, now that I've finished watching it: "Dnevnik velikog Perice" is a brazenly boring and insipid mess, done by talentless hacks across the board. It really has got very little in common with its predecessor.

It's definitely a sequel, though, since it utilizes two characters (Perica and his mother), one prop (a wedding photograph) and one member of the original cast (the aging Mirjana Bohanec in the role of the mother) from the original. Also, it makes use of the fact that nearly all the original cast members are no longer with us, so the story starts after their respective characters would have died in the timeline.

As for the inspiration from the original film, there is none to be seen. None, whatsoever. The series is, in fact, a pure antithesis to the film. "Tko pjeva, zlo ne misli" was a quirky, witty, high-tempo slapstick, full of life and energy. "Dnevnik velikog Perice" is a tired queue of long and empty set-pieces that go on forever and get nowhere. "Tko pjeva, zlo ne misli" had characters so colourful and so well developed by the screenwriters and the cast, that they were driving the plot forward on their own. "Dnevnik velikog Perice" has got more characters, but they are so bland that they had to be given backgrounds, vocations and plot points, yet all that extra load still couldn't make for an interesting story. The cast is at a loss on what they are supposed to do with their roles, so each one of them tries their own shtick, but they don't gel. "Tko pjeva, zlo ne misli" was virtually free of politics of any kind. It was simply a timeless study of characters, which is why it's loved to this day. "Dnevnik velikog Perice" has obvious political undertones and overtones and that makes it wholly predictable, bogs it down and alienates a big chunk of the audience who could just use some escapist fun in times when everything is saturated with politics. "Tko pjeva, zlo ne misli" was a nostalgic throwback to the good old days, and one could just feel the spirit of old Zagreb watching it. "Dnevnik velikog Perice" is a convoluted throwback to the times it obviously doesn't care about. The sets are anachronistic and lifeless, there is very few visual or aural cues that would give away the 1960s period, and the kitschy cinematography didn't help at all. It could've been any given period, really, it just so happens that the 60s were the most convenient, so they went with that.

So what was really the inspiration behind this? In a nutshell, the state funds and the lack of original ideas. That's it, really. Vinko Bresan is one of the "chosen ones" when it comes to the access to the government subsidies for filmmaking. It's not completely without merit, though. He did once make the *second* best Croatian comedy of all time ("Kako je poceo rat na mom otoku", 1996). The brilliant screenplay by his father Ivo, a great playwright of his generation, helped a lot. But then he treated us, from then on, to exhausting attempts to further exploit what he successfully tapped into in that first film of his - the counterpoint between rural and urban Croatia and the accompanying politics. Here, in a change of direction, he tries to tackle a purely urban milieu, something he, coming from a semi-rural background himself, has got zero sensibility for. I think he knows it and this is just a grift for him. A way to pocket some undeserved money. Nothing more.

Even if he approached it sincerely, which I doubt, this TV series finds him way out of his depth as an author and woefully inadequate as a director. Having an attitude and a huge ego just don't cut it. As a result, "Dnevnik velikog Perice" comes across two ways: at best, it's a smug high-concept of "what if a timeless masterpiece - that needs no sequel - got a sequel?" (the co-writer Albino Ursic, a man of a questionable sensibility himself, pretty much admitted to that in an interview); at worst, it's an ugly piece of graffitti on a classical building and one just wishes to take a big hose and blast it off the wall, and put the sacrilegious perpetrators behind bars. Unfortunately, in this case, the perpetrators will probably just end up getting more funds from the sychophantic administration to commit more vandalisms like this. And they will be considered successful, as long as the ride lasts.

But time knows that creating for the Ministry of Culture and creating actual culture are not the same thing.

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016)

Gripping

[10/10 · 29 January 2019]

Michael Bay can direct a bloody great film when he wants to. "13 Hours" is that film and it's unlike anything I've had a chance to see from him before. Leaning on the structure of "Attack on Precinct 13" (1976) and restricting himself from his trade-mark bombastical style, he's built a gripping account of the attack on the US embassy and the CIA outpost in Benghazi on September 11th, 2012. Why the things went down the way they did is a bit of a mistery to this day and it was even more so at the time. The reasons were lost on the CIA military detachment - all they knew for sure was that they couldn't trust anyone in the country that hosted them and were pretty much on their own to the very end. The idea to tell the story as a horror was therefore on the money. The assailants were shown coming in wave after wave, in a reckless disregard for their own lives. By all accounts that's how it actually happened. They were not portrayed as a faceless horde, though. We're not given their motivation but we are shown their human side, and reminded how loss of life is terrible, no matter what side you're on. This doesn't go to say that the film doesn't take a stand. It does. But it's not one of rampant patriotism, like one could've seen in Bay's own "Pearl Harbor" or Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down". It didn't try to portray the defeat as a victory. It didn't show the USA as a righteous peacekeeper. It's shown the American survivors counting their blessings for coming out alive and questioning what they've actually accomplished and what difference did they make at all. The role of the unseen decision makers at the top of the command structure was implicitly criticised as well. The question mark is even visualised with the very last shot in the film showing the Star Spangled Banner partially charred, riddled with bullet holes and submerged into the pool at the embassy. So it is a political film after all, but a quietly reserved one, concentrated on the realism and clarity of action, as well as on the human experience in the midst of all of it. It's one of a kind for Michael Bay, but also one of a kind for this decade in the passing. Almost ironic that people had to die for Hollywood to come up with something memorable.

