Reviews

This series was great for the first three episodes, although there was no indication of what it was about. Then came the second half of the season where we were served that our main protagonist was apparently an antagonist, which is not so awful even though we had indications that someone else was behind it all. And then comes the grand finale, where we meet the true enemy and the witch fight takes place. I'm not sure, but I have a feeling that the series has jumped the shark, because I expected to watch a sci fi show and it turned out to be fantasy. What will be the next crossover of the Marvel universe? Vampires? Zombies? Mummies? Werewolves? Unfortunately, this series is a missed opportunity.

The comments for this series said it was Drama, Mystery, Thriller so I decided to take a look at it. But it turned out to be a fantasy story and one that makes one feel bad. The first three episodes were solid though a bit slow. Then in the fourth episode of the series jumps the shark and everything goes downhill. In the end, the bitter taste remains. I do not recommend this series, because no one will give you back your six hours of life.

I believe that there are some good QT movies out there, for example "Jackie Brown", but this is not it. Tarantino makes his movies in the style of the 70's. Too colorful, too vulgar, too brutal and too bloody and at some point it becomes boring. This movie suffers from same illness. Tarantino, who is known for his quick and memorable dialogues has lost his touch. In this movie, there is not a single memorable scene. Everything happens in snail-speed and he even uses slow-motion technique in some scenes, without any need. Perhaps he wanted to bring the speed of the movie to a grass-growing-speed, I don't know or care. I just wanted to express my feelings about this schlock.

First of all I must say that I knew than JJ Abrams can't pull this thing off. His storytelling abilities were always– at least to me –insuffcient. Just look at „LOST" and the last installment of „Star Trek". Nobody knows what happened with those stories and neither deserves a second viewing. He is capable to throw in some cool stuff in his movies but he was always unable to dramaturgicaly develop a story and finalize it in a satisfactory manner. And the hype from his fans is mostly damaging for the movie. The same applies for SWTFA. I remember some guy on YT with a T-shirt with a logo „In J.J. we trust". Well, that trust was misplaced. But where to begin? First of all, the biggest issue with this movie is that if you have seen all the trailers you wont have to see the movie. Honestly, there is just a single scene in the movie that wasn't shown in the trailers. The rest is well known. It is sad, because many fans thought that JJ decided to limit the trailers to predictable stuff. But that was all there is. The entire movie. Second thing. The hype, which began some time ago was about the fact that there are not much CGI effects and characters in the movie. But – imagine! – the supreme leader of Nord Kor... I mean First Order is humongous, bad, childish and cartoonish computer generated image in manner of Azog the Defiler form the last Hobbit-Movie. Then, of course we have nacistic imagery which is always effective to show some bad guys, but the speech from General Hitler...I mean Hux at the festive launch of the new Death Star made me laugh. It was so over the top, and a funny copy of Hitlers voice and countenance. Further, we have some under-under-under-used characters like Captain Phasma, who was so cool in the trailer with her silver armor. I thought that she will be the main opponent for some of our heroes but alas. She was captured without a fight and put into a garbage compactor (not shown on screen so maybe she did survive, who knows? Or cares.). Then we have our main bad guy-mister Kylo Ren. What a disappointment! At the beginning of the movie he is really a menacing presence with some new powers of the Dark side, but then we get to know him better and I must say I don't understand him or his motivation. Even the sulking Anakin from the prequels is better defined than this „dark lord". But he had three movies to „develop" his character, maybe we will someday see why Kylo Ren became Kylo Ren. But at first sight, I have no idea how he became evil, or why, or how did the ayatollah...I mean supreme leader manage to bring him to the DSOTF. Furthermore, in this movie we have more of the same stuff from the original trilogy. A planet-destroying weapon. Again. With some Achilles-heel that our heroes might exploit. Again. Some fighter battles. Again. Everything is by-the-numbers and everything we have seen before. So dramaturgicaly it is Episode IV all over again. But on the other side, we have some likable plucky heroes (hmm...again). All in all, it could have been much better.

