3DD!3

A TV B-movie with A-movie actors, a promising theme, a weak screenplay and the oh-so-mediocre Rawson Marshall Thurber in the director’s chair. Red Notice could be great a modern take on Indy (they even have Swastikas) and the search for Cleopatra’s golden eggs, if it weren’t for lots of nonsense and ridiculous (even if unexpected) twists. The Rock, Gadot and Ryan Reynold all act how they always act and if this had had more inventive (better filmed) action and if it hadn’t been filmed in a studio, it could have been a wonderful guilty pleasure, but this way it is only just an entertaining snack. P.S.: Not even Jablonsky was trying...

A commercial for being unfaithful with a miserable screenplay and correspondingly miserable acting performances. The kids who end up loosing a stable family because of this movie will sue it makers sometime in the future. The attempt at depicting "reality" in the Czech Republic is horrific. And the bit with the facemask will make everybody mad these days.

An optimistic, post-apocalyptic road movie with a subliminal storyline about people all being bastards and so you’d better kill them or run away if you see them. Hanks survived Covid-19, just to be taken out by a solar flare on Sun-28 and an ozone layer full of holes (like Swiss cheese), so he builds a robot to look after his dog when he is no longer around. Because a mega-storm is headed for St. Luis, he packs up his stuff, robot and dog, and heads for San Franscisco to see the Golden Gate Bridge before he dies. This picture that everybody and nobody will like is rather clichéd, but alternates moods (from over-the-top joy to pessimistic depression) unexpectedly naturally. The robot’s whistles in tried and tested Number 5/Wall-E style is fun and Hanks’ stern scolding that often presents the main human protagonist as an anti-social asshole acts as a dark counterbalance. Sapochnik’s fairly original approach is enhanced by several catastrophes that the heroic threesome come up against on the journey.  It certainly could have been approached from a different direction and called it Jeff and looked at bringing a robot to life, using the potential of the material to the full (and make it three hours long), but the storyline about coming to terms with death also has its positive side.

A meta-documentary about a pair of Mexican cops and their experiences with corruption. Half-way through this switches to some shots from filming and comments by the actors playing in it, which is rather weird. Zero action, and no attempt to make it at all special. The topic is robust and showing the truth has something about, but this really didn’t need to be a feature-length movie, for god’s sake. If this had been a half-hour episode in a series, that would have sufficed.

Burger is good at nice visuals and the premise is interesting, but that isn’t enough. The screenplay is weak and soon slips into a predictable routine. The kids behave like idiots, but not one of them is likeable. The only one to make an impression in acting terms was Colin. + Shame that we didn’t get a look at the surface of the planet.

A raw and pretty original insight into the life of a cunning thief. Pattinson enjoys his role of perverse scab with strange moral boundaries. His attempts at getting his disabled brother out of prison/hospital and the winding road leading to this goal serves only as a way of investigating the logic both of the main protagonist and of the lower classes of dirty New York. Great music, unbelievable pace.

I preferred Del Toro’s vision much more. Although this Hellboy tries to draw more on the comic books, it’s bloodier and ruder, but I miss the fantastic poetry here. Here they simply squander the mass monsters and characters appearing here, only to flit by on the screen, leaving you none the wiser. Harbour’s Hellboy is much more hideous, like a heavy-metal street bum, crossed with the devil. The action is hard and dirty, but full of playfulness and invention. The monsters are really demonic. The witch is so horrible that the sight of her made me feel physically ill. But my two-year-old daughter liked it...

This seems rather underestimated by others. OK, it has a rather average story and a weird beginning, but then Clint takes things into hand and contemplates about getting old and passing on wisdom to the younger generation. Not such a wow as Grand Torino, but still way above the competition. This old man, oozing with charisma, teaches a kid to ride a horse, pulls a cute housewife and knows how to fight too. In fact, I like this more than I expected. Loser cops... Stupid bastards. If they had a brain, they’d be dangerous.

A pretty well-made adventure movie, but the guys at Disney should have made some alterations to the screenplay which is pretty break-neck and because of that I can’t give it a fourth star. The Rock and Blunt have a big job in front of them to save this. Similarly to the Pirates of the Caribbean, this adaptation is a spectacular showcase of special effects generated mainly for profit = job well done. But instead of Verbinski, here Collet-Serra is at the helm, so here they make the killing more entertaining, but the voyage isn’t as smooth. But the twists worked with me and the Mayan city looked fantastic.

Kodi Smit-Mcphee is going to have a hard time from the LGBT community. The Power of the Dog is a really weird family drama set in Montana in 1925, where it seems a key scene is missing, but wait! That’s on purpose. The characters suddenly change their demeanor thanks to something that happens off-camera. Campion simply hints at it and leaves the viewer to do the thinking. So the picture plays through without any sort of catharsis. It all stands on the shoulders of an excellent Cumberbatch who makes the very most of playing the rancher, really enjoying it.