8/10. If someone had told me five years ago that I’d go to the cinema to see a film about the election of a new Pope rather than a comic-book movie, I would have laughed at them, but, world wonder, it's true. Conclave is an unexpectedly gripping, atmospheric and compelling film set in the Vatican where isolated…

7/10. A decent and realistic teacher psycho drama from Germany. The protagonist is a new teacher who has just started at a new school, but soon starts stealing and becomes a target. She had a hidden camera, she knows who the culprit is! A prime example of a man wanting to get justice and solve a fairly straightforward…

A charming Egyptologist on the trail of ancient secrets and dangerous mysteries. A synopsis where you can only trust the conjunction, and Franklin J. Schaffner didn’t direct the film; he embalmed it, and not even the romantic subplot with Ahmed Dracula can save it (as one critic aptly noted, Langella had the charm of…

The psychological horror soon turns surreal, with the imprisoned psychopath murdering through others. He uses dreams and hypnosis to do this. Danny may be a good guy, but he's a moron, so when he spots Laura, the Sleeping Beauty, in the hospital and hears that she's about to become an experimental subject, he decides…

There's a monster killing in the city, and the first massacres convinced me that a xenomorph had jumped in. Too bad they showed its form afterwards. It had a leaky tongue instead of a second set of jaws, but otherwise the inspiration, including the slime, was clear, and I quite like it. Also, there's one nice…

What’s happening in the grass? Practically nothing. After twenty minutes, I was wondering what they would do for the next eighty, as the theme seemed exhausted. Somewhere around the fiftieth minute, I started wishing that the good local farmer would arrive and take care of the whispering meadow with his scythe. After…

Neo-noir from a unique location, where until the last moment you’re unsure whether it's a femme or homme fatale, and that indecisiveness is just like whether to rate it three or four stars. On one hand, there’s Simon Moore's somewhat uncertain direction in realizing his own screenplay, the typologically miscast Neeson…

A forgetful Copenhagen policeman, a jihadist greengrocer, and the all-capable CIA in a futile battle against the windmill of architect Petter Skavlan. The climax at the bullfight was, in terms of editing, music, and overall content (the kick and subsequent drone from Fleet Street), one of the most dreadful things I…

The twilight of the white heterosexual man is said to be a new hallmark of contemporary filmmaking. A film nearly a quarter-century old, and the only normal man in it is gay. The rest are murderous sadistic psychopaths, jealous idiots with mouths full of nonsense (Patton), or cowardly donut carriers who refuse to…

A legendary literary character and his industrious creator from "A Study in Scarlet" to "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire." From an informational standpoint, it's excellent, including the incorporation of examples of the detective's film portrayals from Rathbone to Cumberbatch; however, the escalating central theme…