I haven't read Tom Smiths book Child 44 but the topic of this movie was interesting so I gave it a shot. It is a solid movie with fine performances from the actors but the most interesting thing of the movie is of course a portrayal of Stalin-Era Soviet Union and the treatment of criminals and citizens in it. In this story we see a series of child-murders in an indoctrinated society where there can't be such sick individuals like serial killers. The society's dogma prevents an efficient investigation of the case and it all happens in the time of paranoid hunt for foreign agents and counter-revolutionary elements. The strongest part of the story is the analysis of unjust society, where anything can be declared a treason no matter how powerful a single individual in this system is (as a matter of fact, the only person never accused in any crime in Soviet Union was a General Secretary of the Party. All others were at some time find guilty of something, regardless if this person is a WW2 hero, Army general, MGB general etc). The weak part of the movie is the Holiwoodesque battle of a lonely hero (well in this case he has a wife) against impossible odds. I will not go into detail, but I will say that the killer is killed, the main antagonist in a form of a corrupt MGB officer is also killed and our hero is redeemed in the eyes of the state, which I believe never happened in Stalins SU. Those declared guilty by society have been punished – sent into imprisonment in some camp or executed, because the state was never wrong. All in all, the movie is not bad but if you would like to know more about Stalins State I can recommend two excellent books: Arthur Koestlers „Eclipse at Noon" and from Danilo Kiš „A Tomb for Boris Davidovich".

Funny and illogical movie I didn't have any expectations for this movie because it is not a good sign when the main plot-point is already shown in the trailer. I speak of John Connors enslavement by Skynet. The trailer has shown everything that might have been surprising in the movie. But nevertheless there are bigger problems with this Terminator. First of all - the cast. I was disappointed when I saw that Kyle Reese was played by Jai Courtney. He looks like a supermodel which is unexpected to see in the bleak-postapocaliptic future. Michael Biehn from the original movie was far better choice – hunted and haunted soldier who finds himself against difficult odds. John Connor was played by Jason Clarke, an actor who lacks the charisma for this character. And Sarah Connor was played by beautiful Emilia Clarke which is also an unusual choice because she is supposed to be be tough as nails but she never manages to looks dangerous. As for the movie - the story itself is chaotic and convoluted and looses itself in time-travel paradoxes. I will not try to explain what exactly happened, because to be honest, I have no idea. There were always some serious plot holes about the terminator time travel, and in my opinion only the original movie managed to avoid entanglement in paradoxes. That movie remained linear, logical and hopeless which brings me to our main plot point which I would like to elaborate. We know that time travel was last ace in the hole for Skynet after its defeat by human resistance. We have a superior AI with planetary resources and it managed to build a time travel device. But how is it possible that Skynet didn't know that every tampering with the past can only create a timeline in which it already exists. There can be no change, the fate is set. It was always unavoidable for terminator to go back in time, to be followed by a single resistance member and both of them to meet their end in the past. The only logical explanation is that Skynet didn't try to alter the past but to ensure its existence. In T2 we see that Skynet was a product from the leftovers of the terminator from the future. As for the robots – it was unusual to see T1000 model in the T2 movie. I always thought that the terminator from part one was one last shot for Skynet, the most advanced killing-machine in its arsenal. But then we have a new liquid-metal model. If that things was operational before the resistance stormed the Skynet time machine complex, why didn't Skynet use this model to kill Sarah before her son was born. Ofcouse, because the creator of Terminator, James Cameron didn't plan to expand his story from the original movie. T1000 came later and it was not possible to integrate it in the story without flaws. And I always thought that terminators are self-sufficient programmed units without the need to receive informations during the battle. Time-travel of model T800 from the original movie and T1000 from T2 support this theory. But in this new installement, they have used a Federation-Army approach from Star Wars-The Phantom Menace. When the resistance destroyed the Skynet, all it's terminators went offline, which saved our main characters, by the way, which I found pretty stupid. Also we see T1000 repairs a destroyed T800 with a blob of its liquid-metal. But in T2 it was explained that T1000 cannot form complex devices. An we also see in the end an amalgamation between our terminator hero and some T1000 liquid metal prototypes. In this movie, we have to deal with alternate realities as a result of time-travel which are a convenient plot-device for future installements of the franchise. We see T800 go back into the past. And we don't see T1000 travel, so I have no idea from where it came. From a different timeline? Maybe. T1000 encounters Kyle and it is clear that it awaited him, but how in the world this machine knew when Kyle will arrive is not explained. We then see T800 arrive, ready to kill some punkers and there is our Terminator Hero (Sarah calls him Paps) who was sent to protect Sarah Connor since her childhood. By who, I have no idea. Paps tries to kill T800 and fails, which is no big surprise because he was armed only with 12-gauge shotgun which is not enough to kill a terminator. I wonder how Paps didn't know that this weapon is too weak. He should know what kind od weapon can kill him. He is rescued by Sarah who stops T800 with a large-caliber sniper rifle. Why she didn't kill T800 this way in the first place is not clear. Then we have a showdown with T1000 and our heroes get rid of him easily with the help of acid-trap. We then see that Sarah and Paps have built a time-machine and they only needed a terminators head to make this thing work. How did they manage to build such a device is beyond me. Our heroes then travel to 2017 to try and stop Skynet to go online as a new internet-device called Genisys. There they meet John Connor who has been turned into a terminator T3000 (I hate so many terminators, each and every one more powerful then his predecessor), who is almost unstoppable,because he consists of nano-devices on molecular level, but I don't see why he should be impervious to acid. Our heroes survive, bad guy is destroyed (actually not, because during the end credits we see that some version of Genisys has survived). In my opinion this movie look like it was written by some children-fanboys who tried to cram some cool ideas in the movie and failed to follow the tone of its predecessors, but they only achieved to erase from history Terminator 1 and 2, the best parts of the franchise.

