Kaka

The first one was simple, but also time direct and enjoyable. Red 2 has the same ills as, for instance, the sequel to Ocean’s Eleven: a layered plot that is confusing, crammed with different locations, jarring shifts and cuts, etc. It has no juice and the second time around it's a tired borefest. Not much action either, and the stuntmen are too visible. If it weren't for Helen Mirren in an unusual and unique role, and John Malkovich in full blast, this would be crap seen a hundred times that belongs in the toilet.

Bradley Cooper's acting plasticity and vivaciousness is astonishing, but otherwise this slightly extremist-looking chase for a Michelin start is a bit too simple and too much for the average consumer who is content with the kebab next door but doesn't care much for delicacies. I would have imagined a less routine narrative and more interesting characters like the main one. At the very least Sienna Miller could have been, as could Daniel Bruhl, or the reprehensibly underused Alicia Vikander. These meals aren't about the process of eating, they're about emotion. I expect the same from the film, but the flaws are noticeable.

Given the incredibly mind-numbing screenwriting filler, I'm also tired of the screaming, visually climactic destruction that Snyder can do. He managed to pull it off in Man of Steel, because he had a solid story where he could afford to do it. It's just that this dark backdrop like in Watchmen with a story like Adventures of the Gummi Bears falls far short of bringing the viewer to satisfaction. There are lots of side characters that are unnecessarily overused and have no business being there, and reprehensibly underused characters that are interesting and you want to know a lot more about (Gal Gadot). The word total bummer then is the actual "sparking" of Batman and Superman, where you don't absorb their motivations for hostility, whereupon two minutes into the duel between the two worlds, they're best buddies guaranteed not to betray each other. The digital mess at the end just tops off the resulting headache. After this ride, you're not too thrilled when Snyder has a couple of skyscrapers demolished or nukes the place. Zimmer only added loops, otherwise it's basically the same soundtrack as Man of Steel, and Ben Affleck is a cool Batman who lacks a more realistic anchoring in a more tangible human world like in Nolan’s films. What he does improve on are the great personal fights, but Nolan never excelled at that, and that's common knowledge. ULTIMATE CUT is significantly better. The film is much broader, with a number of shots added, so the whole feels more whole, with a sense of detail. Definitely a different tone than the one set by the Marvel mashup. Darker, more epic, more fateful. A star up.

An unexpectedly solid TV movie, which, apart from the fabulous Jennifer Love Hewitt, offers an interesting insight into the nooks and crannies of "massage" parlours and a quite realistic view of a totally broke American family trying to survive, with the individual crisis life decisions resulting from it. It has no higher ambitions, and that's where it's fine. A solid pilot for a series.

Art, is breaking down, pushing and creating genre boundaries, not following them exactly. Alicia Vikander understood this, the creator(s) of this film didn’t.

Put on this vulgar sexist crap to people 30 years from now and they'll feel about 10 times worse than we do today watching the incredibly gay Wham! live tour. Not that it isn’t a good film by today's twisted standards of audience expectation, it pretty much is; it's also self-aware, dynamic, just desperately uncritical. But it'll make a billion, so it's fine. Comics are running out of ideas, so along come comic book parodies of comics. I'm looking forward to 2020 to see what Marvel's parody will be.

Michael Bay is searching and doesn't know which way to go. He may be aging and maturing in certain creative aspects, but at the same time he is dramatically losing his directorial touch and there is almost nothing left of what entertained his millions of fans and die-hard worshippers in the 90s and 00s. Nowadays they're more or less experiments meant to evoke some sort of shift in the viewer's perception, but I want the old Armageddon and 14 cuts per second back, not a half digital copy of Black Hawk Down where the dying and marine feeling is similarly raw but formally lost before our eyes. The viewer is eventually hit by explosions and bullets, but not entirely in a positive way. It's not as it should be.

Inspiration from The Wolf of Wall Street (lead actors, dynamics), well chosen protagonists and Steve Carell playing me. A heartwarming film for people in the business, and recipients who don't understand it will bemoan how little story there is and how it's too much about numbers and mortgages.

The event of 2015. From the first scene of the camp ambush it is clear that the filmmaking is on another level (the camera and the minimum of editing!). Although many things are unnecessarily discussed (e.g. the actors), the experience of watching this raw and dirty survival story was widely expected, Iñarritú is at his strongest in his depiction of anything. In terms of the script, it’s nothing too revelatory, after all, the driving force behind the entire film is revenge – one of the most primal and rewarding themes. But the hallmark that this Mexican manages to imbue it with through his elaborate formal style makes for a uniquely opulent and pure genre film. It is too long – its single flaw. If they had just stayed strictly down-to-earth and avoided the Terrence Malick-like dream sequence, it would have been flawless.

Only a person who is or was in the shoes of Anne Hathaway's character will see the true heart of this film and the best in it. The stress, pressure, and perpetual not getting things done is almost palpable through the screen. It's a hit and probably the highlight of the year in terms of lightweight American pop cinema. Breathtaking interaction between Hathaway and De Niro. Too bad about the weaker finale. Emotions do take place in the middle when they are not wanted but they are direct.