Movie reviews

The screen adaptation of the graphic novel "The Coldest City" is coming out soon. I've just drafted my review which will appear here on the 22nd of July.

SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING AT IMAX 3D

Recommended. The very beginning was so lousy I was seriously worried whether I'd tolerate the whole: Captain America reduced to lecturing schoolkids on how they should behave, Spider-Man having a crush on an, undoubtedly PC, mixed-race girl (half-black) and running a video diary of shaky quality made me want to run. But it was just the first few minutes. Later it gets better and better and the tension keeps growing. The result of the whole is fantastic. There are some funny lines, e.g. a teacher talking right after a life-threatening situation about how he'd hate to lose a student on a school trip, as well as references to earlier Spider-Man movies and to the infamous beginnings of Iron Man. They're straightforward so it's enough to have seen the films, no need to remember them in detail. Michael Keaton is superb. He has clearly benefited from his Birdman image now impersonating Vulture and having a black bird-like costume. There's an obligatory Stan Lee cameo, a mid-credit announcing a sequel and a post-credit joke. I think the movie will be still OK in 2D on a regular size screen.

TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT AT IMAX 3D

Watchable. This one is worth seeing in 3D as these effects are pretty good throughout the movie. The amazing landscapes in the beginning will certainly gain in IMAX. The location is probably Scotland and it much resembles takes from "Prometheus". In the plot, however, geography gets mixed up, placing Trinity Library in Oxford. In reality Oxford has Trinity College with the Old Library while the Trinity Library is located in Dublin, Ireland. Usually peaceful and often pedestrianized Pall Mall in London is a scene of a car/transformer chase. The rest of the film takes the viewer all over the world as the globe is facing destruction. History-wise it starts in legendary Merlin times and ends "today". I still find machines tiring and... heavy but at least in this installment they come in various shapes, including dragons, men with beards like those belonging to Caribbean dead pirates or a fairy-like flying robot in a wiry dress. They are kept as pets like one in "Chappie" with the difference that here one looks like Wall-E and several are mechanic dinos (dinobots). A male scientist fights superstition: "I'm relying on physics and mathematics, not mysteries, fairies or some Hobgoblins." At the same time a female Oxford professor fights sexism in the form of her aunts persuading her to find a man and ignoring her meteoric career as well as hearing from a guy she's wearing "a stripper dress". Butler Cogman and the Lord (by brilliant Anthony Hopkins) are a delight, especially the Lord silencing the Prime Minister who, in turn, has David Cameron's hairstyle.

Cinema City had excellent service again, very nice people work there.

DARKLAND

Watchable. A standard brother revenge plot is well enacted and gets a social-cultural twist as it's set in the second generation (people around 20 and 30, with their parents living) of Iraqi refugees in Denmark. They have penetrated the white world. White Danes, including one "white" Iraqi - working as a surgeon and living with his Danish wife, can't penetrate theirs. Subtly, the finger of blame is pointed at immigrant families sitting on the couch instead of preventing their children becoming criminals.