Excellent backgrounds, a bit less nice the characters drawings. The film itself is a sequence of symbols, like a Murakami novel without the narrative parts. You may really need to "ask the expert" to fully understand what is happening in the film. Good that movies like this are made, as we lack deep products nowadays, but I seriously doubt that even in Japan the average audience would be able to understand most of what happens, maybe too exaggerated overall.
The movie manages to do one thing well: to show Americans "how beautiful is Italy". It fails on everything else: yet again an English with a stupid Italian accent (not as strong as in Gucci), a random cut on the biography of Enzo Ferrari, more focused on him with the wife than on the overall story of the car and the brand, Adam Driver out of characters, the car racing sequences even nice to see, but again randomly put up.
Strange film, hard to identify its direction on the first viewing. Very interesting the setting, which seems dystopic but in fact it is not. A nice plot, perhaps not represented in the best possible way, some details remain hidden, but I believe it is intended that way.
Coppola is good in portraying the female characters and in their costumes. But that is all, the plot is completely uninspiring, and very little happens during the movie.
Typical Christmas formation film, a sort of two-faced Catcher in the Rye. A nice family movie for the festive period, not too original the character development.
What should be the Oscar winner of this year. It knockouts Cronenberg and The Holdovers, as it covers similar themes much better.
It really smells as an exemplary movie from a contemporary US fiction novel, one of those which mixes too many themes without focusing on anything, with a lot of family dramas which fail to take a clear direction. The first half of the movie shows most of these issues, then the comedic timing improves, and the ending is indeed good.
Not really my cup of tea.
Slipping up here on a technical and visual point of view would have been catastrophic, and fortunately Villeneuve does it right. He sacrificed a bit the screenplay, too dilated in order to make a second episode, with the result that the movie was a bit too slow and not so clear in several passages. But it is a minor issue, there is always the novel to read.
Very low expectations from the stereotypical American Valentine Day comedy. But the acting was really bad here.
Not the most brilliant English comedy among those of the last few years. Many jokes are funny, but the actors loquacity, especially the Colman, has been limited somehow by a script which empathized external elements to the main plots and the acting.
The plot is very engaging, visually very well done, with interesting (albeit expensive) scientific solutions. The the script is however full of American sci-fi-style tricks to make everything working. It starts like a not so good Spielberg-like story, to improve in the second half.
Clear and honest drama which depict quite well the scandal. The first episode in particular is very effective to give the correct emotional engagement.
Documentary on some very interesting and relevant journalistic Indian facts, with repercussions even in Europe. To note the fact that the protagonist, and other characters, where themselves. Unfortunately, as many similar documentary films, it tends to circulate only in restricted cineclubs where the audience already expects what it is going to see, and does not reach a more general unaware audience.
Not a film with a clear plot, but more a series of gags or comedy scenes. Some more engaging and better acted than others.
Let's put in this way. It is the usual action movie of the latest period made of long blocks of detached action in several city landscapes, usually European, often Rome, and sometimes with some stereotypical Italian shouts. It is however better paced than other similar movies of the same time, also for Cruise's gags and some stunts.
Quite nice, though not too original, and could be developed a bit better, perhaps with some more minutes.
Compared to the Pixar film released at the same time, this is weaker in terms of plot, predictable and not too original, though the Pixar was quite bland anyways. This is better however on the animation side. A note of blame for the showing of mobile phone in a movie aimed at children, not really an educative choice, more so if the film has a fantastic setting.
Simple but poorly written light comedy, with a terrible climax, but overall quite entertaining. In some scenes it takes quite a good snapshot of the current social situation in the US.
The Sicilian geography is wrong as usual... Anyways, good the beginning, we can expect such ending from Indy (or more Arizona Goof in fact), decent soundtrack. It suffers however of plenty of the issues found in modern adventure movies, which are the decontextualized long action scenes around some exemplary cities in Europe, and the treasure "not so well hidden" in a touristy place open to the public. Overall a tad better of the photocopy superheros.
A film in which it was very evident the mastery of the great Master... in the second half. Because the first seemed more an ad for Grant and Bergman.
Perhaps the most awaited movie of the period. The waiting was rewarding: very nice film, cinematography and acting very good, not exceptional the main overall plot but still a good storyline with the good dosage of sarcasm and exaggeration. The various intermissions however a bit too difficult to understand at an immediate viewing, a bit penalized for that.
Again the format of the four ladies making various disasters, this time English and younger, but with the same episodes happening more or less.
The Ended story perhaps, as it covers, quite badly in terms of writing, the first half of the novel, with a pretty horrible ending totally contrary to the overall meaning of the novel (Ende was right to complain about this). Nice use of the animatronics, and very good soundtrack, probably wasted for such film.
Some scenes, such as the supermarket, are very interesting and informative about everyday life in the underdeveloped US. The documentary is however long and a bit redundant.
As the underlying theme, it probably works less well today than in the 70s. But in less than an hour and a half the director managed to carefully measure the tension and the surprise.
Bland is the most appropriate definition. The animation is not particularly inspiring or innovative, and the plot flows away without particular emotions. Moreover, I am not really sure this is the most appropriate way to cover the intended underlying meaning.
It is a trivial children cartoon, with the usual silly and predictable plot. The action sequences of the (cartoonish) robots fighting were not really interesting, other movies depict them in more realistic terms.
A simple, effective and straight to the point plot. It does not necessarily say much, but nowadays we really miss simple fantasy films like this.
The art is gorgeous, even better than the first chapter. The plot is really forced however, with at least 45 useless minutes, and the whole seems more a connecting episode than a self-contained movie with an ending.
