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Returning to Anaconda never sounded like a particularly good idea. The original from the 1990s was already a fairly terrible film, so making another version could easily have produced an even bigger disaster. This new film, however, understands one essential thing: if you are going to revive a title like this, you had better not take it too seriously.Paul Rudd and Jack Black are the main reason it works. Both are very comfortable inside absurd comedy and have enough charisma to rescue scenes that would not be especially funny on the page. Their chemistry feels natural, and they appear to be enjoying themselves, which eventually becomes **** film plays with the idea of remaking a bad movie, with characters who know they are entering a ridiculous project and with an industry incapable of allowing any recognisable title to remain untouched. That self-aware approach is more interesting than a straightforward remake and lets the film mock both the original and modern **** every joke works. Some are too obvious, others continue for too long, and there are moments when the film relies too heavily on Jack Black shouting or behaving foolishly. Even so, several scenes are genuinely funny, and the film at least tries to make its own absurdity part of the entertainment.Paul Rudd provides a drier, more relaxed style of humour, while Jack Black operates several levels above everyone else. The contrast between them holds the film together surprisingly well. Whenever the screenplay loses direction, their reactions are often enough to maintain some **** adventure and horror elements are more uneven. The giant snake appears when expected, and there are chases, scares and deaths, but the film never seriously wants to frighten us. Everything is filtered through parody and through the awareness that we are watching a comic version of a story that was ridiculous from the **** effects are not extraordinary either. The anaconda still looks excessively digital at times and loses any real sense of danger. That does not matter too much because the film never asks us to take it completely seriously. The problem appears whenever it attempts genuine suspense and the image cannot support it.There is also a certain amount of disorder. Characters, jokes and situations sometimes feel included because somebody thought they might work individually, even when they do not fit smoothly into the whole. The story moves unevenly, and not every supporting character receives the same attention.Still, it is more interesting than the 1990s film. Not because it is a great achievement, but because it understands its own limitations more clearly. The original wanted us to believe in a terrifying adventure and became unintentionally funny. This version accepts from the beginning that the material is ridiculous and tries to use that **** result is a light, self-aware and harmless adventure comedy. It reinvents nothing, offers very little genuine horror and never reaches the level of the best movie parodies. But it has jokes, strong chemistry between its leads and enough energy to provide a reasonably entertaining **** is watchable. Considering where it started, that is already something.

An Academy Award nomination for Best International Feature does not guarantee that a film is good. Politics, campaigns and many interests that have little to do with quality also play a part in those awards. In this case, however, the nomination is fully deserved. The Secret Agent is extremely well made, and that is clear from the beginning. It has personality, care and the ability to draw you gradually into its world without explaining **** film takes us to Brazil in 1977, still under military dictatorship. Marcelo arrives in Recife trying to leave something from his past behind and remain unnoticed for a while. It soon becomes clear, however, that hiding is not easy in a country shaped by corruption, surveillance and the interests of those in power.Wagner Moura is magnificent. His character remains constantly alert, choosing his words carefully and watching everyone around him. He does not need to explain his fear because it can be seen in his body, his silences and the way he enters every room without knowing who may be watching.This is not a conventional espionage thriller. There are pursuits, secrets, violence and people operating from the shadows, but Kleber Mendonça Filho does not organise the story as a simple race towards a final revelation. He is more interested in building a world, revealing its connections and showing how a threat can enter everyday life.Recife becomes another character. Its streets, buildings, cinemas, offices, bars and carnival atmosphere create a setting filled with life but also danger. The city may appear joyful and chaotic while fear and repression continue moving beneath the **** production design is extraordinary. The recreation of the 1970s never feels like an exhibition of old objects or a collection of cars, clothes and posters placed there to display the budget. Everything belongs to the story and makes the characters feel genuinely rooted in that **** cinematography is also excellent. The film plays with colour, texture and darkness without turning the past into a clean or idealised image. There is sweat, noise, dirt and the constant feeling that something may be waiting behind any **** direction maintains a difficult balance between suspense, political drama, strange humour and moments that come close to horror. An apparently harmless conversation can suddenly become disturbing. These changes in tone reflect a world in which the absurd and the terrible exist side by **** supporting cast is full of characters who leave an impression, even when they appear only briefly. They all seem to have a past and a particular relationship with the system. Some help, some remain silent, some survive by adapting and others use corruption to enrich themselves or remove their **** film is about dictatorship, but also about how power can operate without showing itself directly. A uniform or an official order is not always necessary. Businessmen, police officers, civil servants and killers who understand which interests must be protected are **** structure can occasionally seem scattered. Different storylines, memories, characters and small detours take time to reveal their importance. But that apparent disorder is part of the film. It is building a network in which personal lives, political violence and memory eventually become connected.There is also a profound love of cinema. Recife’s theatres, the films being shown and the use of images speak of another world that is disappearing. The destruction of historical memory becomes linked to the disappearance of the places where a society once preserved and shared its **** length and winding narrative may require some patience. It does not provide every answer immediately or arrange each element so the viewer can understand it without effort. It trusts us to observe, remember and complete some of the gaps.That trust is welcome. The Secret Agent does not use dictatorship as simple decoration or turn the past into a school lesson. It transforms it into a living experience filled with characters, contradictions, fear and **** has excellent actors, magnificent direction and impressive production values. Above all, it achieves something many historical films cannot: it makes a vanished period feel as though it is still present.A very good film. A story about a country’s corruption and violence, but also about memory and everything that never disappears completely.

Shelter is solid old-fashioned action. It does not reinvent anything, does not attempt to transform the genre and does not need to. The film is built around Jason Statham, his physical presence and his familiar ability to play men who appear exhausted by the world but still follow a personal moral code.Statham plays a former MI6 agent living in isolation and trying to leave behind a life defined by violence. Everything changes when he must protect a teenage girl and becomes the target of people willing to do anything to eliminate **** story is extremely familiar. A dangerous man tries to remain hidden, a vulnerable person becomes dependent on him and the past forces him to use his old skills again. We have seen this structure many times, but it is handled effectively **** opening section is quieter and slightly melancholic. The film wants us to understand the character before the gunfire and chases begin. He is not simply a killing machine, but someone who has paid a price for his past and does not want to return to that life.This suits Statham very well. He has never needed long speeches to communicate exhaustion, pain or determination. A look, a movement or a moment of silence is usually enough. His physical ability remains essential, but he can also bring humanity to characters who might otherwise be completely **** relationship with the teenager provides the emotional element. It is not developed with enormous depth, but it gives him someone to protect and reminds us that beneath the cold professional there is still a man capable of caring about another person.Once the action begins, the film delivers. There are dry, physical fights, chases, weapons and blows that appear genuinely painful. Ric Roman Waugh directs with clarity and avoids turning every confrontation into an incomprehensible collection of rapid cuts. We understand where the characters are, what they are trying to do and why each movement **** is not an especially spectacular film, but it is physical. Statham moves with the confidence of someone who has spent years doing this and remains believable when taking down several enemies. He never quite feels like an invulnerable superhero, even though we know he will eventually find a way **** villains are thoroughly evil, exactly as this kind of film requires. They do not possess much complexity, but they work as a threat. They are cruel, persistent and unpleasant enough to make it satisfying when Statham finally fights **** espionage material is fairly simple. There are secrets, betrayals, former agents and powerful people controlling events from a distance. None of it competes with the best spy thrillers, but it provides enough structure to connect the action **** supporting cast also helps. Several actors bring weight to relatively small roles, preventing the film from feeling like a cheap production designed only to reach the next fight as quickly as **** screenplay is predictable and many of its decisions can be anticipated. We know betrayals are coming, we know the assassins will find them and we know the protagonist will eventually stop running. Predictability is not always a serious flaw when the execution is this solid.Shelter knows exactly who its audience is. Anyone searching for a revolutionary story or a complex examination of espionage will be disappointed. Anyone who wants to watch Jason Statham protect someone, fight criminals and leave a trail of broken bones will probably have a very good **** worked for me. The action is strong, the lead completely understands this kind of role and the villains are hateful enough. It is more of the same, but it is more of the same done well.Statham remains one of my favourite action stars, and films like this explain why. He does not need to pretend he is making something else. He arrives, protects the person who needs him and destroys everyone standing in his way.

**** begins extremely well. Its opening section suggests an uncomfortable, strange and genuinely daring film about motherhood, lost identity and the frustration of a woman whose life has been reduced to caring for her child while everything else gradually **** Adams plays a mother who has temporarily abandoned her artistic career to remain at home. Her husband works away and travels frequently. He does not seem like a terrible person, but he experiences parenthood from a far more comfortable position. She carries the routines, exhaustion, loneliness and the feeling that she has become nothing except “the mother.”The film initially observes that situation very well. The conversations with other mothers, the repetitive days, the absence of personal space and the difficulty of recognising the woman she once was all feel believable. There is humour, but also bitterness. Adams communicates exhaustion, anger and guilt without turning the character into a simple **** animal transformation initially works as a strong metaphor. A woman forced to remain patient, polite and maternal throughout the day begins connecting with a wilder part of herself. Becoming a dog can represent escape, physical freedom, the refusal to ask permission and the release of anger suppressed for far too **** problem arrives when the film has to develop that premise. Rather than taking it somewhere riskier, darker or more absurd, it begins repeating the same ideas. The protagonist is frustrated, her husband fails to understand her, she feels trapped and the transformation becomes a way of expressing everything she cannot say.That is where I started having doubts. The film seems to construct an artificial situation in order to force us into the story, when much of the conflict could have been addressed from the beginning through an honest conversation, a reorganisation of family life or a specific decision. People do not always find simple solutions when they are exhausted, but the screenplay prolongs the lack of communication too far to preserve its **** husband is written too conveniently. He is neither cruel nor exceptionally selfish, yet he seems unable to recognise something obvious to everyone else. The film needs him to take far too long to understand his wife because, if they confronted the problem earlier, much of the story would disappear.This also weakens the ending. After presenting motherhood as an experience capable of erasing identity, creating resentment and provoking an almost physical crisis, the solution feels too neat. The film moves towards a fairly conventional domestic reconciliation, as though sharing responsibilities more equally could completely resolve everything it has raised.That solution is not wrong. Sharing care and recovering personal time can obviously transform a life. But the film had introduced something deeper: a woman unsure whether she can remain a mother, artist, partner and individual without disappearing into one of those **** Adams is easily the best part. She commits completely and gives emotional truth even to the less convincing moments. Her performance prevents the film from collapsing because every gesture contains love for her child, exhaustion, anger and fear of admitting that motherhood does not feel the way she was told it should.Marielle Heller directs with sensitivity, but perhaps too much caution. The film could have been fiercer, stranger and more uncomfortable. The premise demanded either a satire with real teeth or a genuine descent into body horror. Instead, it usually chooses a gentler and more accessible **** asks interesting questions about everything society expects women to sacrifice when they become mothers, but it does not follow those questions far enough. It begins as an original and provocative story before reaching surprisingly familiar **** is not a bad film. It has an excellent performance, several very good moments and a genuinely promising first half. But the more I consider its development, the more it feels as though the conflict has been forced and then resolved too easily.A film that begins by showing its teeth but never truly dares to bite.

Predator: Badlands is a very good film and one of the most original entries in the franchise. Instead of repeating the familiar story of humans being hunted by an invisible creature, it completely changes perspective and places the Predator himself at the centre.That decision could easily have failed. Much of the character’s appeal came from mystery and from seeing him as an almost unknowable threat. Here, the film gives him personality, motivation and even an emotional journey. This reduces some of his terrifying aura, but it also allows the franchise to do something genuinely **** is a young Yautja who must prove his worth. He is not the unstoppable warrior we usually see, but an insecure outsider rejected by his own people and forced to survive on a planet filled with creatures more dangerous than he expected. The film makes him a protagonist without turning him completely human. He remains violent, proud and capable of brutality, but he also has something to **** relationship with Thia is the best part of the film. Elle Fanning is excellent and once again proves that she is one of the strongest actresses of her generation. She brings presence, humour and emotion to a blockbuster dominated by monsters and visual **** character is connected to Weyland-Yutani, linking the Predator and Alien franchises again in a way that feels more natural than a simple reference. The company is presented as an organisation that captures, studies and exploits extraterrestrial life, opening interesting possibilities for the future of both **** and Thia work well together because they are completely different. He understands the world through strength, honour and survival. She relies on knowledge, irony and adaptability. At first, they cooperate only because they need one another, but their growing trust gives the film more heart than I **** Trachtenberg once again demonstrates that he knows how to renew Predator. In Prey, he changed the period and type of protagonist without betraying the series. Here, he goes further, creating a space adventure that mixes action, strange creatures, comedy and science **** planet is beautifully designed. It is not merely an attractive background, but a place where everything seems built to kill. The animals, plants and landscapes turn every journey into a threat. The visual imagination is impressive, and several creatures could easily belong in the Alien **** action is very well staged. It is clear, energetic and makes good use of the Predator’s abilities without making him invulnerable. Dek makes mistakes, gets hurt and learns from every encounter. That gives the fights more tension than simply watching him destroy everything.This version is certainly softer and more adventurous than the classic films. There is humour, an appealing creature and a story about trust and chosen family that makes the franchise more accessible to younger audiences. At times, it feels slightly Disneyfied, and the cold brutality of the original is missed.However, I would rather see the franchise try something different than copy the 1987 film again. Badlands keeps the hunt, weapons, Yautja code and danger, but changes their meaning. We are no longer watching the monster from the outside; we travel with him and understand why he needs to become more than a killer.Some fans may reject that change. The Predator loses part of his mystery and is no longer simply a terrifying presence emerging from the wilderness. In exchange, the film gains a protagonist, an entertaining relationship and a world with real potential.Predator: Badlands is exciting, visually spectacular and much more original than expected. Elle Fanning is excellent, Dek works as a new lead and the Weyland-Yutani connection expands the universe without feeling like a cheap marketing **** of the strongest films in the franchise. It changes the perspective and makes the Predator interesting again.

