Jupiter Ascending

I didn't expect much, but I got more than enough. Fabulous sci-fi trash in the best sense of the word (in short, a full-fledged successor to 1980's Flash Gordon), set in an absolutely amazing world and almost constantly entertaining. Hand on heart, it's not much different from the much-vaunted Marvel movies. True, there could have been a little more perspective (crop circles and space bureaucrats with Terry Gilliam amused me immensely), but then Jupiter Ascending could also have turned into an awkward comedy, which the Wachowskis (after Speed Racer, thank God) clearly didn't intend. The action scenes are superbly engaging, the special effects are lavish, everything is nicely clear and understandable, but perhaps the most pleasing thing for me was Michael Giacchino's bombastic music and its judicious use, which makes it not really stick out from the film , but it is not simply neglected either. Four pure stars and I'll probably go to the cinema again (I'll put on Flash Gordon before that happens). (07/02/2015)

I was sort of hoping that the Wachowskis wouldn’t pour 200 million dollars into a black hole and so I’ve been ignoring the reviews around here before I watched the movie myself. I played it with excitement and within a few minutes, I got into a phase where I would have probably immediately turned it off if it weren’t for the beautiful space shots and effects, because the story is totally out of it. At first, the very first shootout reminded me of Star Wars, then the space scenes moved more towards Star Trek and then Channing Tatum popped onto the screen to explain that he’s a werewolf from outer space. It really couldn’t have been any dumber and I’ve never seen a more idiotic movie with such a high budget. (19/06/2015)

For me, probably the guilty pleasure of the year. The film is aesthetically unattractive, with a leading villain that takes it all the way to 11 and a very incompetent casting. When Mila Kunis tries to look serious, it simply doesn’t work… but when she tries to drop one-liners, it’s almost painful. Only the core premise of planets as people factory-farms or fuel to keep the vitality of the galactic rulers had some potential, but this time the Wachowskis were unable to exploit it. On the other hand, I must confess that, in its own way, this crap was actually fun. (04/05/2015)

Sometimes it's sad to see how a perfect-looking blockbuster can crumble into smaller and smaller pieces with each scene. What starts with the absurd scenes with the Russian family the script calmly continues with random scenes without no explanation of bizarre names, theories, and memories, and it absolutely triumphantly concludes with Eddie Redmayne in a perfectly annoying acting role in front of a pre-embalmed corpse that cannot produce a single comprehensible sentence. Lana and Lilly Wachowski should be glad that Channing Tatum smoothly switched to air skating, because without his aerial antics in the final fiery inferno, the rating would unquestionably drop into even more terrifying places. (05/02/2015)

A film where, due to a completely dysfunctional narrative continuity, we often don't even know what awaits us in the next minute (which could be a big plus), but due to a catastrophically overstuffed and unbalanced script, bland characters and a chaotic depiction of everything from the setting to the motivations, we end up not caring about it. It’s hard to imagine a greater travesty that Hollywood, as a purveyor of expensive non-art entertainment with infinite expressive possibilities, from the visual to the aural, has ever produced or will. 20% (12/09/2015)