Robin Hood (2018)

Age of Marvel and Social Justice

[1/10 · 4 December 2018]

The conversation between the producers for this film: "I wanna do a Robin Hood piece." "Yet another Robin Hood?" "Sure! Arthur just went out last year, we cannot sit on Hood for too long." "But Arthur did poorly, didn't it?" "Yes, yes it did, but only because it didn't have enough Marvel in it." "Ah, yes, Marvel." "If it looks like Marvel, it's a seller. And we cannot have anyone like that bloke Ritchie directing. Ritchie had too much of a mind of his own." "We cannot have anyone like that." "Yeah, it has to be an unknown so we can tell him what to do." "What kind of Marvel did you have in mind?" "Well... our hero cannot have superpowers, obviously, no magic stuff either, but remember that lad with a bow and arrow in the Avengers?" "Hawkeye?" "Exactly! I want our Robin Hood to be a Hawkeye, okay? Doing trickshots and stuff, zig-zag, wham, blam - it's perfect! The audience will love that!" "Oh, and let him hop around like the Assassins Creed." "Yes, great! We can have some cool shots of that." "Great! Who's the villain?" "Oh, we have to have Mendelsohn, baby." "But he's in every film these days!" "Yes, that's why he just has to be in ours. And the black guy, we have to have the black guy, Elba or Foxx or..." "A black guy in medieval Britain?" "Yes, yes, like Morgan Freeman, you know? A Saracen, Arab, I don't know..." "But the Arabs are not black." "I don't care, just as long as it's not a white bloke. Anyway, he could even become a member of the Merry Band. You know, equal opportunity and all that." "You know, I actually like that. But let's make him a mentor to Robin so he's not just a sidekick." "Spot on, mate! Like Hopkins was to Banderas in Zorro." "Gosh, that's so old..." "Oh, and don't forget we have to be contemporary!" "What do you mean?" "You know, activism, social justice. Robin Hood is great for that tosh." "Yes, yes, and also America, we have to have a dig at the corporate America!" "Hmmm... here's the idea: let's make the Crusaders look like the US Army in Iraq and let's have the Sheriff run a rotten banking scheme and let's have the masses rebel in London like the Occupy Wall Street!" "Nottingham, better." "Of course, of course, Nottingham! And Robin will spearhead it." "You mean, 'arrowhead' it, ha ha!" "Brilliant! Anyway, we'll have a best-seller on our hands!" "And open it up for sequels and we're the bee's knees!" "Take that, Hollywood!"

Forged in Fire (2015– )

Forged in mire

[3/10 · 21 July 2017]

"Forged in Fire" is a show that features real blacksmiths and a really contrived competition between them. Obviously, you can make a reality show type competition out of anything and blacksmithing is no exception. The only interesting part is the actual craft, the whole process that goes into the making of iron artifacts, but it's not shown in enough depth. As usual the producers are more interested in the backstories of the contestants as well as the scripted banter and lame wisecracks between them.

At times the jury seems to be taking the mickey out of the poor, and obviously skilled, competitors. I don't know or care who or what the members are, but their input doesn't give them away as overly qualified. It seems just anybody could've sat there at the jury desk and talk rubbish. The host is Wil Willis, the man with the perfect hair and overly pronounced mouth. And I don't know which of the two is more irritating. I remember him from another show where he got the chance to show off with all kinds of weaponry. Here he serves mostly as a houseplant.

The most important thing about this show is that it's yet another in the myriad of shows aired on History Channel that has virtually nothing to do with history. Yes, they get tasked to make historical cold weaponry, such as swords and knives. Mostly swords and knives, in fact. But the time to complete them is way too short and the means allocated are a joke (parts of cables and ball bearings) so, naturally, the artifacts will be just makeshift instead of made properly. Anyone hoping to see, say, a Viking sword made in the way they have been made historically will be sorely disappointed. The end result will usually be lame, such as swords bending at the first impact and stuff like that. Maybe the point is to make the candidates look stupid, I don't know.

But I do know that "stupid" is what the network should rename itself to altogether, because it sits pretty with the quality of the programming. And it has a nice ring to it. "Stupid Channel". It might even increase ratings. That's all those people care about anyway.

Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)

Sequels are the places where the originals come to die

[5/10 · 21 July 2017]

If "Lethal Weapon" was a farewell to the action film era before the advent of "Die Hard" type techno-thrillers, the best and the most polished laid-back buddy-buddy flick done in the style of 70s and 80s, "Lethal Weapon 2" is its zombie reincarnation, a deconstruction of everything that was good about the first film.

One could probably look at this film in its own right, and as such its a decent late 80s flick, more suited to the TV than to the big screen. But since it owes everything to the iconic predecessor, and it is a direct sequel, it has to be viewed as a cynical cash-in. As cynical as they come.

Just like the "2" in the uninspired title suggests: everything is just being rehashed. Everything, minus the grit and the poignancy of the "1". All the known tropes are there and not a single catchphrase from the first film is dropped and some new have been added. Jeffrey Boam, who was hired in "Lethal Weapon" to sprinkle Shane Black's script with a bit of welcome humor is called in here to fully take the reins and write the whole thing himself without the wit and insight of Black.

To maintain the merry character dynamics, the character of Riggs is still crazy, the character of Murtaugh is still fed up with everything, even though their plight was resolved in the previous film. They have also developed an uncomfortable comedic self-awareness about it ("We're bad! You're black, I'm mad"). The character of police psychologist has been reduced to a one-note joke. The villains are yet another para-militaristic bunch, this time so unconvincing in their manner of operating and existence one wonders how are they not taken down already before this film takes place. Also a lot of jokes stem from the fact that their origin is placed in the South African Republic. Apartheid and Hitler jokes, you know. Har. Har. The whole "police under siege" climax is unbelievable. No police force would just sit there like stool pigeons, waiting for the bad guys to off them one by one. Riggs and Murtaugh take the gang on by themselves just because they've done so in the first film. Hardly as exciting as it wanted to be.

The worst and the most notable thing, of course, is the inclusion of the psycho midget Joe Pesci in the cast. His insufferable turn as Leo Getz is probably the producers' idea of how to make the film more accessible to a broader audience. It's a mystery to me, though. Watching it now, I cannot believe how anybody ever found Pesci funny. He's effective in the roles of psychopaths because that's what he is in real life, but comedy? "Home Alone"? Really?

The rest of the cast is not much better either. Gibson is having too much fun with his character and Glover just acts like he has stomach problems. Joss Ackland and Derrick O'Connor are hamming it up to the max as the main villains, but one can hardly blame them. They know what they've got themselves into. Patsy Kensit has nailed the blonde bimbo stereotype even though that may not have been her intention. Richard Donner, the director, looks pretty out of shape even though you can't see him in any shots. His direction is pretty loose, concentrated more on the action set pieces than on the overall pace. The action scenes, as well as the toilet scene, are still good to watch but they cannot compensate for all the mistakes, including some amateur ones. There are some really awkward reaction shots of Gibson and there is a cringe-worthy on-the-nose revenge scene where Gibson shoots one of the henchmen accompanied by off-narration of the names of all the cops killed during the film.

