The moment you see the Lionsgate logo on the screen, you know you’re gonna see a good thriller, some gore and some tits. Like 99.9% sure.

Gamer. Or as I call it, Counter-Strike: The Movie. In the first 5 minutes, I think I counted about 2417 shots fired. It gets easier on the brains after that, and it gets better on the other aspects: the story is decent, the cast is filled with well-known faces: Gerard Butler, Michael C. Hall, Kyra Sedgwick, Amber Valletta, Lucacris, John Leguizamo, John DeLancie, Terry Crews. I also loved Milo Ventimiglia as Rick Rape, that was unexpected.

It’s got nice colorful interludes from the “Society” LARP, nudity, gore, surrealist scenes and so on. Takes a swing at grindhouse B-movies and does it in style.

The story is not something exceptional, let’s say if Death Race is Need For Speed, then Gamer is Call of Duty. Nice effects, nice gritty scenery and a lot of blood splashing everywhere. I also liked the television broadcasts splices here and there, specific to the genre.

All in all, a fun watch.

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With its desaturated and high-contrast palette, Cypher is a good mind-bending, suspenseful, sci-fi spy movie. It looks like a modern film-noir, an increasingly bizarre trip in the world of industrial espionage. Good music, good story, good pacing, nicely acted.

Gosh, the last speech flew by.

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Set in the not-too-distant future, this intense sci-fi thriller explores the repercussions that mankind faces when their omniscient technology becomes a substitute for human contact. But life begin to unravel when a global storm causes electronics to go haywire, leading to terrifying, deadly consequences.

Your reality is already HALF video hallucination. If you’re not careful, it will become TOTAL hallucination. You’ll have to learn to live in a very strange new world.

Directed and written by David Cronenberg (The Fly, eXistenZ), this is a great thriller/horror following the head of a bizarre TV station who finds the broadcast signal of snuff films, and starts an adventure following the signal, losing touch with reality in a series of increasingly bizarre hallucinations.

It stars superstar James Woods,
Also, it stars playboy-bunny, Blondie-frontman Debbie Harry, which not only acts nice, but is also hot af.

The tone of the movie is ominous, has a few body-horror scenes, the directing keeps you under tension at most times, its techno-surrealism being only surpassed by the acting of the main actors. It is cryptic, weird, stomach-turning at some points, and it has a great mysterious and creepy soundtrack. Oh, and it has a lot of nudity. And a Hitler ballerina

It touches a lot of classic cyberpunk topics, as well as modern themes, like virtual reality, digital alter-ego, psycho-sexuality, and others.

Videodrome – the next phase in the evolution of man as a technological animal.

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This is the original West Side Story musical that won a whopping 10 Oscars at the 34th Academy Awards. The acting is excellent, the dancing is extraordinary.The songs are excellent and somehow, the story is more captivating than the remake. While the new version has better technology, better location designs, and some story and location changes, this movie still remains one of the best movies ever made, and it’s considered a classic, getting a ton of Oscars for “technical” features, like Best Score, Sound, Cinematography, Costume Design, Art Direction, Film Editing, along with the statues for best Supporting Actor and Actress, Best Director and Best Picture. All these while competing with other great classics like “The Guns of Navarrone”, “Judgment at Nuremberg”, “La Dolce Vita”, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, and many others.

I’m happy that I’ve seen the remake first, because I understand where the inspiration for that good movie came from.

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The story is nice, the costumes and the sets are beautifully designed. I haven’t seen a bad Spielberg movie, and this meets the expectations, even if this is a bit pretentious, as this is a musical. I haven’t yet seen the original movie, but everything is at the cutting edge: the singing, the choreographies, the songs, the performances. I’m not a lot into musicals, I don’t like many, but those I like, I really love. It’s not as strong as Luc Plamondon’s “Notre Dame de Paris”, Gérard Presgurvic’s “Roméo & Juliette: De la haine à l’amour” or “Les Miserables” (the one where Russell Crowe sings), but it’s very close to them.

The legendary EGOT-winner Rita Moreno returned to West Side Story and is playing the role of Valentina, a newly imagined character, the widow of the drugstore owner, “Doc,” in the original version. It was a nice touch, as I find her to have a very good role, story-wise.

The seven Oscar nominations are well deserved, Ariana DeBose managing a great performance, which might get her the statue in the same category that Rita Moreno won an Oscar 60 years ago, playing Anita in the original movie.

Regarding the set designs, Spielberg’s team really went all-in, putting to good use the technological advancements and the production budget of around $100 million, as opposed to the original budget of 6M (73M adjusted for inflation). However good it might be, this still feels like a remix, or an update, and that was seen in the box-office earnings (or lack of) which made this movie a financial bomb, barely making a third of its investment, while the original earned almost 8 times its budget. Different times, different tastes, I guess.

Great drama, great take on Shakespeare’s play, great music, totally worth seeing. 6 popcorns and 4 microphones (for the music).

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The story is well written, the cast is full of A-listers, playing very good roles, the humor is brilliant. The music and cinematography are excellent, as well.

A bit long for casual watching, at 2 and a half hours, but the time passed super fast, because the movie has a great pacing, the story is brilliant and it’s well acted. Do yourself a favor, look the movie up and see it. It’s worth it.

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The set design is beautiful, the costumes are excellent, the A-list actors are performing really great. Guillermo del Toro did a great job with this movie and nothing less was expected of this. It’s weird, it’s mysterious, and it glues you to the screen.

Besides the nominations for Best Picture, it has been nominated for best Production Design, Costumes and Cinematography. And it nails them all.

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Flee is a good documentary, a strong emotional story. If you don’t like indie slow-paced movies, this is definitely not for you. While I liked the story itself, I didn’t like the pacing that much. The music is nice though, the voice acting is okey, the animation is either love-or-hate, and it took a bit for the story to grasp me.

I liked the usage of animation to protect the identity of the protagonist, especially given his situation. I also like the mix with news snippets, archive footage, but some war archive videos are unpleasant, (including dead people), and it’s definitely not an animation for the little ones.

All in all, this is a good film about war, its horrors, and the scars it leaves on people, both physical and mental.

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The movie brings a bit of inside information about the Royal House and Diana’s Christmas holiday when she decided to end her marriage with Prince Charles. It’s a sometimes-surrealist descent into madness, showing the darker side of Diana’s story, about her mental issues and the struggle to be a part of the Royal family.

Here, there is only one tense. There is no future. The past and the present are the same thing.

It is slow-paced, but it makes up for it with beautiful scenery, good cinematography and excellent music. And Kristen Stewart, while still getting a ton of hate for her performances in the Twilight saga a decade ago, proves once again that she’s a good actress, and I found her just right for the role.

The movie could have been a bit more complex, but maybe that’s the screenwriter’s fault (Steven Knight - Locke, Serenity, Dirty Pretty Things)

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It’s got colours, it’s got dragons, it’s got mythology. Really nicely done, the jokes are well placed and the pacing is just perfect.

The voices are done by great voice actors, like Kelly Marie Tran (Star Wars), Gemma Chan (Humans), Awkwafina, Daniel Dae Kim (Lost), Dichen Lachman (Agents of SHIELD, Altered Carbon), Alan Tudyk (Firefly, Death at a Funeral), Sung Kang (Fast & Furios), and many others.

The music is also excellent, the story the same, and it’s not a mistake that it got nominated for best Animated Picture, because it has a strong chance of winning.

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Parallel Mothers is the story of two mothers, and the twisting connection that unites their lives. Penelope Cruz is excellent as always, the directing and storytelling of Pedro Almodóvar put her in a great light, making her worthy of the Oscar nomination she received.

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