Kaka

Doug Liman off the chain. A decently executed summer testosterone romp that's funny and manages to mix humour, self-parody and action, with a backdrop of the sun-drenched Keys at its back. A worthy remake to the awful original, plus an ensemble cast that has resuscitated Jake Gyllenhaal's action career (all honours to his physical form), and discovered the acting, or rather comedic, potential of Conor McGregor. It's a shame about some of the appallingly handled digital shots and botched editing, but within the context of an action flush with no higher ambitions, relative satisfaction.

Watching Succession, you feel as if Paul Greengrass was behind the camera and Martin Scorsese wrote the dialogue, with the actors free to improvise at will. A heavy-weight corporate and family drama against which Billions is just slicked up tinsel for IT geeks. There's dirt, mud, malice and real intrigue. The first season hasn't reached a boiling point yet, but one can assume the next will.

With a bit of exaggeration, you could say of this colossal film it is about the USSR fighting the Arabs for oil and the Americans pulling the strings. Dune: Part Two is the pinnacle of modern big screen in every way. From the engaging storytelling, to the sound design, the fantastic sets, the visual effects, the sound and Hans Zimmer's beauty. Hands down, this a brilliant job by the filmmakers and the actors. A monumental epic that for years was considered unfilmable has succeeded for the second time. Everybody says it can't be done, until somebody does it. And that somebody is Denis Villeneuve. The event of the year – the riding of the worm and the duel between Chalamet and Butler are absolute cinematic delights. And the whiners who will complain about the final third and who knows what else are not worth addressing.

The opposite of Le Mans in many ways. In terms of time narrative, it is a small, intimate racing film, a study of the tormented genius of Enzo Ferrari from the surprising perspective of a family drama, not a flashy driving symphony of speedsters. It's not that there's no driving, and it even has a nicely retro tone with an extreme dose of realism and physicality (except for those awful digital flying cars), but Enzo's living room, bedroom and office are the primary focus. Michael Mann has made a dream come true, in a largely un-Hollywood, non-mainstream way. It's going to be hard to make a lot of money with this film, but the production values are solid. It's not the genre we're used to with Mann, and some of his traditional trademarks are not and can't be here, but he hasn't disgraced himself.

Tom Cruise is a better actor, but Alan Ritchson is better as Reacher. Let everyone choose their own.

The cool outdoors in the style of the Bourne series, a tough, good-guy protagonist whose gestures and musculature sometimes want to resemble The Punisher a bit, and that's where the positives end. In Season 2 Alan Ritchson confirms that he's the one setting a new standard for the film (or series) Jack Reacher. Nothing against Tom Cruise, but he could have tried harder for the physical action, in profile he's not as suited to the character of the jacked good guy as the walking Hulk. Shame about the execution of the second season, which drags too much and doesn't even develop the main character. The team is pretty cool and the character interaction goes well most of the time, but the plot slips into TV-style filler a lot of the time, and that can't be tolerated in an A-list production. Robert Patrick as the villain was fine.

If the third season was wild, the fourth is a blast full of contradictions and contradictory moments. On the one hand, according to the creators of the utopian past, we don't even have mobile phones in 2003, but supercomputers are operating on Mars and rockets have a new propulsion system that makes it possible to cover the interplanetary distance in 14 days. If this is supposed to be a not-so-seriously taken space spy comedy that oscillates somewhere between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Cold War reverberations, then OK. As a serious alternative history of the space conquest, however, it's not even close, and both the first and second seasons had a great start. The third and fourth, on the other hand, are already veering in the wrong direction. What’s worth praise, however, are the Russian actors and the entire Roskosmos, with its typically cold, detached and dark Iron Curtain atmosphere.

Sadness and disappointment. At times, with the often empty and self-serving droning of Josephine and Napoleon, I thought I was watching a compilation of Bridgerton instead of Ridley Scott's new masterpiece. That's how bad Napoleon is dramaturgically: disjointed, inconsistent, fragmented in plot. Decently filmed bloody battles are interspersed with an odd, para-romantic level, and if you thought it would be saved by at least a rich factual-informative level, an analysis of the personality of the brilliant warlord, you are left halfway there – which may be the only reason to watch the director’s cut, to get a larger and more detailed overview of what Napoleon actually accomplished during his time. That is, assuming you accept the medium of film and don’t want to look at Wikipedia or history books. But I highly doubt it the director’s cut will give the film any specific shape or identity. Scott's worst historical major historical film, along with Robin Hood.

Kenneth Branagh continues with the same, generic whodunit that is a carbon copy of the previous one. Only instead of the sunny Nile Delta with its often overly digital Pyramids, we have mysterious Venice, specifically a gothic house full of strange sounds and untold secrets. Not a single moment is remarkable, not a single shot or sequence of events unpredictable. At least it is briskly told and with a few wannabe horror moments and a decent production design, and it also has a decent (meaning short) running time.

A battle of two equally dirty worlds and two implacable rivals on opposite sides of the barricade. From the perspective of a study of two interesting protagonists, it's actually quite an impressive series. Both Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis' characters have charisma, and both are well written and expertly acted. The depiction of a functioning universe around them is less well done, and often some of the moves on the imaginary chessboard are very simplistic. Speaking of cinematic metaphors, of which there are a dozen in every episode, it's safe to say this is Neil McCauley vs Vincent Hana, but if the you are willing to accept something a level or two below, this series will be watchable once finished. It's a great shame that the last 2-3 seasons slide heavily into mediocrity and come across as tired, generic and unnecessarily drawn out. Four stars for the first half, barely three for the second.