"Loaded Weapon" came out four years later, and even though it's an excellent send up to this franchise, they need not have bothered. Much like "Die Hard 2" to "Die Hard", "Lethal Weapon 2" is a perfect parody of itself.

Ozzy & Jack's World Detour (2016– )

Rock'n'roll is through, now anything will do.

[2/10 · 21 July 2017]

It's aired on History Channel, and unlike the usual garbage they peddle there, I suppose you can call this one an actual historical show. In any case it features historical content and history experts to give it a brief rundown for the hosts and viewers.

Unfortunately it features Ozzy Osbourne as a host. I frankly don't know how that guy still receives a media exposure, but there he is. After he hit it off with the reality show, he'll do anything to squander what little professional dignity and musical legacy he has left.

As a typical rock'n'roll airhead, a genuine one at that, Oz just stands there, in any given gallery, museum or memorial center, nodding his head in bewilderment and uttering "wow" at anything that's shown to him. Doesn't matter whether he understands what he sees and whether he's genuinely impressed, a "wow" will be uttered at steady intervals. He'll also twitch in a silly manner, as if he's just going through a withdrawal.

So, that's it, that's your show. Perhaps there are some historical tidbits to learn there, but watching Ozzy makes it an insufferable experience. There is another host partnering in it, but beats me who that other guy is and I don't care.

Wonder Woman (2017)

Just stick to your bloody guns!

[5/10 · 15 June 2017]

Lately, DC have made some critical and commercial blunders which have seen them falling greatly behind the Marvel's juggernaut of dependable high-profit PG-13 films. An ideal response to the success of the competition would be to try and raise the quality of one's own products, but DC seem to think being more like Marvel is the way to go. That didn't do any favors to "Suicide Squad" and it's even worse a course of action for "Wonder Woman". There are too many good things to call "Wonder Woman" a bad film. It's not bad, it's just not as good as it could have been if it was allowed to benefit from DC sticking to their guns and be dark and serious.

Coinciding with the centennial anniversary of the USA entering the World War I, the choice of the setting couldn't be better. There aren't many WWI films out there, and it's a great topic to be explored even if it's just a vehicle for a superhero origin story. To that regard, I found the script remarkably restrained in the usual playing fast and loose with history, and I didn't notice many jarring transgressions other than making a historical German general Ludendorff a comic book villain. The general feeling of depression, futility and hypocrisy of "The War To End All Wars" is there, and that's what counts. Then there is that mesmerising golden-brown cinematography that is by now an established trademark for DC. Nowhere else did it serve a better purpose than in this throwback to the era of early colour photographs, and it helped the film look even more 1910s. The opening scenes, set in the Ancient Greece, quite make up for the current lack of good Greek mythology-themed films out there. Gal Gadot is very comfortable and believable as the titular heroine, with her presence and thick accent working very much in her favour. David Thewlis made wonders beyond what his dialogue would allow and was a pleasure to watch. Some action scenes, especially in the grand finale, do strike an emotional chord and are done rather neatly and cleanly, which is quite a refreshment in the sea of overedited, choppy action of nowadays.

Too bad the shortcomings of "Wonder Woman" stick out just as well as the good parts. There is, firstly, the silly plot. There are pronoun games, heavy handed expositions, twists and revelations which even a mildly keen viewer typically guessed halfway through the film. The motivation of the main character is incoherent, sometimes illogical and it often serves just to make the plot points happen. The vacuum between anything happening is filled with dialogue that ranges from awkward and clumsy to downright stupid. One exchange went like this: "Humanity is good!", "You are lying and I must kill you!", "I believe in love!". One doesn't get to hear that in an A-film often.

The "Marvel" part comes in the shape of the characters that help Diana aka Wonder Woman throughout the film. Chris Pine's rendition of Steve Trevor is over the top awkward. He never connects to Diana properly and the implied love story is unbelievable. Pine does have his moments thanks to his boyish charm, but generally he has been let to do too much. The sidekick characters do even worse. They are too goofy and their dialogue is too frivolous and trying too hard for a comic relief that they just stick out like a sore thumb in the gloomy setting. Also they are not given anything meaningful to do so they more or less just clutter up the screen and the screen time. Greatly lacking is the mise en scène. The backdrop is there and the sets are impeccably designed. But the scenes in London are not populated enough with interesting characters and the film would benefit from more people reacting to the novelty of armor-clad woman in the post-Victorian England. It would also benefit from showing more grit and horrors of the WWI, but I guess in the battle for the PG-13 label sacrifices had to be made.

Much has been made of the fact that one of the most expensive films with a female as the main character has been directed by a female director. It has even been touted as a big deal by recent female presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. Unfortunately, Patty Jenkins did in this production the same thing Mrs. Clinton would have done in the Oval Office - get lost. A Wander Woman, if you will. She lacks pace, focus and determination. Her shots are all over the place, editing is slow and inconsistent and the film overally doesn't get off the ground until it's almost over. She seems to leave the main actors too much on their own, but what's worse, she even lets the extras overact. Someone with a tighter grip over the production was sorely needed here. Jenkins just aimed to please the powers that be. The difference between the good and the bad action scenes in the film prompt me to believe that Zack Snyder took over at least for the final showdown, because that particular scene was almost every bit as good as the finale of "Batman v Superman". If that one was also done by Jenkins after all, power to her.

"Dumb but good-looking" is not the label I like to ascribe to DC films. Not that they've ever been overly smart, but I remember how seeing "Man of Steel" left me with the feeling "man, that's how it should be done" and I wanted more of that. Come to think of it, I can't even say that the new direction is really trying to emulate Marvel. It's just an aimless departure from adult themed stories in the hope of winning that teen buck. And sure enough, the screening I attended was filled with kids. They were laughing in all the wrong places.

Twin Peaks (2017)

"I am the hand and I sound like..."

