Cod(d)ed

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

                I accidentally learned of a novel named "C" reading some newspaper. The brief description intrigued me so I decided to read it. It was only later that I found out who is Tom McCarthy and that the particular novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2010. I'm no expert on modern literature, and never even heard of the other contestants but must say I'm puzzled as to why "C" has such high acclaim.

A multitude of drops

★★★★★★★★★☆

                Every once in a while there comes a movie which strives to break the boundaries of cinema and storytelling and go beyond the limits of our imagination. Those movies provide unique viewing experience and leave marks on your heart as well as your mind. Just from watching the extended trailer (probably the best I've ever seen) it was apparent that the latest work from directors Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer falls into that category. It is a movie called "Cloud Atlas", just like the book written by David Mitchell which it's based upon.

Love and devotion

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

                Reading "Marina" I finally managed to find a downside to Carlos Ruiz Zafón's work. He's building all of his novels on same foundations of mystery and horror, and they evolve in a same way discovering grand and tragic destinies of figures from the recent past which reflect in main characters' stories. To be clear, Zafón is doing it all with great skill, making it impossible to put the book down. It's just that it becomes repetitive reading the (almost) same story over and over again.

The movie is fake. The mission is real.

★★★★★★★★☆☆

                The line between fiction and reality is nowadays often blurred, with television and newspapers assaulting people with all kind of half-checked information, so it's refreshing to see a piece of work that makes clear distinction between the two. And it's even better that it does so by mixing them together.

Death at the beginning, sadness in the end

★★★★★★★★★☆

                "The Casual Vacancy", J.K. Rowling's first non-Potter work and probably this year's most anticipated novel, finally found its way to my hands, and I must say I'm very glad it did. As an adult fan of Harry Potter books, I couldn't wait to read her first adult novel and, obviously, had high expectations of it. It didn't disappoint.

Living under the influence

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

                "Les maîtres de l'orge" (a literal translation would be "The Masters of the Barley" but the books are not yet translated to English), written by Jean Van Hamme and drawn by Francis Vallès, is one of the most lauded Franco-Belgian comic book (popularly called Bande dessinée or BD) series. It is a chronicle of the Steenfort family, one of the largest beer manufacturers in Belgium, spanning more than 140 years, from 1854 to 1997. It is told through eight episodes, the first seven bearing names of the most important family members and telling the story chronologically with gaps of twenty to thirty years between them, and the eighth one bearing the family name and filling out those gaps.

The sacrifice of an egoist

★★★★★★★☆☆☆

                Ralph Fiennes, a famous British actor, recently decided to step behind the camera. For his debut he chose an adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy "Coriolanus". It's a story of Roman general Caius Martius and his downfall. Martius is a member of Roman high society who looks down upon common people considering them a primitive, uneducated mob. After a victory over his arch-nemesis Tullus Aufidius from the Volscian army for which he is given a title "Coriolanus", Martius runs for Consul. But some of the tribunes don't have it in their best interest for him to be elected so they decide to use his well known contempt for people and short temper, and pit him against those who must acknowledge him as a consul, leading to his banishment from Rome. Once banished, his resentment for Rome grows so big he goes to Aufidius and offers him help in conquering the city.

The end is the beginning

★★★★★★★★☆☆

                It has been fifty years since "Dr. No", the first James Bond movie came out, and to celebrate that anniversary we have before us twenty-third installment in the series, "Skyfall". For the first time in the hands of an Oscar winner (Sam Mendes), new Bond has a list of very respectable names attached to it. First draft of the screenplay was written by Peter Morgan while one of the authors of the final version is John Logan. The music is written by Thomas Newman, and Roger Deakins was handling the cinematography. The cast is surely one of the best ever, with Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Albert Finney and Ben Wishaw. And of course, there's Sam Mendes at the helm. Having liked the previous two Craig's Bond movies and looking at that list of names, I was really convinced that this could be the best Bond ever. After watching it I'm not that convinced anymore.

Fragments of ourselves

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

                What is more important, a theme of the movie or how it is presented? That's what I wondered after watching Leos Carax's latest picture "Holy Motors". It's a movie without classical narrative but it seems to talk of many things. In it we see a man named Oscar, driven through the streets of Paris in a big limousine, assume many different roles as a part of his job. He becomes an old woman, a motion-capture actor, a dying man and a head of the family of monkeys amongst else, each of his roles having another kind of story, conveying diverse emotions and different messages. In between his roles Oscar changes clothes and make-up, talks with his chauffeur, gets a visit from who seems to be his employer, and has a chance meeting with his former love.

