Reviews

Alex Garland is one of those writers/directors whose names will make me automatically interested in a project, like Nolan: even his movies I didn't particularly like (and I liked most of them) were interesting enough to deserve a viewing - although admittedly I've so far avoided the reportedly stomach-churning Men.

Some viewers have accused Garland of trickery with his new dystopian/sci-fi flick, because this movie isn't really about a second American Civil War: it focuses on four journalists travelling to Washington during that war and we never really go beyond their point of view or learn more about the origin of the conflict or its various phases, other than the bitter last act.

While this is a legitimate criticism - and the clever marketing was certainly deceptive, because they knew that a movie about brave reporters simply would not have gained that kind of attention - I believe it was a smart choice.

To tell the story of a possibile second Civil War in detail you would need a miniseries, a choral cast of characters and a much bigger budget than Garland had: so the writer-director follows his four protagonists and shows scary, tantalizing glimpses of the bigger picture, a bit like Spielberg's War of the Worlds (which, mawky sentimentality aside, was a great piece of film-making).

The cast is excellent, led by Dunst in what is probably the best performance of her career as a fundamentally decent but dead-eyed and exhausted reporter who has seen too many horrors (also, on a shallow note, bless Dunst for not ruining her lovely face with plastic surgery unlike many of her colleagues - better some wrinkles than looking like a plastic mask).

Moura, Spaeny and McKinley Henderson are also fine, although the great Nick Offerman's screentime as the President is disappointingly tiny.

The standout is probably Jesse Plemons (Dunst's real-life husband) in a small but chilling role as one of the many dangerous encounters faced by the protagonists during their journey.

7/10.

For the record, I like World of Warships... but it's not the kind of experience I expect from a pirate sandbox game. This was explicitly born as a follow-up to Ubisoft's own slam-dunk success Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, so comparisons to that game are fair.

During its decade-long development, Skull and Bones jettisoned many features Black Flag had.

First, melee combat: here you only fight as your ship and never as your pirate, while in Black Flag there was plenty of combat on land and while boarding enemy ships. Jumping on an enemy vessel you had just hit with cannons to finish off its crew was pretty much the coolest thing ever; Skull and Bones replaces this with a cutscene.

Second, land exploration: here you can only visit established ports, while in Black Flag you could jump off your ship and go explore any island which caught your attention and maybe had an ancient temple hidden in a jaguar-infested jungle.

This is so misguided, it feels like some kind of "Springtime for Hitler" scenario where they deliberately wanted it to fail. It has to be. No human being with the intelligence to go to work and turn on his PC without accidentally killing himself would fail to realize that a pirate sandbox game where you don't swing your sword even once is a comically bad idea.

Literally all they needed to do was take the gameplay of Black Flag, a game THEY HAD ALREADY MADE A DECADE AGO, get rid of the obnoxious Abstergo / Animus stuff (good riddance, it was already a pain and a bore in an otherwise fantastic game), add new maps and a lot of customization for the player character and his ship, maybe co-op multiplayer with friends, and boom, it would have been the perfect sandbox pirate RPG.

So, is this game terrible, considered in a vacuum? No, it's a passable arcade-y pirate ship simulation, therefore I'm not giving it a very low score; Age of Sail purists will probably hate the way the ship "feels" though, it's unrealistic and lacks weight. But the context here is infuriating. They had the foundations of a great game and decided to blow them up and rebuild everything... poorly. The people who greenlit this must have no idea of what players loved about Black Flag.

Here's a thought experiment: let's say Rockstar makes a new Western IP different from Red Dead Redemption where the player is the guide of a wagon trail and has to lead it through the wilderness to its final destination - scouting, fighting, gathering resources, upgrading the wagons, and so on. Sounds good, right? Except, the player now can never get off his horse, only when camping at night to talk to characters: all combat and exploration is on horseback only. I guarantee people would be furious and ask "Why can't I get off my horse like in Red Dead Redemption???"... and they would be right.