[1/10 · 24 May 2017]

"...crap"

It's unlike anything you can see these days on the telly. But not in a good way. It's one thing to do an old-fashioned show, or homage maybe - it's quite another to do something completely anti-modern. Each scene takes years to unfold and it's by design. The long, still shots of nothing really happening, the actors standing awkwardly and staring blankly into the distance, the inane dialogue where every word is uttered like it has some utmost hidden significance... It's not how I remember "Twin Peaks". There used to be humour and suspense in there, too. And liveliness.

I can imagine two kinds of people being attracted to this. The first is the nostalgic souls that will tune in to look for the hallmarks of the series they used to love. They'll be disappointed. The majority of old cast is here but they don't seem to serve any narrative purpose, not that there's any narrative to be served. The inconsequential nature of their dialogue and the stilted acting didn't help bring them back to life and their gratuitous presence is more distracting than anything else, especially since some new, and more crucial characters are introduced. The trade-mark brownish set design is also here, but its ubiquitousness is quite uneasy on the eyes this time around. The new plot is only loosely connected to the original series: nothing you see here will answer any of the questions you may have had 27 years ago. Would you even care if it did?

The second kind is, of course, the hipsters. Particularly the fans of David Lynch. The smug, masochistic bunch who think adoring the self-important experimentalist, that is the writer and director of this glut, gives them a pass to some kind of intellectual heaven. I don't know how many of them are there left, though, it's the 21st century after all. Nevertheless, they're likely to relish the idiotic lines of dialogue and cheesy special effects in which they'll inevitably find some "clues" they're supposed to pick up on and collect towards the series' finale, where there will undoubtedly be some big cathartic resolution of a grand paranormal riddle that is the plot of this series. Seeing that the original series didn't end with a resolution but with a cliffhanger, I don't see any reason things should be any different here. Resolving things is not in the interest of charlatans like Lynch. There's no sense of mystery and profundity in it. Nor money. Sense of mystery and profundity often equals money. Religions know that.

Anyway, all in - fair warned, you could have already seen where this was going with the abysmal "Fire Walk With Me" feature film. Better off popping the old episodes into the VCR and forget this "third" season ever happened. If you're a hipster, though, do continue to watch. I like it when hipsters get disappointed. A disappointed hipster a day keeps the doctor away.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Echos of the Lost Cast

[6/10 · 9 April 2017]

The film that captured the imagination of entire generations aged rather well and is still a decent watch but some parts have rotten away like bad cheese. What still stands are the lush, romanticized depiction of the pre-WWII period, the camera-work and the music. And Karen Allen's brazen quirkiness.

More obvious now than before is that Tom Selleck's stand-in, Harrison Ford, proved an unsuitable lead. He brings in a rather difficult chemistry for the film that is supposed to be a goofball, roller-coaster adventure. Ford is clunky, suffering and reluctant, bordering on depression. There is a conspicuous lack of joy about his Indiana Jones that shouldn't be there, because it's at odds with everything else in the film. His comebacks at other characters come off as angry snaps rather than comic relieves. He doesn't possess that devil-may-care attitude that would convince the viewer that his character actually likes all these adventures, nor does he exude that suave, Bondian eroticism that should sell that scene where all of his female students want to eat the good professor alive. The audience must have given him a pass simply because everybody still saw a Han Solo in him.

The lack of a lead that is neither too serious to expose the silly nor too hammingly humorous to drag everything into a camp is what the whole film suffers for. It's because the plot itself treads the fine line between awesome and idiotic. It mixes top-class religious artifacts and magical powers with Nazis and harebrained schemes of world domination, cartoon action with sadistic villains and their gruesome deaths, some really terrible lines of dialog with some really good one-liners, and a bungling detective story with a truly awe-inspiring and larger-than- life finale. Without the poster face that could make you forget that this mishmash of ideas, that only George Lucas could churn out, doesn't quite hold water it's easier to be taken out of the film by some of its lowest points.

What keeps it together still is the brilliant direction of Steven Spielberg. His visual style was at that fledgling time of his career pretty flamboyant, with daring but perfunctory choice of angles, camera movements and compositions, which lent itself to great pacing - moving quickly through the plot points and keeping the tension in the set-pieces with the idea that no one notices how ridiculous they are. He builds up very well towards the climactic end and the revelation of the real hero of the film: the mythical Ark. Its matter-of-fact act of self-defense is a big pay-off so few films achieve these days. It's doubtful that a conventional director, however competent, would have been able to deliver anything better than a B-schlock with the given material.

Harrison Ford made a career playing gloomy characters that got stuck in unpleasant situations and just wanted to leave. He should have been nowhere near this film. Steven Spielberg is a genius for making this work at all, let alone gain a cult-status, of all things.

xXx: Return of Xander Cage (2017)

xXxceptionally bad

[2/10 · 19 January 2017]

Jackie Chan called and he wants his moves back. They were a rare gem in this otherwise utter waste of time.

"xXx" is back to claim the title of the most unwanted sequel to any franchise. It's got a plot, but do we care for it? No. It's got Vin Diesel back, but has he learned how to act? No. It's got a lot of one-liners, but do they click? Not a single damn one.

There is enough films these days that feature the hammy Samuel L. Jackson, the multiracial cast, the anti-establishment angle and wall-to-wall action without stakes and payoff, that the only way for this to stand out was to make it really, really, really stupid. And it seems they pulled it off.

At the beginning of the film, the title character justifies stealing saying: "I don't wanna line some rich man's pockets". Funny, that's how I felt paying for the tickets. Had I known what was I in for, I wouldn't even bother stealing them. As for the "rich man" himself, that is, Mr. Diesel, he seems to be going through the list of successful films he starred in, trying to figure out which one to make a franchise of next. So, when all other options are eventually exploited, it wouldn't be uncanny to see the resurrection of "private Caparzo" in an inevitable sequel to "Saving Private Ryan".

King Arthur (2004)

King's swill

[3/10 · 10 January 2017]

Best paper is made out of trees. Once it's used and discarded, it gets recycled into a lower grade paper. Repeated recyclings result in a product just good enough to wipe your behind with.