There are some exciting scenes in this installment but it is not enough to save it. As usual, following the latest Hollywood standards the movies in the series are following a downward spiral. Every new movie is weaker than its predecessor. There are some pretty cringe-worthy dialogs in this one, for example (it's not an exact quote) when Katniss wonders that Gale remembers their kiss, he said something like „I will not forget it until I die, perhaps not even then". KMN. I mean, is there a single human being in the world who would say something like that? It is sooo cliché, farrago for teenagers, which in my opinion are today a little bit smarter than that. Or perhaps not. Anyway I hope they will try to fix things in the final sequel.

This film reminds me of „Synecdoche, New York" starring the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. This time we see a process of making a theatre play with all up's and down's of all involved. It is also a look behind the curtain where all the glamour of the stage is revealed as a stressful and repetitive process where the actors sometimes go insane. I will not elaborate much about the story of the movie, many of the scenes have been shot in one take which is a proof for a masterful director. The cast is very strong and Michael Keaton proved he is a serious actor just like his alter ego on the screen. The only weak link in the movie is ending which seemed strange to me, because I do not understand why Birdmans delusions are being present in his daughter. All in all a strong movie, but perhaps not an Oscar material.

I can't believe that I just wrote that this movie is boring but sadly it is the truth. Not a single unexpected thing happens in this installment of a beloved book. Heroes die heroically, villains die like vermin. Or like Germans in Brad Pitt's „Fury". The only exciting scene worth watching is a fight between Sauron and Galadriel, Elrond ans Saruman. Everything that comes after is boring to the extreme. The biggest problem with all this battles of five armies is the lack of a true antagonist. I mean, we all know that the Orcs die like flies, so they are unable to create a true threat for our heroes. The dialogues are shallow an to be honest everything looks like a watered-down version of LOTR. Unfortunately this is a movie not worth a second viewing.

Fooled by the hype, once again. I went to see this movie with high expectations, some movie critics even called it „the most complete movie of a year" (whatever that means). And boyoboy, I was disappointed in the extreme. To be honest, the photography of the movie is captivating at times and the acting is OK, but the story itself is naive and hard to believe. Our „hero" is a sociopathic thief who is trying to find a career for himself. He went to some „help yourself" seminars and quotes motivational slogans half the time he speaks. He discovers the world of nightcrawlers, who film scenes of car accidents and crimes and sell the footage to the highest bidder. First of all, I can't believe that the TV-stations in the USA are ready to pay so much money for gore. I say so much money because our main-guy (I can't call him even a „hero") in a very short time buys some cool racing-car and listening equipment, which is probably worth tens of thousands of dollars. So, to make the long story short, he manages to record a crime in real time, hides some evidence from the police, finds the perpetrators of that crime by himself, and stages a confrontation between the bandits and the police in a place with the possible highest victims-count. Before that, he manages to remove (maybe kill?) his competition by sabotaging their van. He then records the bloodbath with the police, send his partner into death, records everything, gives the police some half-a..ed excuse and gets away with it. And of course he expands his filming business and live happily ever after. If you miss this movie, you won't regret it.

