JakubDobos Reviews

Dune: Part Two (2024)

After 5 hours and 21 minutes of Dune 1 & 2 combined, I still have no idea what's going on

[1/10 · 18 April 2024]

Going fresh from finishing Dune part two, I'll let this be a continuation of my review of part one.

It's visually a very amusing movie, starts of fresh, with at least some amount of story.

The expectations are high (compared to 2/10 I gave part one). And they keep being high, for like 3/4 of the movie.

And at that point you start giving up. You realize there's no big reveal coming. Nothing unexpected, or at least resembling a story that evolves.

When I've been so critical in part one, mainly because of the huge cliffhanger it ends on, my friend said: "just you wait for part two"

Well I did, and I still can't see the appeal.

0/5 for a movie that tried, but was over hyped, and a proof that you can't turn a bad book into a good movie.

Invalid (2023)

Good writing goes miles

[9/10 · 19 July 2023]

I accidentally left this movie out for a long time, and I'm happy I gave it a try not a week after finishing Vedma (2023) a fantasy series brought down by lousy writing.

This movie hits amazingly. The Wes Anderson vibe is feelable in the styling, scenography and music, however the theme that roots in something very known to our culture has its gist of originality.

Only two, two small cringey moments in the whole movie. And even those were followed by a mouthful of laughter. That's amazing, and Dusicka did a great work with the script.

Starting a movie in medias res is brave. But even though the storyline is kinda all over the place, it's still easy enough to follow by anyone (I'd eyeball 12+ years of age).

The choice of locations is marvelous. Doing a movie rooted at the turn of the century is logistically a challenge, but we all know how most our buildings and public services got modernized, right?

What really resonated with me was the occasional kick or two at the inability of the gov't to "fix the bloody pavement" (make everything wheelchair accessible).

Even though I watched this movie alone, I was applauding in the end.

First seeing The Swan - a short, at a film festival, I loved the visuals. It's apparent that's one of Karásek's strong suits, another one being the choice of crew (mainly writing, camera, lighting, but also the location guys) and cast (they all play their parts marvelously, and I wondered multiple times, why I never noticed the main actor before (that's a good thing if you mostly get the same female and male stars every year).

With very little to kick at here, this movie deserves your attention, if you're coming from a Socialist turned "Democratic" country, and want a good police/detective mystery, while you're at it.

9/10.

Vedma (2023– )

Marvelous Cinematography & Music let down by mediocre storyline

[2/10 · 15 July 2023]

I'm sad to see this in a form of 5 episode series compared to a 100 minute movie.

They went our of their way on the music, even the acting of the main young protagonist was superb, considering the fact this is her first acting performance. Especially when considering the fact how badly the character 'Adam' was played by his actor.

I also applaud their bravery of inviting a music video cinematographer to shoot this, most scenes look amazing, the location choice was great and varying.

Where it doesn't shine, are all the dialogues, which are non-sensical, feature a lot of story exposition, and a 4 to 5 times repeating during the course of the series (we get the same information multiple times). Also a very weak point is the story itself. All the "modern" references are written from the point of a middle-aged cat woman. Basically the whole story is done that way, but it is especially noticable there.

The VFX is two fold: The effects done by professionals, and what's supposedly their in-house team: you can clearly see the quality in the former, and the jarringness in the latter.

My review will be as scattered as this series' storyline, so sorry in advance for it.

I didn't get the decision of dubbing over the actors, they should've just "admitted" it and roll with their casting decision. I'd much rather read subtitles of the one Hungarian actor and let Slovaks speak Slovak, Czechs speak Czech. The dubbing company handled the excessive dubbing the best they could, and I see the good intentions, however the final result misses out on the very authentic voices of the quality part of the cast. The dubbing of 'Kocis' was useless, since his assistant spoke Slovak. His voice is signature, and it didn't go through. Same applies to 'Cinkota' and 'Marcinková', they'd have sounded much better with their own voices, but that's my subjective opinion.

The character of 'Adam' has great potential, since he can do more than we first think, but the handling of that revelation, and the "black & white" sides of the character are poorly executed.

Lots and lots of scenes felt like they were filling runtime with stuff that barely, sometimes not at all, needed to be shown on screen, and it only enforced the redundancy of the whole story.

There's one beautiful scene that clearly shows the relationship between our main protagonists, but the moment they use exposition, not once, not twice, but thrice to be sure we absolutely understand it explicitly personally ruined the whole point of showing it visually in the first place, or being an important information at all.

This repeats for most of the plot twists. A great idea, with poor execution, and exposé by characters multiple times...

Makes it hard to watch circa after the first 10 minutes of the first episode.

We were given one actually funny moment, and it's in the last episode.

In the 3 hours and 45 minutes this monstrosity has in total, you'd expect at least 5 more moments like this.

I waited to see the whole series before reviewing, but I cannot recommend anyone spending their time and money (Voyo is a paid OTT/VOD service) having to sit this through. 1/5 for me.

I'd love to see done better next time. Don't be too keen on series, CME. Finance a movie or two once in a while. I still won't let go the thought of this being rewritten and remade into a movie. Loved the concept of an exclusive series for the platform, but TV broadcast would probably help out the viewership of this, it's of comparable quality.