The appeal of horror

★★★★★★★★★☆

                The horror genre lost its originality years ago. With the exception of few refreshing movies ("The Descent", "[Rec]", "Amer", original "Saw"), it's comprised of remakes, sequels, and multiple reiterations of the same themes done in the same way. Yet people still watch horrors. It's like there's some kind of need for brutality and gruesomeness. Can it be that getting scared and seeing other people die makes us feel more alive? "The Cabin in the Woods", a new horror directed by Drew Goddard from a script by himself and Joss Whedon, seems to think so and takes that premise to the extreme.

The levels of understanding

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

                "Cesare deve morire" ("Caesar Must Die") is the latest movie from brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, experienced (both over 80 years old) Italian directors and screenwriters. In February 2012 it won the Golden Bear, the main prize of the Berlin International Film Festival, and a very strong reception from the audience which seems to continue. So what's it about? Some time ago a friend told the Taviani brothers about the great experience she had watching a play in a small theatre in Rome and so they went to visit it. They went there, loved the actors, and decided to film them creating another play, Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar". All of that doesn't sound like something special but there's a catch. The theatre is in fact in Rebibbia, a high-security prison, and all of the actors are convicts sentenced for various crimes and to a various amount of time (some even for life). That's the most peculiar but also the most problematic thing about this movie.

Connecting the dots

★★★★★★★☆☆☆

                "El Prisionero del Cielo" ("The Prisoner of Heaven") is third in a series of four novels, written by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, telling the story about 20th century Barcelona, its people and its secrets. To write about the story would be unfair to those that haven't yet read any of the books so I will try to steer away from it. What is interesting about this book is that it brings together characters from the first two books and makes everything even more connected. The main characters of the series are the Sempere family: Sempere Sr., his wife Isabella, their son Daniel and his wife Beatriz, as well as Daniel's friend Fermín Romero de Torres and a writer named David Martín. How are they all connected is best you find out for yourselves. Nevertheless, I won't spoil anything if I say one of the key places in the story is the Sempere & Sons bookshop. That shows the importance that books have in the series and hints to a kind of meta-quality of it. But I should get back to the specific book.

The (in)effectiveness of action

★★★★★★★★☆☆

                "Despite possible coincidences with the reality, this movie is a work of fiction." This is a disclaimer at the beginning of "Tropa de Elite 2 - O Inimigo Agora É Outro" ("Elite Squad: The Enemy Within"), a sequel to the fantastic "Tropa de Elite". It also constitutes the first difference between the movies. While most of the crew stayed the same, including director Padilha, screenwriter Mantovani and former BOPE member Pimentel, they didn't film real life inspired events like in the first movie. Although, one can easily assume what the sequel depicts isn't far from the reality. The other difference is that in "Tropa de Elite 2" the focus moves from the BOPE unit to the politics.

The repercussions of (in)action

★★★★★★★★★★

                From October 2nd to October 6th 1997, Pope John Paul II visited Brazil for the fourth time. Since his first visit in 1980 the social inequality has grown exponentially and the safety conditions deteriorated. But as we all do, Rio de Janeiro tried to show itself in better light. Homeless families and children have been temporarily cleared off the streets and Pope's safety was entrusted to more than 20,000 detectives, military police officers and soldiers, amongst whom were the members of Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais (Special Policial Operations Battalion) better known as BOPE. BOPE is a special unit of military police concerned mainly with battle against organized crime and famous for its incorruptibility unlike the rest of the police.

Fifteen minutes of fame

★★★★★★★☆☆☆

                "He'arat Shulayim" ("Footnote") is an Israeli 2012 Oscar contender, a 2012 Cannes screenplay award winner, and altogether a very highly praised movie. It tells a story about Eliezer and Uriel Shkolnik, a father and son, both Talmud scholars but with different amounts of public recognition. Eliezer devoted all of his life to comparing different versions of the Talmud but never published anything since his colleague beat him to it leaving as his greatest achievement a footnote in his mentor's book. On the other hand, his son Uriel wrote a lot of books on all kind of subjects and got praise for all of them. As a matter of fact, the movie opens with Uriel getting accepted to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the honor which his father never got, and it's immediately clear that Eliezer doesn't take it well. The plot thickens when Eliezer finds out he won the Israel Prize, the most prestigious national award, after 16 consecutive failed nominations, and Uriel learns that it is he who should get it and his father got notified by mistake.

