Crimson Peak (2015)

The poster of this is totally inappropriate. Too much black, too much red ... Seriously, might make you think this is a horror. "Surprisingly" IMDb tells us the same. Fortunately it adds besides "drama + fantasy". Up to half of the movie you might be in doubt. Hmmm, looks like trying for a horror ... there's some drama too ... (don't know what the IMDb editor drank to put fantasy on the list, but well ..). Slowly though, the confusion fades away. The "scary" scenes are one, repeated in various chromatic (actually .. red and black, wait .. I start to get why the poster is using these). More important though, you start noticing that the lack of logic in the script and the over-theatrical acting is not an attempt for a gothic-victorian "hippie" feel of "let's forget the real and dream a bit" ... Nope, it's not intended. Because if it was there should've been an extra genre in the IMDb list: comedy.

So, what do we have here: a blonde girl attempting some literary career, daughter of an industry magnate. Bored by her life she's falling for an English baronet (without fortune) after he's complimenting her last novel manuscript in the 2nd second (measured on the clock) after looking through her wonderful writing. Love story. Daddy doesn't agree. The guy + his sister (especially his sister) seem suspicious. For everybody minus the blonde. Broken heart. The same for the father's head in an unfortunate "accident". Mourning. Marriage. Emigrating to England with the baronet. Haunted mansion (with a big hole in the roof). We find out "the mystery". Actually we already did a while ago, if we have more the one neuron. The blonde finds out too. Well, there are some nuances = some ghosts in the mansion, the evil sister has some background in mental institutions, details on previous victims, and others. The final purpose is anyway the same: the blonde's money. But wait ... the romance ... oh, the romance ... It clouds so much the vision of the baronet that unbelievable .. he wants to save the blonde. So much that he stabs non-lethally on purpose the American doctor (a blond guy) who traveled across the ocean and through a British storm to save the girl. But not before telling him what's the path to run away with the blonde. Let's cut a bit the spoilers and jump to the end. A showdown a la "Shining" in the bloody snow (well ... not too bloody, the paint ran out until the end): "the innocent blonde" vs "the evil brunette" (this film is a good candidate for gender balance of killers in movies). Round 1: weapons - knife vs cleaver. Round 2: weapons - friendly ghost vs cleaver (if the knife didn't cut it ... no pun intended). Fatality move: the shovel. And the winner is ... You won't expect me to tell you everything won't you?.

Conclusion: As the poster says, or the first ghost (a sort of other worldly Nostradamus, warning the blonde since her childhood) - beware .. beware .. of "Crimson Peak".

Rating: 1 out of 5

Trailer: I said everything ... I'm not spending more time to look for it, really, it's dangerous ... you might be tempted to see this

Disclaimer: nothing personal against blondes, but I can't help it when the movie uses more or less intended/nuanced the typical stupid stereotypes

The Walk (2015)

If you've seen "Man on Wire", a very trendy documentary several years ago, you know what to expect in "The Walk". A biopic about the wire crossing of the twin towers in New York done in 1974. Author: Philippe Petit, a French guy with some experience in "the field" and lots of guts to try it out. I don't have time to write, so I'm sorry but I'm gonna stick to the essence of this: the story always seemed to me to be the perfect example of unjustified selfishness. Even just for the fact that the guy got into the whole illegal action a bunch of friends to help him do it. There's also the risk itself = to put your life at stake for the glory of a couple minutes show with an ad-hoc audience ... for me at least that's again a form of selfishness. The documentary I mentioned, very appreciated by the critics, made my opinion even stronger. The movie tough ... managed to achieve something that I wasn't expecting. To make me give a second thought about this. What if, when you try something crazy, you have somewhere a certain feeling that will work out ...

One last thing, checking out the current "peaks" in cinemas: Those towers might have been like 20 times shorter than Everest, but the movie is somewhere at 5 classes above ;) the 3D and all the rest ...

Rating: 4 out of 5

The Martian (2015)

I've been waiting since quite a while for a comeback of Ridley Scott. There are already 10 years since the last movie that had something to make me remember it, despite the not so positive reviews. I'm referring to "Kingdom of Heaven". Since then I've went through "American Gangster", "Body of Lies", "Robin Hood", "Prometheus", "The Counselor". In the order of release. Do you see the trend? Well, there's "A Good Year" and "Exodus" that I missed, so maybe we can't generalize. Well ... surprise! ... The downhill slope is broken (though, to be fair it's hard to get below "The Counselor" with an 8+ figures budget). So, is it a comeback? ...

I say it's not. No comeback. Yup, the movie is ok .. Probably we're somewhere back at the level of "Body of Lies" in the list above (not that it's really comparable). But from here to the astronomic ratings this movie gets these days... I see a long path to walk. The subject of a stranded astronaut on Mars is catchy, as any type of Robinson Crusoe would be. What puzzles me though is that it seems so catchy that the exaggerated ratio of the Fi in SciFi gets unnoticed. A Robinson Crusoe stays a Robinson Crusoe wherever it might happen = I might expect some spectacular innovations when fighting for survival, but still not at the rate and success frequency that we're getting in "The Martian". You can say I'm not that optimistic, and maybe the technical documenting of the movie is good enough, but still the overall credibility it offers made me roll my eyes a bit too often. Even so ... at least we have a subject, compared to other trials in the genre, which were even more overrated ( guess which ... :) Sandra Bullock stars in it ;) )

Rating: 3 out of 5

Sicario (2015)

"Sicario" is the fourth movie I've seen directed by Denis Villeneuve. After "Prisoners", "Enemy" and "Incendies". So my expectantions were high. As production level it doesn't disappoint. About the story, oh well ... the story ...

The story is so predictable that it contrasts about this even with "Enemy" from the above, not to mention "Prisoners" and "Incendies" where there are final twists. A mysterious guy with South-American origins is introduced in the beginning of the movie as collaborator of a task force assigned with surveying the a Mexican cartel trafficking drugs at the U.S. border. The movie is called "Sicario" - the assassin, and the meaning of the term given in the first 10 seconds makes that everything that follows to come up very clearly. You can see from a mile that our guy has his own personal vendetta. Yes, you're given bits and pieces of info during the movie about the reasons for that and his connections with the case, but nothing to produce the "wow" we had in the other pictures. Overall the story is decent, but doesn't rise above an ok action movie. So if you're expecting final twists, or something out of the ordinary to come up, forget it ...

The directing is, however, at the same quality level as we've seen before. A build-up that's again probably a bit too slow, but where you have an uneasy tension kept constant. It's that grim feeling that something bad will happen ... Which seems to become a trademark for Villeneuve that gets better with every new movie, although here seems a bit lighter than the rest. And the cinematography (Roger Deakins) comes as the perfect support for this as well as the soundtrack (Johann Johannsson). I can bet that Deakins will score another nomination at next year's Oscars. Probably that's the best part of the movie, and if you like innuendo-s or fine allusions obtained through visual metaphot, then probably it's worth to watch "Sicario" more than once. Even though pretty much all the frames that carry some extra meaning have this related to the idea that "life is desolate and dark, people are evil & death is near the corner". The shadows are, however, so nicely shot that you cannot get bored with what you see.

Thinking back now, it comes to my mind something quite close to the topic that I've seen during the last year: "Snitch". A story based apparently on real facts, almost unbelievable considering that, and clearly more complex than what we have here. Too bad that the production level there = directing, sound, cinematography, is average. I'm wondering... what if we would have had the "Snitch" story in "Sicario", or the crew of "Sicario" working on "Snitch" ...

Rating: 4 out of 5