The Whale (2022)

Leaves an emotion

[6/10 · 6 May 2023]

Yes, a tear came out of my eye, when the final revelation started taking place on screen. This movie is well done. I appreciate the production choosing to mimic the play with keeping this a one (two) location movie. It's structured in the typical In Medias Res fashion, where we're dropped into the story somewhere in the middle. It contains intertwined subplots that help to achieve clearness in explaining us the character background - exposition, which is hard to avoid completely, but this movie doesn't even try. It however strikes quite a good balance of not being too long. There are "simpler" movies, that are saved by shorter runtimes. This one is two hours long. I didn't notice, until one review here said it was dragging after an hour - which I disagree with. Some character motivations are unclear at best and outright illogical at worst, just for the sake of the story. I'll leave it at: I wouldn't want that nurse (by job) to take care of me personally. If you have the time, give this one a go, you won't be disappointed outright. You will be left, however, questioning why the obvious solution wasn't utilized. Oh yes, of course, we wouldn't have any plot.

The Gray Man (2022)

It's almost like Red Notice but better

[8/10 · 31 July 2022]

If you look at it from the bigger picture, you'll find a lot of similarities between certain aspects of these two films. What's the big advantage this one has? They focused a lot less on plot revelations and a lot more on showing us the action in a lot of places in the world, mostly still recorded in the Czech Republic, where the production designers did an amazing job making it look characteristic like a lot of places from Bankok to Vienna. We get the big budget Michael Bay style explosions, we get Ambulance's (2022) FPV drone shots throughout the movie. We get some Gosling x Evans jokes that were honestly quite witty. Cast played their roles quite well. No hard cringe moments in this one. And the ending is just wholesome. Now, stop reading, go watch it. 4/5.

Stranger Things (2016–2025)

Weird, strange, still a bit exciting, but lengthy

[6/10 · 22 July 2022]

I binged every single season over the span of four days. One thing, that got me really annoyed was four parralel story lines, working towards the same thing, not together. Same research being done four times, always from a different angle, this behavior repeated every season. The evolution of the story was definitely a love and hate thing at the same time. Same goes for the theme. Netflix has this weird behavior, where it does one theme, per season of the series. I have no idea who came up with that monothemaism, but it frankly gets boring, when you recognize the revelation from miles away. I'm sad actually, because this story did not hit me hard enough. Because the music was perfect, camera work - amazing, I love how they started out almost indie, with all the possible things practical in the first season, then slowly expanded. From the actors/extras, to the crew(s) and filming locations. The cast did amazing work, I've heard they wrote the actual script for this cast, not the other way around, like it's usually done. I appreciated it. Made everything fit so nicely. One letdown was that in season four, with that vfx budgets they spat out a ragdoll with a kinect 3d scan and basic maya od 3ds max simulation. Have no idea what happened there. Served such an essential part to the emotion of the story, yet the sucky vfx in these parts pulled me out of it completely. Let's talk episode length. Who on earth thought having the last season twice the runtime of the previous one would be of any good? Yes, they add separate side themes, each group's solving by themselves, but go way too much into detail somewhere, then completely omit some... Overall I was happy to kill my time with this series, but also sad because I wanted it to make me emotional. 3/5 and I'm waiting for the fifth season.

Free Guy (2021)

solid movie with the usual fun

[9/10 · 18 June 2022]

If I could describe it in one sentence, it's like: Source Code's (2011) ending done right.

We only got Disney Plus a few days ago, and until now the only piece of this movie I've seen was the buffed Reynolds on YouTube. No trailers, no nothing.

Going in I had no expectations, and it felt really good. I noticed a few things that prevent this from a 10, but man, this was really solid movie after a long time.

Warrior Nun (2020–2022)

I'm sad

[6/10 · 15 April 2022]

I haven't read the comic book and I'll be really careful not to spoil. This series has it all. Solid acting, solid story, solid cgi, solid camera work, it has solid cast and solid locations. I appreciate that international actors spoke English, and really well I might add. (I'm an ESL, but I've heard much worse English from native speakers, even in movies.) Where this all breaks down is when executives decided that this was the point to cut this season. It ends up so vague, with ending similar to The Society, if not worse. It just cuts. This could've been a solid 4/5 if they thought about ending at least the action and cliffhanging us a bit later. (a bit earlier would be again, too little story in the last episode) I binge watched this over a single spring afternoon, if you are bored with anything, you've seen until, give this a chance. But for the ending of S1, this got the rating down to 3/5.

