Kaka

A film with a testimonial value that is much more than how it actually entertains and enriches the end viewer. At the same time, though, it's typical Spielberg of the last decade. That is to say, smart, honest, with less verve than before, less original and groundbreaking, but also, nonchalantly academic, with accurately rendered period realities of Berlin and an overall magnificent production design (for that money!). It also knows how to play with characters (a reliable Hanks, a fantastic Rylance) and those wordless Kaminski details (the last scene) – something that can be called a constant for a very long time. A safe bet. It’s not bad, but nothing to write home about, either.

A flat out USA vs Russia fight, set in far away Siberia. Michael Jai White and Scott Adkins are great and the action scenes are brilliantly edited. Terrible crap with no logic, but if you skip everything else, that ring is pretty much worth it.

Nowadays it's flat, but in its day it was a very conscious social satire in an unapologetically attractive take on bank robbery. It's incredible how films have swelled and got incredibly big inwardly over the past few decades. Here, the would-be subtle digressions into gay sexuality and political shenanigans are so blatant and simple in hindsight that it doesn't quite hold the viewer's attention, and when they do it is with a considerable smirk. Sidney Lumet can't be denied a certain authenticity and, more importantly, an effort to make everything fit together perfectly. One thing, however, hasn't changed at all in all that time until today: Al Pacino's acting.

A worthy ending. It doesn't make it into the cinematic benchmarks due to its relative emotional flatness, incompleteness and fairytale-ness (ironically, Lord of the Rings is exactly the opposite), but the filmmaking is top-notch and Katniss Everdeen is the driving force behind the whole project, even if the long glances are often unnecessary and the impassioned dialogue isn't exactly heartfelt. Even though I hadn’t read the book, I guessed the finale a good halfway through the film, but it plays to a clearly written plot from the start, where nothing is meant to be a coincidence and everything is clearly working towards a goal. It's not about the element of surprise, it's about liking this fictional world and the characters in it, and childishly rooting for the rebels against the tyrant. Visually, of course, it's appropriately fluffy and it pretty much feels like a war movie with the backdrop of a destroyed Yugoslavia, but whatever. There's not much going on anyway, and the two great scenes (the oil, the sound of drops in the canal) are great to enjoy in the cinema.

A fantastically portrayed atmosphere of New York in the 1970s with all the afros and the smoking, but, in terms of script, the film almost fails, because things get going only in the last 10 minutes. The rest is just a bar crawl with long shots with no editing, where the camera atypically flits around a bar trying to authentically portray the world of the time. Scorsese's start, De Niro's awesome performance.

The Other Woman is dull crap and a waste of time. What's most disappointing is that it was made by an otherwise brilliant and sensitive director of emotional flicks like The Notebook or My Sisters Keeper.

The biggest mafia screw-up in a long time. A film absolutely devoid of drama and suspense, without the much needed period filler to create the right atmosphere. If it weren't for Johnny Depp with a ton of makeup and a couple of stars in supporting roles, I'd think Scott Cooper had moved into pure B-movie waters. Gone is the rawness and industrial cover of Out of the Furnace. Here they feel that a few period costumes and some decent murders will be enough, but no. The film is almost devoid of music and the little there is, well, Junkie XL doesn't know which way to go and his score fits more into mystery horror than a gangster flick. The characters are absolutely devoid of energy, with a monstrous amount of audience alienation. This material had massive potential, but it would have had to be handled by a more sophisticated filmmaker. It's a bit remotely reminiscent of American Hustle with the costume design, and that one also had a lot of wasted potential, but Black Mass wants so badly to be American Gangster, yet it's not even remotely that.

A classic American sports movie. Conservative, with an emphasis on diverse characters, with a strong personality in the form of the head coach, who puts together a talented but properly cheeky bunch of high school kids into one of the most successful cross-country teams of the 1980s and 90s. Thanks to the novel "Mexican" setting, which itself represents some pretty interesting views and attitudes on life, it's a surprisingly self-aware affair that unfortunately loses its breath punishingly towards the end and becomes full of clichés and typical "made in USA" saccharine predictability. The absence of any major twist or heartbreaking moral dilemma it’s a shame, and the potential was there!

There are two reasons to check out these spiritual odysseys like Wild or Into The Wild: the haunting scenery and spiritual cleansing, or at least the psychological nitty-gritty of a main character full of opinions, attitudes and experiences that come into direct confrontation with the question of whether this or that decision is good or bad. With a little imagination, everyone will find themselves, at least for a while in some passages. They have done it cleverly and for good measure put in basically all the negative model situations that can happen to a person from an early age (a bully father, illness, poverty, drugs, etc.). Wild is less psychedelic and puts more emphasis on family, relationships and the formation of what one should have, or not have in life and what one should prioritise. Reese Witherspoon is convincing and solid, but doesn't, as it tends to do, get under the skin as she should, as despite all the blood and sweat it's still just a bedtime story, or rather a good morning one.

Aaron Sorkin's vividly deft dialogue passages are great, as are the minimum of showy gestures and the absence of unnecessary overload of pathetic emotions in a story about a brilliant man who worked with them like a god and expressed them very sporadically (or sophistically). However, the subliminal wisecracks and subtle business hints in this "live" staged story are monstrously spoiled by the fact that there's terribly little of the broader story, and virtually nothing much going on. If this were a 10-minute cut from the trailer for the first Mac, the narrative value would be quite similar and the experience even more intense than watching a similar variation for 122 minutes.