So, we have another time-travel movie. Made after a short story by Robert Heinlein. I can't say this movie is bad, it has something unique, although a little bit perverse. The idea to be your own mother and father looks like some crazy-racial-supremacists wet dream. Eine Mama, ein Papa, ein Volk:). However, the movie avoids to entangle itself into time travel paradoxes. As it seems, everything is in accordance with the idea of time travel and the it's paradoxes, take for example „grandfather paradox". The downside of the movie is it's lack of suspense and the not-so-surprising twists. I read many time-travel stories, and must say that there was not a single thing in the movie that I didn't see coming. The only thing that is bizarre is the fact that John doesn't remember his face when he was a lover of his younger female self. But we cannot expect 100% logic in todays sci-fi cinema. It's one of those see-it-if-you-will-movies. Nothing groundbreaking.

Well. It's difficult to write something about this movie because I don't know where to begin. First of all, I expected a more serious approach to this subject. I didn't expect to see German shock troops to be mow down like a bunch of orcs from LOTR, but whatever. Perhaps there is a reason why the US lost „only" about 400.000 soldiers in that war and Germany ten times more. But in this movie all looks very naive to me, like a script from some first-person shooter. It is above all, a war-glorifying movie. Sacrifices have to be made, and the enemy must be destroyed at all costs. By all means necessary. But, the battles in this movie between remains of the German Army and the US troops are silly. „Zee Germans" seem unable to hit anything with their weapons. Not even from an ambush with their enemies in the open field. A crucial battle between a German Tiger Tank and our heroes is stupid. Or better said the Germans are stupid. At one point in the battle, both crews try to get behind the opponent to hit the weakest point of the tank, but as our heroes are moving to reach the back of the Tiger, the Germans only rotate their turret as if they have no idea of the threat. And they die, of course. Furthermore, the Germans use their infantry weapons (in all stages of the movie) to attack our heroes tank, although it is a futile attempt. Crazy stuff. And the final battle between our heroes and the German SS troops is mind boggling. First of all, we see a SS-battalion (aproxx. 300 soldiers or more), armed with ancient kar98 rifles, machine-gun and couple of anti-tank weapons marching (and singing!) toward our heroes. Our protagonist spots them and runs to warn his friends. He reaches them in couple of seconds so I expected the Germans to be close, but no. Our heroes have time to argue whether they will run away or stay and fight (gues what they decided!) against many ill-equipped enemies. They set up an ambush in their immobilized tank and wait. Pleeeeenty of time to talk some more. Then the hilarity ensues, a battle that has to be seen to be believed! All of a sudden the night falls, everything is on fire, smoke everywhere. Zee Germans run left and right, confused, getting killed. They return fire from their rifles and machine-gun, and – no surprise – they do nothing! Then, after losing dozens of troops, the bad guys decide to use anti-tank weapons. Two of the rockets miss, although they are fired from about 5 meters distance and the third one manages to penetrate the armor and kill a single crew-member. Then our heroes get really mad, they shoot and reload. Shoot, reload. After some time they only shoot, no time to reload! But, there are too many storming Germans. Our heroes die, and the main protagonist survives and is rescued. All's well that ends well.

As a sci-fi fan I must say that I expected more from this movie but as usual the hype was too strong, and it still is, considering the IMDb votes. Some movie critics compared this movie with 2001: Odysee in Space, but it is not so remarkable. I will not say much about the story but there are some classic sci-fi motifs incorporated into it, like themes of dying Earth, exploration of deep space and the ways to do it with simple rockets, wormholes, time-dilatation, time-travel and some humanocentric ending. All these sci-fi (or science) concepts are for themselves fascinating and tantalizing, but the overall result of the movie is underwhelming. It's hard to pinpoint what went wrong, but some ingredient in the movie is missing. Perhaps it was all too much at the same time. On the bright side, the human element of the story is nicely done and we see how much of a sacrifice exploration and distance, both in space and in time, can be. Many things were obvious in the movie, for example betrayal of dr.Mann, and perhaps it should have been done in some different manner. And of course, it is not clear (at least not to me) how and why data from the inside of the black hole helped Humanity to survive doomed Earth. So, all in all we have some mediocre sci-fi movie pretending to have some hard physics in it. Sometimes it is exciting, and at the times it is boring. If you want to see Matthew McConaughey in an excellent sci-fi movie, go see Contact.

