The best Czech film of the year, sex with a car and Prague on Netflix. What to look for in the fall?
Is the series and film season starting again, or has it never ended? With the following selection, you won’t waste time looking for what to do. You will be sure and we will promise that you will not even remember that you want to go through the messages on your phone while watching.
Scenes from married life (on HBO GO)
Ingmar Bergman’s 1973 drama sparked a wave of divorce for the first time, with a new five-part American version starring Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain as a divorcing couple, probably led primarily by a wave of annual awards.
Expect a very intimate immersion into the various phases of one relationship, spreading through several massive dialogue passages in which he loves, hurts, dissects, intricately “breaks down”, and then finds out that after years together, you can’t just erase the other.
The Israeli creator Hagai Levi has reversed the traditional gender roles in the one who starts cheating or who earns more than the original. Unlike the Swedish classics, it also sometimes squeaks a little thundishly in the dialogues, which is less written about. Still, it’s another hit from HBO, although especially after the fourth episode, you won’t understand why anyone would divorce Oscar Isaac.
Titan (currently in cinemas)
In Cannes this year, he won the main prize, the Golden Palm, a film in which a dancer with a titanium plate has sex with a car in her head, after which she sets out to kill with a needle in her hair.
You don’t even need to know more about the film by director Julie Ducournau, but rather prepare for a formally refined range of sharp body scenes, which he wants to shock, surprise and not explain in order to turn into a peculiarly felt family drama in the second half.
Although some of the spectators consider Titan to be an empty maneuver, be sure that you will never look at the gear lever in the same way again.
Power struggle (on HBO GO)
There aren’t many series, the middle second series would surpass the already great first series, but the fight for power is one of them.
The saga of a wealthy family, whose media patriarch decides to resign from the leadership of a giant conglomerate, reigns in the intrigues, money and failures of the provoked elite.
At the same time, however, it serves as a satire on the current media and political landscape – many others in the Roy family, in which he fights for succession in the billion-dollar company, see the clan of former US President Donald Trump.
Perhaps this dive into the terrarium of the richest will be as cleverly mischievous as before.
My Sun Mad (in theaters from October 21)
Michaela Pavlátová’s animated film My Sun Mad about life in Afghanistan comes to cinemas at a time when the Middle East is being talked about more than ever.
But this film doesn’t need to be pushed through current real events at all. In the story of the Czech Helena, who marries into a large Afghan family in which feelings with traditions are beating, there are universal themes that Pavlátová can present with sober feeling.
The film, which was made several years in the Czech Republic and France and won juries at the Annecy festival, does not need to teach or save a prize through its characters, as it respects the complexity of life in its apparent simplicity.
It’s actually pure work. Forget Zátopek, this is the best Czech film of the year.
Invasion (on Apple TV + from October 22)
The Apple TV + video library is wasting tens and tens of millions of dollars this year, as if it weren’t frosting. After the adaptation of the sci-fi classic Isaac Asim’s Foundation, which did not completely catch on, he will try it with another expensive spectacle.
The invasion will follow five ordinary people scattered around the planet on which the aliens are turning. According to the first examples, it doesn’t look like a thunderous blockbuster from the rank of the recent War of Tomorrow with Chris Pratt.
The invasion is more about characters and atmosphere. Perhaps Apple TV + mainly manages to break its curse, which lies in the fact that quality content, about which no one.
The last duel (in cinemas from October 21)
While we baked banana sandwiches during the lockdown, Eighty-three-year-old Ridley Scott completed two large, complete films. In a magnificent morality from 14th century France, two knights, played by Matt Damon and Adam Driver, will meet.
The wife of one of them, already playing Jodie Comer, accuses the other of rape. According to the first reviews, the massive film, written for the first time by Good Will Hunting by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, is based on the perspective of several characters and is one of Scott’s best films.
If it doesn’t work out, his second film, The Gucci Clan, will premiere in November, starring the Italian accent Lady Gaga.
Army of Raiders (on Netflix from October 29)
Although the horror Army of the Dead by Zack Snyder did not come up with better ideas than the “zombie tiger” this year and had to rely on Dave Bautista’s tragic acting, it was still one of the biggest stream hits.
In a prequel called The Army of Robbers, the focus is on Cassarius Dieter, played by Matthias Schweighöfer, who sets out to conquer safes in Europe when the world is not looking for zombies.
The samples promise a fresh team shot during the lockdown in forty days completely in the Czech Republic, so you will see Prague trams or Tonya Graves in it. Films were also made in Slapy, in Mariánské Lázně, in Vraný nad Vltavou or in the Quarry of America.