It's the same thing with the Hollywood screenplays. The best stories come directly from nature. Eventually they get recycled and regurgitated into a pulp that always tastes the same and has no quality other than being the toilet fodder. Once in a while somebody somewhere in Hollywood reads an article or two about something in newspapers and jumps to use it as a new flavor to spice the old swill up a little. That's how films seem to be made these days.

That brings us to "King Arthur". One scientific novelty emerged in the 2000s concerning the legendary first king of England: that he may have been of Roman origin, as some new archaeological findings suggested. To some the news that sparks imagination and sheds light on that largely undocumented period of history, to others a valuable political link between the Roman Empire and the British Empire, it's something that definitely deserves to be put on screen. Unfortunately, there's that guy called Jerry Bruckheimer, that sells swill for a living, who woke up one morning and realized he needs a sword-and-sandal film in his portfolio. He hired the usual goons that approached the subject hastily and, instead of doing a proper research around the new take on Arthur, they just patched up all the gaps (and there were a lot) with the usual clichés, especially of sword-and-sandal genre, slapped on the label "historically accurate" and shipped it off to theaters hoping the label alone will sell it.

The tagline lied - this is by no means a historically accurate representation, even if Arthur indeed happened to be a Roman named Lucius Artorius Castus. Coming from David Franzoni, who wrote "Gladiator", that's hardly a surprise, though. Again, huge liberties, if we can call them that, have been taken to serve a simplistic story, based on some strange conception that people the legends were made around were already acting and talking like legends during their actual lifetime.

The battle scenes are the most obvious sign of that misguided approach. Artorius and his horsemen are too tiny a bunch to convince they'd have a meaningful impact on a battlefield other than in commanding roles. Their special skills and ability to single-handedly defeat multitudes of enemies is not what you'd see in a real battle, but rather something that would emerge in retellings afterwards, yet that's precisely what we see them do: fighting in a more "legendary" manner than their namesakes in "Excalibur". The dialog follows the same lines, but heart is confused with pathos. Artorius is stilted and artificial as if he came straight off the stage and every word he utters bears weight, meaning and poignancy, and is not necessarily in tune with what happens around him. His Sarmatian horsemen are one-note sketches, less a bonafide historical figures and more a bunch of a comic book super heroes. One has a trained hawk, one can shoot a nut off a mosquito with an arrow, one wields two swords at once, one cracks jokes... they're about as historical as Ninja Turtles. Geography grasp of the script is terrible and is a cause of crucial plot holes. The knights guard the Hadrian Wall, at the time the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire, yet they have to be informed by their superiors from the south that there is an invasion coming from the north. Wouldn't Artorius' men be the first to know? The nobleman they are ordered to collect lives with his entire entourage deep into the wrong side of the Wall, in an undefended territory, what no aristocrat, especially an important one, would ever do. On top of that it's him that shares the latest news from Rome with Artorius instead the other way round. How come the crucial communication is bypassing the keepers of the frontier all the time? Timeline is off, too, and concerns mostly queen Guinevere. The box-office nowadays calls for a strong female character, so it had to be a "warrior queen", not just an ordinary one. Ancient Britain does remember one queen Boudicca, a strong female military commander the new Guinevere was likely modeled after. It's just that she lived four hundred years too early for this and deserves a film of her own. No place for her here. They squeezed Merlin into the story somehow, too, but who cares. There is a dark tone to the film, which is fitting, and there is the anti-church sentiment that is about the only thing I genuinely liked.

What the film is missing is a lot. There is no ambition other than the cash grab. There is no heart. There is no connection between the warriors and the commoners who would supposedly be so enamored with Artorius to pass the legend on. There is no Uther, no Morgana and no Mordred, which is a shame because the main villain could have at least come away with a better name than "Cerdic". There isn't a single rape scene, either, and that's both historically inaccurate and a bit ironic: as film that successfully rapes both the history and the legend could use a good rape scene or two.

Black Hawk Down (2001)

An extended Army commercial

[4/10 · 27 December 2016]

At the very end of the film, Eric Bana's character 'Hoot' munches through a chewing gum and gives a soliloquy where he explains why soldiers do what they do. "We're not some war junkies, (munch, munch) no. We do it for (munch, munch) the man next to us. That's (munch, munch), that's all there is." Bana's emphatic munching while delivering the speech is an odd acting choice. I'm still at odds whether this was supposed to be a misguided portrayal of realistic parlance, or was he just satirizing the text. Which is what he should really do. Because that explanation doesn't parlay well into young civilian's motivation for choosing a military career. "Hey, I'm signing up because I want to be there for a fellow man!" can just as well be applied to deciding to join a football team, or a cult, or a stamp collector group. In any case it's an inappropriate conclusion to a film that is little more than a masturbatory love letter to the Long Arm of the US foreign policy.

Because the first and foremost goal of "Black Hawk Down" is to make the US Army look *cool*. From the slick shots of the "Hueys" flying into action over an exotic backdrop, over the soldiers spewing witty one-liners amidst gunfire and explosions, to a slow motion shot of a couple of them treading the streets of Mogadishu in the style of Magnificent Seven, the message is clear: "US Army is where it's at. It may lose a battle or two, but it's righteous and glorious." Ridley Scott, an Englishman, went out of his way to outdo his brother Tony's USAF commercial that is "Top Gun". He lent his mastery in visuals and direction to deliver a propaganda piece timed and engineered for the US invasion of Afghanistan.

Camera-work, scenery and action set pieces are great, occasionally truly gripping. Everything else in this film ranges from cynical to dishonest: on the nose moralizing, whitewashing the cast, portraying the enemy as a faceless horde, distorting the historical evidence... to name a few things. Glossed over are the murky reasons US Army was sent to Somalia in the first place. The Somalis' motives for the fight are mentioned as an afterthought, just to give an appearance of a balanced point of view. The involvement of other countries in that "peacekeeping" mission is neglected. It doesn't matter, it's not a historical film anyway.