Adventures of the spirit

★★★★★★★★☆☆

                In 1977 Italian comic book author Attilio Micheluzzi started creating his most extensive work, a comics series called "Petra chérie" which was being published until 1982, reaching a total of 24 small episodes. The main character of the comics is Petra de Karlowitz, a young women living in the neutral Netherlands during the First World War. First eleven episodes tell mutually unrelated stories from her life, showing how she helped the Allied forces in every way she could, trying to maintain her identity hidden in the process to be able to stay on good terms with the Germans and Austrians. While in the first half of the series we get to know Petra, see her virtues and flaws, how she thinks and acts, in a sequence of unrelated situations, in the second half Micheluzzi creates a continuing story which takes Petra from Italy all the way to Soviet Russia, visiting many countries in between, and shows us how she changes and evolves during that journey.

To be, or not to be, that is the question

★★★★★★★★☆☆

                "Looper" is a new action Sci-Fi getting overwhelmingly positive reviews and comments and even named movie of the year by some, which is pretty unusual for a movie of that genre. Written and directed by Rian Johnson, it tells of a world where time-travel was invented and immediately prohibited but is still used by criminal organisations. When they need to get rid of someone they send him 30 years in the past when an assassin kills him. Those assassins are called loopers and we follow the story of one of them, a guy called Joe. Joe is the youngest looper but he does his job without mistake. That is, until he has to kill his older self. You see, in the future they started hunting old loopers and sending them back to their younger selves with a big payment. That is called "closing the loop" and essentially means early retirement. So Joe finds himself closing his loop but things go amiss and older Joe escapes. The criminal organization led by a man from the future named Abe immediately starts searching for Joe, Joe searches for his older self, and older Joe searches for the Rainmaker, a mysterious figure who rules by iron fist in the future and gave away an order to kill all loopers, but is just a little child in 2042.

Say you, say me, say him

★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆

                Many speak of "Savages" as Oliver Stone's return to form. It certainly looks that way at first glance. Gritty, violent story about Chon and Ben, two drug dealers trying to rescue their mutual girlfriend O from the hands of the Mexican mafia powered with such stars as John Travolta, Benicio Del Toro and Salma Hayek as well as youngsters Blake Lively, Taylor Kitsch and Aaron Taylor-Johnson in leading roles. But then I became sceptical. Oliver Stone hasn't made a noteworthy movie (documentaries aside) for more than fifteen years and the other writers don't have appealing resumes (one of them, Don Winslow, is also the author of the book which the movie is based on, but writing a good book doesn't mean you can write a good screenplay). Still, I couldn't help hoping this one would be a hit so I went to watch it.

Learning to read

★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆

                There are many books about World War II and the Holocaust and of course, they can't all be good ("Jeder stirbt für sich allein" by Hans Fallada, translated as "Every Man Dies Alone" or "Alone in Berlin", comes to mind as an example of a great one). But when I came across one with the story of a little girl learning to read and developing a special relationship with the books in the middle of Germany during WW2 and when I found out Death appears in it not only as the end of life but also as a character, I was intrigued and eager to read it. Some 500 pages later it turns out it's not as good as it sounds.

Shame

★★★★★★★★★★

                "Shame", a new film by British director and screenwriter Steve McQueen tells the story of a troubled young man struggling with himself in a big city. Brandon is in his mid-thirties. He has a boring but probably pretty safe job in some office, the nature of his work not being relevant. He's a lonely guy. The only two persons in his life are his sister, who comes from out of town with no place to stay and is as troubled as he is, and his wife-cheating boss, who gets drunk and sleeps with his sister. Brandon is a sex addict. He spends every available moment masturbating or having sex with whomever he can. The problem is he doesn't enjoy it. It's a pain and torture to him, almost as if he's punishing himself for something.

A farewell to getting high

                And so it came to an end. After eight seasons (it started back in 2005) "Weeds" concluded its run. I won't try to make some kind of review of the whole series here for it would be impossible. There are more than a hundred episodes and some of them I watched so long ago I can't even remember them. I just wanted to bid this series farewell with a few words.

