New Reviews - Progressing Users

Jackie Chan, under the direction of Martin Campbell, has made quite possibly his best film in the last five years and it's nice to see that he is still in form, it's just a pity that the real action only comes at the end. The fight in the woods and the confrontation in the house are very solid, Pierce Brosnan is fine as the villain. Story-wise it could have been more interesting, and I found the first half hour a bit annoying as the stubborn Jackie went a bit overboard with the constant questioning of his daughter about the killer, but otherwise a decent flick that doesn't offend. Next time less politics and more action and it'll be a 4. 70%.

A decent post-apocalyptic thriller from the United Arab Emirates. A decent film for the Arabs, technically competent, and although it doesn't bring anything new to the table, it is still a theme that doesn't get boring. A devastated landscape and a small group of survivors take refuge in an aircraft hangar with a water tank, defending themselves from infiltrators who are not welcome. Decent suspense in places, there's a bit of blood, the main villain is an ex-Marine so he gives everyone quite a hard time, and there are some unexpected deaths. Comparable to The Divide in quality, but a level worse. It was even close to 4 stars for me, but in the end I'll stick with a strong 3. 65%.

The adaptation of Jo Nesbø's The Snowman definitely had more potential. I haven't read the book, but it was certainly more interesting than this bland detective story with mediocre visuals and a bored Michael Fassbender. These cold Nordic serial killer thrillers are usually top notch, here the Americans must have interfered a lot in the film, otherwise I can't really explain the failure. The murders are almost non-existent, so forget about the blood, the atmosphere is not very good and the only thing that surprises is the identity of the killer, which I didn't figure out. It is watchable, but the film lacks any WOW effect, which is a shame. The best scene from the trailer doesn’t even appear in the film. 55%

Kathryn Bigelow is not a bad director at all, and this sensitive racist theme was surprisingly very fitting for me. Will Poulter's performance as the unlikely pissed off bastard was top notch and I hope he gets to portray more villains because he is very well suited to it. Despite the longer running time the film holds your attention, it's quite gritty, shocking and emotional in places, and it all culminates in a 20 minute scandalous trial scene that has decent balls and confirms a respectable 4 stars. A good film. 80%.

Well, I don't know, for the Spaniards it's quite unusually dirty and bizarre, but I can't say that I was entertained for the whole two hours. It's quite funny at the beginning, there are a few jokes, but it's quite boring to watch it until the end. It's not much about gore, it's more about vomit and shit, which I don't find very satisfying, but I definitely won't forget the male childbirth. Maybe if the director had cut the running time by half an hour and focused more on the gore than the feces I would have been more satisfied. 60%.

I was quite surprised by this film. Idris Elba and Kate Winslet are both excellent and they fit together nicely. The film has a few suspenseful moments, keeps the pace, has an unobtrusive romantic line and you sympathize with the main characters. It may have lacked a little something I haven't seen before in this genre to make me rate it higher, but otherwise I had a good time. 70%

Along with The Punisher, the clear series event of the year and the hit of the century for the western genre. This really has everything the genre should have from a likeable protagonist, a great bad guy with his 30 member band of thugs, great music, beautiful locations, cracking gunfights, amazing acting, great direction and writing, I imagine if TV shows got Oscars, Godless would pick up statues for every category. The final thrilling and nerve-wracking 30-minute shootout, where 40 widows defend a saloon with Winchester and Colts against the bad guy and his henchmen, may well be one of the best I've ever seen. An amazing piece of work, a gem, a tribute to a dead genre with clear cult-classic potential. 100%

This film doesn't offer anything innovative and interesting, maybe if it was an original, so be it, but this way it doesn't impress much. While I wasn't bored and the first hour is interesting with medicine and the experiments, the second part with the ghosts is not so interesting. The scares don't work, the atmosphere is nil and the characters don't die, so it's weak in terms of horror. An average film and a pointless remake, but it is watchable. 55%

The decent director Park Hoon-Jeong didn't make me too happy this time and it hurts when my favourite Jang Dong-Gun from the blockbuster No Tears for the Dead is available. However, it's worth noting the new discovery, Lee Jong-Suk, who portrays a pretty sleazy metro-sexual serial killer, but his spree ends a quarter of the way through the film and then it's just South Korea, North Korea and the American Interpol arguing about who gets to take over, which I didn't much enjoy. At the beginning the film looked very dirty and brutal, with scenes of a murdered family in a house and one decent murder by strangling a naked girl with nylons, but that's the end of it. No other action is shown, apart from the final shootout in a building, which was fine. The story is not engaging enough, the suspense is also lacking and there is no twist, there is not much to praise. I was expecting much more, at least it was nice to see Peter Stormare in a brief role. Disappointing. 60%

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, from Radio Silence, deliver their tried and tested recipe once again. Why change something that works. Here we have a group of thieves who kidnap a little girl and are tasked with guarding her for 24 hours in a huge mansion, but what seems like an easy job soon will cost them their lives – they have no idea whose daughter Abigail is. A very likeable cast (I enjoyed the original introduction to the characters, where Melissa Barrera uses details to identify everyone like Sherlock Holmes), the big surprise is Kevin Durand, who is a very funny insert throughout the film, and it was nice to see Dan Stevens as well. The film has a very fast pace, nice visuals, effective jokes, it's decently suspenseful, there a few twists and turns at the end, and it's also decently gory (the house ends up painted in blood from the roof to the basement, so evil can't be pissed) The final explosion was literally a gore epic!!! Too bad the atmosphere doesn't work much and some of the vampire rules change to serve the script, but never mind that, it's the cool ride that they promised, and delivered. Quite possibly the best Vampire movie of recent years? And if you doubt about it, give me a better choice. 8/10.