Wake up, Ubisoft.

For the first 90 minutes or so of Gareth Edwards' The Creator I was baffled by the movie's poor reception at the box office: "Look at this gorgeous, well-acted, compelling science-fiction adventure - how could it get anything than great word of mouth?"

Then, in the last thirty minutes or so I was like: "Oh, I *get* it now". For the record I enjoyed the film overall, but the climax is so protracted and overblown in actions and emotions, so filled of dramatic moments, ticking countdowns, whooshing missiles, astonished crowds, moving reunions, tearful realizations and heroic gestures, that I ended up exhausted.

I had flashbacks of Neill Blomkamp's Elysium, another sci-fi movie which started out fine and relatively grounded but collapsed in the high-strung climax.

Say what you want of Edwards but his visual eye is phenomenal. For a relatively (for a major Hollywood production!) modest budget of 80 million dollars, The Creator looks amazing and blows most high-budget blockbusters out of the water in terms of visuals.

The world of the movie feels alive and tactile, from tropical towns under a night sky flashing with an approaching storm to a cyberpunk futuristic city; the technology looks sleek but believably lived-in.

Overall, I would recommend this to sci-fi fans for the visuals and the excellent first and middle acts. Please give Edwards another Tony Gilroy script for Star Wars, as his Rogue One remains by far the best thing done by Disney in the franchise and The Creator is another proof that Edwards has the perfect eye for this kind of movies.

Ridley Scott directed one of the best movies ever made set during the Napoleonic Wars: unfortunately, that movie is not Napoleon but his cinematic debut, The Duellists, forty years ago.

Unsurprisingly, The Duellists had a strong source material (it was based on a novel by Joseph Conrad which it often followed almost verbatim), while Napoleon has an uneven screenplay by David Scarpa.

Even past the age of eighty Sir Ridley can still shoot pretty and energetic pictures but his hits and misses depend on the scripts he picks, and he hasn't always shown the best discernment.

The elephant in the room is the large amount of historical inaccuracies. Even as a history buff I can forgive many of those: cutting or simplifying events for the sake of narrative, or even some overdramatization like the meeting between Napoleon and Wellington (it never happened) or Napoleon being present at Marie Antoinette's execution (he wasn't); however, stuff like Napoleon charging with his troops at Waterloo is absolute cringe, a kid's (or a lout's) idea of history.

Still, the big problems here are characterization and pacing.

The movie is a demythologization (some would say emasculation) of Napoleon. If you want to take this route then fair enough, but the character here fails to be consistent. I can buy a Napoleon who is an egomaniac and an overrated tactician (like in Tolstoy's War and Peace). I do not buy one who is an anxious, insecure, uncharismatic cold fish but also a stern tactical genius and an effective leader of men, one who flees from Egypt because Josephine is unfaithful but is also an unflappable military mastermind.

Phoenix is a great actor and does what he can but the two sides of the character just don't gel with each other. You can't have parodic moments like Napoleon rolling down the stairs during his coup against the Directory, despondently pouting as he waits for the rain to stop at Waterloo or awkwardly climbing on a box to stand face to face with a pharaoh's mummy (with his diminutive stature becoming a not-too-subtle metaphor of his overall mediocrity)... AND THEN have him magnetically charm the French soldiers into obedience after the Elba. This gawky Napoleon would have been shot to pieces there.

The other problem is pacing. A single movie about the whole life of Napoleon is in itself absurd, like making "a movie about World War 2". There is material in Napoleon's life for a VERY dense miniseries (which Steven Spielberg is reportedly planning).

Napoleon's first wife Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) plays a huge role here but I would argue the movie has either too little or way too much of her. This needed to be either focused mostly on Napoleon's personal life or to drastically reduce the (fairly repetitive after a while) moments where Napoleon is obsessed with his wife.

As it is now, it tries to tell - but rushes through - twenty very eventful years of European history and yet devotes more time to Napoleon visiting Josephine after their divorce than to his Russian campaign.