All is fair in love and war

★★★★★★★★☆☆

                Lebanon, 1940. The country is part of the Levant states controlled by French. Since the France has fallen in Hitler's hands and started collaborating with the Axis, the newly formed so called Vichy government came into power in the France and in the Levant as well. The Axis sent the delegation consisting of German and Italian soldiers to monitor the disarming of French forces. But there are also Gestapo officials, who aren't on good terms with the army, present and French rebels led by General Charles de Gaulle are hiding nearby. Of course, those areas are populated by a lot of Arabs and Jews also and, while the Jews are forced to keep low profile, the Arabs conspire against them. As if the situation isn't complicated enough, a rich and famous American woman comes to Beirut to help smuggle a Jewish professor to Palestine. In the midst of all that stands amoral, shady and selfish character by the name of Marcel Labrume.

Love is all you need

★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

                What would you do if the world was to end in three weeks? Who would you spend your last days with? Those are the questions asked by "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World", a new romantic movie starring Keira Knightley and Steve Carell. As the asteroid approaches the Earth and the world as we know it approaches its end Dodge (Carell) meets his neighbour Penny (Knightley) and goes on a road trip with her. During the trip they will meet some unusual characters, get to know themselves and each other and of course, fall in love. Pretty much standard road trip, at least in movies. Except it shouldn't be.

The Eternal Woody

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

                Woody Allen's latest movie, "To Rome With Love", continues his tour around Europe (London, Barcelona, Paris) bringing us to the capital of Italy, The Eternal City. It's envisioned as a collage of four separate stories taking place in Rome. The themes which the stories explore are classical Woody. Love, fame, culture, sex, art, fear of death, insecurity and lots more. The problem is, although nearly every Allen's movie tells the same (or similar) story, they're not all equally good. And this one isn't one of his better works.

The Hope

★★★★★★★★☆☆

                And so it came to an end. Nolan began his Batman trilogy in 2005 and we've waited seven years for the conclusion. The main question is, of course, does it deliver? And the answer is yes...and no. So let's explain that.

The Chaos

★★★★★★★★★★

            In my review of "Batman Begins" I wrote that it is as realistic as a superhero movie gets to be. I guess I was wrong. "The Dark Knight" takes everything up a notch. The stakes stay the same, the future of Gotham and the lives of its citizens, but the chaos and panic now spread beyond just the Narrows as the people all over Gotham become aware of the threat.

The Fear

★★★★★★★★★☆

          With "The Dark Knight Rises" currently in theaters I decided to revisit first two parts of Nolan's trilogy before watching the final one. Naturally I began with "Batman Begins", watching it for at least fifth time (I can't remember the exact number, but it's one of those movies I feel a need to watch every now and then).

All for fun, no fun for anyone

★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

                "Les Trois Mousquetaires" by Alexandre Dumas is probably one of the most frequently adapted novels and inspiration for numerous movies throughout the last hundred years. With so many adaptations, one gets suspicious when there's another one in the works. It must show something new, take an original approach to the story, and be great at it, to justify another adaptation. And so came "The Three Musketeers" from director Paul W. S. Anderson, known mostly for his Resident Evil movies. The approach he chose is an action-comedic one. Action, humor and CGI, those seem to be Anderson's musketeers. As the fourth one we can put in Milla Jovovich's (Anderson's wife) décolleté. But the musketeers disappoint.

Versailles uncovered

★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

                Most of the movies set in and around the Versailles, in the time when it was still the residence of the French kings, show the building and its inhabitants in all their glory and splendor, but there are always those who take a different approach. "Les adieux à la reine" ("Farewell, My Queen"), latest movie from French director and screenwriter Benoît Jacquot, falls in the latter category. It's based on the book of the same name by Chantal Thomas, French historian and writer, and guides us through Versailles from 14th to 16th of July 1789. Those were hard days for the monarchy. 14th of July 1789 is the day the Bastille fell, which marks the beginning of the French Revolution. But Jacquot isn't interested in politics as much as in reactions of unsuspecting Versailles denizens. What we see aren't the lush and wondrous chambers and halls but rather the small, concealed and poor ones. The characters we meet are mostly servants and lower class nobility, wondering through that "other" Versailles in shock and horror, debating on news and gossip about what's happening in Paris and wondering about their uncertain fates. Amidst all of that is Sidonie Laborde, queen's reader and the main character of the movie. She seems to be the only one who's not concerned by her own fate but by that of the person that means everything to her, the queen. Sidonie worships queen and would do anything for her, but the queen, although somewhat intimate with her, holds that kind of feelings for another woman, Duchess Gabrielle de Polignac.

Got a minute?

