The King's Speech

When at school I learnt the hard truth of monarchy, constitutional, in particular, I lost all the interest I used to have in it. It is really sad that all those people in beautiful old-fashioned dresses and living in amazing castles don't make any real decisions but still have to follow rules of etiquette and always think before doing. Not really fair, as I thought when I was so much younger.

They don't get to have real life, real feelings, real anything - and films or TV series that I saw at the time about monarchs and court's life fueled that stereotype. And now, I'm older and possibly a bit wiser and I am still reluctant to let go of that. Seeing Kate and William, and them being so cute and real, hearing about that Swedish princess that got married to her fitness instructor or something - it ought to destroy this conception of mine.

None of these royal couples has achieved it though, but this film, The King's Speech, did.

It is an impossibly good mix of grandeur and ordinariness: there is Colin Firth walking through Westminster Abbey, and there he is, hiding in Lionel's office from Mrs. Logue. Telling bedtime stories to his kids and talking with prime ministers.

We get to see the inside of the royals' life and it all seems so genuine.
We've seen plenty of prime ministers portrayed on screen - from Hugh Grant to Meryl Streep but personally I've never seen a life of a king or a queen (a prince or a princess) that I wanted to be a part of. I always looked at them from the bird's eye point of view and rarely felt anything but overwhelming sadness for their ruined unhappy lives.

I was as nervous as "Bertie", I was as anxious as Elizabeth, I even sympathized with Churchill.

Brilliant movie, and it deserved all the awards it got.

The Lone Ranger

It was the most boring movie I've ever had to sit through. It even beats the-barely-funny Ted.

Visually, it's like The Pirates Of Caribbean once again. Gore Verbinski is lazy. And I so don't want to admit it but Johnny Depp has gotten lazy: similar parts, similar expressions, similar gestures, argh. And as I see box-office wise the combination of Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny doesn't work if it's not Tim Burton. (Although despite word of mouth people still go check it out, disbelieving that Depp can star in anything so awful).

40 minutes into the movie I glanced at my phone to check the time. That was the moment when I felt that it was time to end this shit. I should have walked out of the theatre but I don't do that. I clench my teeth, I stare at other people's faces trying to gauge their reactions, I check twitter and other social networks, I send angry text messages to a friend who recommended this movie (and feel satisfied when they text me back saying that they're really bored at the moment, too).

I spent the remaining 100 minutes trying to understand what makes this movie so terrible and dull. What I came up with is that the situation the main heroes constantly find themselves in doesn't change. The bad guys slips away, they don't get their revenge, they don't snatch the girl and her kid and they just keep coming up with new plans. It would make a great series, but a movie? Not so much.

He still doesn't get the girl in the end, by the way.
Shit luck.