It's like making a D-Day movie which keeps cutting back and forth from the Normandy landings to Hitler spending time with Eva Braun. You can have either The Longest Day or Der Untergang, not both.

Still, it's not worthless. There are some interesting moments and set-pieces and, while Phoenix is saddled with a contradictory character, Kirby at least is excellent.

6/10.

The Jagged Alliance series was known for its addictive turn-based combat and punchy sense of humor, as the mercenaries hired by the player, each with different skills and personality, interacted and clashed with each other.

Jagged Alliance 3 is a suprisingly fine sequel; combat encounters are interesting, with hand-crafted maps and a good use of verticality.

The characters trade snappy banter like in the good old days as they fight their way through a fictional state threatened by a powerful enemy organization, the "Legion".

You get to assemble your squad and pick the characters you prefer, both in terms of in-game personality and of skills/specializations (sniper, doctor, explosive expert...), with many choices and combinations.

There are a few issues. The most wrong-headed choice is how enemies get to reposition themselves after your first attack, as it nerfs ambushes in an unwelcome way - basically, you fire the first shot then everyone gets a free turn to scuttle under cover. I get why the devs did it - they did not want five-six enemies dead before combat even started if the player made the right moves - but this feels deeply unsatisfying.

I also despise the way shops work in the game: there is no menu, you just click on different piles of ware to buy stuff. It's ugly, clunky and I cannot see in this day and age any reason not to have a proper store interface.

Finally, the mercenaries' contracts expire way too soon (a maximum of 14 days): once you have a medium-sized group you'll be clicking "renew contract" buttons nearly every in-game day. It's about as fun as real-life middle-management. Let me renew for six months paying a small fortune (if I want it and I can afford it) instead of enduring this boring routine.

Overall, though, a pleasant suprise. The combat in particular scratches my turn-based itch.

8/10.

In The Monkey's Paw (spoilers for a 100 years old horror classic, I guess), the protagonists, after the death of a loved one, use a cursed artifact to bring him back, only to find a shambling undead monstrosity knocking at their door.

Being a movie nerd in these days is a similar experience: the franchises you loved as a kid keep coming back, and for a while, maybe after a decent trailer, you are happy and optimistic... but then you see them and regret their return.

In fact, Hollywood just can't let a beloved series end at the right moment. Alien should have ended with Aliens, and it got a diarrhea of terrible sequels, prequels and spin-offs; Terminator with T2, and I've lost count of the reboots; Star Wars with Return of the Jedi, and it got the awful sequels (I'm giving the prequels a pass because they at least tried to tell an interesting story)...

... and, of course, Indiana Jones should have ended with The Last Crusade. It would have been an amazing trilogy (I have my issues with Temple of Doom but oh boys, is it looking better in retrospect), and now it has not one but two pointless sequels.

So, is this one better or worse than Skull? I'd say more or less on par: not terrible and unwatchable but clunky and mediocre.

Ford was my favorite actor as a kid ("Imagine being both Indy and Han Solo!"), and he gives it all here, but the sad truth is, he was already too old in Skull, and that was 15 years ago.

Mangold is a solid director but Indy movies live and die on the strength of their set-pieces, and he isn't prime Steven Spielberg. Then again, who is? Not even Spielberg himself nowadays, since the set-pieces in Skull already sucked.

Mangold keeps the camera too close so we do not get the geography of the action; his set-pieces are all momentum and no triumphant release. See the scene with the underwater relic and the eels, a cool premise which peters out into nothing. Also, the protagonists (especially Indy) rarely if ever do anything COOL to resolve the action - a crack of the whip, a last-second dive: they are just there, ping-ponging between different obstacles.

Story construction is bloated, with pointless characters (the governative agents, the Moroccan mobster), setups without payoffs ("continental drift") and endless tedious exposition: a scene with Waller-Bridge (moderately less annoying than I was expecting, but it was a low bar) smugly decrypting a tablet with a clue feels like the longest ten hours I've ever spent in a movie theater.

