Kaka

If anyone was expecting back to basics and the definitive elimination of "paper dialogue" and endless speeches and annoying metaphors with the seventh season, they will be sorely disappointed. It continues, give or take, in the rhythm of the tired sixth season, and even the main attraction, the return of Bobby, is delivered rather sporadically in a supporting role. The over the top crazy finale just shows the total inability of the creators to come up with a story that frames reality and doesn't edge on the fictional world in the style of Ocean’s Eleven, and even most of those guys had more charisma than the robots here.

Breathtakingly shot fights are not enough to make a good film. And in the case of Creed 3, this is doubly true. The initial enthusiasm for an interesting take on the boxing underdog Rocky was quite right, but if the second adventure was running half throttle despite all its potential in the form of Dolph Lundgren and Sly, the third one is just the fumes from which nothing much can be made. The last Creed thus remains a purposeless editing exhibition of contact fights and hip-hop bangers, while the dramatic line with the boys from the hood is lethargic and pulled out of thin air, and therefore has no chance of success.

A flat storyline with a variation of the same plot seen hundreds of times, but with an excellent group of likeable characters and a truly amazing villain. The whole thing is dynamic, funny with some great scenes (the fat dragon) and a charismatic lead in Chris Pine. It's obvious that it was made by someone who has a feel for the material and a respect for fantasy. The potential for a sequel or saga is there, but next time it should be either darker or more original.

It doesn't beat the originality and the villain of the first one, but it does beat the sterile and uninspired second one. The Equalizer thankfully didn't end up like, say, Taken, and with the third film, the duo Washington-Fuqua made a worthy finale, or let McCall age with honor and in the beautiful Amalfi setting. Last Chapter is surprisingly less action-packed than the previous installments and shapes the mix of the fragile family atmosphere of a small town that has its own specific spiritual charge vs. extreme violence and gore quite adequately, something Fuqua is unafraid of and knows how to handle pretty well. Nothing beats the opening scene, and no other passage even comes close, but as a whole the third Equalizer is watchable. Denzel is no longer an invincible killer, but a vulnerable older man, plagued by the demons of his past, and every now and then he kicks someone's ass and does what's right along the way through life. Exactly between 3-4.

Fast and Furious wants to be like other big and successful franchises, for example, Marvel or Mission Impossible. It aims to put together its own universe with its own rules, audience favourite characters and, most importantly, make billions of dollars. The quality, however, has extreme fluctuations from one episode to the next, and in the case of the tenth it’s for the worse. And yet it looks so promising in the first minutes, with a brief recap and alternation of the legendary fifth episode. But this sequel is bad in pretty much every aspect. There isn't much humour, the action is trivial, the visual effects are extremely poorly done and if all this can be forgiven because of your favourites, the protagonists (with the exception of Jason Momoa) don't even have any juice. Perhaps the biggest filmmaking failure for me is the blatant attempt to rip off the best moments of other films and use them in a worse way, without having the same added value, or at least the desired effect. There are a lot of trademarks and fragments of other episodes in the franchise, and also from Face Off, Mission Impossible, Mad Max, etc. This franchise has turned into a billion-dollar colossus, but the last two episodes bring it back to the quality level of the third and fourth entries (if not worse), which hardly anyone remembers, let alone appreciates nowadays after all those excesses.

The opposite of Le Mans in many ways. In terms of time narrative, it is a small, intimate racing film, a study of the tormented genius of Enzo Ferrari from the surprising perspective of a family drama, not a flashy driving symphony of speedsters. It's not that there's no driving, and it even has a nicely retro tone with an extreme dose of realism and physicality (except for those awful digital flying cars), but Enzo's living room, bedroom and office are the primary focus. Michael Mann has made a dream come true, in a largely un-Hollywood, non-mainstream way. It's going to be hard to make a lot of money with this film, but the production values are solid. It's not the genre we're used to with Mann, and some of his traditional trademarks are not and can't be here, but he hasn't disgraced himself.

If the third season was wild, the fourth is a blast full of contradictions and contradictory moments. On the one hand, according to the creators of the utopian past, we don't even have mobile phones in 2003, but supercomputers are operating on Mars and rockets have a new propulsion system that makes it possible to cover the interplanetary distance in 14 days. If this is supposed to be a not-so-seriously taken space spy comedy that oscillates somewhere between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Cold War reverberations, then OK. As a serious alternative history of the space conquest, however, it's not even close, and both the first and second seasons had a great start. The third and fourth, on the other hand, are already veering in the wrong direction. What’s worth praise, however, are the Russian actors and the entire Roskosmos, with its typically cold, detached and dark Iron Curtain atmosphere.

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 result is something the filmmakers have nothing to be ashamed of. Of course it's not the bombastic heavyweight eye-candy spectacle that the West boasts, but it has a wonderfully gripping post-WWII post-apocalyptic atmosphere, a sinister lizard that manages to wring the absolute most out of it, and even if the limit of the production budget is occasionally apparent in some shots, it works brilliantly. However, I couldn't get into the characters at all and the wistful emotional charge completely missed the mark for me. One of the few films that IMHO would have benefited from a black and white version.

More of a nice fan-service than a full-fledged drama with emotional charge and theses from life like Rush. Gran Turismo has some nice moments, decent circuit racing scenes, solid unobtrusive visual effects and new faces, plus the old ones are cool and don't get in the way. Hounsou and Harbour do what's expected of them, and Bloom is just Bloom. The relationship line, however, is completely unnecessary. This film isn't talked about much probably due to weaker promotion or a specific target audience, it certainly won't become as popular as Nikki Lauda's story, but it has passable qualities.

Not great, not terrible. At the start, when we flashback to World War II and a Wehrmacht officer shines a flashlight in the face of a clearly digital Indy, who squints his eyes everywhere but where he's supposed to, it's a bit scary, but thankfully after a few minutes the train (literally) does slowly move forward and we get a few jokes, solid action and imaginative locations. The dogged effort to honor the unique retro-adventure concept of the saga is evident at every turn, but not always entirely necessary or appropriate. Hats off to Ford, who pulls off some incredible stunts for an octogenarian. On the other hand, I believe this film will probably flop in theaters even if Indy stands on its head. Because it's too uninteresting for the young generation, with an uninteresting, generic pulled out of thin air, and the older viewers would rather watch The Last Crusade, which doesn't need try to go back to its roots, because it’s right there.