Project Hail Mary is a good film: an ambitious, entertaining and very well-directed space adventure built around science, humour, danger and a mission on which humanity’s survival depends. I enjoyed it, although for much of the film I had a strange feeling that, without knowing exactly where, I had already seen this story before.Ryland Grace wakes up alone on a spacecraft with no memory of who he is or why he is there. Gradually, he reconstructs his identity and discovers that he has been sent into space to find a solution to a threat capable of destroying life on Earth. The film turns his returning memory into an investigation, combining the present mission with fragments explaining how he arrived **** scientific material works well. Not because everything is easy to understand, but because the screenplay makes experiments, calculations and mistakes part of the adventure. Grace does not solve problems through magical inspiration. He tests ideas, fails, thinks again and uses knowledge as his main tool.Ryan Gosling carries a film in which he spends a long time alone. He has charisma, humour and the ability to make scientific situations understandable without sounding like a teacher. Grace is not the perfect hero one might expect to lead such a mission, and that imperfection eventually becomes **** story improves when he discovers that he is not the only being trying to save his world. The encounter with Rocky brings curiosity, comedy and a friendship that becomes the film’s true emotional centre. They come from completely different places but share the same problem and must learn to communicate before they can help one another.Rocky is extremely well created. His appearance, movement and way of interacting with Grace make him believable as a creature and likeable as a character. The film finds genuine emotion in the cooperation between two beings who cannot even speak to each other at first.That is also where my main problem appears. The lonely astronaut, the encounter with alien intelligence and the relationship that develops between them all felt very familiar. I cannot identify one specific film, but I constantly had the impression of watching a story I already knew, now presented with a more scientific and optimistic approach.That does not mean it is badly told. Lord and Miller direct with pace, clarity and a strong sense of spectacle. The spacecraft, laboratories and physical problems are convincingly presented, and the film communicates the immensity of space without losing sight of its **** also combines tones effectively. It can move from scientific explanation to comedy and then into danger or emotion without falling apart. At times it pushes its optimism and friendliness too hard, but its lighter approach usually works in its **** running time is noticeable. There are enough discoveries, complications and solutions to maintain interest, although several sections could have been shorter. The film wants to explain every stage of the process, and this occasionally slows the journey more than **** strongest idea is its belief in knowledge and cooperation. Salvation does not depend on a warrior, but on someone capable of observing, learning and working with a completely different being. Faced with a shared threat, the film rejects the idea that one species possesses every answer.Project Hail Mary did not feel as original as it promised, but it is still a very good science-fiction film. It is carefully made, has a charismatic lead, a memorable alien and a story that combines adventure, science and emotion with considerable skill.I may have seen something similar before. Even so, I thoroughly enjoyed the journey.

Supergirl is another major disappointment from the new DC universe. I did not like Superman, and this film does little to restore my confidence in the direction the franchise has chosen. There are moments when it appears ready to recover, find genuine emotion or become something more interesting, but every time it comes close, it falls **** frustrating part is that not everything is bad. Milly **** is very good as Kara Zor-El. She has charisma, presence and a mixture of toughness, sadness and anger that could have created an excellent Supergirl. Even when the screenplay gives her very little, she suggests an inner life that the film rarely knows how to explore.This Kara did not grow up like her cousin. She witnessed the destruction of her world and carries far more painful memories. That offered a great opportunity to create a different kind of heroine: someone who does not represent clean, uncomplicated hope, but the difficulty of continuing after losing **** film mentions that trauma without truly examining it. Too often, it mistakes depth for showing Kara drunk, angry or sarcastic. It seems to believe that making her a troubled superhero automatically makes her a complex **** film takes Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow as its starting point but loses much of what made the comic special. It keeps some recognizable characters and situations while abandoning its melancholy, moral weight and quality of a cruel, sorrowful space fable.A film adaptation does not need to reproduce every page. Changes are necessary. But these changes rarely feel designed to find a better cinematic form. Instead, the story has been forced into the preferred tone of the new DC universe: space adventure, irreverent comedy, strange creatures, familiar songs and characters trying very hard to appear **** influence of Guardians of the Galaxy is far too obvious. Strange planets, a dysfunctional group, jokes, popular music, a cute creature and a wounded protagonist using irony to conceal emotion. In those films, the pieces eventually created memorable characters. Here, they frequently feel like parts of a **** humour does not help. Some of it is childish, crude or simply forced. The film wants this Supergirl to feel wild, unpredictable and punk, but certain scenes seem written by people who believe rebellion consists of drinking, vomiting and saying something offensive.Krem is another serious weakness. He is flat, predictable and never especially threatening. We understand his purpose immediately, but he never develops enough personality to carry the conflict. The film attempts to give the revenge story emotional weight, yet it is difficult to fear such a forgettable antagonist.Ruthye could have provided the emotional heart of the story and revealed Kara’s gradual transformation. Their relationship includes a few effective scenes, especially when the film slows down and allows them to talk. Unfortunately, the screenplay rushes between planets, fights and jokes, preventing the connection from gaining enough depth.Other ideas and characters appear to have been included because somebody thought they would look good in a trailer. Lobo brings energy and noise, but his actual importance is questionable. Much of his involvement could disappear without significantly changing the story.Visually, the film has some attractive moments and the action is competently made, but it lacks a clear identity. There are colours, digital effects and space environments everywhere, yet they constantly recall other films. Everything looks expensive, but very few images remain in the **** music, however, is excellent. It may be the best part of the film alongside Milly ****. The songs provide energy that the scenes often cannot generate by themselves. One of the strongest moments comes with a very different version of Jimmy Eat World’s “The Middle.” It is not the original recording, but a reinterpretation that transforms the song considerably and works better than many of the scenes surrounding **** is also important to separate legitimate criticism from the reaction of people who attack the film simply because it stars a powerful woman. The fact that Supergirl is bad does not vindicate those who resent the existence of a female superhero. We can defend stories led by women while demanding that those stories be much better **** deserves another opportunity with the character. Her Supergirl has real potential, and several moments reveal the film this could have been: sadder, braver, stranger and far more distinctive.Instead, the finished film settles for a familiar formula. It tries to be irreverent, emotional, funny, dark and spectacular at the same time without fully succeeding at any of **** is not a complete disaster because **** holds it together, the soundtrack works and a few scenes suggest that it might recover. It never does. A good Supergirl trapped inside a fairly bad film.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is an outstanding film. It is one of the best Spider-Man movies ever made and, honestly, better than many of the live-action versions. It achieves something that seemed almost impossible: taking a character we have seen repeatedly and making him feel new again.Miles Morales is not Peter Parker, and that is one of the film’s smartest choices. He is not designed to replace or copy him. He has his own family, voice, doubts and a life in which he still does not know where he belongs. He is intelligent and talented, but also insecure, clumsy and overwhelmed by everything happening around **** transformation works because it does not happen instantly. Miles receives powers but does not automatically become a hero. He is frightened, fails repeatedly and cannot control what his body is doing. The film understands that wearing the mask is not enough: first, he needs to discover why he wants to carry it.Then the multiverse appears, something that could easily have turned the story into an impossible mess. Instead, it is used with great intelligence. Every Spider-Man has a different personality, design and rhythm, but all of them share the same idea: anyone can fall, fail and find a way to stand again.Peter B. Parker is especially good. He is not the perfect hero arriving to teach the protagonist everything, but a tired, careless Spider-Man who has been defeated by his own life. His relationship with Miles works because they help one another without fully realizing it. One needs to learn how to begin, while the other needs to remember why continuing is worthwhile.Spider-Gwen also works extremely well. She has presence, personality and her own emotional history. Even the stranger characters, including Spider-Man Noir, Peni Parker and Spider-Ham, find a place without destroying the film’s tone.Visually, the film is extraordinary. It does not merely imitate a comic book; it feels as though somebody discovered how to make comic art move. Printing dots, motion lines, captions, changing styles and different forms of animation make every scene feel **** first, it can almost seem too intense because something is always happening on screen. Gradually, however, that saturation becomes part of Miles’s experience. Everything is fast, colourful, loud and confusing because that is how the world feels to **** action is brilliantly staged. The chases and fights have speed, spatial clarity and a creativity that many live-action superhero films never attempt. Animation allows the filmmakers to do impossible things without losing the weight or danger of the **** is also extremely funny. There are visual jokes, references to earlier versions and moments that affectionately mock everything familiar about Spider-Man. Yet the film is not built only from fan service. Miles always remains at its **** relationships with his father and uncle give the story enormous emotional force. They are not simply supporting figures used to move the plot. They represent different ways of seeing Miles and different paths from which he must create his **** film is about identity, fear, expectations and accepting that we may never feel completely prepared. Its main idea is simple but powerful: there is no magical moment when all doubt disappears. Eventually, we simply have to take the leap.That moment works because everything before it has earned it. It is not only a spectacular visual sequence. It is the moment Miles stops trying to become somebody else and finally becomes his own Spider-Man.Into the Spider-Verse gives us a new protagonist, introduces the multiverse and plays with decades of Spider-Man history without ever forgetting to tell a great story. It has humour, emotion, action, memorable characters and animation that changed how this kind of film could look.Highly recommended. One of the greatest Spider-Man films ever made and proof that familiar characters never become exhausted when someone finds a genuinely new perspective.

Children of Men is an extraordinary film. Everything feels carefully planned and constructed: the screenplay, production design, world-building, action and, above all, the frighteningly believable society in which the story takes place.Humanity has spent years without the birth of a single child and now lives with the certainty that extinction is approaching. Britain has become one of the last countries still maintaining some form of order, although that order is built on fear, repression, propaganda and the brutal persecution of **** film does not waste time explaining everything. The streets, checkpoints, cages, advertisements and people’s exhausted behavior tell us what has happened. This world does not feel like a science-fiction set, but like a more extreme and terrible version of our own.That is what makes it so disturbing. There are no impossible cities or spectacular futuristic inventions. There is dirt, fatigue, violence, terrorism, bureaucracy and a society that has stopped thinking about the future because there will be no next generation.Clive Owen is excellent as Theo, a tired, disillusioned man who appears indifferent to everything. He does not begin as a hero or show much interest in saving humanity. He simply drinks, survives and moves through a reality he has already accepted as **** transformation works because it is gradual. Theo does not change after hearing an inspirational speech. He slowly discovers a reason to become involved and begins to understand the importance of what is in front of him. The greater the danger becomes, the more human he **** story begins with one simple but enormous idea: in a world without births, a woman is pregnant. From there, the film becomes an escape story, although never merely a chase. Every group wants to use the pregnancy for a different purpose, and nobody seems completely **** is not treated only as a symbol. She is frightened, sarcastic, insecure and strong. She knows she is carrying something capable of changing the world, but remains a young woman trapped in circumstances far beyond her control. Clare-Hope **** gives her real humanity.Julianne Moore appears less than I expected, although her character is essential. Michael Caine is also wonderful and provides some of the only warm moments in an extremely dark story. His character represents a small private resistance, preserving humor and tenderness after everything else has collapsed.Alfonso Cuarón’s direction is astonishing. Several long sequences appear to unfold without cuts, placing the viewer directly inside the action. The camera does not watch from a safe distance. It moves with the characters, turns, shakes, becomes dirty and forces us to experience the danger at close **** car sequence is exceptional. It begins almost casually and becomes chaos within seconds. The staging makes escape feel impossible. There is no rapid editing to hide what is happening; we watch the threat approach and see every reaction inside a confined **** final section is even more impressive. A ruined urban area becomes a battlefield where every corner may hide a soldier, rebel or desperate civilian. The gunfire, collapsing buildings and camera following Theo create extraordinary **** the technique never becomes empty display. The long takes are not there merely to show the director’s skill, but to prevent us from looking away. Cuarón removes the comfortable distance between the viewer and the violence.I also loved the way the film presents hope. It is not clean, bright or easy. It appears among dirt, terror and death. The possibility of a child being born does not automatically repair the world, but it forces people to remember that a future might still exist.There is a moment when the violence briefly stops. It does not need much explanation. In a world accustomed to death, the presence of new life reminds everyone, if only for a few seconds, what it means to be human.Children of Men is about infertility, but also immigration, fascism, terrorism, hopelessness and the way a society can become comfortable treating certain people as less than human. Many of its images feel even more relevant now than when the film was **** may attempt to address too many subjects without developing all of them equally, but the world is so convincing and the story so powerful that this hardly **** is a post-apocalyptic film without showing the literal end of the world. The cities still function and people continue going to work, but something essential has already died. That normality within disaster is more frightening than any landscape filled with ruins.A magnificent, tense, moving and technically astonishing film. Beautifully written, brilliantly directed and built with an ambition visible in every frame.

The Mauritanian particularly interested me because it tells a true story and, above all, one involving an injustice that is difficult to comprehend. What is most striking is that the film does not need to overstate anything. The real story is already outrageous: Mohamedou Ould Slahi spent years imprisoned at Guantánamo without ever being formally charged with a **** was arrested after 9/11 because of his alleged links to Al Qaeda and sent there. The years passed, but there was no trial, no evidence presented in court, and he remained behind bars. That is what is truly horrifying. He was simply left in a place where the usual laws no longer seemed to **** film works very well because it does not turn the case into nothing more than a succession of legal facts. Behind the file is a man who does not know whether he will ever see his family again, who is trying to preserve his sanity and who somehow retains a remarkable ability to communicate with the people guarding him. Much of the film’s power lies there.Tahar Rahim is extraordinary. He gives the whole story its soul. He conveys fear, exhaustion, humour, intelligence and enormous dignity without presenting Mohamedou as a perfect martyr. There are moments when he barely needs to speak: a look or a strangely timed smile is enough to understand how he is trying to survive an unbearable situation.Jodie Foster is also magnificent as Nancy Hollander, the lawyer who agrees to defend him. She does not play an idealised heroine, but a dry, intelligent and stubborn professional who understands something very simple: defending someone’s rights does not mean approving of everything they may have done. It means demanding that the state prove its **** character represents a fundamental idea that is sometimes forgotten when fear takes over: justice only matters if it also protects those who are uncomfortable, suspicious or unpopular. If legal safeguards disappear when they are needed most, then they are no longer safeguards.Benedict Cumberbatch brings another of the film’s most interesting elements. His character begins convinced that he is taking part in a legitimate process and that the prisoner must pay for what he supposedly did. However, the more he studies the case, the harder it becomes to ignore how the confessions were obtained and the lack of reliable evidence.I like that the film does not reduce everything to a simple battle between good and bad people. Many of those involved believe they are protecting their country. The problem begins when that belief is used to justify any method, including those that destroy the very laws and values they claim to **** interrogation and torture scenes are harsh. They do not turn suffering into spectacle, but they do not soften it either. The film shows how isolation, humiliation, fear and deprivation can be used to break someone until they say whatever their interrogators need to hear, whether it is true or **** storytelling may be fairly conventional, and some of the legal sections feel colder than the rest. The film follows a familiar path: the investigation, hidden documents, growing doubts and the struggle against a closed system. But here the formula works because what actually happened is powerful enough on its own.There is also a restrained anger that never disappears. It is difficult to accept that something like this could happen under laws supposedly designed to prevent abuses of power. It is even harder to know that this was not an isolated mistake, but part of a **** Mauritanian is about Guantánamo, but also about how easily principles are abandoned when a society is afraid. It is about torture, prejudice, impunity and the need for someone to ask where the evidence is when everyone has already decided that a man is **** is a harsh, well-acted and necessary film. Its form may not be especially original, but the story causes anger, sadness and a profound sense of **** precisely because it is based on real events, it is even harder to forget.

Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase is a decent film. It is easy to watch, quite charming, and has a lead character with enough personality to keep it afloat. But it also constantly leaves you feeling that it could have been much better.Nancy is a very clever and curious teenager, but she is also one of those people who notice something strange and simply cannot let it go. When an elderly woman explains that unusual things are happening in her house, Nancy does not get scared or look the other way. She decides to find out what is going on. The noises, the supposed apparitions and everything that seems supernatural eventually lead her towards a much more realistic **** basic premise works and has the charm of a classic mystery for younger audiences. There is an old house, hidden rooms, threats, suspects and a protagonist who notices details everyone else overlooks. You do not need much more to put together an entertaining adventure.Sophia Lillis is clearly the best part of the film. She brings freshness, charisma and a very natural energy. Her Nancy is brave, clever and slightly impulsive, but she never feels like an adult pretending to be a teenager or a perfect child who is always right. Lillis manages to make the character feel modern without completely losing the spirit of the original **** friends also work well, as does the dynamic between them. The film makes the right decision by not turning Nancy into a completely solitary heroine. The group adds humour, warmth and a sense of shared adventure that suits the young audience the film is aimed **** problem is the mystery itself. It is not especially complicated, surprising or unsettling. The film presents a situation that could have offered much more, but resolves it in a fairly simple way. The clues do not demand much from the viewer, and the outcome is quite easy to **** film also fails to make full use of the atmosphere of the house. There are moments that could have been mysterious or even slightly disturbing, but the direction usually chooses a tone that is too light. Everything feels controlled, clean and safe, as though the film were afraid of making its audience even slightly **** humour is pleasant, although it does not always work. Some scenes are amusing because of Nancy’s personality and the chemistry within the group, while others seem to have been included only to make the film feel more modern or closer to social media **** subplot involving Nancy’s family and her attempts to fit into a new community adds some emotional background. It is not developed very deeply, but it gives the protagonist something else to work through besides the case.Visually, it is a competent film without much personality. It moves at a good pace, lasts exactly as long as it needs to and never becomes boring, although there is not a single especially memorable scene. Everything is handled efficiently, but with very little ambition.Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase works well enough as entertainment for younger viewers. It has a very well-chosen lead, likeable characters and a mystery that is easy to follow. It is not bad and is pleasant to watch, but it needs more suspense, more risk and a little more darkness.Decent, charming and completely forgettable. It could have been better, but it is not a waste of time either.

I really liked Tallulah. It is a heavy drama, but not one that only tries to make you cry. What kept me interested was the fact that the whole story begins with a decision that makes sense for a few seconds and becomes completely absurd the moment you stop to think about it.Tallulah lives in a van, moves from place to place and seems to have learned not to need anyone. One day, she ends up looking after a little girl in a hotel room while the child’s mother is drunk, overwhelmed and far more interested in herself than in her daughter. Tallulah sees the condition the child is in, panics and takes her away.From that moment, I kept asking the same question: why did she not go back to the hotel? She could have taken the child somewhere safe for a few hours, waited for the mother to react and returned to tell the police exactly what had happened. Maybe they would not have fully believed her. Maybe she would still have been arrested. But there were witnesses, cameras and a hotel room showing the state that woman was in. Everything could have been different.Instead, she runs. The more she tries to fix the situation, the bigger the lie becomes. That is what works best in the film. You cannot support what Tallulah does, but you cannot see her as a simple kidnapper either. You know she has done something terrible, but you also understand why she did it.Elliot Page is excellent. Tallulah looks tough, independent and ready to disappear at any moment, but underneath she is completely lost. She does not know how to build a normal life or trust anyone, and suddenly she is caring for a child and pretending to belong to a family. Page makes those contradictions believable without forcing us to like the character.Allison Janney may be even better. Margo begins as a cold, tired and distant woman, but it gradually becomes clear that she is also deeply lonely. The relationship between the two women is the best part of the film. They do not suddenly become a perfect family; they simply begin to fill spaces in each other’s lives that have been empty for too long.Tammy Blanchard has perhaps the most difficult role. Her character is selfish, frustrating and often a terrible mother, but she is not played as a cartoon villain. She is a woman who does not know what to do with her daughter or with herself. That does not excuse her, but it makes the story more **** its heart, Tallulah is about women who do not fit the traditional image of motherhood. One has a daughter and cannot care for her. Another takes a child who is not hers because she believes she can do better. A third is still trying to deal with the loss of her relationship with her own son. None of them has the **** film could easily have felt like a television melodrama, but the performances prevent that. There is humor, absurdity and tenderness, although the feeling that everything may collapse never disappears.Tallulah is sad, uncomfortable and very human. The three actresses are excellent and make a potentially exaggerated story feel surprisingly close. I liked it a lot, although I still think that if Tallulah had simply returned to the hotel and told the truth, she could have avoided almost the entire **** course, then there would be no film.

I had to watch 17 Again because Matthew Perry is in it, the unforgettable Chandler from Friends. Honestly, that was my main reason for approaching the film. After that, it does exactly what you would expect from a comedy about an adult becoming a teenager again: regrets, a second chance, high school, family problems and the inevitable lesson about appreciating the life you already have.Mike O’Donnell was a promising basketball player when he was seventeen, but he gave up that future to start a family. Twenty years later, his marriage is falling apart, his children can barely stand him and he is convinced that he made all the wrong decisions. Somehow, he becomes seventeen again and uses the opportunity to return to high school, get closer to his children and discover that perhaps his real problem was not the life he chose, but the years he spent blaming everyone else for **** premise is so familiar that the film practically writes itself. We have seen similar stories many times: adults turned into children, teenagers trapped in older bodies, identity swaps and characters forced to observe their own lives from the outside. There are no major surprises here, nor any especially original way of using the idea. Very early on, you know what will happen, what the main character will learn and how almost everything will end.That does not mean the film is unbearable. It has a few amusing moments, a light tone and enough pleasant scenes to make the running time pass without too much difficulty. Zac Efron has charisma and handles the physical comedy and high-school scenes well, although it is difficult to believe that there is really an adult man inside him, carrying a marriage, two children and twenty years of frustration. He works better as a charming teenager than as an adult trapped in a young body.Matthew Perry appears less than I would have liked. His adult version of Mike has that tired sarcasm and way of reacting that inevitably recalls Chandler, although the role does not give him much room to shine. It is a shame, because Perry had enormous comic ability, and it would have been interesting for the film to use him more instead of mainly relying on him to begin the story and return for a few moments.Thomas Lennon, as Ned, probably gets the funniest material. His character is a collection of eccentricities, geek fantasies and exaggerated behavior, but at least he brings a more unpredictable energy. His relationship with the school principal creates some of the most absurd and memorable scenes in a film that otherwise follows extremely safe **** family material is where the film tries to find some emotion. Mike discovers that his children have problems he had failed to notice and that his wife is not simply the person destroying their marriage. The film wants to talk about nostalgia, the frustration of getting older and the very human tendency to imagine that our lives would have been perfect if we had made one different decision. These are interesting ideas, but they are handled in a fairly superficial and predictable way.There are also some uncomfortable situations caused by an adult man looking like a teenager and interacting with his own family under that new appearance. The film tries to turn them into jokes and avoid any overly strange interpretation, but it does not always succeed. Some scenes become far more awkward when you think about them for more than a few seconds.Burr Steers directs competently without bringing any special personality to the film. Everything looks like a late-2000s teen comedy: energetic music, a high school full of stereotypes, romance, basketball, dancing and an attractive cast. It is not especially badly made, but there is not a single image, decision or sequence that distinguishes it from dozens of similar films.17 Again has a few laughs and is easy enough to watch. Zac Efron does a decent job, Thomas Lennon brings some life to the story and Matthew Perry is always pleasant to see, even though his role is smaller than one might expect. But the story is far too familiar, offers no surprises and disappears from memory almost as soon as it **** is not a terrible film. It is simply one of those comedies that can fill an afternoon without demanding anything, but that does not particularly justify the time spent on it either. You can watch it, but you really do not need to.

The Fault in Our Stars is beautiful, sad and extremely sentimental. It does not try to hide it either. From the beginning, you know you have entered a love story shaped by illness, one that will eventually press every button necessary to make you cry. And yes, it does. But it also achieves something these films do not always manage: it makes its characters matter before asking us to suffer for them.Hazel is a teenager whose life revolves around an oxygen tank and an illness that has made her world much smaller far too soon. At a support group, she meets Augustus, a confident, funny and slightly theatrical boy who refuses to behave as if his life is already over. From there grows a relationship that is very much a young romance, but also a story about fear, humor, anger and the need to make use of whatever time they have **** story could easily have fallen into the most predictable kind of medical drama: inspirational patients, sad music and a life lesson every five minutes. Some of that is certainly present, but the film works best when it remembers that Hazel and Augustus are teenagers before they are symbols. They fall in love, try to impress each other, argue, say things that are far too solemn and believe their story is the center of the universe. Like most people at that age.Shailene Woodley is the main reason the film does not collapse under the weight of its emotions. She is especially good when she does not need big speeches. A look, a small smile or the way she remains silent is enough to communicate exhaustion, fear and the desire to keep living. Hazel is not presented as a saint or a perfect victim, but as an intelligent, ironic girl who is tired of everyone looking at her with pity.Ansel Elgort has the more obviously charming role. Augustus is confident, funny and always seems to have the perfect line ready. At times, he can feel too idealized or too aware of his own charisma, but the chemistry between the two actors works. Their relationship feels believable because beneath all the romantic idealization are two young people pretending they have control over something that terrifies **** also helps that the film has humor. It is not all hospitals, tears and speeches about death. There are light conversations, jokes, small moments of happiness and an easy naturalness that makes the emotional blows land harder. Illness is always present, but it does not occupy absolutely everything. That is one of the story’s greatest strengths: it does not treat its characters only as patients.That said, the film is manipulative. Very much so. Music arrives at exactly the right moment, lines are designed to be remembered, silences are extended and scenes are built with almost scientific precision to exercise the viewer’s tear ducts. Sometimes the emotion genuinely comes from the characters; at other times, you can clearly feel the screenplay pushing you toward the tissues.There are also sentimental moments and lines that no normal teenager would deliver with such perfection. Hazel and Augustus sometimes speak as if they have spent their entire lives preparing sentences to be underlined in a novel. Strangely enough, that is part of the charm. The film is not searching for dry realism. It wants a romantic, literary and slightly idealized version of first love when time is working against **** trip to Amsterdam may be the point where all the film’s elements come together best: excitement, romance, literature, disappointment and the feeling of living through something unique. The film allows itself to be bright for a while, although it never lets us forget that fragility is always there. That mixture of happiness and threat is what gives the romance its strength.This is not a subtle film. Anyone who immediately rejects emotional manipulation will probably find it unbearable. But for viewers willing to accept the game, The Fault in Our Stars works. Even though we know it wants to make us cry, the emotions it creates do not feel entirely **** is a beautiful, sad and very self-aware young love story. It says nothing especially new about illness, pain or loss, but it tells its story with warmth, strong performances and characters who are easy to care about. It can be sentimental, excessive and far too eager to press the tear button, but it is difficult to remain completely unmoved.

Exit Wounds is an action disaster built almost entirely as a showcase for Steven Seagal. And the worst thing is not only that it is bad, but that it has that kind of industrial badness that is almost impressive: the film seems convinced that putting Seagal on screen walking seriously, hitting people without breaking a sweat and delivering tough-guy lines is enough to make everything work. It does not. Not as a police thriller, not as a corruption story, and not as a minimally decent action **** story follows Orin Boyd, a Detroit cop who does not follow the rules, gets involved where he should not and ends up uncovering a corruption plot inside the police department itself. It is the most worn-out setup imaginable: rebellious cop, bosses punishing him, suspicious partners, drug trafficking, betrayals, chases, shootouts and a protagonist who is always right even when the script has to twist itself into knots to justify it. Everything feels like a standard action movie written on **** main problem is Steven Seagal. He does not have enough charisma to carry the film, he does not create tension, he does not feel genuinely dangerous, and his action scenes are edited so he can appear invincible without having to do too much. Everything revolves around him, but the center is empty. Watching him here, it is hard to understand how he managed to occupy such a visible place in action cinema for so many years. Having physical presence is one thing; being a star capable of giving life to a film is something else **** most frustrating thing is that Exit Wounds is not even fun in a bad-movie way. There are absurd action films that at least have rhythm, exaggeration, trashy charm or shameless energy. Here, almost everything feels mechanical, ugly, clumsy and lazy. The plot is simplistic and confusing at the same time, the dialogue seems written just to fill gaps between punches, and police corruption works more as an excuse to connect violent scenes than as a real **** brings more presence than Seagal, although he cannot perform miracles either. Anthony Anderson tries to bring humor, Tom Arnold appears as comic relief, and Michael Jai White has a physical presence that honestly deserved a much better film. There are actors around Seagal who could have given the movie more life, but everything is subordinated to the Seagal machine, and that machine already feels very rusty.Andrzej Bartkowiak, who came from cinematography and knew how to move the camera better than many directors of disposable action films, manages to give a few scenes a minimal sense of polish. But that does not save the whole thing. A couple of acceptable shootouts or a halfway decent chase do not make this a good film. If anything, they make it even clearer that there were resources, a theatrical release and some commercial ambition, yet the result is still extremely **** is incredible to think that this was released in cinemas as a major action vehicle. Today it makes more sense as a relic from a time when studios were still trying to sell Seagal as a tough, unstoppable, cool action hero, even though the screen was already saying something else. The film wants to be hard, urban and muscular, but it ends up as a chain of lifeless clichés, violence without impact and tough lines without any real toughness.Exit Wounds is bad, almost impressively so. A stale, mechanical and soulless action thriller made to let Steven Seagal look important for more than an hour and a half. Its box-office success at the time does not make it any better. Sometimes a film fills seats because it sells a promise, not because it delivers. This one promises action, corruption and toughness, but gives us one of those personal showcase vehicles that mainly reminds you how badly some action cinema can age.