About the same as the first part. The battle is maybe a bit better, because we have lightsabers in a bigger extent. The script is a big mess. The idea is there, but Zack Snyder can hold it with all the weird dialogue and nonsensical behavior of the checkerboard pieces. I want to see the uncensored version to see if anything interesting can be done with the material or if it is just bullshit. To be continued. P.S: There's still not enough of Anthony Hopkins' Jimmy out there.

When I saw the first trailer for The Noonday Witch, it raised great expectations in me, moreover, I like the poem of the same name for its depressingly suggestive touch, and even though it was announced in advance that it would be a free adaptation of Karel Jaromír Erben's classic, I still counted on the translation of the main motifs from the poem into the film. Which to some extent it did! To begin with, it must be said that The Noonday Witch is more of drama than horror, mainly about a new beginning for the main character, but also about issues of parenthood and human relationships. As far as the visuals are concerned, it's an above-average piece of work in terms of Czech production – I was most impressed by the predominant colour of the grain (and the overall golden colour), which made the unbearable heat the characters deal with all the more apparent. All the scares in worked well, even if they were few and far between, but as I said, this was more drama than horror. In short, a solidly made film that benefits mainly from the premise, the visuals, the convincing performances and (by Czech standards) a good musical score.

When I went to the cinema to see Gods of Egypt, I was expecting a heroic audiovisual orgy with nothing to surprise me. And I wasn’t too far off the mark, as this film more or less fits the previous description. It's a truly colourful film, with a large number of imaginative elements that both help and hurt it. I rolled my eyes considerably during the scenes in which the gods are transported in chariots by birds and bugs, and the same was true of their Terminator-like appearance. On the other hand, I was probably most impressed by the line with Geoffrey Rush, who elevated the overall acting quality. A film to fill an evening, with which one of the most overused critical clichés can be applied: “It neither impresses nor offends.”

I really don't know what the Coen brothers were trying to say with this star-studded genre hybrid, but the effect of this film missed me by a very large and centrifugal arc, which is a shame, because at first glance it seemed like it was going to be a comic blockbuster that would rely on the cast and script. Unfortunately, there was acting was neither great nor very funny, which is not to say that everyone was lousy, rather, they were all playing to a weak script. Even though it was a comedy, I honestly laughed from the heart very few times – probably most of all at the scene in the editing room with Frances McDormand (too bad she didn't get more space). A film that is let down by its lackluster execution, considering all tose big names and the potential that was there somewhere.

An impressive film about a not-so-traditional relationship between a mother and son, which relies mainly on convincing performances and a well-written script. With this film, Xavier Dolan has climbed back up the ladder with me after his largely mediocre and embarrassing Tom at the Farm. My only criticism is the film’s running time, which could have been shorter, but again, I don't want to say that I was bored in any way. Anne Dorval and Antoine Olivier Pilon, as the loving mother and her unmanageable son, played their parts with verve, and were very well seconded by Suzanne Clément as the mentally disturbed neighbour. There are wonderful musical hits throughout the film, from Dido to Ludovico Einaudi to my favourite Lana Del Rey, so it was truly a symphony for the ears. In short, a film that is certainly not lost within its vastly overcrowded and largely exhausted genre.

Truth is a film that is mediocre in many ways – from the not-so-convincing actors to the premise, which, while not blatantly obvious, somehow gets lost in the course of its portrayal. Truth be told, I can't say that any of the hour and a half stuck in my mind. In short, a film that is easily lost in the clutter of films like it.

A very peculiar film, which on the one hand stands out with a somewhat original idea within the time planes, but on the other hand, paradoxically, it trips over its own feet because it's all a bit of a mess in the end. As far as the execution is concerned, it looks more like a TV movie that hand had some higher ambitions, but these somehow disappear in the course of the plot. In short, it's a film that's quite hard to form an opinion on, as it evaporates from your mind faster than steam over a pot.

For me personally, the weakest film in the Terminator franchise, significantly hurt by the absence of a real Schwarzenegger as the the casting of Christian Bale and Sam Worthington in the lead roles, they just didn't seem charismatic enough to catch my attention. Technically, it's well done, but story-wise it's just such a weaker offshoot of its predecessors. In short, such a poor little sibling among its quality brethren that ultimately impresses most with its mediocrity.

I had Joe Wright pegged as a director of stunning film adaptations of literary classics, like Atonement and Pride & Prejudice. So my hopes for Pan were higher than for 2003's Peter Pan (which wasn't bad, but mediocre), even if I wasn't particularly taken with Wright's previous Anna Karenina. What I didn't expect, however, was what I got in the cinema as a final result. The new retelling of Barrie's play is an overly goofy and modern-laden hodgepodge of something disgustingly colourful without any internal consistency, which is a real shame considering the big names surrounding the film. I've never been a fan of Nirvana, but even so, the cover to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in a movie like this irritated me to a degree. A very big fail on many fronts that not many people expected, myself included.

San Andreas could be ranked alongside Roland Emmerich's disaster movies like 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow, and it certainly wouldn't put itself to shame. Within its genre, it is a solid piece of work that is average in many ways, but that's the way it goes with films like this. The film is duly laced with action and decent visual effects depicting overwhelming destruction, and as far as the cast is concerned, they are universally likeable. In short, an enjoyable flick that looks good and doesn't require much thought.