MrHlad

At some point before the end of the first film, I already felt this world was a bit exhausted and I didn't quite feel the need to return to it. The sequel confirms that feeling, unfortunately. John Krasinski basically repeats what worked last time, and I'm going to believe that it's not because he can't do anything else, but rather because his world doesn't stand on a strong enough foundation on which to build a full-fledged sequel. If, however, you caught the last one before the closing credits and you're in the same boat as me, you're going to get a bit lost in the sequel. Krasinski is very confident in the action scenes, he can also get the atmosphere right and his scares are in the right places, but the whole thing feels somehow unnecessary. Trying to expand the world doesn't lead to anything interesting, Cillian Murphy's character doesn't really work, and trying to split up the protagonists and spread them out over several locations and give each one their own challenge or problem misses the mark too. It's more like Krasinski is chasing minutes and trying to get to the end credits as soon as possible so that the audience doesn't notice that this sequel doesn't make much sense and just varies what the first film impressed with. There really aren't many new ideas here, and I can easily do without the third film.

Author Elly Conway discovers that her spy books have more in common with reality than she thought, and that their hero, Argyle, may very well be real. But why does everyone suddenly want to kill her? Matthew Vaughn delivers another homage to spy action movies that is full of ideas and original action sequences, but this time perhaps so wild that it may be beyond tolerable for some.

This film requires you to turn off your brain and enjoy the skillfully shot action, the good visual effects and the classic pathos. Simple, dumb, but fun.

This isn't a horror movie, it's a perfect fantasy comedy. It's brutal, violent, full of dry one-liners and terribly funny.

So sloppy, it's like nobody was trying very hard with Army of the Dead. The characters are so uninteresting that I didn't care what order they died in, the actors have no charisma or nothing to work with, and the first really interesting and entertaining action scene3 doesn't come until sometime at the beginning of the last quarter. Once they start shooting and slashing properly, it's quite fun, with Snyder keeping himself in check, so there aren't nearly enough of those slow-motion sequences to make it boring, it's just that there's about an hour of completely unnecessary ballast that is boring, where the most entertaining thing is how it all makes no sense at all. Sure, in a B-action flick, that shouldn't really matter, it's just that Army of the Dead may be a B-movie, but it really isn’t. There's climactic brutality , it only falls into the horror category because there are zombies. And Snyder's playing with the camera, which often leads to ugly visuals full of out-of-focus shots (which was supposedly the artistic intent), is more annoying than effective. I don't know. An hour after the closing credits, I can recall virtually nothing of it. Just that I was expecting a lot more than another routine Netflix movie, and I really didn't have those expectations particularly high. An unimaginative and boring waste of time.

I'll probably take some time to figure out if Arrival is one of the best films of the year or the absolute number one, but it was definitely better than I expected. Albeit in a slightly different way. Although the story of humanity's first contact with visitors from outer space works as "science fiction", it's still much stronger on an emotional and personal level. I won't go into some sort of breakdown, but the trailers offered the bare minimum of that layer of Arrival, so the film can surprise quite often, and thankfully always in a positive way. The acting is top-notch and Amy Adams is going for an Oscar nomination. Technically, visually and musically this is an absolute brilliant film that may have been inspired by Nolan somewhere, Malick somewhere and Spielberg somewhere, but overall it holds together without the slightest reservations and can confidently rank among the best that has been made in the smart sci-fi genre. I want to see it again. And Denis Villeneuve goes into my personal top 5.

The attempt to start a new family fantasy franchise turned out to be a directorially mismanaged mess. Artemis Fowl starts blackmailing fairies to rescue his kidnapped father, and you'll be hoping he succeeds soon enough to shut it down. The film looks more or less average, but unfortunately it's full of lifeless and nonsensical characters, with their personalities from the ground up maybe three times in a single scene, and the whole thing makes virtually no sense. But at least it's short.

The animated passages are great, the acting is terrible. If Luc Besson had taken more care and kept the pace and especially the atmosphere at the same level all the time, it could have been very good. As it is, it alternates boredom with enthusiasm.

Well, it's not a good film, but in the end it's not a complete disaster either. Assassin's Creed alternates above average and sometimes almost great moments with moments when I almost felt sorry for the filmmakers. What goes well? Definitely the action, or rather almost everything from the past. The battles are quick, fairly straightforward and brisk, and at least the part where two of the heroes are running away from an entire city really hit the spot. The scenes of Spain being terrorised by the Inquisition do show the money, and the costumes, the production design and the visual effects look more than good too. Unfortunately, everything that takes place in the present is more or less ugly and terribly boring. I've played almost all of the games, and from the very beginning, these passages annoyed me. In the film, the uninteresting present takes up two-thirds of the running time. Most of the cast act like they weren't told what was wanted of them, it doesn't make any sense at all at times, and unfortunately Assassin's Creed is unaware of its stupidity and simplicity (nothing against it, I love it) and tries to pretend to be something more than a simple blockbuster. And it's not very good at it. In a few years, someone will edit a nice 20-minute video out of it with good action and nice sets. In the meantime, we have a movie that is boring most of the time or tries in vain to fulfill the ambitions of someone in the background who didn't understand that he was making an action movie. And those have to be entertaining first and foremost.

Surprisingly mature filmmaking. Bradley Cooper manages to sell both the big concert scenes and the small intimate ones where two people talk with complete ease. He gives quite possibly the best performance of his career, and Lady Gaga definitely deserves all the awards she picks up. Even the songs can move or tear you up and it's awfully good to watch. The only major complaint might be a certain predictability and schematicism, but on the other hand, in this case it would be unfair to the film to criticize it. This is exactly what it promised and delivered and in a highly superior performance. A film that is honest, functional and superbly shot and acted, and moving.