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Reviews
Mazaný Filip (2003)
Terrible! One of the worst films I've ever seen.
I was really excited to see Mazany Filip, wanting to see a comic Czech take on American film-noir, hard-boiled detective movies. Unfortunately, there was nothing funny about this movie. The directing, pacing, and acting were all terrible, slow, and boring, and *none* of the "jokes", visual or verbal, were in the least funny. Here and there they would try slapstick in the style of the Zucker brothers (Airplane, Naked Gun, etc.), but these failed miserably. I can only go by the English subtitle translation of the script, but it was repetitive and stupid. A host of otherwise good (I'm told) Czech actors had their little cameo set pieces (a screaming film director, a crazy doctor at the sanitarium, etc.), which were even less funny than a Saturday Night Live sketch, if you can imagine it. To portray a black character, they put a white guy in minstrel-show blackface, complete with white lips, curly 'fro wig, and "ol' Southern black guy" accent. My Czech friend who came with me also thought it was terrible, so it can't be only a case of cultural differences. I recommend that you definitely don't waste your money or time on this pathetic film.
Black Hawk Down (2001)
Thinking of seeing this movie? RETREAT!
Seeing this movie was two or three or seventeen of the most excrutiatingly horrible hours of my life. Besides being so disgustingly violent that I nearly felt ill, director Scott uses the same cinematographic and directorial tricks he did in Gladiator -- can't he think of anything new? The wooden script is also full of offensively "patriotic" rhetoric that made me sicker than the physical blood and gore (of which there's plenty, don't worry).
Thousands of Somalis die, but they're just nameless "skinnies" (the derogatory term the U.S. soldiers use), while the 19 American soldiers who died in this tragedy of errors are practically martyred. And, as we learn from a sappy, leaden monologue, soldiers don't fight for politics or heroism, but just for "the guy next to you". Yeah, tell that to all the Somalis they fill full of lead.
Ugh, what a terrible movie. Not only will I never get that time back, but now I have to try to get to sleep with visions of severed hands and half-blown up men dancing in my head.