EvilPhoEniX

A nice little surprise from Netflix and from the director of 28 Weeks Later. It's a fantasy survival adventure that's unexpectedly dark, suspenseful and slightly brutal in places, and with some bits of scape room. Millie Bobby Brown goes from eleven to sexy twenty and grows into a big babe, there's also a visually very pretty to horror dragon, it's got great pacing, plenty of tension, a working soundtrack and it doesn't matter that the story is a simple "Sacrifice a princess to an evil dragon to secure a kingdom" when it all works and entertains. 75%

Not for me. I don't think Michael Haneke is my thing. It's all too grounded and mundane for my taste, filmed entirely in an apartment, and the long static shots really pissed me off because I was always afraid that I had paused the film or someone cut it by mistake. It's very slow paced, unfortunately nothing really interesting happens for the whole two hours, no suspense at all, the twist is ambiguous and the vaunted "shocking" scene seemed rather comical to me. Lots of light psychological terror where I struggled not to fall asleep. It even made remember the horror of Anatomy of a Fall, which is similarly grounded and won the same European awards, so let the nerds enjoy it. 4/10.

A little known but solid effort from the Germans, set in a tough German ghetto where four kids have a rough time as they get involved with drug dealers and get in debt, which leads to the robbery of the school computers. Another film that shows a rough European neighborhood where the kids have no money and this leads to crime. The mood is reminiscent of rougher Nordic films with similar themes. Good for me, it grabs from the beginning and doesn’t let go. 8/10

The king of comedy Peter Farrelly is back, and for anyone who likes his early work won’t be disappointed by Ricky Stanicky, especially when it comes to a completely dying genre the comedy with A-list stars, so he's hit the mark for me again. The plot is quite interesting, three friends have been pretending to have a friend all their lives but he's fictional, but when the going gets tough and he needs to be introduced to his family they all decide they'd rather hire an actor to impersonate Ricky than go out with the truth. The problem, however, is that John Cena takes the role too seriously and it starts to complicate everyone's lives. Zac Efron is admittedly a bit bland here, because he's being overshadowed by John Cena as an actor, who is fucking stealing the whole show for himself, and luckily he's on screen almost all the time, so fun is taken care of. I laughed out loud too, some of the lines are really crazy and it's all one big crazy ride full of absurd and daft humor, which I love. I really miss movies like this once in a while, so thank you. 75%

I'm satisfied. I like these themes where someone is just plain weird and when it's spiced up with witchcraft, so much the better. The story is about a man who is looking for his biological family, he gets a call from his brother in Portugal and so he and his girlfriend go to visit him, but who are they and what do they want? This premise has been quite popular for the last few years and the twist is not surprising, but it doesn't matter. The unsettling atmosphere with a few unpleasant scenes and one decent jump scare worked for me. The mother's appearance is thus a deterrent case for today's ladies respectively, how you will look in 30 years with all the plastic surgery and botox, she was quite creepy. The craftsmanship is good, so are the actors, the suspense with the music in the final third works fine and I really liked the reference to Goya. Paco Plaza's The Grandmother was a level above, but liked this one too. PS: Scaring with old people has worked for me since The Visit and it suits me better than today's ghost stories. 6/10

The first part was an enjoyable B-movie surprise, but nothing that needed a sequel, so this film was written off more or less from the announcement and unfortunately it's a class worse. Plot-wise, there's not much action either, the robot dogs were alright, but the whole thing just reeks of mediocrity. It doesn't hurt to watch it, so those 3 stars in the end, yeah, but it’s pretty useless. 5/10.

