Goldbeater

Guy Ritchie has become an unexpectedly interesting filmmaker in recent years, making a "smaller", gritty and honest-to-goodness film here and there in addition to crafting decently done commercial stuff. After The Gentlemen and Wrath of Man comes The Covenant, which isn't necessarily the best of the aforementioned trio, but at least manages to translate a whiff of creative verve into the viewing experience. In the first half, Ritchie delivers an almost procedural war drama, only to switch into John Woo mode in the second half with his over-the-top bromance action, culminating in a fetishistically long montage of the immeasurable physical and emotional effort one partner can make to save another.

After the fairly accomplished retro slasher X, Ti West delivers a Technicolor nightmare that absolutely works in its (intentional) kitsch. Unlike the previous film, Pearl is not predictable and avoids genre tropes, and Mia Goth proves once again that she is an incredibly energetic presence in contemporary genre cinema.

Ari Aster and his excessive auteur onanism. The first three-quarters of an hour and a few good moments later in the film cannot redeem the unjustifiable three-hour running time, in which, despite the exaggeration and craziness of all the events, the plot flows as if it was stagnant – extending a seven-minute short into three hours is not easy feat. With its most expensive film to date, studio A24 had the luxury of slapping the filmmaker on the wrist at times and thrusting a pair of scissors at him. It’s impossible that this film will earn back half its budget, impossible.

Evil Dead Rise is a solid horror flick, but if you're familiar with the franchise, you'll just be mentally ticking off a list of must-haves. The setting of an old tenement house is not as atmospheric and interesting as a cabin in the mountains, and while the filmmakers attempted to bring evil to a new cramped location, they didn't miss the tried-and-true cabin, giving the film a framing device that's quite impressive but completely unnecessary to the main story (but at least it brought the best reveal of the film's title in years). The 2013 remake was far more impressive, engaging and entertaining in its reinterpretation of a well-worn formula; this one is just OK.

In an ideal world, I would have imagined a slightly different form of action from a film featuring both Sylvia Kristel and Sybil Danning, but alas. In short, this is the dumbest Airport film, the plot is largely a joke and the greatest energy comes from the scene where Alain Delon and George Kennedy extol the virtues of French prostitutes (they probably both knew). Still, it manages to be solid entertainment, and if you have an idea of what to expect, you won’t be disappointed.

Paradoxically, the best entry in the Airport franchise hardly takes place in an airport, or in the air. In fact, Airport '77 is closer to a sort of underfed sibling of The Poseidon Adventure than to the previous or subsequent aviation thrillers, and in that peculiar way, oddly enough, it totally works. A lot of the credit for this goes to Jack Lemmon, who with his charisma and zero showmanship beats all the actors who played the main roles in this series before or after him.

The sequel to Airport follows the formula of shorter runtime – longer action. And although the action looks rather ridiculous from today's point of view, the creators' efforts to keep the audience on the edge of their seats for as long as possible should be highlighted. The surprise of the film is that the main star is far from being Charlton Heston, but rather Karen Black.

Airport is a very solid showcase of a fine ensemble cast and probably a worthy adaptation of a book I haven't yet read, but as a drama it's as flat as a runway and as a thriller it's completely ineffective from today's perspective. Without nostalgia for the little, it's impossible to approach this film too sympathetically.

Let yourself be enveloped by the fresh wave of pure American capitalism and enjoy a story whose exact outcome you know in advance, but whose engaging dialogue and dynamic direction will keep you entertained for nearly two hours. It's very much "by the numbers", but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Russell Crowe was apparently bored in conventional roles, his Jekyll & Hyde in the failed Dark Universe didn't work out, so his overdone genre cravings had to end here. And in all fairness, he is also the only reason why this schematic routine with no suspense, no creative ideas and no horror atmosphere is worth watching. You can see that he enjoys his unusual role immensely, diversifying it with small details, and even his crazy Italian accent will amuse more than annoy you from the very first moment (partly because it is far from the worst accent in the film). The rest of the vacuum around Crowe, however, is sheer exorcism routine from a routine director, who can only be credited with at least not cramming in annoying jump scares with loud sound effects, which is otherwise the plague of contemporary horror films.