X-Men - Days of the Future Past excels in every aspect. It has a clever story (which is a hard thing to do in a time-travel movie), superb action and suspense. Basicaly it is a mixture between the Terminator and Matrix, our heroes try to manipulate the past in order to achieve some better future for the almost-extinct mutants and the oppressed mankind. And the future is grim indeed, and visually fascinating. The mutants have been hunted down because Homo Sapiens in its fight for survival in the evolutionary process managed to create super-robots which are able to confront superpowers. The battle scenes between the Sentinels (robots programmed to hunt down mutants) and the remaining X-Men are stunning. X-Men are facing a lost cause and that way we have some real suspense on the screen. In every battle before, ordinary humans have been only a cannon fodder, but with the sentinels all bets are off. As for the time travel story, our remaining heroes sent Wolwerines conscience in his young body to try to prevent the creation of super robots and perhaps to save a soul of the shape-shifting mutant Raven/Mystique. The story background in the seventies is very cool and of course it is a good thing that we have some different languages in the movie. I always found irritating that in the most movies we don't hear foreign languages, but have bad English with a foreign accent. Nacis are best example for that. This time everything fits together and as a result we have excellent movie. And it is always a pleasure to see Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen share a screen, this time as allies. Go and see it, you will not regret it.

First installment of CA was a very ordinary movie. Thin plot and some generic action scenes. But this time we have something bigger with just a few plot holes. At the beginning of the movie we see Captain in a rescue mission on a ship and all the action scenes look fresh and well thought out. Main story of the movie in interwoven with the events in the series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and it is a nice move from the producers. As for the story I have one objection. The main enemy of Shield, Naci-organization Hydra wants to impose their world view on the USA. They realized that in the WW2 they failed because they tried to do this by force. This time they want to persuade the Americans to do that for them out of free choice. All good but why then did they try to eliminate hundreds of thousands of Americans to achieve that goal? They made the same mistake they tried to avoid, but blame it on Hollywood. Lately, there are many movies with some major plot holes. As for Captains opponent, the Winter Soldier, we have some real nemesis for our captain and hopefully we will see him in the future also. All in all, a solid action/sci fi movie. You will not be bored.

I will not elaborate movie plot in detail, it is a remake of the award winning movie of the same name from 1948, and of course it is a similar story. But I must say that it is a important movie about a forgotten conflict in Chechnya. The reception of the movie was poor in EU and it is clear why. The Director shows the reality of European and Russian politics, the europeans are indifferent to the problems of small oppressed nations in the former SSSR, and reluctant to do anything against the Russian terror. I was surprised to see an European movie which clearly takes sides with the victim and does not try to detach from the conflict, something which has always been popular among the political correct movie-makers, quoting „both sides are equally guilty". And we see a surprising accurate depiction of the training in the Russian army, a traditionally brutal thing. All in all, a must see movie. The truth must be told and the crimes must not be forgotten.

Another movie in the genre of Young Adult Fiction. I haven't read a book, because to be honest, most of these books are written around the same idea: rebellion of the youth coming of age against some form of totalitarian society (read: society of the adults). It is clear why these ideas are so appealing to the teenagers, it is in their nature to be rebellious. We also have obligatory love story, and that's it. Divergent did not blow me away with it's story, but it's far away from awful. The premise is interesting. In some unspecified future we see residents of post-apocalyptic Chicago living within five categories (factions) of people (Abnegation the selfless, Amity the peaceful, Candor the honest, Dauntless the brave, and Erudite the intelligent), according to their character traits. But there are also the Divergent, people without faction, who live outside of society like Untouchlable caste in India. Each 16-year-old person must choose his/her faction and remain there for the rest of life. Our heroine chooses military faction (because they are soooo cool - and irritating) and we see her complete her combat training only to face great conspiracy between leaders of Dauntless and Erudite to seize the power for themselves. She manages to foil this plot and escapes with her friends. What happens now, we will see in an obligatory sequels. My main criticism is the portrayal of the Dauntless faction-army and police force of the city. They are shown as crazy, brave, tattooed, sexy youth and no wonder that they are so appealing to our heroine and young audience. They always run, jump, do dangerous stuff and so on. But even though one of the faction commanders says they train soldiers and not rebels, I wonder. They learn how to fight, of course, and most of the time they look like a bunch of brigands. They repeat the mantra „faction before blood", and not once in the movie I see their loyalty to the society they are bound to protect (against what, remains to be seen). Honestly, they look as coup d'état-in-waiting, but whatever. All in all, not great, not bad.

