Bravo to Czechs, their once-powerful movie industry seems to awaken from post-Communist slumber.
The Loners is a comedy done with all the elements you would expect to see in a modern "hollywood" production minus the garbage that seems to get attached to the genre over the past several years. Superb soundtrack, excellent visual editing, beautiful Prague cityscape, to mention but a few.
The story is actually comprised of several sub-stories that frequently intertwain and overlap, an is in essence a collage of destinies, fates, desires... It follows a group of urban youth-to-mid-thirties people through a variety of situations ranging from daily life and leisure activities to careers and obsessions. And it IS hillarious. There's actually a point in the movie where the entire theatre I was in (about a 100 people in a small art gallery) laughed non-stop for about 40-50 seconds. How often do you experience that with modern hollywood productions?
Although the entire main cast is excellent (especially the upcoming Macedonian star Labina Mitevska in the role of an immigrant facing the all-too-familiar hardships) I have to single out Jiri Machacek for his superbly believeable portrayal of Jakub, a constantly stoned bohemian whose brain is severely affected by the stuff he smokes landing him in a plethora of funny situations.
Conclusion: don't miss this one! It's got a lot to offer.

Yeah, I "get" Pasolini and his milieu, but at the same time, I feel his "Decameron" is largely overrated, and more than a little disturbing. Overrated because the supposed "realism" he introduces (milling crowds, crumbling architecture, etc.) are mooted by the absurd and downright goofy way that the characters behave. In the pursuit of realism, Pasolini utilized many non-actors, but their deer-in-the-headlights stares and painfully awkward line delivery gives the whole a terribly off-kilter and inconsistent feel. And frankly -- many of the toothless, misshapenly-featured people are painful to look at.
And Pasolini's "Decameron" is disturbing (to me at least) because of the casual and prevalent homosexual content. Not because I'm prudish or homophobic (I'm neither) but because the emphasis that Pasolini places upon homoerotic images and situations is contrary to the neo-realism he otherwise espouses, so it comes off as gratuitous and forced. One can almost hear him say "Ooh--I've got to stick a cute, naked boy in this scene!" At times it seems that Pasolini is trying to play up the homosexual angle to thumb his nose at critics, and at other times because he enjoys that aspect himself, regardless of what his audience might prefer.
The disjointedness of the 9 or 10 different stories in Pasolini's "Decameron" struck me as being a failing of Pasolini as a storyteller, rather than being an aspect of neo-realism. He seems to get bored with each story and so he wraps them up rather unconvincingly and with little conviction. Even the Pasolini's final line of dialog in the film, which some people seem to find pithy ("Why create a work of art when dreaming about it is so much sweeter?") -- to me, it just makes me wonder why Pasolini would bother making a film if he felt this way? In my opinion, a far better-crafted film (and with MORE homosexual content) is Fellini's "Satyricon". It is also full of bizarre-looking people and absurd situations, but it succeeds because of its pacing, direction and strong storytelling whereas "Decameron" fails by those same elements.