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

                A study on The World Distribution of Household Wealth by the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University from 2006 showed that 2% of world population hold more than 50% of global wealth. The inequality is staggering, but most of the people really don't think that much about it. But what if the wealth was measured by the years, months, days, hours, even minutes of our lives? It's an interesting idea examined by Andrew Niccol in his latest movie "In Time". In the movie, people are genetically engineered to stop aging at 25 and get one more year after that. But the time they get is also a currency. They have to work to get it more and pay bills with it. Of course, some things always remain the same, so there's small number of people who can practically live forever and a large number of those who don't know if they'll survive another day. It should be noted that the exchange of time between two people is fairly easy. They simply hold each other's forearms and the time flows from one to the other. The direction of the flow depends on whose forearm is up and whose down. It's obvious that it makes stealing a lot easier so the rich ones need even greater protection than they need in this world. So the world (we see only north America but it's safe to assume it applies to the whole world) is divided in time zones, from the ghettos to the zones where the "immortals" live. Traveling between zones isn't illegal but is extremely rare. Every zone has its border and the price you have to pay to enter and there aren't many who can afford it, and the rich ones don't travel but live in the safety of their time zone. Different currency asks for different control system and so we're introduced to the Timekeepers, some sort of police whose job is to keep track of time and make sure each time zone has the assigned amount of time. (Now thinking about it, definitely not the job for the White Rabbit.)

Living incomplete

★★★★★★★★☆☆

                Yesterday we had a real treat at our local cinema. Director Etienne Faure came to introduce his new movie called "Désordres" (its international title is "Chaos", although a literal translation would be "Disorders"). The movie was finished just a couple of weeks ago and that was one of the first showings. "Désordres" tells the story about a seemingly ideal family who moved from Paris to the country, to escape the madness of the big city and come close to the nature. The husband, Vincent, is a professor of geography and history and gets a job at a local school. His wife, Marie, is a well-known pianist who quit playing at a young age and now has nothing to do but take care of their son. Not long after they settle in their new house their lives start to change with the intrusion of Thibaut, one of Vincent's students.

And though your soul it can't be bought, your mind can wander

★★★★★★★★★☆

                I recently finished reading "Schwindel. Gefühle", translated in English as "Vertigo", by W. G. Sebald. Original title is an interesting play of words. Put together, as in "Schwindelgefühle", it means "vertigo", but standing for themselves the first word also means "vertigo" while "Gefühle" means "emotions". I found it important to note because the book is filled with emotions, as was I reading it. It took me two tries at reading it to get to the end. At first I couldn't get over the first chapter. The one which tells the story of Henri Beyle, soldier and writer from the beginning of the 19th century. I have a habit of reading books late at night in my bed, before I go to sleep, and trust me when I say this book isn't meant for that kind of reading. It took me from five to ten sentences to fall asleep, and I found it nonsensical and unclear. Still, something that I can't put my finger on told me I should read it. Two or three months passed and, a few days ago, I decided to give Sebald a second chance. And I'm glad I did.

Keep your lights on

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

                "El Príncipe de la Niebla" ("The Prince of Mist") is the first novel by acclaimed Spanish writer Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Originally published in 1993, it was marked as a "young adult novel". The story which unfolds through its pages is one of friendship, growing up and first love, but also of magic, evil and fear. Running away from second world war, young Max and his family come to a seemingly idyllic small village on the Atlantic coast. But Max senses something's wrong right from the beginning when he realizes that the old clock at the train station goes backwards.

Happiness is an inside job

★★★★★★★☆☆☆

                Norwegian movie called "Sykt lykkelig" ("Happy Happy") tells the story of two couples. Kaja and Eirik rent a house to Elisabeth and Sigve. And madness ensues. Kaja and Eirik don't have the greatest relationship. They haven't had sex for over a year, Eirik wipes his lips after kissing Kaja and prefers watching men wrestle to spending time with his wife. It pretty soon becomes clear that he is gay but isn't able to admit it to her, or to himself. In spite of it all Kaja wants to be happy and tries as much as she can. When Elisabeth and Sigve, seemingly perfect couple, arrive, it makes Kaja more happy and more miserable at the same time. But things aren't as they seem. Elisabeth cheated on Sigve and their relationship is in a crisis too. Next thing you know, practically everybody tries to hit on everybody and at the end of it all they're back at the beginning. Almost.

