Kaka

A raw Barcelona odyssey, a tribute to the big city, and Bardem's remarkable one man show with cancer. Unfortunately, it doesn't have any "filler" or other connective tissue in between, so a lot of interesting images, handheld camerawork and a few solid scenes are wasted. It lacks drive, it lacks an emotional charge, and it’s too long. Iñarritú wants to play the same music he did in 21 Grams, but he doesn't have a good enough score, or rather, he has a story and characters you can't understand or relate to.

Exactly what you expect if you know the work of Derek Cianfrance, the master of relationship dramas: a touching, poignant and hauntingly minimalist period piece. The social and moral dilemmas set 100 years in the past give the film a certain refinement and grace of yesteryear that is hard to do in modern films and usually needs to mature a bit. It is expectedly heartbreaking in places and scripted very well; it gets under the skin. You understand everyone involved, and yet you cannot say unequivocally what is good and what is not. After Minghella, those classically told, old-school stories have almost run their course, and it's great that Cianfrance is picking up the baton and moving on. With his directorial virtuosity and sense of emotion, we have much to look forward to in the future. Cut 10 or 15 minutes of overloaded shots of the sea and rocks and it could have been almost perfect. And I hope Vikander gets another Oscar for this.

Something is wrong if you have to wait 131 minutes for the first great scene in a film that is 133 minutes long. This film is not made out of love and fondness for Star Wars, it's made for people who will go to see it out of love and fondness for Star Wars, because any billion in profit is good. A woefully ordinary and completely useless film that doesn't fit in with either the old or the new episodes.

Thematically similar to Wild and Into The Wild, i.e. an individual with different views, attitudes and philosophy of life, going against the established practices and standards of modern society. It's a bit of an agitprop for organic life, a bit of a tribute to the hippies and a bit of a backwoods romp. Most of all, though, it's a surprisingly functional family drama about unconventional family practices and a different approach to life that's very raw in some scenes while brilliantly contrasting the typically capitalist mannerisms of the contemporary bourgeoisie, a superbly typecast American middle class, and a family of pragmatic, penniless scrappers living in the woods who are seemingly depraved in every way, but not really. The greatest virtue is that the director manages to put all these typologically selected life practices into one plane and extracts the positives and negatives from both in equal measure. So, in the end, the viewer is served with a plethora of consistent, very interesting opinions and scenes that are entertaining in their inner charge, thought-provoking message, and are healthily spiced with great acting performances. Thankfully it clearly doesn't side with nature, whereas the older brothers have it in their name and it's clear what it looks like afterwards. Mortensen and co are nuts, but they have brains, they know why they're doing it and you root for them.

A breathtakingly deceiving film, seemingly over-stylised and focused on form and material things, coldly pragmatic and ruthlessly violent. At the same time, it is a subliminally disarming probe into the reality of today's world with a bunch of fundamental life questions in the sense of rightness/wrongness of living contemporary life, dealing with important goals, directions and opinions that influence the future and define the present of man. A film as sophisticated, wise and extremely inaccessible to the audience as Ridley Scott's The Counselor. Script-wise, however, it is even more sophisticated, which is why it has that extra bit in the rating. Again, some users' allusions to snobbery, etc., stem from a misunderstanding of the film and thus a misunderstanding of the ideas and message it conveys.

A mix of The Bodyguard (focusing on the protagonist and his fragile relationship with his employer) and Drive (the aesthetics, the minimalism, the music). It's a pity it's so austere and short for what it's about. The emotional level is strong and the running time is too short to fully get under the skin of the main characters. The more action-packed passages are surprisingly chilling and suspenseful. It fits right in with the contemporary European trend of more ambitious filmmaking.

An interesting cabaret-theatre staging, the confused and whiny dialogue that is typical of Woody Allen, the famed Chazz Palminteri doing what he does best, a mobster. Otherwise, unfortunately, it's a boring, hysterical farce with unremarkable protagonists. The already mentioned homage to theatre occasionally comes through, but that doesn't make a film a film. Putting this on for a modern audience is a punishment.

For my taste, too much time is spent on the early era, when Formula One was in its infancy, but everything was at the beginning and the appeal and trends were gradually developing. On the other hand, there’s not much of the golden era, or the modern era. Lauda vs Hunt is OK, there is very little Senna, and Prost is basically not there at all, yet the duel between these two drivers is perhaps even more epic and longer than the one between the knights of the 1970s. It's solidly done, though, with lots of valuable facts and interviews

A proper B-movie with likeable actors and an interesting theme of time travel – a rewarding topic that makes even an ordinary film relatively interesting. The general enthusiasm for this film is a big mystery, but Ok, a whodunit where clues are gathered by two people talking 30 year apart over an old transistor radio, that’s a good one.

Oliver Stone remains just as critical, slightly caustic and interesting. I'm a little worried that this patriot won't be doing anything more than dissecting American’s biting problems, and that's a bit of a shame (the glorious and "differently" conceived Alexander). On the other hand, Snowden is an interesting subject, decently handled and easy to grasp for an ordinary viewer unfamiliar with the case – even a complete illiterate can understand what is happening in the film and what is related to what. For die-hard political scientists and would-be pundits, however, it may not be the right fit, It's not pure documentary style, they wanted it to be good to go to the cinema and the purpose is fulfilled.