Here's a hint, scriptwriters: characters dealing with treasure hunt clues is only interesting if we, the audience, can also SEE the clue and GUESS the possible answer. Otherwise, it's like watching someone on the bus mumble as he does his Sudoku, and you can't even peek over his shoulder.

Dial of Destiny takes a weird turn in the last act and I sort of wish they had embraced the sheer cheesiness of it. I enjoyed a couple of scenes (the prologue is decent enough), but, if you absolutely need a good Indy sequel, play the old adventure game The Fate of Atlantis.

5/10.

Bannerlord is an action/adventure sandbox RPG where the player creates his/her own character in the medieval-like setting of Calradia.

The game has plenty to offer: battles and sieges, joining one of the several factions (each inspired by real-life historical cultures es. Vikings, Arabs and so on), finding a suitable spouse to have heirs, trading goods, managing your fiefs, and so on. The fight system is a lot of fun (first or third person view, as you prefer), specializing in mounted or unmounted combat, melee or ranged weapons...

There is also a very interesting option, which I recommend, where the main character (and his friends and family too) can die in battle or eventually of old age and the player takes control of the heir (if there is one) and can continue playing with the next generation.

Bannerlord is entertaining in the early-middle phases of the game, where the player is growing in skills and reputation, acquiring companions with different abilities, crafting weapons (smithing is overpowered to be honest, but I still love it) and climbing the ranks of a faction: you can even become king... which unfortunately is less fun than it sounds like.

Yeah, about that...

Unfortunately, the late game becomes a slog of endless warfare, as you cannot play for more than five minutes without other factions declaring war on yours; if you win, give it other five minutes and another conflict will start. Basically, the game I love disappears in a tedious grind where you have to micromanage wars, often on multiple fronts (some started by your own idiot allies), while having little-to-no control on your side's armies except one (your own), even if you have become king. Also, the algorithm to decide "who is winning" (and thus will have to pay tributes at the end) is dubious to say the least - you can win all the battles, have the enemy king and all his retinue in captivity, but if the enemy raided more settlements than you did (we are talking peasant villages, not capital cities), you are the one who "is losing". Wait, what? Oh, look, my vassals are voting to open the third war front at the same time.

It's like herding cats, if cats where medieval bannermen with an incessant war lust; if the in-battle tactics are fine, the war strategy needs a serious overhaul - your vassals will wander around with their men and keep losing the settlements you conquered, only to clamor for more wars a minute later. How I longed for a "Hold this castle with your troops or I'll cut your head off!" button. As a king you can overrule your vassals if you find a way to "farm" influence points, but you still have the wars started by the enemy factions to bore you.

In fact, in my last playthrough I had more fun as a soldier of fortune with his own mercenary company (which you can do, as a testament to the game's vast possibilities) and no fixed faction than I had as a king earlier. At least you are not forced to fight someone every couple of minutes unless you choose to.

There is potential here for a phenomenal game but, although it was finally released after much waiting, some issues still need to be ironed out. Also, the lack of co-op multiplayer campaign mode is a shame - there is a multiplayer but it's just battles (and why no commander battles against a friend like in Warband?). I still recommend Bannerlord, though.

I will say this for Colin Trevorrow: unlike other Hollywood writers/directors, who seem to be actively spiteful towards the classic sagas they are writing sequels to, when Trevorrow says he is a fan of Jurassic Park, I believe him.

That's why Jurassic World Dominion feels, for good and for ill, like the world's most expensive fan film, cramming in nearly every dinosaur known to man and every character, meme and in-joke from the previous five movies (button up your shirt, Malcom! Get your hat, Grant! Oh look, Nedry's old Barbasol can!).

I'm betting that if the great Pete Postlethwaite had not passed away we would have gotten Roland Tembo rappelling from a helicopter to shoot an Oviraptor in the face.