It's not an anti-war film either. To some viewers, portraying the battle that has gone wrong and was essentially a failure is a tantamount to a call against armed violence. Not in my opinion. I think glorifying a tragically botched military operation yields a far stronger reaction than filming the one that was successful and completed. It makes a young viewer want to join and finish the job. What difference does it make whether it's Mogadishu or Kabul? They all look the same, don't they?

And no, Mr. 'Hoot', you're not in it for the guy next to you, you're just a war junkie. Otherwise you and that other guy would have just stayed at home.

G.O.R.A. (2004)

Mel Brooks meets Bollywood halfway

[2/10 · 12 October 2016]

A rare Turkish attempt to mimic Hollywood production got one thing right - the trailer is infinitely better than the film itself. Over time it has taken on a life of its own on the Internet, with a couple of ostensibly clever jabs at "Matrix" and "Star Wars". See it and that's about as much fun as you will get out of the entire feature. See the rest if you think it'll help you infer something about Turkish culture. Beware, though: you might come to a conclusion that the Turks have quite a low grade sense of humor and that practically everybody can be a comedian there.

"G.O.R.A." tries to spoof the Western Sci-Fi genre. It fails so badly at it that the only thing it achieves is to make one appreciate the spoofed material even more. The jokes that worked in the trailer just fell flat in the actual film because they came off random and gratuitous, without a proper set-up.

The space between is filled with inanity and randomness, as far as the viewer accustomed to the coherence of Western films is concerned. Characterization is poor and unconvincing, plot points are disjointed as if several story lines were forcibly merged into one, pop references are crude and literal ("I've seen it in the Fifth Element!"), the fourth wall is smugly being broken ("This goes out to you, Hollywood!"), there are unnecessary flashbacks that slow down the plot, there is a heavy reliance on shallow stereotyping to elicit humor, and the main character, a sleazy everyman who just can't shut the hell up, is one of the most insufferable leads I've ever seen on screen. I'd feel sorry for one Cem Yilmaz who plays him, hadn't he been the one who wrote the daft script in the first place. In an act of vanity he also took up three more roles here and has only achieved something of note with the role of main villain.

The production value, as seen in the trailer, largely holds up throughout the film. Visibly, most of the budget went into the special effects, the costumes and the sets. However, already at the cinematography level things fall apart, as one can observe the uneven color grading, mistakes in the lighting setup and so on. Furthermore, the art direction is overly glossy so everything looks more like a commercial than a feature film, but all of that is at least passable. What is uniformly bad is the cast, who are simply lost in space, and the director who doesn't know what he wants out of the scene and the actors, has little understanding of camera positioning and movement, and has no knack whatsoever for comedic timing and pace. The overall feel one gets is that, while there is always something happening on the screen, the plot never gains a momentum.

Perhaps all this is just a cultural thing and perhaps one has to live in Turkey to be in on all the nuances and jokes. As far as I'm told, "G.O.R.A." broke the box-office records in the native country. But it has a clear ambition to speak to the Western audience as well and, seen through that scope, one must admit that by far the funniest thing about this "comedy" is the undeservedly high rating on the IMDb.

Star Trek Beyond (2016)

A bona fide Star Trek episode

[6/10 · 21 July 2016]

After the two inaugural films of the now-called "Kelvin timeline" brought the stale "Star Trek" franchise back to life with a vengeance, this third episode slowly but surely sets the course towards calmer, safer waters.

The subtitle "Beyond" is somewhat misleading because it promises some epic journey into unknown, something seen in "The Motion Picture", where the characters really had no idea what they were getting into and where some ambitious issues are raised. Here it's kind of like what the TV series used to be: The Enterprise floats around the space as it's its own playground and the crew gets into danger, alright, but you just know they will be fine by the end.

The plot outline doesn't much differ from J.J.Abrams' entries, as it's basically another story of Federation cleaning up its own mess. The stakes are unbelievably high, again, in form of a villain bent on a wholesale destruction and the nearly indestructible super-weapon as a means to do it. However, the antagonist is disposed of in an almost cheesy, cowboy fashion by Capt.Kirk & Co. just the way typical villains-of-the-week were, in the old series. So I guess the "Star Trek" spirit is really back, for better or worse. Many of those who were unhappy with the "new" Star Trek will be much happier now, but I preferred the gloomy and costly resolutions of the first two films.

The cast is now completely at ease with their roles, each one making their respective characters their own. Only Karl Urban as Bones seems to still be trying, unwisely, to emulate hammy mannerisms of his predecessor, DeForest Kelley. The director, Justin Lin, nearly matches his style to that of J.J.Abrams. He somewhat lacks elegance in camera angles and editing, but the pacing is adequate and set-pieces are really effective. Visuals are, in general, stunning and are probably the richest and the most detailed in the whole series.

When it comes to verdict on "Beyond", it's a mixed bag for me. I admire the ambition and the impetus of the "new" Star Trek as much as I resent the cheese and safety of the "old" one. Some sort of convergence between the two seems to be in the making in the future and I'm afraid to glance "beyond" that point.

Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)

Five screenwriters for five years old audience

[3/10 · 5 July 2016]

In my aging eyes Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin are some sort of pioneers... ground-breakers, if you will. When the first "Independence Day" came out in 1996, I thought it was the dumbest mainstream blockbuster I've ever seen and that it's not possible to ever make anything dumber. Ever. Since then "Armageddon", "Pearl Harbor", "Day After Tomorrow", "Godzilla" and the likes came into existence. Now that "dumb blockbuster" IS the mainstream, and now that all of them look alike - Emmerich and Devlin still managed to pull another "dumbest ever". Congratulations, chaps! It was totally worth seeing it for that fact alone.

It would be a pain for me to go through the motions of analyzing this flashy but disjointed and airless regurgitation of the barely-worthy-predecessor, just as it was a pain for the film crew to put it together, so perhaps bringing up a couple of major annoyances should fill the requirements for this review:

• A clunky and too obvious exposition, stupid plot and even stupider and unengaging subplots and backstories.

• "Orange and Teal" color scheme. It's ubiquitous and tiresome and they didn't even make it well. The majority of shots were just drenched in blue/gray, or alternately in red/orange. They should at least have followed the look of the original.

• Judd Hirsch. The unfortunate fact that he's still alive didn't warrant his reappearance in the sequel. He already ruined every scene he was in the first time around. Now he's twice as old and four times as irritating.