In 2010, Shireen was stopped at a checkpoint in Jerusalem and asked for her ID."I gave the Israeli soldier my ID. He said that I couldn't pass and have to take a detour. I asked for directions. He screamed suddenly and told me I was under arrest for three hours.

They put me inside a small room near the checkpoint with large windows. Later a jeep came and they transferred me to a Jabal al-Mukaber police station. Someone identified himself as an officer. He didn't mention his name. No charges were mentioned. Only that I'll be transferred to Talpiot police station.

In Talpiot they interrogated me and accused me of owning a knife, which I didn't. I was under arrest for 24 hours and would be transferred to Maskobiyeh Detention Center. They handcuffed and blindfolded me. Later on, I realised I was in an interrogation room. They removed the blindfold.

An interrogator said: 'Welcome, we've been expecting you for a long time.' They confined me in a cell. Soldiers came later and told me I'm going to court which was comforting. I knew if I meet a judge I will be released. I did nothing wrong. They took me blindfolded through long corridors. I heard Palestinian detainees calling upon me to remain strong. I was confused. What do they mean? Was I not leaving?

I was alone in the cell, which I believe was underground. I had to go down a very long staircase to reach it. It was very small to fit a person. It had a pit-toilet and a sleeping mat. The smell was horrible. The walls were grey and made out of pointed stones. I hurt myself several times trying to support my back or head.

The orange lights were kept lit all day. The AC was mostly on with full power. I felt like I was in a fridge. My whole body turned blue from the excess chill.

The iron door had a small slot they used to talk to me. They switched me between two cells. I knew that because the door location changed. Sometimes they'd get me to a new cell with the lights off. I couldn't even see my own hand there. So, when I approached the door or the pit-toilet, I end up hitting the wall. Only then did I know they switched the cell. They made my meetings with the lawyer difficult. They'd make him wait for hours falsely claiming I'm being interrogated. Other times they claimed I refused to meet him without informing me. They left me alone while the lawyer was waiting elsewhere. They'd intentionally sit very close to me. They almost stick their mouth to my ear and shout loud. One day the interrogator unchained me and approached. His face was almost glued to mine. I asked him to give me my space. But he told me: 'We're the ones who decide here. You have no personal space. Who do you think you are?'

I pushed him away. Other interrogators rushed in and started shouting. They hit me, tied my hands and legs and blindfolded me, repeatedly dragging me on the floor and slamming me against the wall. They chained me with a leash and said: 'I dealt with the likes of you before. You're rubbish. You're worthless.'

During interrogation I asked for a Quran, a book, a pen. Anything to feel alive. I said I'm on strike until I get my demands. When I finally got the chance to buy a pen, I was so happy. I felt like a kid on New Year. I started to write down everything I experienced. I wrote about finally buying a shampoo to use in my cell. I described to my mum the scarce smell of hygiene. Being a girl in the interrogation, they know honour and reputation is something we highly value. So, they use it against us. They threatened to rape me. A colonel once came to me in the later stages and called me nasty names. He gave details on sexual positions, and that he'd bring his dog to do those things to me. As if to say we are worthless, not human. That we're worthy of dogs.

The detention with all its horrors had a positive side. It allowed me to experience things that detainees may hide. If I go back to being a lawyer or working with children, the cases won't be rumours I merely hear about. I lived through it."