Dune (2021)

I don't get the hype

[2/10 · 15 March 2022]

After 2 hours and 27 minutes of the movie itself, I was left with a feeling, that I absolutely don't get why this movie got all the attention it did. Don't get me wrong, there are some good sides to it. But to be satisfied I need a bit more...story. I never watched a movie so long, where there is a bit happening in the first 30 minutes, because you get absolutely nothing explained, you miss essential context, but something is flowing, and that's good. Then it stalls for around an hour. Then again something happens. The movie is filled with Nolan's style visuals, but lacking just the details. E.g. For every Hollywood movie after Zack Snyder's Justice League, I expect the water to be absolutely perfect. I know that large objects require large simulations, but I watched this on a large TV, not in the cinema, and noticed and locked myself on the paper-like white water everywhere, where there were any kind of CGI used. There were moments, and very good, iconic moments, but the one thing is true: you don't get much Zendaya. Just keep that in mind. If you don't mind it, like myself, then the movie offers an evening between watching TV of an ad-less film, but not much more. Both Inception & Interstellar left me very emotional, even though they had mistakes. Tenet was exploring a very interesting concept, so it was fun to watch, but not really emotional. I know this is not a Nolan's movie, but I expected much more out of this. This wasn't interesting from the get-go. You don't get stuff, therefore you are just watching blindly and trying to get what's happening. When something finally happens, the movie ends. And I seriously doubt that the second part would offer all of the questions. Upon reading the "Top Review" and since I fought with LotR for a bit, I don't even want to read the novel. 1/5.

Kitz (2021)

Great story

[8/10 · 6 January 2022]

In comparison to "The Society" which had 4 more episodes and 5 minutes more runtime per episode, this had just the right revelation speed. There, literally nothing happened. Here, story moved forward. The cinematography was quite exceptional and all the twist and turns were not immediately obvious. 4/5 and I was happy to kill a single winter afternoon with this.

By a Sharp Knife (2019)

A weird movie, high expectations, not quite fulfilled

[4/10 · 28 November 2021]

Cinematography is quite good, full points there, but the same can't be said about almost any other point. I never cringed so hard in a movie of this nature. Very deep topic, yet scenes decided to stay included, where actors not only managed to break me out of the emotion, but turn it into a laugh, too. The movie has a runtime of 85 minutes, but the story can only stretch so far. Why not cut it a bit more aggressively on the dialogue part, and include even more of the ambient scenes, like in the beginning where it almost feels like jump-cutting.

I also never counted so many goofs. This is supposed to be set in 2005 judging only by the timestamp on the camera, the time printed on the magazine, and the fact that they still use Slovak crowns (Euro was introduced in 2009). The cars of the main characters are also carefully picked, but that's where the environment thought starts to fall apart. They are walking down a street and entering some building, when suddenly all the cars are modern. I'd assume that they couldn't clear the street for that shot.

I like that the FMPH building was turned around so many times, what a creative way to get more out of your set. I also like that in the means of distribution, this got onto netflix, so that should be an achievement.

If you really have the time, and you want to see a soviet-style country captured with how it's jurisdiction system is so fragile, then give this a watch. But don't expect too much. 2/5.

Outer Banks (2020– )

Driven by stupidity till it's annoying

[2/10 · 19 August 2021]

The first season was ok, but overall nothing happened. After around 300 minute mark of content it started dragging the story really slowly, on and on we return to the same stuff that just repeats.

The second season is just a waste of time. Finally something happens...in the first two episodes. Then we return to the story dragging. I like that some concepts were brought out, but in a now common dumb fashion. At around half of the second season, the story gets downright painful to watch.

Recommended only if you really, really like the actors, because the cast isn't well suited to play 8-10 years younger characters. You are going down a rabbit hole that seems to be bottomless. Brace yourself. 1/5.

The A List (2018–2021)

Interesting concept dragged over thrice as much time as needed

[2/10 · 9 August 2021]

This is just too long. I can only imagine how good of a 90 minutes movie this would make. There are lots of interesting concepts being opened. But that's where they stay. Nothing is being resolved in the way you'd expect and more and more of the same twists are being brought in. Watched the second season today and I must decrease my review. The second season is just non-sensual, ghosts and stuff. Every single episode of the second season I thought it was the last one 1/5. It's just like you have problems on problems during production and you bodge every single one of them halfway. Less than halfway...

The Stand (2020–2021)

I'm lost

[1/10 · 25 December 2020]

I just watched the 1st episode and I literally got nothing out of the story. It jumps back and forth, then the story starts, but we don't know the characters yet. Great mistakes some indie filmmaker would not have done. I highly recommend reading the book first, then watching the 94' one, then try on this. Because right now I can't recommend this.

Crack (2019)

Three storylines = total chaos

[5/10 · 21 October 2020]

As the movie itself indicates by black slates with roman numbers, it's divided into three parts, which are connected through characters, but the story isn't really carried through. It gets lost a bit. Like the first part is about a psychiatric hospital cleanup. There you get many points that could go wrong, a lot of tension between characters, yet it mysteriously fades out, as we enter the second part. That lies between the main protagonist inspecting the material he just got, and also introduces the other two main characters and starts the journey. The last part is fairly straightforward. I could imagine that one, with a few adjustments the whole movie. It's too long and stretches itself like a caramel. The totally unnecessary beginning with kidnapping of the book writer doesn't help and unnecessary unexplained endeavour, where one of the main characters meets him at the end. That doesn't make sense... How on earth would she get from the mountains back to civilization, if moments before her (former) boyfriend tells us, that people went to woods to die, not to come back, and yet she travels however many kilometers to a city, just to meet the writer. It's like most of our Slovak movies. Worth a watch if you have too much spare time. 5,5/10