• No less than four comic relieves. Four of them! Woods, Wright, Spiner and Hirsch. None of them even remotely funny or needed.

• Vivica Fox, who would have possibly provided a great lead, was just wasted to make room for bland but higher paid colleagues.

• The white talking Orb from the mysterious "other" alien race. It looked not as much as an Apple product as something lifted from the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". Didn't fit because it was comical and wasn't meant to be. When it paid the slimiest and the most condescending ever homage to humans for winning the fight it became clear that the target audience for this film were kids.

• All the main characters talk way too much, in an incessant bombardment of words with almost no relief throughout the film.

I think that's enough. "Independence Day" is affectionately called "ID" and I think it's not without merit. In the sea of bland epic disaster flicks it does have an identity - it brands itself by stupidity. In the original it worked to its advantage - this time it doesn't. But don't skip on it: you have to see it to believe it.

Warcraft (2016)

Might convert a heretic

[9/10 · 11 June 2016]

Even though "Warcraft" can by now surely be regarded as a part of cultural heritage, and warrants a film to its name, I expected that its cinematic incarnation be nothing but a cynical exploitation of the popularity of the game itself. Not really knowing that much about the game I could appreciate the film purely as a film.

Gosh, what a pleasant surprise! The production, the direction and the script must really breathe some fresh air into already stale "sword and sorcery" genre. Principal shooting reportedly took four months and post-production took additional twenty. And you can see that the time was well spent. The CGI characters look incredibly vigorous and real, the scenery as well, thanks to motion capture, skilled animators and acres and acres of render-farms. The cinematography (or whatever filters they've used in the post) is vividly colorful, luscious and glamorous as one should expect from a fantasy film. The costume design, the props and the sets are done impeccably and to a tremendous detail.

The script is unexpectedly self-conscious. Although it pits humans into battle against yet another monster species, we're allowed to observe both sides on equal footing. Both factions have their motives, their good and bad guys - we learn what's at stake for all of them. Not only it makes harder for the audience to pick sides, it makes for a more thrilling viewing as well.

Still, despite all these things going for "Warcraft", it's still the direction that sits at the heart of it all. It plays to the strength of the script, it's concise and matter-of-fact, and it never leaves a dull moment. Timing is so good that it makes you both laugh at tremble at desired moments. You can freely see it in 2D and give your eyes a break, no thrills will be lost. Really kudos to always intriguing Duncan Jones. Who knew "Zowie Bowie" would get so far. I hope he sticks around for the sequels.

If I should name flaws and thus justify not giving "Warcraft" the highest mark, I'd say that the pace, although needed to keep the attention in the complex story, didn't leave much room for relationships between characters to sink in completely. If it did, it would be an Oscar-worthy material, but hey. Doesn't matter all that much.

There will be people who will complain that the story is derivative. And indeed, how many stories about humans, kings, good and evil wizards, monsters and dwarfs are already there? Quite a lot, no doubt. It doesn't bother me, though. I'm glad this one came to be, and that is was brazen enough to go through all the familiar tropes of the genre as if they were anew. Because "Warcraft" could give lessons to some better known franchises of this and other genres. It could, for one, teach "Lord of the Rings" how to not be cold and heartless and it could teach Marvel how to avoid making listless villains and stories without stakes.

I'll never ever play "Warcraft" the game, but I'm now thankful for its existence because it gave me another cinematic franchise to look forward to in the future.

Number 55 (2014)

Dial C for Cheese

[1/10 · 29 May 2016]

A good 16 years after "Saving Private Ryan" set quite a milestone in production design of war epics, came this Croatian war flick and jumped at the chance to copy-paste some notable aspects of it, based on the fact that nobody here had done it beforehand. As is usual with Croatian film-making, the copy is rather pale, misguided and inappropriate, and, as usual, tries to hide the lack of depth in the story. The end result is laughable and cringe-worthy.

What was the director thinking? First he has the camera dollying through the walls of the house the main characters use as a stronghold. All the authenticity is immediately lost because it looks like theatre and a satire. Then some shooting starts and it turns all shaky-camy. Then an explosion in slow-motion. Then a character gets killed, again in slow-motion. Then more shaking of camera. Then another character dies slow-motion. Then another character runs and screams into a wide-lens close-up of his face (think GoPro)... Kristijan Milic is clearly a victim of shallow trickery and quite oblivious to a bigger picture. The pace and the tension in his films give way to pure cheese.

Bleach-bypass picture is a bad choice for presenting the early 1990s war action. It tries, rather amateurishly and bluntly, to emulate "Saving Private Ryan", forgetting that the purpose of bleach-bypass in "Saving Private Ryan" was to emulate 1940s war journals. They should've copied "Black Hawk Down" instead.

The screenplay lacks clarity and logic in describing action. The eye is unaware what's actually happening and where. We see mostly "good guys", very seldom do we get a chance to see what they see. From military point-of-view, what characters do from time to time is just ridiculous, such as whispering while there is already shooting going on and the enemy is 200 yards away. The opponents often don't even try to hide and charge like idiots. The dialog is full of corny one liners and truisms lifted from better films. Bad language is thrown in so frivolously and forcibly one thinks it's been spoken by robots, not people suffering in bad circumstances. Bad acting doesn't help bring it to life, either.

Ironically, for all the time the camera sticks with the Croatian platoon, we still don't get to quite know them or care about them. All there is to see is a bunch of dirty and desperate people, getting picked off one by one in gruesome manner. One has to belong to domestic (Croatian) audience to be able to appreciate what's on screen, because only domestic audience has had the "privilege" of being heavily indoctrinated about piety, poignancy and suffering of Croatian soldiers during the War of Independence. The viewers that are not "in the know" will get bored very soon because the film crew cared more about cramming all the clichés they possibly could than telling the actual story.

The film caps everything off with a series of photographs suggesting it was a depiction of a real-life event. The dead people in those photos were members of the actual platoon that got ambushed and killed off in one of numerous small-time battles during the war. This cheese-fest does them no justice whatsoever. And to hijack their names like that to add some undeserved credibility to another lousy cinematic effort is not only cheesy in itself, but is also to bury those people for the second time.

