MrHlad

There is one more pleasant surprise this year after all. I wasn't really expecting it from the new Terminator, and it's all the more pleasant. Tim Miller delivers a lot of action (admittedly, a bit too digital at times), but, most importantly, the right Terminator atmosphere. At the same time, he's not afraid to try new things that are more suited to the twenty-first century. Terminator: Dark Fate does feel a lot like the first and second movies, it's more or less one long chase, but Miller doesn't try to cheaply reference the older films and instead fills the screen with a lot of simply great, quality action. And with interesting female leads, too. The main stars of the new Terminator are three ladies who looked god-knows-what in the photos. Fortunately, in the end, they are charismatic and interesting characters that the three leads portray more than well. And Arnold? Arnold is the king! Although a little different than you'd expect. In short, Miller and James Cameron made what fans have wanted to see since the second film, while not being afraid to throw in a few modern trends. If you're fundamentally bothered by women getting more and more space in the male-dominated genre, Dark Fate will convince you that when done well, it's not only okay, it's very good.

Princess Aurora wants to get married and Maleficent has a bit of a problem with that. One that leads to a war between humans and magical creatures! This dark fantasy sequel is just as lackluster as the first part, a CGI-packed film with a hackneyed and overly simple story that surprises with the unexpected relegation of Angelina Jolie. As an unpretentious family fantasy flick, it may hold up, but you'd look in vain for anything extra in the second Maleficient.

The Goldfinch wants to be a great story, but its creators found out too late that they couldn't cram everything into it. And yet they tried. The result is a film that wants to deal with a huge number of themes, but in the end has to deal with all of them only very superficially. It's a shame because, at least in the first half, it's a very well-made drama that also looks beautiful. The whole, however, is hardly satisfying.

An awful film in every respect, with lousy actors, ugly visual effects and laughable make-up. Also, woefully cheap action and production design. There's nothing to praise here. This film was only made because they hoped someone would watch it up because of the famous brand. Don't do it.

Gemini Man is a strange combination of a 90s action movie with an attempt to suggest what the future of cinema might look like, and I'm not sure I like it. I didn’t mind the B-movie story, Gemini Man is still a brisk actioner and Ang Lee handles the chases, the shootouts and the one-on-one fights brilliantly, and thankfully there's not a shortage of them, so the overall goofiness and straightforwardness doesn't particularly matter (except perhaps for the boring villain). The problem I had was more with the visuals. While young Will Smith looks really great, everything else is kind of weird. Gemini Man is visually unnaturally... clean. Especially in the exteriors, it looks more like a very well done computer game animation, which unfortunately with its bold colors sometimes resembles the worst of South American soap operas. I don't know to what extent it was 3D or 120fps, but personally I found it distracting and even annoying at some points.

The autumn of film disappointments continues for me, unfortunately. If I were to take Joker as a comic book movie or even a DC movie, I would have to consider it exceptional. However, if I want to approach it as a more ambitious drama that takes the themes of madness, inability to fit into society, and human cruelty seriously, it's not so good already. Joaquin Phoenix is excellent in the lead role, especially in scenes where he can, shall we say, exhibit; when he's alone on the screen and he's just going nuts. But once he's supposed to be part of a larger story and plot, it turns out the film doesn't really have much to offer. All the twists and surprises are pretty banal and the whole descent into madness is actually terribly predictable. Joker looks great, has great music and a perfect lead actor, yet remains too ordinary and not very interesting at its core, as it just copies similar films and relies on similar techniques. Not to mention the fact that the Joker as a character is much more interesting to me as a nutter whose madness and the roots thereof cannot be defined. I find Alfred's "Some men just want to watch the world burn" from The Dark Knight more interesting as a probe into the mind of the Joker than this entire film.

The trailers didn't promise a fundamentally accomplished film, but I still believed I would get one in the cinema. Well, I didn't. The Fifth Rambo is not very good , but not because of the craftsmanship, lack of action or cheapness. Rather, it's because it's not really Rambo. It's more like Emo-Rambo. Sylvester Stallone spends an hour and a quarter trying to look like a man struggling with his inner demons and a past of violence, but appreciating that something good has finally come into his life. And it takes him a hell of a long time to turn into the Rambo we know and love (or at least I do). We don't really see any action until the last half hour and it's extremely brutal and for a while I felt like I was watching a crossover of Saw and Friday the 13th rather than Rambo, but I didn't mind. What bothered me was the hour and a quarter before that, in which they completely nonsensically devote space to new characters and try to explore the inner workings of a cinematic warrior. Regardless of the fact that there's not really much there, and we already saw the little there is in the fourth outing. If it weren't called Rambo, I'd probably be more forgiving of this whiny B movie and the wait for the finale. But as a conclusion to a classic action franchise, it's unnecessary at best. And quite sad at times.

It looks beautiful. Hoyte Van Hoytema deserves an Oscar, the vastness and grandeur of space is literally palpable. It's beautiful to look at, the sound design its great, and in that respect Ad Astra can easily stand alongside both Interstellar and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Unfortunately, though, the film is tripped up by its story, or rather its delivery. The plot itself, with its search for a father and other motifs, is not uninteresting, but neither is it fundamentally new or revelatory. That wouldn't be a problem, there are some questions that people will probably always ask, but James Gray seems to have no confidence in his audience and leads them by the hand unnecessarily. Instead of letting me meditate on life in the middle of infinity, he tried to serve me answers right under my nose. It was uncomfortable. It's as if Gray knew he had made an interesting and clever film, but didn't trust his audience to interpret it for themselves, so he tried to make it easy and, for my taste, unnecessarily too easy. Which, for me personally, ended up spoiling the overall experience.

A brother and sister find themselves in a world of strange and not so nice little men and when the brother gets lost, the sister has to find him and a great adventure begins. In theory. Playmobil: The Movie is a very sedentary animated film that relies heavily on showing as many kits as possible, and because of that, you stop noticing how mediocre it is in every way at best. It’s alright for the kids, without them, there's no reason to see it.

As someone who has never watched the series, I unexpectedly enjoyed the film's conclusion. Downton Abbey is a great piece of work in terms of costumes, cinematography and music, but most importantly it also works as a collection of small and large stories of twenty characters, each of whom gets a chance to shine. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes tragic, and then poignant, but it holds together beautifully and is very enjoyable to watch.