I must confess that before watching this documentary, I never heard of Alejandro Jodorowski or his movies, or that he wanted to do a movie based on Frank Herberts sci-fi novel „Dune". Being a great fan of Sci-Fi I went to see this documentary and I must confess it is a fascinating movie. It shows Jodorowskys passion about this project, his visions (probably LSD-induced) and the obstacles he faced during the preparation of the movie. He said himself that he wanted to create a mind-changing movie for the entire generation of youth, a movie which induces hallucinations for the viewer without having to take LSD, and in my opinion, that is the core of the entire problem, the cause of his failure. Jodorowsky is a true representative of the avantgarde in the 60's and 70's. It was a generation of people who tried to find some bigger truth and to provoke the establishment, all that with the help of mind-altering drugs, mysticism, lots of sex and horrible fashion, and ultimately they failed. Many movies from this period are violent, disgusting (here I mean sci-fi movies) and bizarre things, which are better left unseen. In this context, Jodorowsky thinks that his movies are deep, challenging and philosophical, but he is wrong. Confusing or strange or sick images are not deep. Bizarre brutality is not challenging of philosophical. It is what it is. The only thing which cannot be disputed is Jodorowsky energy which he uses to convince people that nothing is something. His enthusiasm for his project is great but I cannot perceive his rationale behind his actions, his only criteria for everything is his intuition, which led him to make a bizarre cast for the movie. Enough to begin with Salvador Dali (whose demands were ridiculous) as the Emperor of the Galaxy, then Orson Wells (whose demands were also ridiculous) as baron Harkonnen. These two egos on the stage would have probably never be able to cooperate. He continues with Mick Jagger as Feyd Harkonnen and Dalis muse Amanda Lear as princess Irulan. For the soundtrack he chose Pink Floyd and a group named Magma. From his scenario we can see how he imagined the costumes and it reminds greatly of „Flash Gordon" from 1980. Everything looks bizarre, campy and ridiculous. As for the story, he made some big changes in his script, which were unnecessary in my opinion and did not contribute to the movie at all. He was not ready to make any compromises with anyone so he did not want to cooperate with Douglas Trumbull, the special effects expert from that time, only because he didn't like him. The length of the movie was estimated at 12 hours or more, which scared and banished all the movie companies in Hollywood. And of course, anybody in Hollywood who has seen Jodorowskys other movies would be frightened by a prospect of letting him do a movie without any creative control. All in all, a must-see documentary for all science fiction and „Dune"-fans, which must be grateful Jodorowsky failed to put his vision on the big screen. It would have probably be overlong, campy, bizarre, brutal, frustrating ordeal with lousy special effects, but however it would have become a cult movie (probably impossible to watch sober), if nothing else then for it's strangeness.

This movie is known for its many swear words and nudity, but rest assured it is all with a purpose. It is based on an autobiography of Jordan Belfort (played by excellent Di Caprio), stock market manipulator. I will not elaborate much of the story because it is simple, a story of a self made man from his humble beginnings to his downfall, after some criminal activity, of course. The movie gives splendid presentation of how things work in today's economy and stock market exchange. It is a worrisome and at the same time funny business when you see that many people who rule the economy world are primitive, greedy, lying, manipulative, sinful people with short tempers. They apparently try to enjoy everything life has to offer, without limits. They enjoy drugs on regular basis, alcohol and all kinds of sex. In short, they are in all aspects priests of hedonism. Wherever you have success and money, the face under the make-up is ugly. But the most important scene in the movie, which recapitulates the whole thing, is with Di Caprio and Matthew McConaughey at the beginning where things are explained in short. Everything is a game without any meaning. The only goal is to make naive people give your their money and in exchange they receive the illusion that this money exists somewhere multiplied many times. As long they feel rich, they are rich. When they try to cash this money, the moment has arrived to deliver them from their illusion. Go see the movie, it will be informative and you will not regret it.