The trailer was packed with action, but there's not much action in the result and even though it's my favourite kind of stuff, it's mediocre in all respects, even for the French. We have the Parisian underworld and six major crime families, each focused on a different kind of crime. The introduction of the families and the mythology around them is great, but if the whole series focused only on them. or each episode about a different family, I'd be seething with glee because there would be burglaries, prostitution, drugs, assassinations, pickpockets. Instead we have a young girl out for revenge and the Furies, who sort of tame everyone, but doesn't really show much in the way of action, so nothing new there. Plot-wise, it's cliché on top of cliché, the characters are quite likeable, the protagonist pulls it off, the action isn't the worst (occasionally there’s a nice fight or a bloody shootout, but I found it woefully lacking, especially when everything else doesn't work properly). This didn't do much for me. Pure mediocrity that would have worked better as a movie, but as a series it's unnecessarily long. 55%

Matthew Vaughn is a favourite of mine and I love the KIngsman series, but Argylle is his first big misstep so far, where even his trademarks don't work and the whole thing is just so weird and dysfunctional. A lot of the film is hampered by the fact that there is no R-rated action, if he had sprinkled some gore in there and spiced up the film with some decent humour, the whole thing would have worked a lot better, but unfortunately the casting alone isn't worth much. The most interesting acting trio of Henry Cavill, John Cena and Dua Lipa are rather just cameos, and Sam Rockwell tries his best, but I'd rather see someone else there. Bryce Dallas Howard is completely miscast for me though, as the bulge in the action doesn't work for me at all (Dua Lipa and Sofia Boutella would have been much better suited there). The plot twists are quite overwrought and none of them are very interesting or shocking, and even the action this time is not typically playful, creative and inventive, except for two quite original action scenes in the very finale – the dance using colored smoke bombs was interesting and visually nice and the oil skating was mad, but it was one of the lighter moments of the film. That said, I have to criticise the opening scene on the train, where the switching between the two actors was very annoying even to me, and it's a shame no one told Vaughn that this really isn't cool. Overall a big disappointment, but I didn't suffer, it's watchable. 55%.

A wonderfully hypnotic and transcendent grandiose work of epic proportions that finally satisfied me to the fullest. To be honest I was very skeptical, because I didn’t like the first part very much; it was extremely slow for my taste, slightly uninteresting, it lacked any memorable wow scene (there are several here), that would make me want to watch the movie again sometime, and the action scenes were a real bummer (especially the shields, which looked like cheesy CGI effects from SyFy, really bad in contrast to the world, which looks visually stunning). Thankfully, Denis Villeneuve himself realized this and the shields are kept to a minimum, almost non-existent. The second episode had me glued to my seat right from the start, it's simply more rewarding to watch and it deals with more interesting things. I did enjoy all the customs and traditions of the Fremen (there is a lot of inspiration from the Arab world here: names, costumes, religion, but I really liked that here). Audiovisually, it's flawless, the Greig Fraser/Hans Zimmer connection is very effective, all the huge monuments, machines, worms are hypnotically captivating, and the music is wonderfully ear-splitting and chill-inducing. The Harkonnens are also perfect, their world and traditions are nicely dark and twisted, and the entrance of Austin Butler is brilliant (though he doesn't appear until halfway through the film and doesn't get as much space). Timothée Chalamet's transformation into the leader is believable and (every speech where he roars is great), the chemistry with Zendaya works too – especially at the end it had a strong emotional impact on me and the final epic battle could have been longer but was satisfying. (maybe they hired a new choreographer, because the fights are much better, though I wish it was R-rated). I'm glad I finally lost myself in Dune, albeit for the second time, but even that counts. I enjoyed every minute of it in the cinema, and the last time was with Poor Things, which is a different genre. I'm really looking forward to the third installment, with the addition of my favourite Anya Taylor Joy (a cast of the most talented young actors together!!).

This unconventional, twisted, unpleasant and sick oddity from Spain got me. This strange film is a sort of episodic mosaic of different stories of people who have some sort of physical deformity, all in a modest setting and with an interesting soundtrack. There's a woman who has an anal opening instead of lips (that's probably the most twisted creation), a blind prostitute working in a brothel full of strange individuals, a boy whose dream is to lose his legs because he wants to become a mermaid, and more. There's also a lot of nudity even if mostly of extremely obese or elderly people, so nothing fancy to look at. In short, another film where you won't be entirely comfortable watching it, but it's also quite sad and mostly very WTF. Only for a fringe audience. The running time of 77 minutes is acceptable, and an extra star for originality. 70%.