The Lone Ranger

The most underrated blockbuster of the year. Admittedly uneven in pace, with occasional dullness in the middle passage and some forced humour courtesy of a goofy Depp, but otherwise full of playfulness, likeable exuberance, unprecedented production design and top-notch choreography in several action passages. And please, screw the fact that Depp is just recycling Jack Sparrow, I’m not going to deny excellent craftsmanship because of that. (10/05/2013)

Cowboys and Indians for the twenty-first century pulling out all the stops; the bad ones and the good ones. And the dozens (dozens!) of neat, not immediately obvious allusions (the cicadas and the birds in the bush, the umbrella in the desert etc.), paradoxically more than in Rango, prove better than anything else that the creating team didn’t treat this as just another product. And, yes, this is unarguably “just" the Pirates of the Caribbean in Western garb. However, it should be said that, along with the first Pirates, this is the best to come out of that “series". (07/05/2013)

A small big man smokes a hallucinogenic peace pipe with Pirates of the Caribbean and a mute grotesque. A movie that looks like it's being told by a senile crazy Indian... because it's being told by a senile crazy Indian who also likes to listen to himself talk. The middle passage is a little weak, but otherwise I had a great time. Verbinski sometimes drowns in beloved references, but his "meta-westerns" are smarter than most genre competitors. That guy is not Tonto. (11/02/2013)

A multi-genre homage to a century of cinema? The purest western with the most classic vaudeville gags? Indeed. A big train robbery and easy girls that even Méliès couldn't make up. Or Hell on Wheels through the lens of a comic book hero and progress that you can't stop, even in 1933 (that's when they could play with labels to make Tonto a notorious savage). General Custer keeps his narcissist in check at all times, the ugliest Jane Eyre Ruth Wilson has grown up a bit, Armie Hammer is a worthy successor to the Lone Rangers (ever since the 1933 radio series, novels, comics, and more) and of course, Tom Wilkinson and Helena Bonham Carter are absolute classics. And Hans Zimmer isn't ashamed to cram the entire "William Tell Overture" and its finale into the soundtrack! (07/03/2013)

Exotic and beautifully shot summer bollocks. Depp is a lot of fun and Hammer is alright, but neither of them, nor the cookie-cutter script are enough to keep us interested for almost two and a half hours. It's a breezy and brilliantly scored adventure for the whole family, but it's cold as a penguin’s butt inside and relies too heavily on the fact that we're still interested in Depp's peculiar pirate character – very little from Verbinski. A better 3* (11/28/2015)