MrHlad

After a botched robbery, Michael Bay has the two protagonists steal an ambulance and take a hostage, and a chase across L.A. begins. And it's Bay, full of slow motion, crazy explosions and stylish camera work. Only this time, the director tries to be unexpectedly serious at times and doesn't completely underestimate the character work. Unfortunately, what looks for a while like a serious action drama that might even work, ends up getting beaten to death by childish humour, overwrought action and the fact that he's just making what he's always made. So in the end, it's more or less exactly the kind of wildness one expects from Michael Bay. Whether that's a good or bad is for each to decide.

After Free Guy, like a lot of other people, I thought Shawn Levy had gone into his own and had finally grown from a routinist into a director who could be genuinely interesting. After Project Adam, I don't think so. Indeed, this Netflix family-action sci-fi film that pretends to want to follow in the footsteps of Back to the Future, E.T., and those adventure films that Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis once made, managed to impress in the trailers, but it's a lot weaker in feature form. It's as if Levy was given a ten-page manual on “how to make old-school family sci-fi flick in the twenty-first century quickly and easily”, just copied it, and then he ditched his own invention. With Project Adam, you can tick off all the Spielberg and Zemeckis stuff, either in the themes the film addresses or in direct references. Levy manages to offer solid action, Ryan Reynolds playing Ryan Reynolds (you decide for yourself whether to take that as a positive), and the film works quite well in individual. But unfortunately, those individual scenes don't really build on each other and the emotional moments alternate with the action or funny situations without any substance, and then it's all over. And it doesn't leave a strong impression, just the feeling that Levy is a solid executor, but without a really good script he can't really scratch above the average.

Thirteen-year-old Mei is an average teenager who tries to get straight A's in school and not be naughty for the sake of her family and especially her mother. Or at least not to misbehave when her mom sees her. One day she wakes up as a giant red panda and finds that she is the victim of an old family curse. If she doesn't want to look like a giant animal, she has to keep her emotions in check, and for a 13-year-old girl, nothing is harder. Pixar's new film may not surprise in terms of story – it's another clash of parents, children and their views on the future – but it's still very funny, touching and entertaining. Pixar simply knows how to do these things, and even though they skimped on originality this time, it's still first rate among animated films. Don't be afraid to go to the cinema, but don't expect anything revolutionary from Turning Red.

Waldo, a former cop and professional weirdo, leaves his exile somewhat involuntarily for Hollywood to find out if TV star and professional alcoholic Alastair Pinch killed his wife, or if someone set him up. But in Hollywood, you can't trust anyone. Last Looks is a fine crime drama that isn't afraid to alternate suspense with bizarre humour, has a very fine cast and doesn't get boring. But it's more of a sequence of dialogue than a movie, because it's actually a lot of talking, mostly to make sure no one notices how cheap and underfunded the whole thing is. But once you get over that and get used to the cheaper look, it's actually unexpectedly good.

Matt Reeves delivers a confident vision of the world of Batman, going in a completely different direction than his predecessors. As he sees it, Gotham is an ugly and dirty city, and its inhabitants are tired of corruption and crime. So it's no surprise that Reeves’s and Pattinson's Batman is no pushover. The new Batman doesn't gloss over the inspiration in crime dramas from the 1990s and thrillers from the 1970s, recalling Se7en, Serpico and Death Wish. And there's a lot more talking and investigating, as Reeves made a primarily crime thriller set in a much more realistic and believable world than his predecessors. It looks nice, it sounds great, and Robert Pattinson is very good as Batman. Unfortunately, he's not very good as Bruce Wayne, and overall the work with his “civilian hero” is a bit jarring. Mainly because despite the three-hour running time, they ultimately didn't quite manage to pull all the motives, storylines and twists to a satisfying conclusion, making some elements of The Batman feel sort of half-hearted. In short, there's an awful lot to deal with, and Reeves doesn't always manage to pull it off to a satisfying conclusion. Less is sometimes more, on the other hand it all still works enough to make a good film.

The future is full of robots and they’ve just thought they'd make life a little harder for humanity. During the machine uprising, several people with a lot of unfinished business between them gather in a house, and what else are they supposed to do but talk about what they really think of each other? BigBug is a visually interesting, but shallow and boring sci-fi comedy that starts to run out of breath after half an hour. And the more you watch it, the more obvious it becomes that the director of Amélie has his best creative years long behind him.

The highwayman Karaba has to get back into action, because mischief starts happening in the kingdom where his daughter rules along with the king. Little does he know that the evil advisors from the last film are setting a trap for him. And that he'll have to deal with love. This sequel is an inoffensive fairy tale that might deserve cautious praise on TV, but is lacking in narrative and, above all, rather chaotically put together, predictable and ordinary for cinema. It doesn't offend, but it would have suited television better.

So it looks like we'll have to wait for another really good movie based on a game, because Uncharted didn't succeed as much as fans of the source material would have liked. And probably not even adventure movie fans. Making it a prequel turned out to be a smart move, the makers can tell their own story and just reference the game; sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, sometimes totally, and make a good adventure movie first and foremost. But it’s not much of one. The main problem is that it all drags quite a bit, there’s little action, and at some points what happens on screen is almost embarrassing. All the attempts at Indiana Jones-like wandering through corridors, avoiding traps and solving puzzles looks so cheesy that I was reminded of the 1990s series Relic Hunter. The chemistry between Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg is also pretty dour, and that's mostly because Wahlberg is playing more of a scumbag than a likeable bastard, and Holland tries his best, but the flat and predictable script doesn't give him much of a chance to make Nathan Drake a real likeable guy to root for. Fortunately, Uncharted climbs from below average as the runtime progresses, and the finale on the boats is already a lot of good action fun. And it was because of it that I left the cinema feeling actually satisfied. Unfortunately, as soon as I started thinking about the rest of it, the enthusiasm went way down again. A good finish is important, but Uncharted has so many unfinished or uninteresting elements that it makes up for an average adventure at best.

The moon has deviated from its orbit and will collide with the Earth in a few weeks. Only two former astronauts and one annoying conspiracy theorist can save the world, but they have no idea what awaits them in space. Roland Emmerich rips himself off and makes another disaster movie, but one that is a shadow of Independence Day or 2012. It's just not very entertaining this time around, which makes how stupid it all is stand out that much more.

A narrative and audiovisually very good historical film that combines real events with fictional ones. But while the former are at least interesting, the latter not so much. As long as Munich – The Edge of War tries to be a political reconstruction, it works very decently thanks to Jeremy Irons in the lead role, but as soon as it wants to become a spy thriller, the whole thing stutters. It's not suspenseful, interesting or entertaining, and the ending, which contradicts everything written by history and the film itself, is already a regular slap in the face to the viewer, and completely unnecessary.