D.Moore

From the first trailer, this light-hearted-looking film with three heroines is very much about the heroines, and it's light-hearted to boot. Oh, yeah. I really liked The Marvels, perhaps because I wasn't expecting a second Civil War, perhaps because I don't mind switching and looking at different movies through different eyes. So I enjoyed not only the interplay of the central trio, but also looking for that interplay, with the most important role played by the perfect Iman Vellani as Kamala. It's hard to imagine a better guide through the Marvels story than an enthusiastic teenage girl who finally made it from a show to a movie and from dreams to their realization. The film is light, fun, colorful, has an understandably driven female villain, an absolutely great score (Laura Karpman, do some Star Wars, please), including a musical passage where Disney kind of pokes fun at itself, imaginative action passages with character flipping, effective humor in scenes like "Nick Fury and Kamala's family", as if cut from an Emmerich flick,... And there are cats and Cats! The most likeable Marvel movie in a long time.

It's almost fascinating, mischievous fun. Watching an elite hitman who praises himself to the skies in the opening fifteen minutes, then makes a terrible mistake, but never stops doubting himself, even when it increasingly seems that the mistake was far from the last, and in fact not even the first. David Fincher has taken the liberty of making a wonderfully filmed two-hour ode to the ego, and I'm sure with each successive viewing there will be more and more little "a professional killer probably wouldn't do this in another movie" details that I didn't notice the first time around.

At first, it looks like a chilling, almost documentary thriller, where we will be thoroughly nauseated by the pair of main characters until the end. But it's even more cunning. They're more malicious. Not that I liked Perry or Dick, not that I stopped feeling a chill or that I did not believe their story, but over time I learned enough about these two that their actions became tragic in my eyes, not only for their victims, but for them as well. And the inevitable ending certainly didn't bring any satisfaction, on the contrary, it just underscored all that ugly, sad hopelessness. Brrr.

Kiki's guileless fairytale mood meets the ecological message of Nausicaa and the mythological magic of Mononoke. A beautiful tale from a beautiful world, inspired by Norse myths (and one fairy tale), in which flying has been replaced by swimming and Miyazaki's poetic imagination has leapt up another rung. For kids? I don't think so. Certainly not for them.

Ugh, so bleak, yet such a great movie. I applaud that Martin Scorsese didn't just decide to set the book in motion this time, as he unfortunately did in Shutter Island, but that he decided to retell the story in his own way, so that those who know the source material can get something out of it. It's not surprising that he conceived the film as a gangster drama, a chilling study of how easily a man can be swallowed by evil if he doesn't fight back, and an indictment of the media's silence on the subject. Perfect choice. And how it's filmed! The ideas, the cold murder scenes that only Scorsese can make, the wonderful mystical scenes I wouldn't have expected from him… And then there's the acting. Leonardo DiCaprio acts and looks like Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro straddles the line of caricature with clockwork precision and is clearly enjoying a proper role again, and Lily Gladstone, she matches them both with a single look that somehow manages to get everything into it. A true cinematic experience that deserves every one of those two hundred minutes. And with a perfect ending that few could afford. But Scorsese can.

It's not fair to compare it to the original film, which it's arguably the best horror film I've ever seen, but unfortunately they are literally asking for it, and so one must conclude that The Exorcist: Believer is nothing but mediocre. Perhaps it can appeal someone who doesn’t know the original, but as far as sequels to The Exorcist go, not only is the third one with George C. Scott better, but also the Harlin prequel, which I really like.

It's a pity about the finale, because for six episodes I had almost nothing to criticize Ahsoka for. The cast is perfect, the series and the Star Wars cinematic universe has once again managed to tie together another nice string, one single episode (and you know what I mean) is better than the whole Obi-Wan series. And Kevin Kiner does an absolutely brilliant job, who knew how far he'd come from his not-so-skillful imitation of John Williams in the early days of the Clone Wars. Season two, please.

The transition from a steampunk fairy tale to a philosophical adventure full of various metaphors was so smooth that I didn't even notice it and I was entertained from beginning to end, even though I was sometimes confused about what was going on, especially in the finale. I’m sure I’ve written several times already that Miyazaki's imagination is admirable, but I'll happily write it again. A beautiful film with a beautiful idea.

Helen Mirren's make-up distracted me at first, but her always reliable acting was thankfully not lost underneath. Moreover, Golda is a biopic made the way I like it, as the ever-so-slightly controversial personality is represented not from childhood to old age, but during the Yom Kippur War, when perhaps all of her positive and not-quite-so-positive qualities are on full display. The script copes skilfully with a large cast of characters that I had no trouble telling apart, thanks to the excellently chosen and, with the exception of the impeccable Liev Schreiber, also not entirely familiar actors. It resorts to cliché only very rarely indeed, and doesn't even need to show sweeping battle scenes to tell us what a terrible thing war is. A surprisingly good film. And with great music!

I think this is Branagh's best Poirot (so far?). The bet on a lesser-known case paid off, putting him in Venice was a great idea. And the best thing is the way Branagh the director enjoys the cramped setting of the old dank house falling apart, how strangely unsettling the shots from different angles are, how beautifully suspenseful and at times pure horror. The unravelling of the mystery may come as no surprise to those unfamiliar with the subject source material, but again, that's not really the point. It's about what the case leads Poirot himself to do and that, in turn, is absolutely brilliantly written and acted.