Some films do not need to reinvent anything in order to work. They simply need to know exactly what they are, move with confidence and avoid boring the viewer for even a minute. Those Who Wish Me Dead belongs to that kind of classic thriller: direct, tense and very entertaining, made from familiar ingredients but assembled with enough craft to make the result enjoyable almost all the way through.Taylor Sheridan’s hand is easy to recognise. This is not his most complex or powerful work, but it has his taste for characters damaged by guilt, hostile landscapes, dry violence and a kind of tension in which the environment itself seems to become part of the threat. Here, the forest, the fire and the human danger all push the story forward with the same pressure.Angelina Jolie works very well as the emotional centre of the film. Her character carries a trauma that could have felt like a simple dramatic device, but Jolie gives it presence, exhaustion and vulnerability without weakening the character’s strength. She does not need to overplay anything. She holds the film with a convincing mixture of toughness and **** supporting cast also helps. Aidan Gillen, always effective, once again proves that he can turn a functional villain into an unsettling presence with very little. The film does not explore its antagonists in great depth, but it uses them well: they are clear, cold, professional threats, almost mechanical in their determination. In a survival thriller, that can be **** plot is fairly predictable. Some developments are easy to anticipate, some writing choices are convenient, and the structure sometimes seems more interested in keeping the pace alive than in surprising the audience. But the film compensates for those limitations with energy, visual tension and a tight running time. It does not get lost in unnecessary explanations, and it never pretends to be deeper than it **** greatest strength is efficiency. It works as a chase thriller, as a survival story and as a piece of adult genre entertainment. It has fire, killers, emotional wounds, a threatening natural setting and characters forced to resist when everything seems to be against them. Not everything is memorable, but almost everything is handled **** may be minor Sheridan, but it still has more nerve, craft and sense of spectacle than many recent thrillers. Those Who Wish Me Dead does not dazzle, but it grips. And sometimes that is exactly what one wants: an intense, well-acted, straightforward film that keeps you watching until the end.

Love in the time of hysteria feels today like an early-nineties comedy, with its excesses, sexual jokes, bedroom farce, lightness and shameless energy. In some ways, it recalls the spirit of certain Spanish comedies from the eighties: messy, playful, cheeky and built around desire, misunderstanding and embarrassment. It is not a perfect film, and it does not need to be. Its charm lies precisely in its mixture of youthful confidence, controlled clumsiness and visual energy.Alfonso Cuarón’s debut feature, written with Carlos Cuarón, feels like a small film trying to move faster than its own limitations. The story of Tomás Tomás, a womanizer trapped by the consequences of his own irresponsibility, works as a farce with a moral undertone, but without becoming solemn. The fear surrounding HIV/AIDS, filtered through the sensibility of its time, becomes the trigger for a comedy about desire, guilt, machismo and the fear of **** best part of the film is its rhythm, its visual imagination and the feeling that Cuarón and Emmanuel Lubezki were already working above the material. The camera has movement, the city has personality, and the apartments, ledges and physical spaces become part of the comedy itself. This is not just a series of jokes; there is already a clear cinematic eye behind it.A very young Daniel Giménez Cacho does a good job with a character who could easily have been merely unpleasant. Tomás Tomás is selfish, immature and irresponsible, but the film also makes him ridiculous, vulnerable and pathetic. It does not absolve him, but it turns him into a comic figure of reckless masculinity finally facing the consequences of his own **** me, however, the standout is Claudia Ramírez as Clarisa Negrete, the flight attendant neighbour. She brings a different tone to the film: more elegant, more melancholic, more magnetic. Whenever she appears, the film gains air. She seems to belong to a more romantic and wounded story, standing apart from Tomás’s sexual and emotional **** film has obvious flaws. Some jokes have not aged particularly well, some dialogue feels artificial, and the treatment of suicide and illness clearly belongs to another cultural moment. At times, the absurdity overwhelms the drama. Yet even when the film stumbles, it remains fresh and alive.Today, Love in the time of hysteria is interesting both for what it is and for what it announces: the first step of the Cuarón brothers, the emergence of Giménez Cacho, the luminous presence of Claudia Ramírez and the early signs of a filmmaker who was not yet “Alfonso Cuarón” in the global sense, but was already showing a much sharper visual instinct than **** is not a major masterpiece, but it is funny, historically important, shameless and far more relevant than it may seem at first glance. A Mexican farce with nineties flavour, eighties echoes and genuine flashes of talent.

Willard is a strange film. Truly strange. One of those movies where you are never quite sure whether the director made exactly what he wanted or whether everyone simply lost their minds during production. It has atmosphere, personality and Crispin Glover in full force, but it is also so twisted, uncomfortable and over the top that it is hard to know whether it works as horror, black comedy, outsider drama or rat-filled **** story follows Willard Stiles, a lonely, repressed and socially awkward man who lives with a sick, domineering mother, endures humiliation at work and finds in the rats in his house the only form of companionship and power he has. From there, the film builds a kind of descent into madness where the rodents become friends, army, revenge and a reflection of everything the protagonist cannot control.Crispin Glover is, without a doubt, the best thing in the film. He is also one of the main reasons it feels so strange. His performance seems to come from another planet: unhinged looks, stiff gestures, a broken voice, a contracted body, a mixture of frightened child, damaged adult and developing psychopath. It is not a “normal” performance, and it does not need to be. Glover turns Willard into someone unpleasant, pathetic, disturbing and, at times, almost sad. The question is whether the film always knows what to do with that intensity.Because Willard has a clear problem: it wants to be many things at once, and not all of them fit. As a horror film, the rats are not as scary as they should be. They are uncomfortable, yes, and some images are disgusting, but they never create real fear. As a psychological drama, it has an interesting basis in humiliation, loneliness and resentment, but everything is so exaggerated that the emotion is half buried under the artifice. And as a cult oddity, that is where it works best, because the film has a personality that is hard to confuse with anything **** tone is the most disorienting thing. Some moments seem to aim for old-fashioned horror: a decaying house, a damp basement, something lurking in the dark. Others feel like a cruel fable about a man who has been stepped on for too long and finds power in the place where there was only misery. And others feel like a macabre joke nobody bothered to explain. That mixture can be fascinating if you enter the game, but it can also leave you outside, staring at the screen and wondering what on earth you are watching.Visually, however, it has a certain taste. The house, the office, the muted colors, the sense of emotional and physical dirt — all of it helps create a closed, unpleasant world. Glen Morgan does not make a flat film. There is aesthetic intention, atmosphere and a clear desire to turn the story into something more stylized than a simple rat festival. The problem is that the plot is quite weak and does not always support so much eccentricity.R. Lee Ermey works very well as the abusive, unpleasant boss, almost a caricature of cruel authority. Laura Harring appears as a possible kind presence in Willard’s life, although her character feels underused. In reality, everything revolves so much around Glover and the rats that anything else feels secondary.Willard does not seem to me like a fully good film, but it is not a vulgar one either. It is too strange to be forgettable. The director and Crispin Glover may have lost their minds, yes, but at least they did it with style. It has unsettling moments, ridiculous moments and moments that are genuinely fascinating because of how twisted they are. It is not very scary, not very moving and narratively not much, but as a strange object it has its appeal.A film to watch more out of curiosity than real pleasure. If you feel like seeing an oddity with rats, a decaying mansion and Crispin Glover doing Crispin Glover cubed, it may hold some interest. If you are looking for a genuinely effective horror film, it will probably fall short.

Gigi & Nate is one of those films where almost everything is announced from the beginning: tragedy, overcoming adversity, family, disability, a support animal, emotional music and an invisible “based on true events” sign lit up throughout the whole running time. That already says almost everything. It is watchable, yes, but it is also so carefully designed to move you that it ends up feeling more manipulative than genuinely **** story follows Nate, a young man whose life changes completely after a serious illness leaves him with a severe physical disability. Depressed, dependent and unsure how to rebuild his life, he finds a form of hope in Gigi, a capuchin monkey trained to help him. From there, the film builds the bond between them as the emotional engine of the story: he regains the will to live, she becomes more than a service animal, and the family learns to breathe **** problem is not the real story that inspires it, nor the subject, nor the intention. All of that can be perfectly valid. The problem is how the film tells it. Gigi & Nate does not really trust the natural power of what it is narrating and underlines almost everything: every pain, every step forward, every look, every small gesture of hope. It seems afraid that the viewer might not be moved, so it constantly pushes toward tears.Charlie Rowe does a decent job as Nate, and Marcia Gay Harden brings professionalism as his mother, giving some truth to several family scenes. There are also moments when the relationship with Gigi has tenderness and actually works, especially when the film allows itself to be simpler and less solemn. That is when you can see the film it could have been: an intimate drama about dependence, fear, adaptation and **** the whole thing becomes too inflated. There are subplots, conflicts and twists designed to increase the emotional and moral weight, especially when the issue of animal rights and the use of primates as service animals enters the story. That part could have added complexity, but the film treats it in a rather forced way, as if it needed one more external obstacle to push the melodrama toward the ending.Everything also feels too clean. Disability, frustration, family guilt and personal reconstruction are very hard subjects, but the film wraps them in a soft aesthetic, with very guided emotion and little room for real discomfort. I am not saying it had to be cruel or depressing, but it could have been a little less manufactured. There is a difference between moving an audience and constantly pressing emotional buttons.Still, it is not impossible to watch. It has good actors, a story that can touch a nerve and a central bond with enough tenderness to sustain some moments. Anyone looking for a family drama about overcoming adversity, with an adorable animal and a comforting ending, will probably find exactly what they expect here. But for me it lacks subtlety, has too much sugar and makes the tear-jerking machinery far too visible.Gigi & Nate is decent, kind-hearted and overwhelmingly sentimental. It is based on true events, yes, and that always adds a layer of interest, but it does not automatically make a film good. In the end, it remains a well-intentioned family drama, but one that is too manipulated, too predictable and too convinced that moving the viewer means telling them exactly when to cry.

In the Hand of Dante is a strange, ambitious, excessive and very uneven film. It is watchable, because it has striking images, a remarkable cast and a mixture of literary thriller, spiritual journey, mafia story, art, religion and imagined biography that at least sparks curiosity. But it is also very obvious that the film wants to seem deeper, more cultured and more important than it finally is.Everything starts with a supposed original manuscript of The Divine Comedy, which connects the present-day story with Dante’s own life. On one side is Nick Tosches, a New York writer caught in a criminal plot around the manuscript. On the other is Dante Alighieri himself, in the middle of a vital and spiritual process tied to the creation of his work. The idea is powerful: crossing two time periods, two searches, two men haunted by love, beauty, death and the divine. The problem is that the film wants to cover so much that it often ends up getting lost inside itself.Julian Schnabel does not make a small or discreet film. Quite the opposite: In the Hand of Dante always aims big. It wants to be furious, artistic, spiritual, gangster-like, poetic, dirty, cultured and visionary all at once. At times, that mixture has a certain magnetism. Some scenes work through sheer strangeness, through the presence of the actors or through the sense that you are watching something that does not look like a conventional streaming film. In that sense, it is refreshing that it is not a flat or factory-made product.Oscar Isaac holds the double game between Tosches and Dante fairly well. He has presence, intensity and a clear ability to move between the earthly and the tormented. The cast is also so striking that part of the film’s appeal is easy to understand: John Malkovich, Al Pacino, Gerard Butler, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, Martin Scorsese... There is almost a sense of a parade of appearances, as if the film wanted to build its own hell, purgatory and paradise of **** the whole thing never quite fits together. The film has interesting moments, even hypnotic ones, but also heavy, confusing and rather pretentious passages. Sometimes it feels like a literary road movie. Sometimes like a gangster film. Sometimes like a spiritual meditation on Dante. Sometimes like a cult fantasy too fascinated with itself. The problem is not that it is strange; the problem is that it does not always turn that strangeness into emotion, clarity or real **** tone also weighs heavily. In the Hand of Dante talks about love, death, art, faith, redemption and beauty, but sometimes it does so with such solemnity that it ends up sounding more important than it feels. There is a difference between being a complex film and behaving all the time as if you were saying something enormous. Here, too often, the ambition is more visible than the result.Visually, it does have strength. Schnabel knows how to create images, atmospheres, faces and moments of aesthetic intensity. The film may be excessive and messy, but it is not anonymous. It has personality. Even when it becomes a little boring, even when it turns verbose or self-indulgent, there is something in it that prevents you from dismissing it as a simple disaster. It is flawed, but not dead. Wrong, but **** the Hand of Dante is a film you can watch, especially if you accept its strangeness and excess from the start. It is not a marvel, not by any means, and its attempt to rise toward the intellectual and the spiritual often remains more pose than substance. But it is not a vulgar film either. It has ambition, images, actors and moments of genuine attraction. The problem is that it wants to reach Dante’s paradise and too often remains wandering through a rather confusing purgatory.

Little Brother is a simple, fairly predictable family comedy, but it has enough charm to be watchable without too many problems. It is not a great film, nor does it try to be, but it has funny moments, a lead pairing that works better than expected and that friendly streaming-movie tone designed for a light, easy **** story revolves around Rudd, a successful real estate agent who is organized, controlled and obsessed with keeping his life perfect, until everything is thrown into chaos when Marcus, his chaotic “little brother,” suddenly reappears. From there, the film plays with a very classic contrast: the rigid man versus the walking disaster, the successful adult versus the misfit, the planned life versus the emotional bond that arrives to break everything **** best thing, clearly, is John Cena. For some time now, it has been obvious that he has more talent for comedy than many might have expected when he was mainly associated with wrestling and action films. Here he works very well again in this kind of role: a huge, strong, seemingly unshakable man who becomes increasingly overwhelmed by a situation he cannot control. His physique helps the gag, but what really works is his willingness to look ridiculous without seeming uncomfortable. Cena knows how to stay serious inside something silly, and that matters a lot in comedy.Eric André brings the chaos. His character can be a little exhausting at times, because the film depends heavily on his uncontrolled energy, but he also has some genuinely funny scenes. The relationship between the two keeps the film going: not because it is especially original, but because there is a recognizable dynamic of irritation, dependence, tenderness and embarrassment that eventually works. When the film focuses on the two of them, it is usually at its **** problem is that Little Brother almost always follows very familiar paths. The script does not surprise much: initial clash, disaster, misunderstandings, small emotional lessons and a more or less expected reconciliation. Everything is built efficiently, but with little real personality. You can see most things coming, and some conflicts are resolved too **** all the jokes work either. There are funny moments, yes, but also others where you can feel the effort to be irreverent or outrageous. The film wants to mix absurd humor, physical comedy and a bit of family emotion, and while the balance is not bad, it is not really brilliant either. It makes you smile more often than it makes you laugh out loud.Still, it has its charm. It is one of those films you can watch without expecting too much and end up accepting because of its likeable energy. It has decent pace, it does not feel especially heavy, and John Cena manages to lift several scenes that would probably have felt much weaker with another actor. It is not a memorable comedy, but it is not a waste of time either.Little Brother works best when it does not try to seem more important than it is: a friendly, slightly outrageous, family-flavored comedy carried by two leads with good energy. It lacks originality and relies too much on formula, but it has funny moments and confirms that John Cena, in this kind of increasingly desperate role, really can be funny.

