MrHlad

James Cameron once again shows Hollywood who is the king of blockbuster movies. Despite its three-hour running time, Avatar 2 is entertaining from beginning to end, with breathtaking audiovisual and personal stories of old and new heroes at the ideal pace. Pandora is perhaps even more beautiful than last time, the newcomers are likeable, and Cameron keeps the pace from start to finish without a single flinch. And after thirteen years, he shows that he's still a long way ahead of most Hollywood filmmakers.

A gang of killers decide to ruin Christmas for a dysfunctional family and only Santa Claus can save them, and the chubby bearded guy is definitely not afraid of violence. Tommy Wirkola may be a little slow to get going in his actioner, and maybe he plays a little too much with genres and Christmas clichés, but he manages to shift into the mode we love him in time. David Harbour is clearly in his element here, the action sequences are full of ideas and clearly shot, the humour is pitch black and the references to Home Alone and Die Hard are a delight too.

Morana, the goddess of winter, has decided to rule forever, and people are in for a bad time. Will the other Slavic gods, led by their ruler Svarožic and the goddess of spring Vesna, be able to make things right? They will. This is a fairy tale, but one that's best avoided. This film will first make you laugh with its dodgy costumes and make-up effects, then it will throw you into a depression with how poorly the story is told, and finally it will poisons you with unimaginative direction, stupid jokes and general dullness, boredom and amateurism. Go see something else. There's nothing here besides a nice open-air museum.

Sammy Fabelman loves cinema. Together with his friends and family he makes small amateur films and dreams of becoming a director. But then, through his hobby, he uncovers a nasty secret from his loved ones that makes him rethink everything he's ever known. Steven Spielberg delivers a semi-autobiographical story that is moving, funny and above all believable. And while it's also nostalgic and melancholy, it never feels cloying. An honest and audience-friendly drama from a storyteller who understands his job damn well.

Jennifer Lawrence returns home from war and tries to get back on her feet after a nasty injury, and finds she can't do it alone. When she meets James, a likeable mechanic, and they become friends, things finally start to look up. But even James has traumas he hasn't yet come to terms with. Can they help each other? Causeway is a not very original but well acted drama that doesn't push emotions unnecessarily and makes do with believable dialogue, likeable ordinary characters and a simple and understandable story. It's easily enough for an above-average drama.

This return to the more traditionally constructed Marvel films of yesteryear is certainly welcome. It's nice Black Panther, except for a few moments, tries to look serious – within the confines of a superhero movie, of course – and doesn't make idiotic jokes like Thor. It probably wouldn’t been fitting, since mourning for Chadwick Boseman, or in this case T'Challa, is supposed to be one of the pillars of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. And it's a bit of a problem. Because as we are mourning, we are introduced to quite a few new characters and an undersea civilization whose city we also have to look into. And while it's all nice and visually imaginative, the first half seems to forget that the film has to have a plot. The second Black Panther doesn't really get going until about an hour in, and unfortunately it comes too late, because by the closing credits Ryan Coogler doesn't have time to properly involve the new (and often old) characters in the plot and there's just too much going on. The moments when the film turns into a fine political thriller, at least for a while, or when the characters start to deal more with their emotions and traumas, are interesting. But having to deal with a huge amount of stuff and build up to the big finale, or rather the big finale and even bigger invasion of Wakanda in the middle, results in even the two and a half hours being simply too little to serve up everything they wanted to cook up. Not to mention that Letitia Wright unfortunately doesn't have the talent to pull off the lead role in such a complex story, and that Riri Williams, the future driving force, has so far profiled herself as more of a whiny sidekick than someone I'd want to see on screen more often.

Someone murdered a famous Hollywood director who was about to adapt a popular play based on Agatha Christie, and practically everyone had a motive. How will real detectives fare when they have to solve a crime that seems to have fallen from the pen of the queen of mystery novels? See How They Run is a playful retro crime comedy with a good cast that cleverly works with clichés from Agatha Christie's novels, but sometimes lacks the courage to be truly innovative or daring. But it will definitely please both fans of the genre and lovers of the famous writer's stories.

Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile is a simple children's film, where none of the makers obviously did much work. There are few songs, a boring story in which the same thing happens three times, an ugly digital protagonist and zero invention. It's watchable, but why anyone would do that, I really don't know.

I really don't want to watch this anymore. After Zack Snyder’s departure, I thought Warner wouldn't send these movies out anymore, but Black Adam actually looks exactly the same as the Snyder films, only that Jaume Collet-Serra uses about a third less slow motion. We still get more than an annoying amount of it though, and when the action starts, you don't really enjoy it because when it's not slow motion, it's either chaos or just golden-blue flashing. And there’s action more or less all the time, because there's nothing to stand on in terms of story, character depth, or anything else that could potentially engage, and they probably knew that. Black Adam is an emaciated over-colourful action flick that tries to be theatrically spectacular, but comes across as ridiculous and often even embarrassing (the skateboarding boy brings to mind the worst of 90s clichés). Dwayne Johnson stares and tries in vain to convince himself that he's playing Clint Eastwood, and getting through this collection of dull visual attractions, empty story and flat characters to the end credits is ultimately quite a chore. But it does have an advantage, an hour and a half after the screening ended, I remember nothing of Black Adam.

Kevin Smith returns to Quick Stop, New Jersey, to make a film about making a movie there in the 1990s. While the meta elements aren't as wild as one might expect from the plot, it's still mostly a film for people who like this director's early work. It's just that the new Smith doesn't have much in common with the old one. The dialogue lacks the inventiveness and believability of those earlier films, and the actors sometimes downright suffer in scenes for which their skills are not up to the task. It's not until somewhere around the halfway point that Clerks III starts to feel like a confident film, rather than a nostalgia bet that works only halfway because Smith simply can no longer offer what he once won fans over with. It still works, give or take, but it's questionable whether that's thanks to the director-screenwriter, or instead in spite of his efforts.