JudgeHolden

Gangster shoot'em-up movie (with almost no shooting in the first hour), which feels like a mix of short scenes from various, unrelated films. It has a great cast that never manages to meet the expectations, great setting that is never really explored, and mediocre attempts to create deeper characters that fail miserably in a mish-mash of cliches.

A must see for all the Middle-Earth aficionados. A great return to a great universe... The movie is a tribute to all the fans, who missed songs, as well as references to the Silmarillion and other Tolkien's works in the LOTR trilogy. The critics may be right when pointing out some tedious moments, but taken as a whole the movie stands out as a really enjoyable work, shot in a spectacular 3D technology...

Good movie, coherent, plot-twisting, and with well written characters. This said, I thought there would be more science fiction and a little more broader view. It made me think of "12 Monkeys", which had the same scale: one city, max. 10 depicted characters, and surprising ending. To sum up, very engaging, despite the flaws.

This movie will not cater for everyone. It has a feeling of old spy movies and manages to mix in an engaging way various genres: drama, action, thriller, and comedy about Hollywood. Despite the characters lack more depth and the movie does not focus on the global situation (which could add to the thrill), I think Affleck squeezed every drop of potential for success from a crazy and out-of-the-box-thinking story, making it accessible and entertaining for the modern viewer, who is not used to old-school spy movies. Chapeau to both Affleck and the CIA.

One of few movies during which I fell to sleep :/ The plot seems full of bullet holes, with some reminiscence of previous Bourne movies rattling inside. Sometimes it's even difficult to understand what the point of this movie is... Is there some kind of conspiracy? Or is it just about one American agent, who runs after some pills? Yet another disappointment, after a dismal Ghost Protocol...

Fairy tale for adults. And a great, Family-Guy-ish story of friendship. Seth McFarlane in good form, although not so witty as always. Very watchable movie.

Not so memorable as Kill Bill Vol. 1 for me, a bit touchy sometimes and naive at moments (e.g. the daughter's plot), thanks to Madsen and Carradine I found it really enjoyable. It's Tarantino ok, the references to westerns, noir, and kung-fu movies are cool, but a bit schematic and dull to some extent.

A unique blend of movie genres with a superb choice of music and a lot of small hints at some well known pictures make of Kill Bill Vol. 1 a must-watch position. Though I'm not a fan of some other Tarantino movies, I enjoyed this one thoroughly and recommend it to anyone.

This is NOT a cinematographic legend or a myth. All the same, it is a great conclusion of a wonderful trilogy with all the Nolanesque style we're used to (deep characters, good photography, memorable script). I enjoyed it a lot and surely will watch it again. However, I was a bit disappointed by Marion Cotillard's character and her performance, as well as by some minor elements (final scenes, a bit of cliches in Zimmer's music that resemble Inception). Michael Caine FTW!

Decent, funny picture, which contains a load of memes and jokes about the fading action-movie stars. I laughed during all the movie. Probably that's why I overlooked dull plot and absurd production. Expendables 2, though, aren't about the plot. This movie is about fun and action. And fun and action it provides.

After a decent "Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona" and a good "Midnight in Paris", Woody Allen offers us a galore of stereotypes about Italy and the Italians boosted to unimaginable, absurd levels. Where are all intelligent and witty jokes that used to enjoy in his movies? Where is the well balanced humour? All I receive is a flawed picture of the Italian society, which seems to be full of idiots and people obsessed with fame, not to mention a total lack of Rome itself. The atmosphere of this wonderful city was reduced to a few postcard-ish scenes that completely lack to portrait its soul. And what is Penelope Cruz doing there? She was included in the cast as a prostitute who doesn't even speak good Italian... When Carlo Verdone, a famous Italian actor from Rome, saw this movie in March, he supposedly said: "Allen knows nothing about Rome and the Romans". Unfortunately, he was right.

Prometheus has two faces. On one hand, it offers stunning 3D visuals (quite a compliment from a person who hates 3D movies), great music, very good photography and locations, not to mention good performance of the top two actors (Fassbender and Theron). On the other hand, the return to Alien universe is marked by complicated plot with too many loose elements (even dull towards the end), treated in a hasty and pretentious, new-age-ish way, which is quite a shame for a picture with a tonn of small resemblances with the genre's classics (think of 2001: Space Odyssey, Blade Runner or, more recently, Mission to Mars etc.) and books (In the Mountain of Madness, some hints at King Lear's parental drama). It seems to me that after 30 years of absence from sci-fi universe Ridley Scott wanted to tell us everything, ending with telling us nothing in specific. 6/10 for the plot, boosted to 7/10 due to great technical elements.

