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Poster tagline: “Like nothing your eyes have ever seen before!” It's endearingly clumsy in many moments, especially during the frequent animal fights, but otherwise I'm surprised that for a vintage 1950s monster B-movie, it has the parameters of a cinematic behemoth, rather than something that usually stuck to the mainstream as a second-run movie in those days. That’s mainly thanks to the unusually beautiful Brazilian locations, some of the shots of the Amazon and the beautiful waterfalls looked very nice on the restored Blu-ray and the filmmakers seemed to know it, so they didn't spare them especially in the second half. Even the story about the mysterious monster tries to have a surprising ending and I can feel Siodmak's effort to make a good film. Of course, we're still within the boundaries of B-movie filmmaking, so viewer indulgence is required. PS: The posters are beautiful!

One of the best films of Fulci’s late years. His later films were already quite dead, they lacked atmosphere or were almost unwatchable and played on the lowest instincts (see the terrible Touch of Death from 1988), but here Fulci seemed to remember his better years. For the first two thirds the film maintains a nice kind of tension as it unravels an ancient tragedy, Meg Register has an interesting face and you believe her as the lost archaeologist, the backdrop of the crumbled monastery is fine. On the other hand, the basic idea of the story, why the villagers are trying to keep the nuns' secret even centuries later, lacks logic, and in the last 10 minutes the whole thing falls apart and the scenes stop making sense. That's just so Fulci can live up to his nickname "The Father of Gore" and get unleashed, so we can see an impalement on a stake, a tongue nailed to a butcher’s block, eyes gouged out and someone being cut in half while alive. For the unprepared viewer it could be quiet a shock, but for those of us familiar with Fulci's work, it can't come as a surprise. There is also Fulci's traditional fetish in the form of macro shots of the protagonists' eyes, and the director himself, as was always his habit, appears in a small role as an inspector. Considering what he produced since the weak Aenigma, this at least has some of the chops of his older stuff. PS: The decent 4K Blu-ray transfer did the film good.

"Liposuction for everyone!", or looking at Courteney Cox here, I wonder if this wasn't originally made as a sequel to The Mummy. Man, why can’t Hollywood actresses age naturally? And the film itself? Well, it actually it needs a heavy dose of botox, a dose of botox of invention, because this is nothing but a compilation of what we've seen many times before and even breaking the fourth wall in one scene doesn't help.

The first third or so was barely a 3*, the situational jokes didn't work and the humour was a bit too pedestrian for Gunn (he was probably still winging it after the average Christmas special). But then it clicked. By going deeper with Rocket's flashbacks and showing his hardships, the story was given the emotional charge it needed, plus there's one more aspect that's important to me - how helpless animals somewhere are rescued, or an effort is made to rescue them, the film gets plus points with me. And the ending was poignant and chilling, and only served to prove that the most cohesive and interesting bunch in the entire MCU universe were the Guardians. It's been a pleasure, you lovable freaks. PS: Gunn's films are distinctive and have their own identity, which is why I like them so much. What a difference from the factory fare Marvel offered after Endgame, they can go bury themselves in shame. PPS: A message for parents: if you don’t want your kids to be traumatised, don’t take them to this film. It’s really not for little kids.

Homie here, homie there, and in the words of the guys from Moviezone, I guess I'd sum it up by saying "nice, but kind of shit". I would give five it stars for the inventively cut final fight, when the audience suddenly disappears around the ring, the background changes colour and you can feel only the fervor of the two fighters. But the rest follows a very beaten path, with some sort of family or relationship cliché that missed me by a wide margin, and I counted zero moments of surprise. I don’t even think that this has added anything to the franchise as a whole. When I think of Sly sweetly getting Adrian in the first Rocky, that was something else. So in a nutshell: watch and forget.

I have to come to terms with the fact that the times of the first three albums (RIP Cliff Burton), and the still great fourth one, will not return. It is Cliff's songwriting input and liveliness that the band sorely misses, and they have never been able to replace that absence. So their entire career has been living off only from their most prolific beginnings in the 1980s and their enormous global influence on the mainstream thanks to three tracks from the “Black Album”. Since the mid-90s there’s been a gradual decline, not in popularity, but in inventiveness and the ability to write distinctive songs, and you can see that in 72 seasons. There are only three tracks that I can say are at least a little bit out of the uniform mass (the best is “Lux Aeterna”, such a nice return to simplicity of “Kill 'Em All”, the old foxes knew well why to put it as the first clip), otherwise it's quite flat and the distinctive musical motif can be found only with a magnifying glass. As far as the visuals go, about a third of the clips with steady visual stylisation were fine, and about a third, where the primitive black and white eight-bit graphics "stood out", were almost impossible to watch. Otherwise, though, for a old geezer like me, it’s alright. I had a beer, admired the great vocal condition of the skinny James Hetfield, and reminisced about my youth, the time of “Master of Puppets” and “Ride the Lightning”, two of the best albums in metal history. It still amazes me that they recorded it at a time when they had just passed the age of twenty.

It's like the Gus Van Sant remake, I don't see much reason to film this, but if anything, I'm certainly not offended by Franklin’s take. But, it's also a beautiful example of how a plot twist in the last minutes can reliably flush the entire logic of a story down the toilet. Otherwise, I enjoyed it more than I would have expected, Anthony Perkins with his gaunt, sinewy physique was perfectly suited to the torn psychotic, and Jerry Goldsmith, although he's going about half throttle, still manages to embellish the tense scenes with disturbing music. Too bad the screenwriter went off his meds in the last few pages and lost his mind.

Jean-Louis Trintignant was never as big a star as Belmondo or Delon, but in my eyes he was at least their equal in charisma. With his acting skills and his economical gestures, he was able to express everything, and here, as a entertaining goon, he shines to the fullest. A little drama about a guy who masterfully fucked with the judiciary, the police and naive citizens. Lelouch composes it brilliantly, how many times the story has the upper hand over the viewer, maintains tension and mystery, and the kidnapping of a boy from a banker's family and the way Lelouch handles the chronology of the narrative is a masterpiece of screenwriting. A very good film.

It’s for kids, all I missed was Robocop petting a puppy or something like that. It does have some funny ideas, it even has a hint of something that could be called a screenplay, but otherwise it's emasculated of Verhoeven’s irony and subversiveness, and I'm not exactly saying that I necessarily need the blistering gore that the first one was full of, but here the action is so sterile it hurts. They knew how to make things much spicier in the 1980s. In the last quarter of an hour we move dangerously close to self-parody. Peter Weller made a smart move and left the sinking franchise in time.

In my eyes, Scott Derrickson has done it again, and hasn't faltered once in his career, including that piece of craft slavery in the form of a Marvel movie. He's just a smart kid. I could actually do without the supernatural element here, but I understand that it is crucial to the development of the plot. It's not horrifically spooky, but it's finely unsettling, the seventies production design paces flawlessly, and Ethan's masks are creepy enough to make his personality both repulsive and appealing. And on top of that, a double pleasure: the performance of the charismatic boy Mason Thames and the discovery that Jeremy Davies can give a solid performance if the director leads him to do so. I give a shout-out to the musical dramaturgy for Pink Floyd's "On the Run" (from the album "Dark Side of the Moon") at the very end.