Kaka

They say Shyamalan is back with this film, but I have the feeling that he never fully left. With a few exceptions, he's still doing the same stuff: ghost stories, or at least thrillers, often with naturalistic elements, where the primary role is played for 90 percent of the film's running time by a crystallizing twist that more or less shocks at the end. But once the rules are set, it's good to stick to them. And so, when the whole film has the undertone of the reality of the laws of physics of the contemporary world, it is good to stick to them for the whole duration, because that final game-changer irritated me a lot. And this is one of the reasons why Now You See Me, which pissed off many a film fan with its digital trick escapades, was a flop. Maybe at least McAvoy will get an award for his performance, it was awesome!

The Norwegian rookie isn't afraid of big production. Throw in some good looking actors, a few gore shots and camera finesse like the thrice as expensive and much more bloated Van Helsing and off we go. 90 minutes of non-stop fun and entertainment, or Hansel and Gretel for adults and lovers of an alternative approach to the classics. Sure, it's bullshit, but the signature and commitment of the creators is very likeable.

Emotionally, it's a bit of a cold story that ironically, especially at first, moves quite slowly, but Zemeckis does repair his reputation after the botched The Walk, as Allied may not work as well as a romantic drama, but it certainly works as a WWII spy film. Brad Pitt, of course, as has been the case for the last 10 years, is appropriately wonderful, and Marion Cotillard is traditionally, by eye contact, properly inscrutable. It's not an exemplary hit, but it's filmmaking from a filmmaker who rarely gets it really wrong. It has all the classic filmmaking frameworks that meet at least the standard, plus an absolutely lavish form with at least three over-the-top sequences and a beautifully stylized Morocco set to Silvestri's music.

A prequel to American Beauty. Sensitively made, often very self-aware, but this adolescent romp, for all its under-the-skin atmosphere, doesn't entertain nearly as much as its two years older and more mature sibling.

Flipped is a heartwarming telling of a real-life story, where Rob Reiner, unlike the vast majority of American productions focusing on adult life wisdom exchanges, focuses on elementary school. It has an unwavering charm and a touch of melancholic nostalgia, atypically spiced up with the 1960s, full of prejudices and clichés. It went by fast and was a lot of fun.

The military rhetoric conveyed by Gavin Hood is clear, snappy and lucid, but it’s hard to say to what extent it is realistic, but it’s got pace and the build-up is good. If it weren't for the clichéd element in the middle of the film, this would have been a solid spy drama that combines some interesting attributes. Firstly, technological gadgets of all kinds, but also a political-legal level and a probe into the powers of political leaders. Alan Rickman is superb and Helen Mirren is good in a surprising badass role. I was also pleased with the fact that they got down to business and didn't just talk.

After fifteen years, I would have expected a far more marked evolutionary change than what I got. Nowadays, most of the big studios producing mainstream action heroes know that it's easier to do things in a team and the audience enjoys it. The new XXX came up with this idea and it has to be said that half of the squad is more interesting than the alpha man himself, who makes a few comments here and there, fights once or twice and that's about it. Tony Jaa and Donnie Yen don't have much room to stand out thanks to the hasty editing and confusion of the action scenes, and the girls are damn good at it, but the shooting doesn't quite work for them. We are willing to bend genre standards and boundaries, you know before you watch it that it's going to be dumb, but not many people expect it to be this stupid and badly made.

A brave effort by the French, keeping their typical traditions of hard, raw and direct crime dramas, and are not afraid to experiment a bit (exotic South Africa). It’s a very rough and explicit blood fest in places, but unfortunately it is entertaining mainly because of its form and style, and the performances. The script is too simple and generic. The surprisingly well matched Forest Whitaker-Orlando Bloom duo is a delight. The latter in particular portrays a character of a perpetually drunk and stoned cop, the exact opposite of his acting career so far, and I have a feeling that he enjoyed it quite a bit.

Organ transplants in a different way, with elements of the crazy Trainspotting. A film full of strange creatures, underground London and an atypical love story. Not that it's not original, but there's not much to admire about it.

Everything I feared became a reality. You want a gritty gangster revenge flick, but instead you wait with fear in your eyes for a dressed-up Gatsby to pop around the corner in some lavish camera swoop. That's how "beautiful" Live By Night is, unfortunately, in this case. It does have a flair for pictorial composition, it’s well-acted with few exceptions, with some great roles given damn little space (Gleeson, Cooper). Unfortunately, thematically, it's a film that's not supposed to be so fancy, especially when right at the beginning you get a lively action set-piece like in Public Enemies. It is, after all, a gritty story from a harsh and unforgiving time, and not a poster-boy reminiscence of the golden 1930s. And that's exactly the point where Affleck screwed up, hand in hand with the script. He shows the twenties with poetics, in a haze of nostalgia that doesn’t fit. It called for shady businesses, down-to-earth characters, period hits and dirty streets, exactly how we like it in other films. Still, Affleck has a talent for directing and he can act, but hopefully, he will no longer write scripts.