The movie is at least twenty minutes too long - Hollywood seems incapable to make a non-bloated blockbuster today, even Bond movies have the running time of The Thin Red Line - and it doesn't have a shred of the wit and intelligence of my beloved first Jurassic Park, but I did like a few set-pieces (the Therizinosaurus, the frozen lake...) and it's always nice to see the awesome Sam Neill back, so I guess the fan bait worked to an extent.

6/10.

Two little nits to pick. One, this has the usual, fantastic split-screen coop mode of Lego games, but no online multiplayer (as usual, but still).

Two, it has LOTS of Star Wars characters to choose from (we are talking hundreds), but no character customization to create your Jedi/Sith/scoundrel and roam around the galaxy (kind of lousy, since other Star Wars Lego games had it).

Having gotten those complaints out of the way, the game is charming and well-done, a humorous re-telling of the nine movies (playable out of order if you like) with the really fun free-roam mode, which allows the player to visit all the locations unlocked in the game to explore planets, complete non-story missions and search for collectibles.

It's weird that the one Star Wars game including some kind of open world sandbox with over 20 planets to visit, space battles when you travel from a place to another and different character classes with unique gameplay... is a Lego game.

Really says something about how sadly underused the license has been in the last years. I mean, I liked Fallen Order, Squadrons and the Battlefront games, but where's the Star Wars equivalent of Skyrim?

Still, this scratches that itch to a little, brick-y extent. A nice game, crafted with passion and care.

1) This is a pretty solid adaptation, well-shot and acted, although most changes from the source material are for the worse, and I am no purist.

2) We get an origin story for Poirot's moustache during World War One (!).

3) I still prefer Ustinov's and Suchet's versions of Poirot over Branagh's.

4) The modern tendency to "humanize" archetypal characters (see also James Bond), with a tragic backstory, a lost love and so on, ends up weakening them compared to their simpler, more effective versions. Poirot does not need to weep, lament his immortal beloved or point a gun at the suspect with trembling hands. By giving the Belgian detective a sassy love interest who makes him stutter you are not giving him more depth, you are making him more generic.

5) Gal Gadot is hot, Emma Mackey is hotter and the sadly underused Rose Leslie is fire.

6) I love Agatha's books but man do her killers have some crappy plans relying on a string of good luck, coincidences and involuntary collaboration of bystanders.

7) Water is not wet.

6,5/10.

This Rashomon-inspired narrative about a medieval rape charge culminating in a trial-by-combat is well-shot (Scott is 84 but still a master of the craft), compelling, featuring fine performances.

The stand-out is Jodie Comer: after stealing the show in Killing Eve as a quirky killer, she continues her journey to super-stardom and deserves an Academy Award Nomination for this.

A couple of scenes require the viewer's stomach to be lined with lead, but it's worth watching if you appreciate grim historical dramas and a clever, subtle approach to multiple / unreliable points of view structure.

7/10.

When I first heard of this and saw the trailers I was doubtful, as I feared a weird, garish mess.

How wrong I was. This dark fantasy tale is a re-telling of the Arthurian myth of Gawain and the Green Knight - it's *weird*, but in a good way.

A simple yet powerful story of a man finding the courage to face his doom, the film boasts great visuals, a haunting score and excellent acting: Harris and Ineson are unsurprisingly fine as the King and the Green Knight, and Dev Patel carries the movie with a strong lead performance.

And the open ending is brilliant and memorable.

This will become a cult classic... hopefully.

7,5/10.

No Time To Die is visceral, well-crafted... but also overlong and self-indulgent. Craig is solid as usual (and gets more witty lines this time around) but the real star is director Fukunaga: this is one of the best-looking Bond movies ever in terms of atmosphere, shot composition, color palette, and so on.

Gorgeous, adorable Ana de Armas continues her journey to super-stardom, here in the (sadly) tiny role of Bond girl Paloma, whose scenes have a sense of fun most of the film is lacking.

