The western formula cannot be overlooked. A mysterious stranger in a town where the law is interpreted by its protectors, an inevitable confrontation, a helpful friend, the expulsion of the intruder beyond the town's borders, a buildup of injustice, and a final reckoning. The only difference is that the stranger…

Everything is pretty much the same, Alexandre Aja continues to waste his talent on contrived scripts. The absurd premise predictably evolves towards a single meaningful non-absurd denouement. This then arrives, relatively timely, so that for a while the film seems to build to a rather chilling ending on top of it. But…

Spoilers/History – The unexpected gift in the form of a director's cut raises the biggest question: are three and a half hours enough for a comprehensive look? Not even close. At least not for something with the gigantic scope that David Scarpa's screenplay was seeking. Ridley Scott thus faces the traditional drawback…

Damian Nieman may be a card magician, but his directorial skills belong at a school recital. By the end, it was basically irrelevant who would have whose urine on their clothes, as the card table never once brought the nose out of the shadows of moments when Felix Leiter orders the same thing as Bond, but without the…

A released convict, a fugitive, and a loser, all completely stripped of innocence, clash in a red circle. The robbery scene, which would take place in the first half of other films and leave the second half for plot development and resolution, is held off by Jean-Pierre Melville until the final third. That’s how…

A depressing schism led by an excellent Anthony Hopkins and his respectable performance, but at its core it's just a drama. It manages to stir up uncomfortable feelings, it manages to entertain and make weaker hearts cry while still captivating with Hopkins' character, but on it's nothing groundbreaking, it doesn't…

It's hard nowadays when Netflix comes out with a superhero series with a bunch of over-aged, racially, gender and politically balanced wannabe avengers, but they don't bring anything new or innovative to the genre, on the contrary, it's the same old same old (fire, super strength...). The story is boring, some of the…

I'm not sure I want to spend 12 hours watching a cartoon that's only "adult" in that there's a lot of beheadings and litres of blood. What I would expect from a work like this, and what would distinguish it from animated fairy tales and just entertain an adult audience, is constant slapstick, profanity, and similarly…

An excellent, flawless and extremely emotional documentary. I was afraid (as with most similar films) that the narrative value would be zero, that the story would be boring, but the opposite is true and I am extremely surprised and satisfied. 90% of the film is wrestling and as an audience we see footage of even 10…

Alexandre Aja is usually a guarantee of quality, but here I wasn't so happy, and after the end I asked myself "So what? What was he trying to say? Where is the deeper point?". It's an interesting film, because on the one hand it certainly could have been much better with a statement, but on the other hand Oxygen is…