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The individual sequences are adrenaline packed and Kathryn Bigelow does a good enough job with the “will it explode or not” dilemma to push the viewer into their seat through the simple movements around the mise-en-scène. Unfortunately, the episodic scenes of the life of an elite unit are pasted together in an attempt at a story where the emotions don’t work due to the weak profiling of the characters, while the attempt at a moral insight is not very successful either. It is realistic, probably (fortunately, I can’t judge), but the constantly shaky camera doesn’t work as ingeniously as in other films and actually disrupts the leisurely built atmosphere of an environment where every movement is dangerous. Jeremy Renner’s performance keeps things afloat, providing the viewer some depth they can hold on to. 65%

An engaging biographical portrait of one of the most famous painters in modern history that avoids controversy, but dissects the personality of the main character and his fateful relationships very thoroughly and convincingly. Douglas and Quinn are perfect and the scenes that bring to life Van Gogh’s iconic paintings are beautiful. The epic orchestral score, on the other hand, is not very fitting and I would have liked a more tragic feeling by the end, instead of the universally melodramatic one. 80%

You have probably heard the word timeless in connection to this film and it’s not a coincidence. Network balances on a line between black humour satire and serious human drama so fine that if it stumbled and lost its pace for an instant, all that motivational structure would fall apart and would no longer be believable. But as usual, Sidney Lumet was up to the task and managed to transform a script packed with a lightly caricatured criticism of the media and the emotional ties between the characters into a memorable and balanced experience. At times it feels overstuffed, but all the components and storylines complement each other smartly, the personal dialogues can be related to the problems in the dominant world of the media and each of the characters has their precisely allocated destiny – the fanatical Peter Finch is someone whose private life we never get to know anything about, but who becomes a “sensation” for the other characters, who pull the strings and are only interested in viewership and profit; William Holden is the rational exception, someone who wants to have a normal life, but who’s also attracted to the unpredictable and untameable desire for the sensation represented by the attractive Faye Dunaway, a media animal that avoids normal life and only “switches channels”. Yeah, and Robert Duvall is the arrogant ruler who only cares about dirt, for which he’s willing to do anything. All this together results in a valuable, smart and timeless movie that doesn’t have many imitators. The best parts, though, are the ending, which grinds the edge between serious drama and satire, and the actors and the profiling of their characters, conforming to the overall order of that world and its message – where else can you see two performances lasting only five minutes that ground the viewer and get well deserved Oscar nominations? Or the closing greeting by Nad Beatty (perhaps the best portrayed business bigwig in cinema history) and Beatrice Straight, the most convincing broken wife. 90%

A smart depiction of human mistrustfulness, the automatic creation of prejudices and the avoidance of difficult life obligations. A group of interesting characters in a closed space confronting themselves and their pasts, and though they are quite numerous by the end, the result is still strong and warming. The excellent cast lead by David Niven and the charming Rita Hayworth helps a lot, of course. Overall, though, a good rendition of theatrical material and the big screen doesn’t spoil its atmosphere and ideas. 80%

Look at that! The same year that gave us the gorgeous Singing in the Rain produced another film that should be included in any “must watch” list. A story set as a pyramid that through three retrospective levels leads to a climax and a sharp portrayal of the dream factory and their powerful bigwigs (Kirk Douglas is great again). Its predictable structure doesn’t deliver any big surprises, but it doesn’t matter, it’s great to watch, the actors are fantastic and each of the episodes is interesting enough to confidently hold the attention of the audience. Classic Hollywood at its best, albeit bitterly turned inside-out. 80%

It doesn’t reach the quality level of Ferris Bueller, but Uncle Buck is still a showcase of John Hughes’s singular talent and comedy timing (which he somehow started to lose after Home Alone, but that is very possibly due to changes in the expectations of the audience and the cultural atmosphere). This time the story is very classical and I have to say that there were moments where the behaviour of the characters was a bit questionable, but there are still plenty of ideas, everything happens at a pleasant pace and the absence of cheap humour and the presence of John Candy make the hero convincing. I would have loved to spend my teenage years with such an uncle, even at the risk of gaining weight and an even more markedly limited romantic life. 75%

Weak. A shallow pursuit of style and thoughtful social critique that only borrows from other films, without getting under the skin as deep as the director believes it does. The effect of society on the “development” of a mentally unstable individual is truncated to a minimum, represented by media satirical manipulation, while the script haphazardly throws at the viewer motifs around an uprising of the poor masses, an Oedipal complex and the Batman universe, which can hardly fit together (especially when a disproportionally long part of the runtime is taken by scenes that are about nothing). The core rebirth of an individual under the weight of a depressive and insidious environment is almost invisible and the much-praised performance of Joaquin Phoenix relies only on embodying an asshole who’s skinny and laughs like a madman when he shouldn’t. There are a couple of moments that have brilliant, black-humour twists, and I also appreciate the great music and the attempt at being distinctive, but they are clumsy. Phillips should go back to The Hangover, where he belongs. 50%

A thorough lesson in cheap narrative manipulation. I believe that an audience of a highly sensitive nature might be impressed, and I can’t deny at least the strong depiction of those seemingly endless 72 minutes (though that’s probably because the concept of the film is utterly boring and several passages are endless, especially for the viewer). A strong and heavy topic transformed into flat narration that lacks arguments, which only aims to exhaust the viewer without stimulating any interpretation or curiosity. To a great extent, this is thanks to the properly authentic and chilling format, but it’s mostly tedious, shallow and uninteresting, which for a premise like this it’s very bad. Paul Greengrass’s 22 July is far more intense because it doesn’t rely only on effect and it’s not afraid to place the whole event, including the suffering of the innocent victims (for which I can't find enough words of sympathy) in a much more urgent and provocative argumentative context (and no, the film cannot be defended with the argument that it should only be a raw depiction of the events on the island, because such depiction should communicate with the viewer instead of having them yawn). 50%

I don’t know. From a Pulitzer winning story, I would have expected more than just a church song with weirdly glued-together motivations, mostly held together by the exceptional actors. The dialogues are fairly decent and the titular message works pretty intensively within a strongly unspoken and interpretively open framework, but they are nothing but shallow gimmicks of a good writer who doesn’t know how to work in the film medium or how to lead the attention of the audience. Something like this should be a lot stronger and less artificial. 60%

A strong topic and an appropriate challenge for Jane Fonda, whose political and environmental activism and her desire to be a strong personality prove that no guy would be able to keep up with her for a long time. And so it is, Jason Robards managed it for only nine minutes and the Academy gave him an Oscar for secondary role… But I digress, Julia perhaps is mostly about Jane Fonda, who handles the role very well, but also stands on a script that relies primarily on automatic empathy and doesn’t throw at the viewer anything that would suddenly shake them or be etched in their memory while they are in a comfortably watching mode. Zinnemann is an experienced and competent filmmaker, but he should work with more adrenalin-packed stories like The Day of the Jackal, which I could not take my eyes off. Julia is nice and narratively original, but it didn’t impress me much and, for instance, Jason Robards didn’t manage to sell the character well enough to be fundamentally important to the story. The ending just fizzles out…