In fact, I wish Bond had dumped weepy drama queen Madeleine for Paloma. No disrespect to Seydoux, who is fine, but her character exemplifies my pet peeve about Craig's Bond era: every element needs to be overly emotional, with a tragic backstory and a crucial impact on Bond. It seems Craig's Bond can't go to the bathroom without meeting the love of his life or making a life-changing decision. Just give me Connery shooting a bad guy with a pen gun and a cheesy one-liner.

And YES, I've read the Fleming novels and I know the first, quip-delivering movie Bond was not an accurate representation either, but this is too far on the other end of the spectrum. It seems Craig's Bond can't have an "ordinary" mission and a casual relationship, everything has to come with three spoonfuls of drama. I'm almost thankful this era is over, so that I never have to see Bond soulfully ruminating over Vesper Lynd ever again. James, dude, we all have a crush on Eva Green, but enough is enough.

My biggest problem with No Time To Die? It's bloated. My heart sank when, two hours into the movie, I realized we were still in the second act (which has to be the longest and slowest of any Bond film) and there were still 45 minutes to go. No Bond movie should have a running length nearly equal to The Thin Red Line.

6/10.

Although a former Mass Effect fan (especially of 1&2), I skipped Andromeda at its release. The game was received as well as a new COVID-19 wave, with scornful memes, reports of ghastly bugs, video montages of dreadful animations and embarrassing scenes; to be fair, the Mass Effect 3 ending had also poisoned the well for many. Last year, during lockdown, I finally tried it.

The bad:

• For a game about space exploration, this is stunningly unimaginative in terms of worldbuilding, planets (desert planet, ice planet...) AND creatures (TWO new races compared to the fifteen or so introduced in the main series);
• The bad guys are generic space orcs and their leader (the Archon) is the weakest BioWare villain ever;
• While writing is decent by videogame standards, some dialogues are clunky and badly in need of a new draft.

The so-so:

• Party members, BioWare's secret sauce, are... okay. They are mostly a bunch of likable characters, although none of them is a classic BioWare companion like Garrus, HK-47, Mordin, Bastila, Wrex, Morrigan, Jolee Bindo, Legion, and the list goes on. A few of them are too blatantly a retread of previous ones - take Drack, who is fine but essentially Wrex 1.2.

• There is a lot of content here, although much of it (like in Dragon Age: Inquisition) is typical open-world busywork, following the philosophy that if a quest is worth doing once (say, activate an alien beacon), it's also worth doing many times again and again with minimal variations.

The good:

• The premise was a clever way of getting around the Mass Effect 3 ending, which seemingly nuked the chance of a direct sequel with vastly different (and mostly nonsensical) possible outcomes to its infamous final choice;
• The combat is fast, energetic, the best seen so far in the series;
• Ground exploration with the "Nomad" vehicle is also the best Mass Effect has to offer;
• After years of patches, bugs and facial animations appear to have been mostly fixed.

This is the polar opposite of the first Mass Effect, which had the best world-building, writing and lore but also the worst combat in the series; the second had okay combat, amazing companion quests but a so-so main plot, and the third some of the best moment in the series (the Genophage), but was also very linear and with a dreadful ending.

Considerably lowered expectations helped me enjoy Andromeda, although it feels like a missed opportunity.

As a history buff who wishes there were more World War One movies, this was right up my alley - and what a great piece of filmmaking it turned out to be.

The premise is brilliantly simple and effective in its urgency: two British soldiers have to reach another battalion and call off a doomed attack. Performances are effective: the relatively unknown leads bring sincerity and intensity to their roles, supported by a cast of veterans (Colin Firth, Mark Strong...) with short but memorable appearances.

Technically, 1917 is a marvel: director Sam Mendes and legendary director of photography Roger Deakins really achieved something remarkable. The movie appears to be filmed in an unbroken single take (actually with innumerable perfectly hidden edits), but it never feels gimmicky or distracting.

The level of tension is phenomenal.

8,5/10