Apes strong together... With Caesar's passing came the necessary long exposure. The new hero Noah, the new heroine Nova, and of course family and friends. Funny sequences about the foul odors of human females alternate with themes of artificial evolution. Knowledge and technology vs symbiosis with nature is…

Indonesia also adds its hand this year with a decent adrenaline action flick. Angga Dwimas Sasongko is one of Indonesia's more aspiring filmmakers, but only now has he made a film that I can appreciate above average, even though his Stealing Raden Saleh has had a decent amount of success abroad. Here you can see a…

I'm glad I caught up on this one. The combination of Robert Zemeckis and Denzel Washington sounded good and it worked. The opening 30 minutes with the plane crash is a decently intense beast and I liked the aftermath, the investigation and the subsequent trial where the protagonist is tried for alcohol and drugs. I…

Gareth Edwards wanted to revive this dramatic concept back in 2014, but the mass success of his Godzilla seems to have been broken by Hollywood dictates. Godzilla -1.0 has it a lot easier in this regard, having been made for a few bucks and in a far more Godzilla-friendly environment than the US dream factory. And the…

The main thing you will take away from this film is that Vittorio Storaro (Coppola's Apocalypse Now) was a grandmaster of the camera, a GRANDMASTER! Without knowing in advance who was holding that wonderful optics machine, I immediately noticed the amazing visual compositions, of which there are many, along with the…

At first glance, Shame stands out for its compelling premise, but paradoxically, the story is the biggest enemy to the overall feel of the film. I found it insanely long-winded, going nowhere and empty. The performances of the actors didn't captivate me either, and I found myself wandering quite often over the…

Magic Mike is described here as a drama and a comedy, but it doesn't fulfill either genre enough for me to be satisfied with the overall result. On the comedy side of things, I was perhaps most amused by the scene of Channing Tatum like Marilyn Monroe, otherwise the rest were scenes that were more lightly funny, but…

The Cremator can be thought of as either a deep psychological thriller or a comedy with the most morbid type of black humour. Either way, it is a high quality film in both respects, one of the best that was made in this country in the 1960s. Rudolf Hrušínský's breathtaking performance is a prime example of how one…

Holy Smoke is a film that relies heavily on a compelling premise and great performances from Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel. The story itself, however, didn't engage me as much. I found it too drawn out and there were too many dead spots that only hindered the film. In short, a film that takes place in unfavourable…

Brave is a likeable animated film that offers nothing new apart from the (basic) story, but I still found myself enjoying it. As usual, this film features a lot of didactic nuggets and sentimental passages that are (or should be) meant to educate and impress children, but that's just the way it goes with films like…