Major Grom: Plague Doctor is one of those films that first catches your attention because of where it comes from. Not because Russian cinema is an absolute rarity, of course, but because in the West we do not get that many Russian commercial productions of this kind: action cinema, superheroes, comics, police thriller and spectacle with visual ambition. That already makes it interesting. You can tell there is money behind it, a desire to compete in blockbuster territory and a clear refusal to look **** story follows Igor Grom, a Saint Petersburg police officer with unorthodox methods, who must face the Plague Doctor, a masked figure who begins violently punishing the rich and powerful under a supposed idea of justice. The comparison with V for Vendetta comes almost automatically: mask, discourse against corruption, violence as public spectacle, the city turned into a moral battlefield and a villain presenting himself as a symbol. Here, however, the film goes less far politically and much more toward comic-book **** best thing about it is the production value. Major Grom: Plague Doctor looks good. Saint Petersburg works very well as a setting, the cinematography takes advantage of the city, the special effects are solid and the action scenes have energy. There are moments of camera work, editing and staging that show skill and ambition. It does not feel like a cheap film or a clumsy attempt to imitate Hollywood, but rather a production with scale, pace and visual **** also works as entertainment. It is not particularly boring, it has action, investigation, light humor, chases, a theatrical villain and that kind of cocky, impulsive and brilliant protagonist who always seems to be one step ahead of everyone else. The material comes from comics, and that can be felt in the tone, the characters and the way the conflicts are presented. The film embraces that large, exaggerated and colorful comic-book energy fairly **** problem is that almost everything feels familiar. There are echoes of V for Vendetta, Batman, rebellious cop movies, Marvel, The Purge and many stories about vigilantes who claim to fight corruption while spreading chaos. The Russian setting and Saint Petersburg bring some freshness, but the narrative structure is quite conventional. The hero, the partner, the journalist, the superior officer, the villain with a moral speech and the plot twists all fit into very recognizable **** also does not explore its ideas very deeply. The concept of a vigilante punishing corrupt elites could have opened the door to a more uncomfortable reflection on power, inequality, violence, populism and social manipulation. But the film prefers to remain in a safer area, closer to police adventure and spectacle. That is not necessarily bad, but it limits its force. It seems to want social commentary, but without ever stopping being an accessible and commercial action **** actors do their job, although there is also a certain cultural distance here. If more Russian films like this reached Western audiences, we would probably have more familiarity with these faces, their acting styles and their star power. Tikhon Zhiznevsky has presence as Igor Grom, Sergei Goroshko works well as his opposite figure, and the cast keeps the machine moving. But from the outside, it is harder to fully appreciate the real weight these actors may have in their own industry.Major Grom: Plague Doctor is not a masterpiece, but it is perfectly watchable. It has money, good effects, an attractive city, competent action and a premise with a hook. It lacks originality, runs a little too long and does not fully exploit its political or emotional possibilities. Even so, as a Russian comic-book blockbuster, it is curious, entertaining and more solid than one might expect when going in without knowing anything.

Hoppers has almost everything that made Pixar famous: a strange but easy-to-accept premise, lovable characters, physical humor, adventure, emotion, a clear moral idea and that attempt to speak to children without completely forgetting adults. It is not one of the studio’s masterpieces, but it is a very entertaining, likeable film with far more life than some of Pixar’s recent **** story begins with a very Pixar idea: a young animal lover uses technology that allows her to place her consciousness inside a robotic beaver in order to communicate with wildlife and protect a threatened natural environment. It is a mixture of absurd science fiction, ecological adventure and animal comedy. It sounds ridiculous, but the film embraces it with so much energy that you quickly accept the **** best thing about Hoppers is its comic rhythm. It has plenty of absurd humor, very visual situations and a constant ability to make the most of the contrast between the human world and the animal world. The beavers, the forest community and the internal rules of that small universe work very well. Pixar has always known how to turn an apparently silly idea into something emotionally understandable, and here it does so **** also looks very good. Not only because of the technical quality, which is expected from Pixar, but because of the imagination in the natural world. The forest, the animals, the robotic bodies, the chases and the action scenes have color, movement and personality. The film feels alive, agile and pleasant to watch. You can feel the desire to have fun with animation, not just to show off technical **** moral lesson is there, of course. Hoppers talks about protecting nature, listening to others, understanding that human beings are not the center of everything and respecting the balance of a community. It is a very obvious message, but in a family film it does not bother too much if it is integrated with humor and adventure. And here, fortunately, it usually is. It does not feel like an ecological lecture disguised as a cartoon, but like an adventure that uses its premise to talk about coexistence and **** problem is that this is still Pixar in a very recognizable mode. That has a good side and a less good one. The good side is that you know the film will be well constructed, that there will be tenderness, gags, final emotion and a clear lesson. The less good side is that some pieces already feel too familiar. There are moments when you can see the formula: the character who learns, the community that comes together, the villain or threat representing destruction, the accelerated climax and the comforting ending.Even so, the film has enough wit and energy to work. It does not try to force tears out of you, which is appreciated, and it relies more on comedy, movement and adventure than on calculated sentimentality. That makes it lighter and fresher. It may not reach the greatness of the best Pixar films, but it does recover a good deal of their charm: imagination, rhythm, good characters and a family story with heart.Hoppers is entertaining, funny and very well made. It has a moral lesson, yes, but it also has humor, beavers, action, tenderness and a visual world with personality. It does not change Pixar history, but it does remind us why the studio was so beloved for so many years: because even when it tells a crazy story about a girl inside a robotic beaver, it manages to make the idea feel natural, close and emotionally useful.

Swapped is a decent, likeable and very easy-to-watch family animated film. It does not discover anything new, nor does it really try to, but it works reasonably well as an adventure for children, with a clear message, a colorful world and that classic idea of literally putting yourself in someone else’s place in order to learn empathy, coexistence and respect for those who seem **** story begins with a very familiar premise: two creatures who belong to different, almost opposite worlds swap bodies and are forced to work together. From there, the film builds an adventure of survival, friendship and mutual discovery. It is true that everything feels quite familiar. The storytelling does not surprise much, and many of its lessons arrive exactly where you expect them. But within that familiar territory, Swapped remains pleasant to **** best part is the visual world. The forest, the hybrid creatures, the colors and the design of that natural universe have charm. The film is strongest when it allows itself to observe that environment, to play with shapes, sizes, movements and the differences between species. There is more imagination in the creation of the world than in the structure of the story. Visually, it has some lovely moments, and in a family animated film that already helps a **** message also works, even if it is simple. The film talks about prejudice, fear of the other, cooperation and community. It does not do so with great subtlety, but it does not really need to be too complicated. For a young audience, the idea is clear and useful: sometimes you only understand someone else when you stop seeing them as an enemy and begin to live, even briefly, from their place. It is a message that family cinema has repeated many times, but it is still **** problem is that the script plays things too safely. It lacks more spark, more risk and more personality. There is adventure, humor and emotion, but almost everything feels carefully measured so as not to disturb or surprise too much. The film does its job, but rarely dazzles. You can feel that it has a strong visual base and a capable team behind it, but the story could have had more wit, more depth or more truly memorable **** a comedy, it is not especially brilliant either. It has pleasant situations that come from the body-swap idea, but not many real laughs. As an adventure, it works better, especially thanks to the dynamism of the environment and the relationship between the two central characters. And as a family film, it will probably work better for children than for adults, although it is never heavy or irritating.Swapped is fine. It is not a great animated film, but it is not a failure either. It has color, rhythm, an effective premise and a gentle message about empathy. It lacks narrative originality and stronger emotion, but it is enjoyable enough and can work very well for a family afternoon. A pretty, simple and entertaining film, although it may be forgotten faster than its visual world deserves.

We Have a Ghost is one of those films designed to be watched with the family, without too many demands, with a ghost who is not scary, a haunted house, a lonely teenager, a somewhat broken family and a mixture of comedy, adventure, mystery and final emotion. The intention is clear: to recover a little of the spirit of those eighties family films in which the supernatural was used to talk about friendship, loss and family bonds. The problem is that the film has better ingredients than **** premise has charm. A family moves into a house where Ernest appears, a ghost unable to speak who soon becomes a viral phenomenon. From there, the film tries to mix several things: ghost story, internet comedy, government chase, family drama, mystery from the past and teenage adventure. All of that could have made a very entertaining film, but the whole thing feels too scattered. It wants to be many things at once and does not always know which one it cares about most.David Harbour is the best thing in it. It takes skill to build a character almost without words and still give him humanity, sadness and a certain tenderness. Ernest works best when the film slows down and lets his presence be more than a special effect or an excuse for a chase. In those moments, you can see the film this could have been: a simple, emotional and slightly strange story about a forgotten ghost and a boy who needs to feel heard.Jahi Di’Allo Winston is also good as Kevin, the teenager who connects with Ernest. Their relationship is the most honest part of the film, although it never quite reaches all the emotion it promises. Anthony Mackie brings presence as a frustrated father, but the script takes him down overly obvious paths. Jennifer Coolidge, as almost always, arrives with her own energy, although her character works more as a gag than as a real part of the **** main problem is the length and the tone. The film is too long for what it tells. What should be an agile family adventure becomes heavy at times, with secondary plots that do not always add much and a chase element that stretches the whole thing without making it more fun. It is not boring all the time, but you can feel that there was a lighter, better film hidden inside this **** a comedy, it does not fully work either. It has a few pleasant moments, but not many laughs. As a ghost film, it is too harmless to create real mystery. As a family adventure, it has heart, but lacks rhythm. And as a comment on social media, instant fame and the exploitation of anything unusual, it remains on the surface.Still, it is not a disaster. It is watchable, especially with children or at a time when you want something gentle, fantastical and not too dark. It has decent effects, a ghost with some tenderness and an ending that tries to move you. But it also leaves the feeling of a missed opportunity. With less running time, more focus and more confidence in the relationship between Kevin and Ernest, it could have been a much stronger family **** Have a Ghost is decent, occasionally charming and very harmless. It does not annoy too much, but it also does not leave much of a mark. A family ghost film with a good idea, a good David Harbour and plenty of potential charm, but one that ends up being longer, more scattered and less funny than it should be.

Duplex had the ingredients to work much better: Ben Stiller in one of those roles as an ordinary man slowly losing his mind, Drew Barrymore as part of a young couple trapped in a real-estate nightmare, an unbearable old lady upstairs and Danny DeVito directing a black comedy about frustration, coexistence and the secret desire to get rid of the person ruining your life. On paper, the idea is funny. The problem is that the film almost never finds the comedy in it.I have always liked Ben Stiller, and he usually makes me laugh, especially when he plays overwhelmed, hysterical characters who are unable to control a situation that gradually consumes them. Here he has moments where you can see his talent for progressive desperation: the nervous look, the fake patience, the face of a reasonable man about to explode. He understands this kind of physical and emotional comedy very well. But not even Stiller can lift a film that gets trapped in one joke repeated too many **** premise is clear: a couple buys their dream home, but an old lady living upstairs turns that happiness into torture. The conflict should grow into something increasingly dark, uncomfortable and funny. But Duplex stays in a strange middle ground: it is not cruel enough to be a great black comedy, not sharp enough to be a good farce and not funny enough to justify its repetition. There is some bite, yes, but not enough precision.Drew Barrymore, moreover, has never especially worked for me, and this film does not change that impression. She has charm and an agreeable presence, but her character does not add much here. The couple never quite has the chemistry needed to make us fully invested in their desperation, and the film needs us to understand their frustration for the escalation to work. If you do not fully believe in them, everything becomes **** main problem is that Duplex feels like a funny idea stretched into a feature film. The old lady is annoying, they get desperate, they try to fix it, everything goes wrong, and then it starts again. At first it can be mildly amusing, but the lack of real development soon becomes obvious. The gags pile up without truly growing, the story becomes repetitive and the film ends up feeling longer than it actually **** tone also fails. A story like this needed more darkness, something more poisonous, closer to an absurd and cruel domestic war. But the film stays halfway. It wants to be mischievous, but it does not fully dare. It wants to be uncomfortable, but never quite gets there. It wants to be funny, but too often it is simply tiresome.Still, it is not a total disaster. Ben Stiller has skill, there are a few isolated moments with a nasty edge, and the premise still has potential. But it is one of those films where you end up thinking the actors deserved better material. Duplex did not make me laugh, and in a comedy that matters too much. It is watchable, but almost immediately forgettable.

Self Reliance is a strange comedy, the kind that begins with a fairly original idea and then does not always seem completely sure how far it wants to take it. An ordinary, somewhat faded man is given the chance to take part in an absurd game: if he survives for a month without ever being completely alone, he can win one million dollars. The problem is that nobody around him believes him. And that is where the best part of the film lies: in its mixture of paranoia, loneliness, awkward humor and desperate need for company.Jake Johnson works very well because this kind of character fits him perfectly. He has that way of seeming lost, tired and funny without forcing it too much. His Tommy is not exactly in danger all the time, but he is trapped in a life that feels sad, still and disconnected. The film uses the game premise to talk, without becoming too serious, about something very recognizable: how easy it is to isolate yourself and how hard it can be to ask for help or simply be with **** cast also helps a lot. Anna Kendrick, Andy Samberg, Natalie Morales, Mary Holland, Emily Hampshire and Christopher Lloyd bring that slightly offbeat comic tone without turning everything into obvious jokes. There is a pleasant naturalness to the actors, as if they all understand that the film has to be absurd, but not too exaggerated. That balance is what makes it easy to **** starting idea is very good. It has something of a thriller, something of a survival game, something of an odd romantic comedy and something of an indie film about emotionally stuck people. And the best thing is that it can appeal to more people than one might expect from the plot. It is not a film only for fans of strange comedy. It has an accessible, likable and even tender side that makes it easier to enjoy.Still, it does not fully make the most of its premise. While watching Self Reliance, you can imagine several stronger films coming from the same idea: a darker one, a wilder one, a more romantic one, or one more focused on reality shows and digital spectacle. The film chooses a kinder, smaller path, and that gives it charm, but it also limits the result. In its final stretch it loses some strength and leaves the feeling that it could have pushed further.Even so, it is refreshing to see a film trying something different. It is not a perfect comedy, but it has personality, good actors and a premise that catches your attention from the start. It is funny without shouting too much, and beneath the oddness there is a nice idea about human connection. In the end, the game is not so much about surviving hunters as it is about realizing that being alone all the time may not have been such a good way to live.Self Reliance is small, uneven and a little underused, but also likable, original and easy to watch. A strange comedy that is more enjoyable than expected, precisely because beneath its absurd setup there is something quite human. It is not a great film, but it can be watched very comfortably.