Captain America: Civil War (2016)

The franchise is alive and well

[6 May 2016]

Which side are you on? Are there sides at all? Do you support the ideology of freedom and individual responsibility or the one of security and obedience to a collective? Is either of those two polar opposites attainable in the first place or are they just illusions?

This film couldn't have been more topical if it wanted to. Wait a minute - it's the Election year in the US... it DID want to be topical. Nothing occupies minds of citizens of the Western hemisphere more than these issues nowadays and "Captain America: Civil War" addresses them with zest. Of course, it does so in Marvel style: punch up first, ask questions later, but it does address them with some unexpected insight and self-awareness.

Personally I found the premise a little ludicrous. If I was someone with superpowers and a proved record of integrity and reliability I'd be hard pressed to allow sneaky bureaucrats who elbowed their way to UN to "supervise" me; or to wait for months on end for them to reach an agreement on what to tell me to do. If I was an unreliable and/or immoral superhero, they'd see even less of me. So it's a no-brainer as to what side should any of the characters really take. I also found ironic that the thing "the Avengers" were accused of by their political opponents - routinely ignoring sovereignty of national states and acting as the World police - is what the US military does on a regular basis. But hey, the setup needed to happen and the screenwriters have put in enough effort to make it look as plausible and as realistic as possible.

The result is a very tense and well paced film that balances serious and fun bits pretty easily. All the characters of old as well as some new additions have found their place in it. Perhaps the most anticipated addition, the one of Spiderman, is the one most effective (and hilarious). Given how colorful that superhero bunch is, the fight scenes are naturally spectacular and very imaginative. I found the ending kind of anti-climactic and unfairly vague in resolution. Obviously a major Disney investment isn't allowed to really take sides and risk repelling some of the audience, and that warrants taking the rating down a notch or two. Still, overall it's a very satisfactory film.

Of course, comparison with another major conflict in a competing comic-book franchise is inevitable and kind of obligatory. So, as far as that's concerned, I'd say I find both films on equal footing. Both are overall impeccably produced and directed, both are marred with similar implausibilities in terms of main premises, and both can be forgiven for that because they're so damn well made. The only difference is "Captain America: Civil War" is more fun and "Batman v. Superman" has a more poignant ending.

But comparisons don't really matter to me - I like both franchises and I like to see them both alive and well because I've grown tired of TV-series. You see, ever since the early days of television the cinematographers are fighting to bring the audience back to theaters. A relatively easy task at first, it became harder and harder over the decades, as both TV-series and TV-sets kept getting more and more cinema-like. The 3D technology was the latest gimmick but it also ended up in living rooms. And now the film industry started copying television. Just as TV has series, cinema has "franchises". A couple of ongoing and very expensive sagas are set to entertain majority of the film-goers during the next decade or so. The companies can ill- afford any flukes and I root for all of them to succeed as far as possible. If they retain the quality of this year's entrances, it could be a long fun ride.

Deadpool (2016)

R Is the New Black

[8/10 · 12 February 2016]

Adhering to MPAA rules is killing creativity of US blockbusters, that is by now pretty certain. The rating system scares away almost any kind of risk taking when it comes to making expensive A-list films because film companies, naturally, want to see their huge investments returned by assuring the widest possible public appeal - but they don't want to p|ss off the censors. That's why it's ever easier to predict the plot and the stories are all looking blander and more and more alike. Any form of gritty realism, readily available on the Internet and TV-news, is a huge "no-no" when it comes to showing a cinematic work of art to a precious little teenager or an adult prude.

Films made upon comic books are particularly sanitized, given the nature and obscurity of the source, and they suffer for it a great deal. Enter "Deadpool" as one of the rare attempts to tackle the "R-rating". Not to fight the rating system itself but to sort of rehabilitate the "R" and make it lucrative again, long after the impact of "Pulp Fiction" and "Private Ryan" has been forgotten. It has been heavily marketed as "not for children" and it was implied that the filmmakers hope for a sizable money return nonetheless. There seems to be a growing intent to make comic book films more adult-oriented, and I'm certain a lot rides on the success of this film.

Since this is a sort of probe, it's obvious from the first minute that Marvel and Fox allowed filmmakers unusual creative liberties but, unsurprisingly, unusually low budget. A complete newcomer (when it comes to directing a feature film, that is), in form of Tim Miller, is put at helm, partly probably for fresh perspective, partly because he's expendable in case of failure. Expendable is also the main star, a handsome but down-and-out Ryan Reynolds. At this point he's got little to lose.

Apparently, Miller handled everything pretty well. From really impressive and hilarious opening shot, through solid pacing and good action scenes, to dynamic climax. Really, hardly anything to complain about there. Editing is also done well, although there are places where more trimming would be welcome. Screenplay is more of a two-way street, however, and it has its hits and misses. It's undoubtedly brave, not only with gratuitous and quite welcome profanities, sex, blood gore and dark humor, but with the concept of a downbeat main character itself and complementing mise-en-scène, as well as with the ending. There are many inventive visual gags and some verbal jokes really click, but a lot of them are overwritten, cheesy, too absurd or unnecessary so the reaction to them is more of a "meh" than a real amusement. But, I suppose that's what the character of Deadpool is all about - an edgy, nervy, blabbering sort of fellow, as the lore goes, a spitting image of Ryan Reynolds.

Yes, as it happens, Deadpool, a relatively new hero of Marvel universe, is fashioned after the guy that eventually got to play him twice by now on film. So Reynolds by definition does the character justice. But I did hope for something slightly different than Reynolds doing his usual hamming and nodding. He is surely a likable actor and carries the film well, but a comedian he isn't and he simply cannot find the right measure for his deliveries. So he's a hit and miss too, in this film as well as in his entire career.

I recommend "Deadpool" because although not brilliant, it's quite a fun watch. It's also an unrestrained celebration of the "R" and as such, hopefully, a small milestone in the future of filmmaking. I'd honor it here properly if IMDb allowed me to use the same words that were used in the film. Oh, IMDb, you're a walking piece of sh|t irony!