I have mixed feelings about this movie. It's fun and specific humor for which Baron Cohen is known is intertwined with some dull moments (e.g. the birth scene). I enjoyed more the allusions and small, intelligent quotes that some longer scenes. The Dictator has some interesting twists in the plot, laughs at Arab and Western absurds, and this one man show is paired with some decent acting performance by others (Ben Kingsley!). A really positive element are great and funny Aladeen-ish songs. Overall, it's a good movie to see ONCE and laugh a bit. And that's it. Just ONCE.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Aksel Hennie and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (a.k.a. Jamie Lannister from Game of Thrones) team up in this Norwegian thriller and offer viewers a stunning, memorable acting. Although with some minor flaws in the plot and some moments that recall more a tragicomedy than a fully-fledged thriller, Headhunters is one of the best movies I've seen recently. It raised my heartbeat in a way unseen since Girl with a Dragon Tattoo and I fully recommend it to all the fans of Scandinavian criminal shows!

Those who've read the book of Valerio Massimo Manfredi will probably agree that the movie had too many differences compared to the novel. The movie felt like if its balances were misplaced. Too many changes, too many lame dialogues, very bad combat scenes. And inexistent characters. Those were present also in the book, but the movie lost even the best element of the literary original: all the valuable information about the Roman era... Disappointing.

Well designed characters, good acting, nicely balanced humour and very good visual aspect sum up to make of this film a very enjoyable movie, even for those who like me are not particularly fond of superheroes.

< See those critic reviews on the left? Those are there and give this movie 50 out of 100 because Iron Sky makes a laugh of the culture they represent. It's a witty and funny movie that derides the pop culture and politics as a whole with a ton of well-chosen references, proving that you don't need an AAA budget to create a good movie with stunning visuals nor that you must have a Spielberg as the executive producer. It is not "as funny or cruel as its killer premise"? Oh come on! It's a wonderfully done B-class black comedy that even in the end mocks Hollywood productions! And it's great! Don't listen to "critics" whom the movie criticizes! I saw the "killer premise" and I expected a movie with a simple plot, full of bad acting, with lots of star battles and jokes about the ****, all presented in a high quality way. Except for bad acting, which was correct and decent, all was there and I'm far from disappointed.

There would not be enough opinions about how wooden the acting in this film is. At the same time, after thinking it through, I find it quite positive. The SEALs are not pretending to be professional actors. They are just doing their job well, and in a spectacular way! The action scenes are really great! The operations are as realistic as they can be. There are no exaggerated visual effects. None are needed, though. This movie is all about SEALSs and all about action as it could be. And that's its biggest advantage! A staunch 7!

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Psychological and personal. This movie is all about J. Edgar Hoover the person, not the chief of FBI. Dark, gloomy, enigmatic... a film like the person it depicts. DiCaprio is awesome at playing Hoover. However, in my opinion, the movie toys too much with retrospectives, leaving the spectator lost at times...

Millenium trilogy? What's that? I haven't read Larsson's books, I haven't seen the previous movies. Probably that's why I'm able to give this movie a sound 9. I don't care if this is a good adaptation of Larsson's book. What I can say is that I was simply captivated by this movie for 2,5 hours. The plot is good, makes you wonder, fear, doubt, and shock all the time. The gloomy atmosphere of a Northern Swedish town with a lingering mystery that surrounds the Vangners' possession is overwhelming and well presented. Trent Reznor's music is just great in stressing the hideous danger that creeps literally out of everything: iMacs, forests, photographs, neat Swedish homes etc. The acting of Craig is good (and just that), while the critic appraisals for Mara's performance are justified -- she is truly mesmerizing as Lisbeth Salander, and her acting, in which she speaks more with her eyes than actually words, is fantastic. The director of photography and the editing team did also a great job: fast-changing scenes truly capture all the necessary elements, gestures, and moments. What are you waiting for? Go watch it!

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

A+. Remember the classical sport movies about overcoming one's problems with a happy end? Have you seen Jobs' speech at Stanford? Moneyball is both. It's a good movie about unorthodox thinking, opening oneself to the others and going against the odds. Maybe it's not fast-paced, but hey, we're talking about baseball, aren't we? Screenplay is good and convincing, but it's Pitt's performance that is great. I hope for him to strike at least one home run by getting an Oscar nomination.

Political dirt at its best. The Ides of March depicts a modern Brutus-Gosling who loses his idealistic faith in politics. Although with some plot-flaws, this is a good piece of political cinema. Worth watching and worth wandering who is going to be the next Caesar...

The best spy movie I've seen in the last 15 years and probably one of the best in its genre. If you like thinking about what you see and not just see some images pass by, that's the movie for you. Period.

Disappointing. After reading the critic reviews for this film I expected something much more coherent from a action-spy-movie point of view. This film is totally predictable, the acting is dull, the plot seems taken from Goldeneye or another crazy-terrorist-going-after-nuclear-disaster movie from the 1980s. I don't give this film a negative score only because of great scenes at Burj Khalifa.