I hoped this would be solid movie and I was not wrong. It is based on a Japanese novel which explains fresh approach in the time-travel concept. The premise of the movie is simple: Earth has been invaded by some alien life-form (called Mimics and remind of sentinels form Matrix) and the Humanity is losing. Almost all of Europe has been conquered and the United Defence Forces are preparing one final big offensive, something like landing in Normandy to reclaim European mainland. Our main protagonist, William Cole played by Tom Cruise, is some kind of military journalist/PR expert who is send to be embedded reporter in the front line. Being a complete coward, he tries to avoid being sent into the combat force but he gets arrested and forcefully drafted. The invasion itself is a total disaster and our „hero" dies within minutes. But before he dies, he accidentally manages to kill alien alpha soldier, which obviously has some kind of special ability, because he wakes up a day before the invasion and repeats the same day over and over. On the battlefield he meets a Hero of human forces Sgt.Rita Vrataski (played by Emily Blunt), the woman who managed to defeat the aliens in one battle and she recognizes what happened to him. The Mimics have a power to rewind time each time when some alpha soldier is killed, and after a contact with one Cole has acquired this ability. Rita had this power before, but she lost it after her winning battle. She wants to use Coles ability to train him so that they will be able to find Omega-alien, mind which controls the entire invasion. Training is brutal and difficult, because our protagonist is really not a soldier and we see why he doesn't want to go into battle. He dies time and again, many time funnily. He tries to reach that alien over-mind and at the same time to save Vrataski from a certain death, which is – as it seems – an impossible mission (no pun intended). The chemistry between Cole and Vrataski is superb, and never feels forced. Luckily, the director has chosen not to overdo the romantic relation between our heroes, everything is hinted at. The ending of the movie is somewhat weaker and not logical, but that's OK, it's a time-travel story and it's difficult to avoid paradoxes.

The hardest thing to review is a mediocre movie. Horrible and excellent movies are easy, because the motivation for a review is high. But with modest movies there is nothing special to say about them. It is possible too see them once in a lifetime and forget them immediately. I had some high hopes about this installment of Spiderman and it failed to meet them. The movie itself is in my opinion too long and most of that time was wasted as a filler. There were many new things introduced in the movie but everything seemed rushed and uninspired. We have two new villains, Electro and Green Goblin. The birth of Electro is somewhat funny, because he was bitten by radioactive electric eel (Not radioactive spider, mind you! Eel!). He hates Spiderman, because he used to love him and he got disappointed later. Green Goblin is born when Harry Osborne injects himself with some kind of radioactive spider poison. And we see him on screen for entire five minutes. Spiderman manages to defeat his enemies at the end after a bombastic fight full sound and fury, but at great price. Then we have setting for a new villains in the future, Black Cat and Rhino which seemed ever more rushed then the first two villains (especially Rhino, it's unbelievable how did they introduced him in the end)and we will see what will happen with them in future movies. All in all, a generic uninspired superhero story, more like a prequel for some future blockbusters. Go see it, you will lose only 140 minutes of your life. And you will gain not much.

It's an allegory, of course. The movie, I mean. It was meant to be an example of how the mankind behaves, and truth be told, I think the movie-makers did get some things right, all the plot-holes aside. It is in human nature to make an unjust society which recklessly ignores the biotope in which it lives. The history is full of such examples, whether we see the situation among the people in prison or among the people in most technologically advanced society in the world. The principle is always the same, those who have the power, tend to keep it in their hands, and those without it tend to rebel against such a society, and more often such rebellions fail. Those which succeed, turn into the same thing people rebelled against. The poor are being exploited and sacrifices so that the rich minority can live in luxury. But now for the movie. Where to begin? It has so many plot-holes and many of those have been in detail analyzed by other reviewers. I will only try to point out some bigger problems. First of all, why train? They could have make the entire thing happen in some underground bunker and everything would be much more logical. This train is perpetually running through the frozen rail tracks, to what end? Nobody repairs those tracks, the train is an isolated ecosystem, or so we are told so there is no need to be on the move. The could just stop and nothing would change. Next thing is a question, why the need the people from the last carriage? They don't contribute with anything accept they eat cockroach-energy-bars. Of course, their children are being taken away but all the same, the people in the last carriage are not necessary. Then we have those cockroach-bars, but where in the world have they found all those roaches? They need probably thousands each day. Then we have that garden with couple of trees but it is not enough to sustain the entire drugged, partying population of the rich. The same goes for the aquarium. And the ending! The ending. The train is destroyed and only a teenage girl and a little boy survive the crash, and go outside to face uncertain future. Or, better said, certain death. They have nowhere to go, nothing to eat. They even see a polar bear, who will probably attack and eat them. They are the last two surviving human beings in the world, as far as the viewer knows from the movie. Even if they could procreate (they can't, because the generation gap is too big) it is a too small a number to restart the humanity. So. After decades of train ride, the humanity finally goes bye-bye.

P.S.I gave it four stars, because the movie itself was not boring which is something I can't say for a majority of the movies today.