A Cure for Wellness is a very curious film, because it has many elements that can fascinate you and almost as many that can frustrate you. Gore Verbinski builds a visually impressive world: a sanatorium lost in the Swiss Alps, white corridors, water, sick bodies, strange smiles, unsettling treatments and an atmosphere somewhere between gothic tale, medical nightmare and paranoid thriller. Visually, the film certainly has **** problem is that it seems to want to be too many films at once. There are echoes of gothic horror, boarding-school mystery, mad science, sick fairy tale, corporate paranoia, Shutter Island, stories about impossible sanatoriums and even dark European fantasy. All of that could have formed a fascinating mixture, but the film does not always know how to organize its own ideas. At times, it is hypnotic; at others, it feels trapped inside its own excess.Dane DeHaan works well as the protagonist, with that face of exhaustion, arrogance and fragility that fits a character slowly losing control. Jason Isaacs also brings presence as the unsettling figure inside the center. But, for me, the person who stays in the memory is Mia Goth. She has something special, as always: a mixture of innocence, strangeness, mystery and quiet threat. Every time she appears, the film gains something. Hannah could have been just another odd character inside the setting, but Mia Goth turns her into a magnetic **** film succeeds strongly in atmosphere. There are powerful images, uncomfortable moments and a constant sense that this place is far too clean to be healthy. Verbinski knows how to look at spaces, how to create discomfort and how to turn water, corridors and bodies into something unsettling. Even when the story becomes untidy, the film remains visually **** it is too long. Very long. Its almost two and a half hours weigh heavily. There is a good film inside A Cure for Wellness, perhaps even a very good one, but it is buried under scenes that stretch on, predictable turns, too many explanations and a plot that gradually loses elegance. What begins as sophisticated mystery ends up moving too close to excess. And not always in a good **** also lacks a clearer emotional force. The film is beautiful, strange and dark, but it is hard to truly connect with what happens to its characters. There is more visual fascination than real emotional impact. It seems more concerned with creating disturbing images than with making its story truly hurt or frighten. And in a film this long, that becomes noticeable.A Cure for Wellness is not a bad film. It has ambition, memorable images, a carefully built atmosphere and a perfect Mia Goth, as always. But it is also uneven, excessive and too in love with its own delirium. It mixes many stories, references and tones, and it does not always make them fit. It is interesting to watch, yes, but in the end it leaves the feeling that it needed less running time, more focus and a cure for itself.

Hearts in Atlantis is one of those Stephen King adaptations that does not follow the path of obvious horror, but something much more melancholic: lost childhood, adults who fail to protect, the arrival of a mysterious person who changes your life, and the feeling that the world is far darker than a child can understand. You can feel King behind it, but this is the more intimate, sadder King, more interested in memory than in scares.I liked the film quite a lot. It has something very classic about it, like a story told from memory, with an adult man returning to the past and recalling a decisive summer. That device can become sentimental, of course, and the film sometimes gets close to that, but there is also a sincerity that works. It does not try so much to frighten as to leave a feeling of loss, discovery and hidden threat beneath a calm surface.Anthony Hopkins is magnificent as Ted Brautigan. He has that mixture of kindness, mystery, intelligence and fatigue that makes the character fascinating without needing to explain everything. Ted is not simply a kind old man or a disguised magical figure. He is someone who seems to have been running for too long, someone who knows things he should not know and who nevertheless finds in Bobby a clean, almost paternal form of **** Anton Yelchin is especially good. It is very sad to watch him now, knowing he died so young, because even here he already had enormous sensitivity. His Bobby is curious, vulnerable, alert and full of emotional hunger. He never overacts. He looks, listens and absorbs. He makes the relationship with Ted believable and gives the film its heart. The rest of the cast is very good too: Hope Davis as a selfish and frustrated mother, David Morse as the adult Bobby, Mika Boorem as an essential part of that childhood memory.What is interesting is that Hearts in Atlantis can also be read as a criticism of an era of suspicion, surveillance and persecution. The “low men” who are looking for Ted have a fantasy threat around them, but they also evoke a very recognizable climate: fear of difference, control, the hunting of those who step outside the norm, the shadow of political persecution and of an America that turned suspicion into a system. The film does not turn this into a direct speech, but it is there, floating underneath.Perhaps its main weakness is that it lacks a little more intensity. At times, it is too soft, too restrained, and it can feel as if it does not fully use the strangeness of the original material. It has mystery, emotion and good atmosphere, but it does not always reach the force it promises. In that sense, it is not on the level of the great King adaptations about childhood, such as Stand by Me, although it shares with it that tone of painful memory.Still, it is a beautiful film, well acted and with feeling. It speaks about how certain childhood encounters stay with us for life, how some adults save us a little even if they cannot save themselves, and how fear can enter a house without making noise. Hearts in Atlantis is not perfect, but it has soul. And in a Stephen King adaptation, that already means a lot.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie follows exactly the same path as the first film: lots of color, lots of pace, lots of references, many recognizable characters and a very simple story designed so that nobody gets lost. If the previous film already felt more like a Nintendo theme park than a movie with real depth, this sequel reinforces that feeling even more. It is bigger, more galactic and more packed with visual energy, but not necessarily **** film is clearly made for children and fans. And on that level, it works to a point. There are bright worlds, constant action, easy humor, beloved characters and the feeling of moving from one level to another. Anyone looking for a light family adventure with Mario, Luigi, Peach, Bowser and company moving through space settings will probably find exactly what they expected. It does not hide what it **** problem is that there is not much more to say. The film often confuses movement with emotion. Everything moves fast, everything shines, everything jumps, everything runs, everything bursts into color, but the story remains minimal. The characters barely have room to grow, the scenes feel like a list of recognizable moments and the script works more as a way to connect references than as a story with real weight.Visually, it is pleasant, even impressive in some moments. Illumination knows how to create clean, colorful and easy-to-watch images, and the Mario Galaxy material allows for planets, gravity, impossible spaces and new creatures. There is potential there. But there is also the feeling that such a strong visual idea could have led to a more imaginative, more surprising and less automatic film.Bowser remains one of the best parts, although he is no longer as surprising. Jack Black keeps that mix of exaggerated villain and comic character that worked in the first movie, but the film depends too much on formulas that have already been tested. Everything seems designed to please, to avoid risk, to place references and to prepare more Nintendo universe. That can be effective, but also rather **** the positive side, it is watchable. It does not feel endless, it keeps its energy and it can entertain younger viewers without much trouble. But as a sequel, it feels a little poor. It does not make a real jump from the previous film; it simply changes the setting, raises the volume and multiplies the stimulation. For a saga with so much imagination in the games, the cinema version still stays in the safest **** Super Mario Galaxy Movie is not a disaster, but it is a fairly limited sequel. It is colorful, fast and occasionally charming, but also empty, repetitive and too dependent on immediate recognition. For children, it works. For fans, it may be fun. For anyone expecting an animated film with real story, emotion or invention, it falls short. Another level cleared, yes, but not quite the final star.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is exactly what you might expect from a modern Mario adaptation made by Illumination and Nintendo: color, pace, constant references, recognizable worlds, simple humor and the constant feeling of watching a very well-packaged brand. It is not a great film, but it is watchable. And it is certainly much better than that strange 90s version with John Leguizamo, which had its own accidental cult charm, but as a Mario adaptation was pure madness.Here, at least, Mario looks like Mario. The Mushroom Kingdom, Peach, Luigi, Bowser, Donkey Kong, karts, blocks, pipes, power-ups and music are all where they should be. The film understands that a large part of its audience is not looking for a deep reinvention, but for seeing on screen what they have been playing for decades. In that sense, it delivers. It is colorful, fast and respectful of Nintendo’s **** problem is that it also remains very much on the surface. The story is minimal, the characters have little depth and many scenes feel designed more as a succession of references than as real storytelling. At times, it feels less like a film and more like an animated theme park: everything is pretty, everything moves, everything sounds familiar, but there is not always much underneath.Still, it has charm. Bowser is by far the best thing in it. Jack Black gives him an absurd and funny energy, and the song “Peaches” works very well because it understands the exact tone: silly, catchy and ridiculous in the best possible way. That mix of exaggerated villain and pathetic lovesick monster gives the film some of its most memorable **** also helps that the film has the right length. It does not drag, it does not try to overcomplicate things, and it moves from one world to another as if clearing levels. That can be seen as a limitation, but also as a virtue: a Mario movie did not need two and a half hours of mythology. It needed to move, entertain and avoid becoming heavy. And it does that.What it lacks is a little more soul. It has nostalgia, spectacle and visual fidelity, but not much emotion. For children, it can work perfectly, and for adults who grew up with Mario, there is the pleasure of recognition. But beyond that, it is hard to find a truly memorable film. It is fun while it lasts and fairly forgettable once it **** Super Mario Bros. Movie does not jump to the very top of the flagpole, but it clears the level. It is a correct, likable and very carefully designed adaptation for fans and children, with Bowser stealing the show every time he appears. It is not especially inspired animated cinema, but it is effective family entertainment. And compared with the 90s version, this almost feels like a masterpiece of the Mushroom Kingdom.

Mr. Harrigan’s Phone starts from a very Stephen King-like idea: a lonely boy, a mysterious old man, a strange relationship, an everyday object turned into a doorway to something impossible, and a sense of guilt that slowly begins to grow. On paper, it had everything needed to become a small, unsettling and deeply uncomfortable story. But the film never fully crosses that **** curious thing is that it does not work badly as a drama. The relationship between Craig and Mr. Harrigan has interest, especially thanks to Donald Sutherland, who fills every scene with very little. His character has gravity, distance and a kind of quiet menace even before anything supernatural happens. Jaeden Martell is also good, with the mix of fragility and curiosity the protagonist **** problem is that the film seems to sell itself as horror, but it never becomes truly scary. There is a constant promise of something dark, of an impossible connection from beyond the grave, of a phone turned into a kind of neo-Ouija board, but everything remains too restrained. There are no strong scares, but there is not enough atmosphere of threat to make up for that either. It did not need to be a jump-scare film; it only needed to be more **** most interesting part is the moral idea: what happens when someone discovers they can ask for revenge without directly getting their hands dirty. That is where the film has something powerful. Craig is not a monster, but he begins to understand that pain, anger and the desire for punishment can open a very dangerous door. The film points toward that uncomfortable place, but it never presses hard enough. It seems to want to talk about guilt, technology, loneliness and death, but it does so too **** can also feel that the story may have worked better on the page. King is often very strong in those tales where horror grows from a simple idea and slowly enters the character’s mind. On screen, however, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone feels a little flat. It has elegance, good actors and a hooky premise, but it lacks pace, tension and a truly memorable image to lift it beyond correctness.Even so, it is watchable. It is not a disaster, nor one of those embarrassing King adaptations. It is more of a correct but somewhat disappointing film, one that works better if you are not expecting pure horror. As a supernatural moral drama, it has moments. As a scary film, it falls ****. Harrigan’s Phone had a very promising call, but there was less on the other end of the line than we hoped. An interesting, well-acted story with a slightly unsettling edge, but too timid to leave a mark. It can be watched, and you understand what it is trying to do, but when it ends, the feeling remains that it could have been much scarier, more painful and more disturbing.

Fred Claus has an idea that, at first, could have offered quite a lot: Santa Claus has a resentful, selfish, loud-mouthed brother who is much less exemplary than he is. With Vince Vaughn, Paul Giamatti, Rachel Weisz, Kathy Bates and Kevin Spacey, you would expect a Christmas comedy with more bite, more rhythm and more laughs. But the film falls far below the level of its **** main problem is the script. Everything is too simple, too childish and too familiar. The story of a cynical character who does not believe in Christmas, or dislikes it, or has to learn a lesson about kindness, family and redemption, has already been told in countless ways. Here it is told once again, but without much imagination. The names change, the North Pole is added, Santa’s brother is introduced, and little else.Vince Vaughn tries to pull the film into his own territory, with his fast-talking style, sarcasm and slightly tiring mischief. At times it works, because he has comic presence and knows how to play selfish characters who are not completely hateful. But the material does not help him. The film seems to want Fred to be a funny disaster, but also lovable, family-friendly and redeemable from the beginning. In the end, it lands somewhere in the middle: not naughty enough to be truly funny, not tender enough to be moving.Paul Giamatti as Santa Claus is one of the film’s best ideas. He brings humanity, fatigue and a touch of melancholy, and he could have been used much better. Rachel Weisz, Kathy Bates and Kevin Spacey are also there, but the feeling is that there is too much talent for such a small and uninspired story. It is frustrating to see a cast like this trapped in a comedy that never really uses them.Visually, the film has what you expect: workshops, elves, snow, sleighs, Christmas atmosphere and the kind of friendly design that fits a family movie. But there is no real surprise there either. Everything looks correct, but manufactured. The film does not have enough magic to be remembered as a Christmas classic, nor enough bite to become a mischievous alternative.Fred Claus is not unbearable, but it is very weak. It can work for a Christmas afternoon when you do not want to think too much, especially if you accept that it is basically a children-and-family comedy with the occasional adult joke along the way. But with that cast and that premise, it should have offered much more. In the end, it is a present wrapped in shiny paper, but rather empty inside.

Voicemails for Isabelle is one of those films that comes in gently and ends up touching you more than expected. It looks like a romantic comedy built around a slightly absurd premise —a woman leaves voicemails for her deceased sister and a stranger starts receiving them—, but beneath that idea there is something very beautiful about grief, the need to keep talking to someone who is no longer there, and the possibility of reconnecting with **** film works because it does not rely only on the romantic gimmick. Yes, there is formula, there are coincidences, there are predictable moments and a very recognizable contemporary rom-com structure. But there is also emotional truth. Jill’s voicemails to Isabelle are not just a screenwriting device; they are a form of survival. She does not call because she expects an answer, but because she needs a place to leave her pain, her silly thoughts, her failures and her small joys.Zoey Deutch is wonderful. She has that mix of awkwardness, charm, energy and vulnerability that makes the character work even when the film gets close to cliché. You laugh with her, but you also understand why she is broken. Nick Robinson supports her very well, with a calm presence that keeps the story from becoming too sugary. There is chemistry between them, and in a film like this, that is **** best thing is that Voicemails for Isabelle manages to make you laugh and cry without one thing cancelling out the other. It has funny moments, some of them quite silly, but also scenes of very recognizable sadness. That combination of comedy and loss is delicate: if it is pushed too hard, it feels false; if it falls short, it does not move you. Here, most of the time, it finds a very pleasant **** also helps that the film has a kind tone. It does not try to reinvent the romantic comedy or become a profound work about grief, but it does make its characters matter. There is something luminous in the idea that a voice sent into the void can end up reaching someone who also needs to hear it. It is a romantic fantasy, of course, but a beautiful one.Voicemails for Isabelle is a very pleasant, tender film, and more emotional than it first appears. It uses clichés, yes, but it uses them with heart. It made me laugh, it made me cry and it left me with a warm feeling, the kind not every romantic comedy manages to create. It does not need to do more than that: sometimes a film works precisely because it keeps you company, softens you a little and reminds you that love can also appear in the middle of absence.

