Goldbeater

A relatively short, yet very eloquent and emotionally powerful portrait of the American desire to lynch, scapegoat and project their own depravity onto other people. A film as relevant today as it was eighty years ago. And Henry Fonda plays an unconventionally distant but all the more impressive role in the finale.

The Marseille Contract is a kind of British reaction to The French Connection, only that Friedkin's almost documentary realism has been replaced by the playfulness and cheapness of sixth-rate crime films. Nothing against it, the idea is great, but the execution could have had more pull. And it's a pity how the film doesn't manage to tell both lines of the two main characters at the same time, so for the first half hour it is purely about Anthony Quinn's character, and once Michael Caine comes on the scene, Quinn practically disappears from the plot and later vice versa. That said, I do appreciate the amazing work with the locations of French cities and Douglas Slocombe's camerawork; today it would be all green screen.

The Devil's Men is a hellishly wooden Greek-British horror co-production, with the typically excellent Donald Pleasence going for the throat of the typically good Peter Cushing. But have a lot of patience, because it has the pace of a true Greek siesta – very long-winded. And the sound design, what the hell was that?

After years of promises and media hype, it's here! And within five minutes of watching it, everyone would rather just forget about it. I suppose nobody had much expectations, but I was hoping for at least an enjoyable portion of filmmaking. What I got instead was a grinding grey amateurish borefest, full of the most tedious pathos and jaded actors' faces. Aside from the endless hunt for the macguffin that is the female lead, and a throwaway shot of a three-way that the ruler wants to scheme on, the script offers nothing but a hodgepodge of the most hackneyed movie clichés you can imagine. There’s no characterisation of characters, there are no interesting dialogues, there’s no clear storytelling, there’s no dramaturgy, there’s no pace. Jan Žižka represents the purest grey you could get from the most expensive Czech production.

A depiction of the triumph of humanistic endeavour, just the way we like it from Ron Howard. Procedural and sincere ensemble filmmaking that can only be appreciated.

Experienced Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur delivers a very successful and high quality genre film with a simple premise but all the more effective execution. It doesn't aim too high and it works well in pretty much everything it tries to do. If you enjoyed Aja's Crawl a few years ago, Beast might be something for you. And there aren't that many quality horror films about killer beasts.

I will go against the flow. The Predator saga needed a return to the sources and uncomplicated simplicity, but this concept was completely at odds with my idea of effective filmmaking. Unlike the original, which is a textbook thriller where everything works perfectly, Prey doesn't work dramaturgically at all and mires the viewer in uninteresting dialogue, zero tension, absent character development and continuous action, but it becomes so routine in the first few minutes that it quickly gets boring. Moreover, the abundance of digital animals and CGI effects in places where they are not needed, makes it unbelievable. This was supposed to be the most natural Predator, instead it's the most artificial of them all. It’s not there.

Bullet Train is a good action flick without much ambition, where the disparate cast of peculiar characters have fun and Brad Pitt in particular pulls it off well with his "substitute". Just the reveal of both the main villain and his motivations was like something out of a movie, like, three quality levels down. It's a bit too cluttered and unfocused at times with the exuberant wannabe cool style and numerous flashbacks, but that was probably the intention, and what the hell, it's entertaining anyway.

The alternation of serious themes and humour for small children may have worked with Jojo Rabbit (though I didn’t like it too much there, either), but Waititi’s style is incredibly annoying, like a drunken clown you kick out of a kid’s birthday party, but he keeps on coming in through the window. As a result, the new Thor didn't work for me, neither in terms of humour, nor in terms of the dramatic level that the creators were trying to achieve, which is a recurring motif in Marvel movies of the last few years, for which I can more and more often say as a positive only the cliché that they are colourful and moving. And I would put the word positive in quotes.

For how relatively pointless this prequel seemed from the first announcement, and how I couldn't even imagine that it could be functional plot-wise, it was ultimately watchable with moderate expectations. The quality drop from the first one is considerable, like Child's Play and Child's Play 2, which also didn't come up with anything particularly new, but it was fun. The screenplay at least comes up with a rather entertaining twist halfway through, which, although it already reaches into very B-movie and silly realms, makes the film work all the more as a black comedy, where it's fun to watch the main characters tiptoeing together. It just needed more black humour, as it ended up somewhere in the middle. It’s not great, but it’s not awful.