Q: Ying, a Chinese girl who speaks Czech, invited us to screening of a Czech movie (with English subtitles) in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies (VES). It was the first time I saw Samotari (Loners, 2000) and it was pretty good.

Much like in many other Czech movies, the seven central characters seem to have a pretty difficult, dirty life; the web indicates that this theme was popular among the U.S. movies in the early 1990s. Their relationships are breaking up, combining, and recombining. Another typical feature of the Czech movies is that neither of the characters is designed to be a universally negative one and neither of them is a permanently positive character either. Also, you can see how the characters judge the features of others depending on the context; that's a very realistic feature of the movie's psychological analysis.

Ondrej is a talented and married young surgeon who has two daughters. Nevertheless, you learn that he has only studied neurobiology to prove how much he loved another woman, Hanka. He is so obsessed that he repeatedly dresses up as a plumber to get into Hanka's parents' house - a house that he repeatedly burns.

Meanwhile, Hanka has a very mixed relationship with her parents. She just decides - by tossing up a coin - to break up with Petr who works in a private radio station. Hanka does not view her parents' bourgeois life as a good example but seems rather unsuccessful in creating a better environment. But she is a very flexible figure, as far as the type of her boyfriends go.

For a while, Hanka seems to have serious plans with Jakub, an innocent drug addict whose memory seems to be rather devastated by the drugs. However, the friends from his band inform Jakub that he already has another girlfriend. Hanka is disappointed and returns to her parents.

When Hanka and Petr break up, it is organized by Robert, a matchmaker who also works for a travel agency where his job is to show the life of ordinary Czech people to Japanese tourists. Robert - who also provides Jakub with marijuana - is never serious about anything and he usually sleeps with many different women; eventually, his mother dies in a hospital and he has his own ways to deal with the depression.

Vesna (a Slavic word for "Spring") who came to Prague from Macedonia works as a barmaid - and you won't learn whether she came to Czechia in order to see her dad or UFOs. She seems pretty confused but sometimes helps the other characters from their problems.

Petr works in the radio station and he is the only one who likes his job - a job that he eventually loses. He announces to his audience that he broke up with Hanka - which is how Ondrej learns about the news that make him very happy.

Finally, Ondrej's wife Lenka is always ready to forgive him and stabilize their marriage - even after Ondrej asks a magician to make him disappear so that Ondrej can try to capture Hanka again. (The magician pays his debt because he is a brother of a victim of an important car accident - Jakub and Hanka bring the victim to the hospital and Ondrej saves his life.) Lenka also works for the travel agency - as a translator - and eventually she has to translate some hysterical scenes for 20 or so Japanese tourists who are shooting their movies during Hanka parents' dinner.

The seven characters interact in interesting and exciting ways that would be natural if Prague were smaller by four orders of magnitude. Given the actual size of the Czech capital, it looks a bit unlikely that all these events would take place among seven people, but it is fun.
A: positive
Q: My husband rented this from a video store thinking it was suspense. (He never reads the synopsis).

Well, it would be funny if the thing was watchable. It simply isn't. The same thing over and over, no intrigue, and WHERE did they find the leading man?. The leading man, Michael Des Barres, is not even feasibly good-looking, especially for this role he is given. Also, sexual harassment at work is something, if you want to see, rent Michael Crichton's "Disclosure". At least Michael Douglas looked good in the early 90's.

Alexandra Paul, who is usually watchable, plays an embarrassing scene here. There are also lighting effects cheaper than your at home web cam. Don't even waste time renting this. 0/10.
A: negative
Q: WOW! Why would anybody make a sequel to an already rancid film? Half Past Dead was a bad movie but at least at had an idea of what it wanted to be. HPD2 has no clue of what it wants to be. It just exists on screen for reasons I cant explain. Spoiler: The whole movie is this: Twitch(played by Kurupt of Tha Dogg Pound) gets transferred to another jail where there might be a box filled with gold bricks buried. In the jail, a riot breaks out between rival inmates, one of them gets shot by a guy named Cortez and Cortez plans his escape. During a conjugal visit, Twitch's fiancee and Burke's(played by Bill Goldberg)daughter get kidnapped by Cortez and are held in an execution room. Burke reluctantly befriends Twitch and they end up getting into trouble with the idiotic inmates while finding out that Cortez has their loved ones.

Opinion: This is the most unnecessary sequel since Universal Soldier: The Return. The script is terrible, the acting is horrendous, the dialog is a joke and everybody in this movie is a caricature. Look, I know it was low budget film but that is not an excuse for these guys to not put effort into what they do. Nobody in this "movie" believes in the characters they play. Nobody in this "movie can be taken seriously as an actor. Kurupt should be ashamed of himself. His character "Twitch" is pretty much a spineless minstrel puppet who spends most of his time posing while getting jacked up by Burke or the other inmates. Bill Goldberg spends most of his time sulking throughout the movie as if he had to take a PHD(pretty huge dump). The fight scenes are poorly choreographed and pathetic and for an action movie HPD2 is pretty boring even when action is happening! Don't let anybody tell you that this movie is somewhat decent. It stinks and is a prime reason why people despise Follywood.
A: negative