J*A*S*M

It’s certainly a well made film, but after Sideways it’s a bit run-of-the-mill.

Rowan Atkinson is funny even when he's just standing and staring blankly, but in a hundred minutes he will get boring sooner or later (sooner, in my case) and not even Scully can help him.

A film about the birth, life and death of a story. The author as a cat and the audience as a mouse. An unusual film by an unusual director who deserves a lot more attention – originality should be appreciated.

That was yummy! A film doomed to the most mixed reviews. For some it will be an insufficiently stylized and insufficiently action-packed copy 300, for others, a way too stylised and an unfaithful take on ancient mythology, and yet for others, a screenwriting mess without any clear motifs and relationships… or, it’s really easy to criticise Immortals. But if I had to criticise one thing, it would be that, compared to his previous film, Tarsem Singh has taken a bit too big a step towards the average audience. But despite that, he’s made a very original and stylised film that I refuse to call average, even if I was forced to. Visually, it’s one of the most intoxicating films from last year and I’m sorry to have missed it in the cinema.

A perfect premise, no doubt. The director of Spread has made a surprisingly ambitious romantic drama with a global catastrophe as a backdrop. The result is quite impressive, but it could have been even more so if the relationship between the two protagonists worked better – I just didn’t feel any bond between McGregor and Green. The apocalyptic line works much better and it was the most enjoyable thing in Perfect Sense. What’s a stumbling block, though, is that the creators want to express way too many things in these two lines (from personal relationships, through the human nature, all the way to our relationship with our planet) and I couldn’t catch the central motif, if there was any to begin with. The resulting impression is as if someone had optimistically told me that I still have one year of a happy life left… 7/10

A much more unbearable film than I could have ever expected. Technically speaking, it’s good, of course, but the dialogues are a pain to listen to, the main characters are unlikeable (all of them, and the main teenage redneck most of all), the story is driven by either chance or the stupidity of the characters, and the whole lot is so awfully pathetic and kitsch that it made my head spin. I think the world around us is full of better stories and I don’t understand why anyone should care whether one mare will be reunited with an unlikeable young guy or not. And, if the animal in this film intentionally and consciously (!!!) sacrifices itself in order to help its friend, and people actually believe it and are moved by it… something is bloody wrong in this world. It’s been long since something pissed me off so much. Two stars for the technical aspect, but unfortunately, Spielberg is no longer guarantee of quality mainstream entertainment.

If I labelled the blend of horror and comedy as a misdemeanour, then the blend of horror and musical couldn’t be labelled other than a crime against humanity. To make something like that so I would like it, the director would have to be a genius. But, against all my expectations, what I enjoyed the most about Don’t Go in the Woods were actually the songs. The horror part is not worth talking about, the murders don’t begin until twenty minutes before the end. Without the music, it would have been almost unbearable, so two points for that at least.

I felt like a redneck in a posh restaurant who orders some incredibly expensive chef’s special and a thousand Euro bottle of wine and then, when they bring it, I lovingly reminisce of a pork schnitzel with a beer at the local pub. An incredibly well made spy drama whose potential to become an immediate modern genre classic is similar to, for instance, last year’s western True Grit, or Tomas Alfredson’s previous film, Let the Right One in. For me, however, it was too slow, with too much dialogue, too one dimensional and too long, which, together with the fact that spy dramas are not my favourite genre, resulted in my being unable to properly appreciate it. I’m sorry, but that’s the fact.

One star for those couple of moments when it was unintentionally funny and for one of the last scenes, which was nicely awful, and also because I’ve been trying not to give Boo! ratings.

David Fincher is one of the best directors alive and it’s not surprising that he’s made an excellent film. The differences between the American and Swedish adaptations are enough to invalidate the argument of a pointless remake, but I’m still unable to convince myself that I should be satisfied with this new version, I’m not, even though the quality is clear. In short, watching a whodunit when you know who the killer is, is as much fun as going to the sea to watch dolphins, even though you know that dolphins don’t live in that sea. You can enjoy the fresh sea breeze, work on a tan, have a cold alcoholic beverage… but you still know that you won’t see any dolphins.