An American Pickle is a fairly silly comedy, but it also has something likable about it. It starts from an absurd idea —an immigrant is preserved for a hundred years in a pickle vat and wakes up in present-day Brooklyn— and handles it with a mixture of goofy humor, generational clash, family tenderness and a bit of sharpness. It is not a great film, but it is pleasant to **** best thing is the contrast between Seth Rogen’s two characters. Herschel comes from another world: he is rough, old-fashioned, hardworking, stubborn, full of prejudices and driven by a very basic idea of family, honor and effort. Ben, his great-grandson, is the opposite: modern, insecure, technological, lonely and lost in a life that is much more comfortable, but also much emptier. The film works when it confronts those two ways of understanding the world.Some jokes work precisely because they are so simple. The clash between a man from the early twentieth century and today’s sensitivities gives the film several funny moments, some very silly and others with more bite. The film laughs at nostalgia, modernity, social media, entrepreneurs, social correctness and also the tendency to turn anything into identity, offense or business.Seth Rogen carries almost everything. He is not always inside a perfectly tuned comedy, but he has timing and knows how to give humanity even to a ridiculous premise. Herschel could have been only a caricature, and Ben just another standard sad millennial, but between them something more interesting appears: a story about family, roots, inheritance and the difficulty of reconciling yourself with what you have **** problem is that An American Pickle does not always know what kind of film it wants to be. At times it seems like a fairly acidic satire; at others, a sentimental comedy about family grief; at others, an absurd fable about Jewish identity, capitalism and cultural clash. That mix has charm, but it also leaves the film a little halfway. It starts strongly and then gradually loses some of its spark.Still, it is entertaining. It will not go down in history, but it has a pleasant strangeness and a few ideas that are better than they first appear. It is a small, imperfect comedy, with tenderness and bite, best enjoyed without asking too much coherence or depth from it. You laugh at silly things, but sometimes those silly things have more intention behind them than it seems.

Superintelligence is a rather silly comedy, but also a fairly likable one. It starts from an idea that mixes something very familiar with something a little curious: an all-powerful artificial intelligence observes humanity and chooses to study an ordinary, almost average woman in order to decide whether the world is worth saving, destroying or changing into something else. The premise could have led to a much sharper satire, but the film prefers the easier path of light **** still, it is watchable. It is not a brilliant film, nor a particularly intelligent one, despite being about artificial intelligence. It has very basic jokes, absurd situations and moments that work more because of silliness than real wit. But sometimes that is enough. Some comedies do not need to be perfect to make you laugh at something stupid, and Superintelligence clearly belongs to that group.Melissa McCarthy is once again the main reason to watch it. She has a huge ability to make a weak scene feel more alive than it really is. Her character is built as an ordinary, clumsy, kind and slightly lost woman, but McCarthy gives her humanity and rhythm. Not everything funny comes from the script; much of it comes from the way she reacts, looks or holds an absurd situation without completely losing the character’s **** romantic side with Bobby Cannavale also helps make the film more pleasant. It is nothing extraordinary, but it has a simple warmth that fits the tone. In fact, Superintelligence works better when it stops trying to be a big science-fiction comedy and becomes something smaller: a normal woman trying to fix her life while a meddling AI pushes her from one situation to **** problem is that the film does not fully use its idea. Artificial intelligence, technological control, surveillance and the possibility of judging humanity could have provided material for something much sharper. But the film does not want to get into too much trouble. It prefers to be friendly, harmless and rather soft. That makes it easy to watch, but it also limits it a lot.Superintelligence is not a great comedy, but it is not the disaster it might seem either. It is light, absurd, uneven and forgettable, yes, but it has some funny moments and a Melissa McCarthy who makes many silly things land better than they should. For a relaxed watch without demanding too much, it works. You laugh at stupid little things, and sometimes that is exactly what you want from a comedy like this.

The Cursed starts from an idea that, at first, had real potential: a gothic werewolf story, a curse tied to violence against a persecuted community, an isolated village, superstition, guilt, blood and a dark period atmosphere. On paper, it could have been an elegant, cruel and disturbing horror film. The problem is that the film seems to confuse solemnity with depth, and it ends up feeling much heavier than it should.Visually, it has interesting elements. The cinematography, the landscapes, the fog, the dim interiors and the sense of a sick world help create a fairly strong atmosphere. You can tell that Sean Ellis wants to move away from the usual werewolf formula and give the myth a dirtier, more tragic and more adult texture. That is where the best of the film lies: in the intention, in the surface, in the promise of something more **** a good idea is not enough. As it moves forward, The Cursed becomes increasingly clumsy. The story drags, the characters never really matter and the supposed moral weight of the curse becomes diluted. There are powerful themes here — guilt, violence by the powerful, punishment, the inheritance of crime — but the film never manages to turn them into true drama or true horror. They are there, yes, but they weigh less than they **** also fails as entertainment. It did not grab me, it did not unsettle me very much, and at times it becomes boring. It has a few strong images, some violence and a creature that tries to move away from the usual model, but the whole thing progresses with a slowness that does not always create tension. Building atmosphere is one thing; making the film feel as if it is dragging its feet is **** cast does its job, especially Boyd Holbrook and Kelly Reilly, but the characters feel too rigid inside a story that seems more concerned with looking serious than with feeling alive. It lacks emotion, nerve and someone truly compelling to follow. When the horror arrives, it often fails to hit because the film has not made the stakes matter **** Cursed could have been a great revision of the werewolf myth. It had context, images, violence and a curse with background. But it remains a visually attractive and rather hollow film, more interesting for what it tries to do than for what it achieves. Good idea, weak pulse. A lot of gravity, little emotion. And in the end, a clear feeling of missed opportunity.

Firestarter is based on a Stephen King novel with a very strong idea: a girl with enormous destructive power, parents marked by secret experiments and an organization that wants to turn that gift into a weapon. The source material has tension, paranoia, family tragedy and that very King-like mixture of the intimate and the monstrous. The 2022 film does not reach that strength, but I also do not think it is the absolute disaster many have made it out to **** is true that the adaptation moves too fast. You can feel that parts of the story have been cut, that some characters should carry more weight and that certain conflicts needed more room to breathe. In the book, the threat grows differently and the relationship between Charlie and her parents has more depth. Here, everything is more compressed, more direct, as if the film wants to reach the fire moments as soon as possible. That takes away some of the emotional density the story should have.Even so, it is watchable. It has tension, a tight running time and some entertaining moments. Zac Efron works well as a tired, protective father broken by what he carries, and Ryan Kiera Armstrong holds the film together fairly well as Charlie, especially when the story focuses on her fear of her own power. The idea **** who is not only being hunted, but is also afraid of what she can do, still **** film also has a decent atmosphere. It is not always scary, and it does not make the organization hunting the family feel as unsettling as it should, but it does maintain a certain feeling of escape and threat. Also, the score by John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies gives it a personality that the direction does not always achieve on its own. At times, it almost feels as if the music understands the tone better than the film **** problem is that it lacks real spark. For a story about fire, psychic powers and persecution, everything should burn with more intensity. There are effective scenes, but also the feeling of a small, somewhat muted product that never fully explodes. It is not boring, but it is not memorable either. It does not betray King’s spirit, but it is too functional a version of a novel that could have offered much more.Firestarter works as simple science-fiction horror entertainment. It is easy to watch, has tension and does not overstay its welcome. But anyone coming from the book, or remembering the strength of that story, will notice that it lacks soul, danger and that mixture of sadness and fury that made the premise so powerful. A correct adaptation, but with a much smaller flame than it promised.

Love and Monsters is one of those films that does not seem to want to change cinema, and perhaps that is why it works so well. It has a simple premise, a light tone, well-designed monsters, a likable protagonist and a post-apocalyptic adventure that is very easy to enjoy. It is not deep or especially original, but it is very entertaining, and that is not a small **** story has something classic about it: a normal guy, rather clumsy and not very prepared for survival, leaves his underground shelter to cross a world full of huge and dangerous creatures. The romantic motivation is there, yes, but the film works better as a journey of growth than as a love story. What matters is not so much reaching the girl as discovering that the protagonist may be more capable than he believes.Dylan O’Brien carries the film very well. He has charisma, conveys vulnerability without becoming annoying, and makes Joel clumsy, scared and kind without turning him into an idiot. That is essential, because an adventure like this needs you to like the person who is going through it. The film also gets its supporting characters right, especially in the sections with Michael Rooker and Ariana Greenblatt, who give it the feeling of a small community of survivors with more world behind it than we actually **** monsters are another of its great strengths. They do not feel like simple digital obstacles placed there to fill action scenes. They have design, personality and variety. Some are disgusting, some are imposing, and some even have a strange tenderness to them. You can feel that the film enjoys imagining this world after disaster, and that is exactly where the sense appears that this could have been the beginning of something **** also helps that Love and Monsters does not take itself too seriously. It has humor, pace, adventure and a kind of innocence that recalls certain youth adventures from the 80s and 90s, but without feeling like a blatant copy. It is a kind film inside the apocalypse, with danger but without cynicism, with monsters but also with heart. And that mixture suits it very **** everything is perfect. Some situations are predictable, the script does not take many risks, and the world it presents could perhaps have supported a more ambitious story. But as entertainment, it almost always works. It is light, charming, visually appealing and leaves you wanting to explore that universe further. One of those films that, without making much noise, leaves you thinking: “I would have watched a sequel.”

The Hunt is much more entertaining than its controversy suggested. It starts from a brutal and very direct idea: a group of people wake up in the middle of nowhere and discover that someone has placed them there to be hunted. From there, the film mixes action, horror, black comedy, gore and political satire with very little subtlety, but also with a lot of pace. It does not try to be elegant. It tries to shoot, provoke and laugh at **** best thing is Betty Gilpin. Her Crystal is one of those characters who almost enters the film sideways and ends up taking over everything. She has a very strange way of looking, speaking and moving, as if she is always understanding something the others cannot see. She is dry, unpredictable, dangerous and very funny without needing to underline it. The film would be far less special without her. Gilpin turns what could have been a simple survival heroine into someone memorable.Hilary Swank also works very well, especially because the film understands the pleasure of putting two actresses with real presence against each other. Her character represents the other side of the farce: the elite convinced of its own moral superiority, just as ridiculous and violent as the people it claims to despise. And that is part of what makes The Hunt enjoyable: it hardly spares anyone. It mocks conspiracy-minded conservatives, snobbish liberals, prefabricated speeches, cultural paranoia and the very modern habit of turning everything into a war between **** social criticism, it may not be especially deep. The film has more bite as exploitation than as political analysis. But that is not necessarily a flaw, because its energy lies precisely in the wildness, exaggeration and discomfort. It is not looking for delicate nuance, but for pushing caricatures into direct collision. Sometimes it is too obvious, yes, but it is also aware of its own **** action works, the deaths have bite and the black-comedy tone keeps the film alive even when the satire becomes a little broad. There are very effective scenes, well-handled shifts in rhythm and a constant sense that anyone can disappear at any moment. That lack of respect for its own characters gives it freshness and makes the opening especially **** Hunt is not perfect. Its political commentary can feel limited, some ideas are thrown out better than they are developed, and at times it seems more interested in impact than reflection. But as a genre film, it is very enjoyable. Violent, fast, nasty and carried by a terrific Betty Gilpin. One of those films that does not need to be perfect to leave you feeling that you had a very good time.

The Marked Woman has something interesting hidden inside it. It is not a perfect film, and at times it clearly moves through familiar thriller territory: a woman with no memory, an urgent investigation, secrets gradually coming to light, a police officer marked by her own pain. On paper, it could sound like something we have seen many times before. But the characters are strong enough for the film to find a force of its **** best thing is Candela Peña. Her character is not simply an investigator solving a case, but someone carrying an inner fracture. There is exhaustion, anger, guilt, instinct and a kind of dry sadness in the way she looks at the world. Candela Peña knows how to do that very well: she gives the impression that a character is thinking and suffering even when she says very little. Thanks to her, the film gains a density that it might not have through the plot **** relationship with the woman found without memory also works. That is the most suggestive core of the film: it is not only about discovering who she is, but about asking what remains of a person when they cannot remember their own story. The film finds interest in that tension between what has been forgotten, what is reconstructed and what others try to impose as truth. Handled well, that idea has real **** is true that The Marked Woman does not always dare to go as far as it could. At times, it settles into thriller conventions, functional twists and a somewhat predictable seriousness. It could have used sharper dialogue, a few less tidy scenes and more risk. There are moments when you can sense a harder, stranger or more uncomfortable film trying to emerge, but the whole thing prefers to remain in a fairly safe zone.Even so, it is engaging to watch. It has good pacing, enough tension and character construction above the average of many streaming thrillers. Not everything is surprising, but what happens to the protagonists almost always matters, and that is already something. The urban setting and the idea of a broken identity also give it a more adult texture than a simple police **** Marked Woman is not a great film, but it is a film with something inside. You can feel a good story trying to come out, and although it does not always do so with all the force it could have, its characters hold it together. When it focuses on them, on their wounds and on the question of who we are when our past is missing, the film truly works.

Night Teeth is one of those films that disappears from your mind almost as quickly as it moves forward. It has vampires, night, neon lights, cars, parties, blood, attractive people and a city that should become a dangerous playground. On paper, it could have been a light and fun mix of nocturnal thriller and vampire fantasy. The problem is that everything remains on the **** film is so simple that it is hard even to get angry at it. Rather than being spectacularly bad, it is flat. It moves from one scene to the next without real tension, without characters who matter very much and without a vampire mythology strong enough to hold your attention. Some silly films at least have energy, nerve or one memorable scene. This one does not even leave that behind. A week later, it is difficult to remember anything specific, and that may be the worst sign.Visually, it tries to sell an elegant, dangerous and slightly sexy night, with clubs, colored lights and modern vampires moving through Los Angeles as if they owned the city. But it all feels more like packaging than an idea. The look is there, the music tries to push things along, the characters come and go, but there is no real world behind it. The film wants to have style, but it lacks **** also does not help that the horror is very weak. There is hardly any fear, no real sense of threat and no violence with much impact. Vampires should be imposing, seductive or unsettling, but here they feel more like an excuse to stage a fairly routine night adventure. What should bite barely scratches. What should feel dangerous ends up looking like a long and rather boring **** actors do what they can, and there are a few moments that are watchable enough, but the script gives them very little room. Everything is too predictable, too light and too underdeveloped. The film passes through thriller, horror, action and romance without ever deciding to be good at any of them.Night Teeth is not an absolute disaster, but it is a fairly clear waste of time. It has a premise that could have made for a fun watch, but it becomes an empty, toothless and forgettable product. It does not scare, it does not move, it does not surprise and it does not even entertain enough to justify its own existence. Vampires with fangs, yes; a film with bite, no.

