Goldbeater

The film is off to a very promising start. Some of the ideas concerning the perception of the world around the deaf-mute main character are quite entertaining, although the film doesn't try to work with them in any clever way. Similarly, they don't attempt much in terms of world-building, so the whole inner world feels as shallow as an arcade game level (which may have been the intention), plus they populate the plot with utterly futile, annoying and unmotivated bad guys (which may not have been the intention) and soon bog down in a very repetitive action spectacle without any substance (which certainly wasn't the intention). The film cuts the branch underneath itself with a twist in the last quarter that turns the whole plot on its head and commits the cheapest deception on the viewer that can be devised. It's no longer about being stylistically surprising, it's just helplessly messing with the script. And the rest, sadly, isn't nearly as engrossing and cool as it tries to be.

If you're going to make an unpretentious action comedy, this is how you do it. Putting aside the most questionable thing – the crime plot at the heart of the film is very simple and silly, but it's not really the point, the whole thing is pulled along by both the action-packed stunt attractions, but mostly by the charisma of the two leads. Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt work great together, they have visible chemistry and their verbal banter at times almost makes you think of classic screwball romantic comedies. It's actually a nice love letter from Drew Pearce and David Leitch to all the stuntmen, the "invisible" crew members and filmmaking in general, and the idyllic romanticization of the whole creative process without a single hint of cynicism works very well for the audience.

For Alex Garland, Civil War is a return to the tried-and-tested formula of a group of characters wandering through an "inhuman" landscape in pursuit of a vague goal, but compared to 28 Days Later, Annihilation and Sunshine, the British filmmaker is now dealing with a rather down-to-earth and quite realistic scenario. I've always seen him as a very capable genre filmmaker and I also got what I expected from his latest effort: a solid simple genre film; don't expect anything complicated or deep. The relative straightforwardness actually suits Garland far more than the artsy symbolism of his previous two efforts, which is also not to say that Civil War completely resigns itself to it. If I have one criticism, it's some all-too-obvious visual choices, in a film that, given the premise, would be best served by a straightforward and almost documentary-like approach, the director too often tries to frame the characters in all symmetry in the middle of the frame, as if they were in a Wes Anderson film, and it doesn't quite fit the concept. On the other hand, I appreciate that Garland didn't reach for some low-hanging fruit in the script and somehow politicised the film in a one-sided way at its core, so we get a story that is balanced and, most importantly, not black-and-white.

Mature sci-fi with mature themes that value the intellect of its audience. Can't we get that more often? Before I get to my minor reservations, I must first point out three things. Go to the cinema. Go to the cinema. And thirdly, go to the cinema. For epic cinematic feats in which everything is technically correct and yet completely mesmerising and impressive on an unreal scale, it makes sense to put money into buying a ticket. In short, Dune: Part Two delivers the viewing experience in all its glory. And it could easily have been over three hours long – even at 166 minutes it feels too short in places, and an extra quarter of an hour would have been easily enough. A more significant problem for me is the fact that Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya have almost zero chemistry with each other and their relationship, although the mainstay of the film, feels rushed and unconvincing. Emotionally, I simply didn't tune in to the characters. In any case, in many other ways, Denis Villeneuve translates the book into film language very effectively and once again raises the bar of contemporary science fiction a little higher. And although we'll probably have to wait quite a long time for the third film, I'm looking forward to it a lot and I'm curious to see what kind of spectacle he'll have in store for us again.

What a weird Pepsi commercial... Sony continues to make C-rated comic book crap that seems to ignore everything blockbuster filmmakers have learned in the last twenty years, and instead proudly follow on the footsteps of films like Catwoman. Some of the creative choices here are utterly incomprehensible in terms of cinematography, sound and editing (the terrible CGI is not worth talking about), but the script and the way the story is told, that's a treat. For some reason, almost all the flashbacks in the film are repeated exactly twice without exception, and everything that is clearly explained visually has to be recited out loud by one of the characters for good measure. Always. In short, Sony thinks its audience are complete morons, and even then it doesn't make any better sense. At least Morbius was more fun.

Musical biopics are, unfortunately, one of the most tired and hackneyed of film genres, and to engage on any level higher than the most superficial, they need either a very rich story that rises above the established template, or a very talented filmmaker who grasps it with a dynamic and original style. This film has neither. It is another patchwork of life dramas, flowery wisdoms and samples of the performer's most famous songs, dosed with a certain regularity so that the film doesn't bore and fulfils basic audience expectations, but it lacks both a functional narrative that would perhaps justify the existence of flashbacks to the past, as well as some interesting conflict that would elevate the story above a mere regurgitation of information from Wikipedia, laced with numerous genre clichés on top of that. Kingsley Ben-Adir has learned Bob Marley's mannerisms carefully, and he's fun to watch, but he just can't carry the weight of the whole thing. Moreover, his character is classically sleek and stripped of its problematic aspects because the film's producers are Marley's descendants and obviously don't want to create anything but a wholly flattering image of him. Bohemian Rhapsody was accused of similar things, but at least that film oozed incredible creative energy and boasted some superbly shot concert scenes. Surprisingly, those are almost absent here. Additionally, the entire film is directed towards one particular concert, but we're not shown it because the cut to the end credits comes when it's supposed to really get going. The day after the screening, it pretty much evaporated from my mind.

A shallow, dumb and unspeakably boring variation on The Stepford Wives. The two-hour running time is truly mind-numbing given the emptiness of the whole story. It's also a tacky, fatuous and shallow film, just like the world it's trying to satirize. The high rating on this one is downright shocking to me.

A flawed and unsurprising whodunit that, after three clunky episodes with some interesting themes, turns into a complete farce in the fourth episode. And the idealization of the relationships between students and professors probably says more about the personality of the writers than about any attempt to address the problem.

Adam Ondra may push the limit, but this documentary certainly doesn't. As a portrait of a personality, it's done at a high level, but there's a lot missing for me to enjoy it as a viewer.

A very interesting urban horror film with a great atmosphere. The fact that Wolfen is the only feature film ever directed by documentary filmmaker and cinematographer Michael Wadleigh, the man behind the legendary 1970 film Woodstock, is no mere curiosity. Wadleigh imprinted the film with his flair for capturing subcultures, the spirit of a vanishing era, and a unique setting (here, the endless demolition of the South Bronx and, by extension, all of New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s). And the more you see similar older films in which a city is practically a character in its own right, you realise how this element is increasingly missing from contemporary cinema, with a few honourable exceptions. Story-wise, it's a bit heavy-handed, and it's clear that the studio took the film away from the director in post-production and did their own thing with it, but it's still a fairly unique watch if you're after a film with an edge and not just straightforward horror. A very refreshing piece of work. Only notorious recycler James Horner performs here basically half of his themes for the one-year-younger Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and the five-years in the future Aliens, which isn't necessarily a bad thing (it's still a great score), but it does take a bit out of the plot.