lamps

The incredible Jim Carrey – it's up to you how you take it, because this is exactly the kind of film where his acting and associated sick humour will forever divide fans into two hostile camps. I don’t mind this madman, on the contrary I bow to his tireless creativity, but unfortunately everything around him bothered me a bit. Even a full-feature one man show needs a proper and meaningful story, it’s a fact... 55%

For a while I thought about a full rating, but that wouldn't quite fit with other, richer and more varied crime stories. Running Scared is not lacking in brutality, charge, rawness and a fast-paced plot packed with tension and the word "fuck". The actors are also good, led by the "fast and furious" Walker and, of course, the wacky John Wayne worshipper Karel Roden, who rocks again and clearly enjoys his role. It's just a pity that director, Kramer, left too much room for emotions and firearms at the end, focusing excessively on the surface rather than playing with the story itself, and the whole thing felt a bit contrived and overdone. Otherwise, though, a great and original thriller that even David Fincher would not be ashamed of.

I certainly can't say I didn't have fun, but I can't say Silverado amazed me, either. It's an enjoyable western with everything fans of the genre expect from such a film. By that I mean great actors who don't hesitate to shoot and a stony look that is a thing of beauty, a solid script full of gunfights and unadulterated western atmosphere and of course a pretty good soundtrack, which has become an unwritten rule of the Wild West. I've seen a few better westerns, but few as well cast and not boring as this one. 75%

It's easy to wonder what this film would be without Quentin Tarantino. Surely it would still have one of the most stellar casts ever, plus the skilled hand of Tony Scott, and an absolutely superb soundtrack by Hans Zimmer. But it would have lacked the soul that Tarantino's wonderfully relaxed screenplay gave it, and the story would have been completely lost. With all that, True Romance is one of the most charming and compelling crime stories I've ever seen, and Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette may be the best couple since Bonnie and Clyde.

A truly great documentary, filled with emotions and interwoven with an impressive sports atmosphere. Personally, I never cared much for Formula 1, but Senna was truly a giant, a consummate role model and a likable man in every way, so his life journey, great triumphs and tragic apotheosis was something I was very happy to learn about, and in the end it was hard to hold back the tears. I never thought that a biography consisting mostly of interviews and racing footage could be put together in such an engaging and flawless way. I was wrong. 100%

We could criticise the film and endlessly point out its lapses in logic and mistakes, but that wouldn't be entirely fair. The Hills Have Eyes is first and foremost a spicy, almost unprecedented nowadays killing spree that offers, besides several truly brutal scenes, a superbly dense atmosphere, supremely disgusting villains and an absolutely riveting last act, which I probably wouldn't want to watch in the dark at midnight. Yes, it is disgusting, but Aja knows the right amount and never overdoes it to the point of being unbearable or gratuitous – unless we take into account the final fight, which is actually over-the-top. I didn't expect to be interested in this kind of horror, and I was all the more pleasantly surprised. Aja squeezed the most out of it, but Martin Weisz in the sequel brought the entire good premise to its knees...

great future prospect in the field of the fantasy genre, but on the whole I found the film overwrought to the point of shame and also terribly uninteresting and slow. Maybe the fact that it's based on a comic book hurt it, because comic book movies have a specific order and attitude that didn't fit this story for me at all. Or maybe it's because I'm not a true connoisseur, as POMO points out in his review, and I wasn’t able to appreciate the film enough the first time. I think the latter option is the more likely :)

Incredible film, I will never forget it. A hundred-metre long submarine cruising through magical Venice, the intrepid Indiana Jones senior Sean Connery, plus a vampire, a secret agent and an invisible man. It’s missing the Incredible Hulk and Iron Man, but tell me, can something like this be rated less than 3*? I would take it as an insult.

Oh, man, that was stupid. And I really looked forward to it! Billy Zane as a masked jungle hero, Treat Williams as the bad guy, and Catherine Zeta-Jones, with whom I was hopelessly in love in my youth. But as it turned out once again, even the most interesting premise with the best cast can be brought down almost to nothing by routine and unimaginative direction. The Phantom starts promising, but eventually climbs onto a life raft, albeit a very rickety and hideous looking one...

I love the Coens’ crime movies, but not their comedies. They have a strange sense of humour that I, an ordinary fan, probably have no chance to understand. George Clooney is fine as a successful and greedy lawyer, and Catherine is always awfully lovely to look at, but their love escapades mostly bored me rather than made me kick back and relax. At least it is saved for a while by Billy Bob Thornton, who again excels and climbs higher and higher in my acting rankings, unlike this romantic comedy. 60%