Pet Sematary is based on one of Stephen King’s strongest novels. And that is already a problem for any adaptation, because the book does not work only because of its macabre premise, but because of something much deeper: grief, guilt, the impossible desire to undo death and the terrifying idea that there are doors that should never be opened. Read as a teenager, it can stay with you precisely because of that: it is not just about scares, but about a brutal human **** 2019 version has elements that work. It is competently made, has a solid cast and manages to create a certain gloomy atmosphere. Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz and John Lithgow bring professionalism, and there are moments when the film almost touches that unhealthy feeling that should surround everything. The problem is that it only touches it. In a story like this, the atmosphere should weigh like a stone, the cemetery should feel genuinely disturbing and every decision made by the characters should feel like another step toward something inevitable and horrifying. Here, too often, everything feels more **** film is watchable, but it rarely truly hits. It has scares, darkness, a few changes from the familiar material and an attempt to update the story so it is not just a repetition. But in trying to work as an efficient modern horror film, it loses part of King’s sadness and fatalism. What in the novel feels almost like a moral infection, a slow descent into the unforgivable, too often becomes here a sequence of genre scenes placed more or less correctly.Another problem is that the source of the horror does not feel as powerful as it should. The idea of the forbidden place, the cursed ground, of what comes back changed, has enormous force. But the film does not always know how to let that idea breathe. It uses music, effects, jumps and visual choices that sometimes replace unease with easier tricks. And that is a shame, because Pet Sematary does not need to shout in order to frighten. It should be enough for it to whisper from the **** everything is lost. There are effective images, an underlying sadness that occasionally appears and some stretches that do understand this story is more about pain than monsters. But the film never reaches the dark greatness of the book. It remains an acceptable adaptation, dignified at times, but too conventional for a story that needed more poison, more despair and more **** viewers who do not know the novel, it may work as a decent horror film. For those who read the book and felt it as one of Stephen King’s most disturbing works, it falls short. Very short. It does not completely betray the idea, but it does not bring it back with the force it deserved either.

The Rite belongs to that family of possession and exorcism films that seem to arrive with the manual already in hand: a priest with doubts, faith put to the test, the Vatican, disturbing cases, solemn lines and a demonic threat that should be scarier than it finally is. It is not a disaster, but it is not a particularly memorable film either. It is watchable enough, although at times it feels heavier than it **** film has one clear virtue: Anthony Hopkins. Even when the material is not worthy of him, he manages to give it presence, ambiguity and a little unease. His character works because Hopkins knows how to move between calm, irony, authority and darkness. Every time he appears, the film improves. The problem is that not even an actor like him can turn such a familiar story into something truly **** atmosphere also helps. Rome, the Vatican, the dark spaces, the religious interiors and a certain visual seriousness give The Rite a respectable mood. It is not loud or excessively dependent on cheap effects, and that is welcome. It tries to treat the subject with gravity, without turning every scene into a jump-scare show. But that same gravity eventually works against it, because for long stretches the film becomes too solemn, too slow and too convinced that its subject alone is enough to **** main problem is that it is not very scary. It has a few decent scenes, some uncomfortable moments and the occasional strong image, but it lacks real tension. In exorcism cinema, the shadow of The Exorcist is always there, and here that comparison weighs heavily. The Rite wants to be serious, atmospheric and spiritual, but it often remains in a middle zone: not disturbing enough as horror, and not deep enough as a drama about faith.There is also something predictable about the protagonist’s journey. His doubts, resistance and evolution are told in a way that feels too orderly. The film seems more concerned with moving him from one moral point to another than with making him live through a truly unsettling experience. And when a story about the devil becomes more didactic than frightening, something is not working.Even so, The Rite is not unbearable. It is competently made, well acted and visually decent. For an afternoon of religious horror without great expectations, it does its job. But it is far from the great possession films. It lacks intensity, it lacks risk and it has too much solemnity. Hopkins deserves the attention; the film, much less so.

Wind Chill is a small, simple film, and quite a bit more pleasant to watch than it might seem at first. It is not a great horror movie, nor a particularly polished one, but it has something that works: the cold, the road, the isolation and the feeling that the journey is slowly going wrong. Sometimes placing two characters in a hostile space is enough for suspense to start **** film is entertaining and easy to watch. Its premise is very basic: a young woman shares a car with a stranger in order to get home, the trip becomes complicated, snow covers everything and what first seemed like an uncomfortable situation turns into something much more unsettling. It does not need much more than that. When Wind Chill relies on that initial discomfort, on the distrust between the two leads and on the threat of the landscape, it works quite well.Emily Blunt is very good, as she almost always is. She has a natural presence that lifts the film even when the script does not give her very much. She does not need big speeches to convey exhaustion, fear or anger. Even in a modest film, she makes us follow her with interest. And yes, she is beautiful too, but what matters is that even then she already had that mix of intelligence, fragility and strength that would later make her a much bigger actress.Ashton Holmes also works as the strange companion, and for a good stretch the film knows how to play with our doubts about him. That is one of its strongest elements: not everything depends on ghosts or scares, but on the discomfort of travelling with someone who seems to know too much, who never quite inspires trust and who turns the car into a space that feels less and less **** problem is that Wind Chill does not always maintain that level. It has effective moments, a fairly strong cold atmosphere and some unsettling images, but it also carries an uneven script. The supernatural side is not always as strong as the starting situation, and some twists feel more functional than truly surprising. The film seems better when it suggests than when it explains.Even so, it is very watchable. It has a contained running time, good atmosphere, a very strong lead and a fairly restrained way of approaching horror. It does not look for excess or spectacle, but for a drier, more austere kind of unease. It may not leave a deep mark, but as a supernatural road thriller it works. You have a good time, you feel the cold, and above all you confirm once again that Emily Blunt improves almost any film she appears in.

Radio has one of those true stories that, on paper, seem made to move you: a high school football coach who reaches out to a marginalized young man, a community that learns to see him differently, and a human bond that should carry the whole film. The problem is that cinema does not work only because it has good intentions. It also needs perspective, restraint and an honest way of telling the **** film wants to move you from the very beginning, but its intentions are too visible. It goes for the easy tear, and that does not always work, even when you have very good actors. Ed Harris brings seriousness, Cuba Gooding Jr. gives himself fully to the role, and the cast tries to bring humanity to a story that, in other hands, could have felt much cleaner and truer. But the film insists so much on underlining what is noble, beautiful and exemplary that it ends up weakening what it is trying to **** biggest problem is the tone. Radio seems afraid of any uncomfortable area. It deals with integration, difference, prejudice, disability, racism and class, but often does so from a surface that is far too gentle. Instead of truly entering what hurts, it prefers to turn everything into a warm fable, with emotional music, kind gestures and moments designed to make the viewer feel good.That does not mean it has no effective scenes. Some work because the story itself has strength and because Ed Harris can convey decency without needing big speeches. There are also moments when the relationship between the characters shows a certain sincerity. But every time the film could become more complex, more uncomfortable or more adult, it chooses the easy path.That is where it falls short. A film based on true events should not use that label as an emotional shield. Reality can be inspiring, yes, but it can also be contradictory, harsh and full of grey areas. Radio prefers to arrange everything so it fits into a nice lesson, and that is why it ends up feeling less like life and more like a product designed to pull at the **** is not an unbearable film. It is watchable, it has good actors, and it may move viewers who accept its approach without much resistance. But its tenderness feels too calculated, too clean and too comfortable. It wants to speak about the best side of human nature, but it does so in such a sentimental way that it ends up weakening its own story.

Pearl is a hard film to place immediately after watching it. It is not just horror, not just a prequel, not just the portrait of an unhinged young woman. It is strange, sickly, very aware of its own style, and held together almost entirely by a completely committed Mia Goth. You may like it more or less, but it is difficult to deny the hypnotic quality of watching her fall apart inside while the film surrounds her with color, melodrama and the beauty of a rotten fairy **** most interesting thing is that contrast. Pearl seems to look back at classic cinema, bright musicals, idyllic farms, fantasies of escape and dreams of becoming someone special. But beneath that pretty surface there is frustration, confinement, desire, resentment and unbearable loneliness. That is exactly what the film plays with: the cleaner and brighter the world looks, the dirtier everything becomes **** Goth is the film. Her performance is excessive, theatrical, even uncomfortable, but that exaggeration fits the character. Pearl is not a “normal” woman slowly losing control; she is someone trapped between a dream of greatness and a reality that feels like a cage. Her face can move from innocence to threat in a matter of seconds, and there are moments when the whole film seems to rest only on her **** also works very well as the reverse side of X. It does not need to explain everything or turn every detail into psychological justification, but it does add a tragic and grotesque layer to the character. What could seem simply monstrous in another film becomes sadder, more human and therefore more disturbing here. The film does not simply ask us to pity her, but it does force us to look at the roots of her resentment.That does not mean it is perfect. At times, it can feel more interesting as a stylistic exercise than as a horror story. There are moments when the film indulges in its own strangeness, and it can leave a cold, even distant impression. It does not always scare in the traditional sense, but it does disturb. And perhaps that is its real strength: it is less interested in jump scares than in the gradual deformation of a trapped mind.Pearl is a strange horror film, beautiful and unpleasant at the same time. It has something of a cruel fable about broken dreams, ambition, the need to be seen and the violence that can grow when a life rots in silence. It is not an easy film to summarize, and perhaps that is why it can leave you blank. But when a film leaves you staring into space, trying to organize what you have just seen, it has done something right.

The Curse of the Necklace is a bad film, and truly bad at that. Not the kind of bad that at least has some madness, a memorably ridiculous scene or a bit of accidental charm. It is worse than that: a flat, tired horror film, full of clichés and without a single idea strong enough to lift it. A simple premise can work if there is atmosphere, tension or at least one well-built scare. Here, almost everything feels recycled from better **** story of a cursed object, a broken family, children seeing things, a guilty father, a house full of shadows and textbook scares could have worked if there had been any personality. But the film moves forward as if it were ticking off a checklist of the most routine supernatural horror obligations. Nothing surprises, nothing truly unsettles, and almost everything arrives exactly when you expect it to **** worst part is that it does not even manage to be enjoyable as trash. It is too serious to be camp, too clumsy to be scary and too generic to be interesting. Some moments are clearly meant to be disturbing, but the staging has no force. Others are supposed to carry emotional weight through the family drama, but the characters are so lifeless that it is hard to care about what happens to **** cast, at least, tries to hold something together. The McGraw sisters have presence, and Henry Thomas naturally brings a certain sympathy because of everything he carries as a familiar face from fantasy cinema. But even they cannot do much with such a weak script. The film gives them worn-out situations, unnatural dialogue and a supernatural threat that never feels genuinely frightening.There is also a serious tonal problem. The Curse of the Necklace wants to feel like a classic haunted-house and family-possession horror film, but it has no elegance, no tension and no visual imagination. Everything is dull, repetitive and predictable. It is supposed to be scary; instead, it becomes tiring. And when a horror film does not scare, does not intrigue and does not even entertain, the result is very **** idea of the cursed necklace could have worked as a small, entertaining B-movie. But there is no spark here, no bite, no atmosphere. Just a succession of scenes we have already seen, weak scares and the constant feeling that time is being wasted. A real dud.

Fear Street: Prom Queen is an entertaining film, the kind you can watch easily if you enjoy slashers. It has high school, prom queen candidates, an 80s atmosphere, murders, suspicion and that basic pleasure of trying to guess who is behind everything. It is not a great film, but it is not a disaster either. It works as bloody, disposable **** problem is that it arrives after a much more interesting trilogy. Those three films had the curse, the witchcraft, Shadyside’s past, the jumps between different periods and a larger sense of story that gave everything more weight. This is not a direct sequel to that trilogy, and you can feel it. It shares the same universe, a teen tone and a taste for slasher horror, but it lacks that saga dimension that made even the earlier flaws feel like part of something bigger.Here, everything is simpler. The film plays as a prom-night slasher, with its clichés, popular girls, outsiders, secrets and showy deaths. And it partly works, because the franchise clearly likes the genre. There is blood, there is pace, and some scenes have enough energy to keep your attention. If you go in expecting a teen horror film without too many complications, you can have a decent time with it.Still, it is also much less memorable. The characters do not have the strength of those in the original trilogy, the story is more predictable, and the film never really makes Shadyside feel as unsettling as it did before. There are fun moments and a couple of striking deaths, but it lacks imagination, it lacks bite, and it lacks a stronger reason to exist beyond continuing to use the Fear Street name.Even so, it is watchable. It has that quick-consumption slasher feel, with a direct entertainment purpose and very few pretensions. It is not fair to expect the emotional complexity or curse-driven force of 1666, because this is not that kind of film. This one is lighter, more superficial and closer to a standard high-school horror movie.Fear Street: Prom Queen is not on the same level as the witchcraft-and-curse trilogy, but as a standalone teen slasher it has its moments. It entertains, offers some blood and keeps the connection to Shadyside alive, even if in a much smaller way. For slasher fans, it is enough. For anyone expecting another entry with the strength of the trilogy, it falls short.

Fear Street Part 3: 1666 is, in my opinion, the best entry in the trilogy. The first two worked well as slasher entertainment, each with its own particular tribute: the 90s in the first film, the Friday the 13th-style camp setting in the second. But this third part has something more. It does not merely close the story: it rearranges it, gives it an origin, gives it meaning, and shows that behind the curse there was something far more human, and therefore more **** section set in 1666 works because it understands that witchcraft, in this kind of story, is not only about magic or superstition. It is about social fear, control, ignorance, fanaticism and the way a community can become monstrous when it needs someone to blame. That is where the film finds its strongest idea: minds full of hatred, prejudice and filth are not a modern invention. They were already there. Misogyny, racism, hatred of difference, hatred of those who do not fit in, those who love differently or simply disturb the established order, appear here as an ancient disease.That is why this part feels stronger than the previous ones. It still has blood, horror and pace, but it also carries a deeper sadness. The film connects the violence of the past with the violence of the present and turns Shadyside’s curse into more than just an excuse to bring out killers. There is a clear reading about how scapegoats are created, how fear is manipulated, and how many societies would rather destroy the outsider than look at their own **** is also the entry that best justifies the trilogy structure. What previously might have seemed like an accumulation of references, nods and deaths begins to fit together more clearly. Not everything is perfect, of course. Some moments are a little underlined, some sections are less elegant, and the ambition occasionally exceeds the execution. But even with those flaws, the film has more emotional weight and more personality than the two previous **** direction keeps the story moving, the cast works well, and the film becomes stronger when it stops being only a horror game and turns into a story about injustice, memory and persecution. It does not reinvent the genre, but it does manage to make the trilogy end better than it began. And that is not so common.Fear Street Part 3: 1666 closes the saga with more soul, more anger and more meaning. It is teen horror, yes, but also a bitter fable about how collective fear can become organized violence. For me, it is the best of the three parts.