Barroco Tropical

★★★★★★★☆☆☆

                Today I finished reading a book called "Barroco Tropical" (it isn't translated in English yet, but my guess would be it would be called "Tropical Baroque") by Angolan writer and journalist José Eduardo Agualusa. I thought for some time if I should write something about it because I didn't have any idea what to write. I'm no literature expert so I can't say much about the style, the sentences, or the importance of the book for the Angolan or  African literature, or literature in general. And the plot is so convoluted and phantasmagoric it's hard to write anything about it that makes sense. But as you can see, I decided to try.

Twixt

★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

                Failed writer of witchcraft novels named Hall Baltimore comes to a small American city on his book-signing tour. There he meets a local sheriff and finds out about the mass murder that happened some years ago, one murder that happened recently (or so it seems), the clock with seven faces all showing different times and vampire (or not) kids across the lake. He decides to stay and write a new novel about all of that. Helped in his dreams by Edgar Allan Poe and a dead girl, and haunted by the memories of his deceased daughter, he tries to unravel the mysteries surrounding him and find an ending to his story.

The Killer

★★★★★★★☆☆☆

                Have you ever thought about killing people for money? I'm not talking about some macho guy movie stuff, just being an ordinary person who, instead of teaching, selling or working in a factory, kills people to earn his daily bread. A comic book series called "Le Tueur" (The Killer) tells the story of one such person. It's French series consisting of 10 episodes so far written by Matz and drawn by Luc Jacamon. I recently read Croatian translation of first five episodes which we can call "first part" 'cause it concludes the main story.

Rock of Ages

★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

                Let's be clear, this movie was never to be a masterpiece. Nevertheless, it should have been much, much better. Filled with (mostly) corny old songs, clichéd characters and familiar Hollywood names, altogether involved in a silly first chances/last chances story seen hundreds of times before, „Rock of Ages“ had the potential to be fun. Unfortunately, it isn't.

Ain't no sunshine when she's gone

★★★★★★★★☆☆

         It's very hot these days with temperature only rising and, considering I can't stand that kind of heat very well, I'm getting an urge to shoot down the sun. It happens to me every summer. What I don't think of in moments like that, are repercussions of such an act. Without sun, every form of life on this planet would cease to exist. So if the sun was to die, what would you be willing to do to prevent it from happening? That's one of the questions director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland ask in their 2007 sci-fi movie called „Sunshine“.

Exit Wounds

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

                "Exit Wounds" is a comic book (or a graphic novel if you prefer) written and drawn by Israeli artist named Rutu Modan. It's her first comic book and she made quite a break with it receiving accolades all over the world and winning an Eisner award for Best New Graphic Novel in 2008. It tells a story of a young man in Tel-Aviv who finds out his father could be dead and embarks on an investigation to find out what happened to him, accompanied by his father's young girlfriend.

John Carter of...does it really matter?

★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

         The „John Carter“ movie is based on a first book in the series written by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I guess that's the reason some things are left insufficiently explained – that is probably done in the sequels. I haven't read the book „John Carter“ is based on and I'm sure those who have understood everything right from the beginning, but that doesn't mean it is done well. The first part of the movie tries to explain to the viewers too much in too little time. As if that wasn't enough, it does so jumping back and forth in time and between two planets, Earth and Mars. It isn't so confusing as it seems unnecessary. The situation between two colliding fractions on Mars could've been explained through the unfolding story in the movie as it certainly has time for that. Instead it seems director and/or screenwriters decided to explain the story to the viewers in the beginning so they could relax their minds and enjoy action scenes and corny dialogue for the rest of the movie. That is an unfortunate decision but the problems don't stop there.

Hysteria

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

Did you know that vibrator was invented as a disease-curing device? I didn't until I watched "Hysteria", a comedy about battle of the sexes, battle of the classes, non-existent disease, female orgasms and of course, the vibrator (coincidentally invented by a pair of males with different sexual preferences). 

Prometheus?

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

       After 33 years Ridley Scott decided to revisit the universe first created in "Alien", but this time around he decided on a (almost) completely different approach. Unlike the "Alien" which speaks of most primal human emotions, "Prometheus" is more concerned with human thirst for knowledge and answers to eternal questions. What is our purpose? Is there God? Is there extraterrestrial life? As all of you who watched the movie could see, it answers only part of this questions.The rest of them are likely to be answered in the inevitable sequel, but that's not of concern here. It's important to note that in spite of philosophical questions, "Prometheus" is mainly a science fiction movie, and like in most sci-fi movies, visuals and action play great part in it. So it's a movie that should work on many levels. Unfortunately it only works on some.