Marigold

Stick to your Gunn. It’s got a bit more balls and less heart than Guardians, the shotgun of gags is a little less polished, but DC finally has what it's been craving for years. A fun ride with pace and structure, where the characters don't look like a bunch of staged consumers of horse tranquilizers or hangers-on for crappy gags. Marvel should have guarded their gold better, but generally speaking, we all benefited from this. The Suicide Squad is a wild ride with an excellent last third and in which the charisma of Idris Elba and surprisingly Joel Kinnaman stand out. I say keep it up, though I honestly don't see how this fits into a universe that gave the world a lot of shit films.

It’s stiffly nice and it may take a little too much time to cut to the chase, but once it settles into its pleasantly adult and slightly surreal tone, it has moments of near-miraculousness. Pixar growing up is a good thing. It had a childishly playful core in its head, but this is more about adult creativity and the very personal theme of finding meaning and anchoring in the life that passes through the main character's hands. It's good that Pixar has abandoned the anthropomorphizing of nonsense for kids and started having a dialogue with parents in midlife crisis. God knows we need a caress like that more than our kids.

An enjoyable, if not revelatory "haunted house" gothic horror film, where the atmosphere of an old mansion is replaced by an old hospital and a mysterious ghost delivers a social and women empowerment message. It's not particularly virtuosic and refreshing like His House, but it kept me going in the dark with no problem.

Someday when the dictionary entry for "biggest film blunder" is written, there will be a photo of Zack Snyder. All the pompous slow-motion, the emotional ping-pong of hollow figures and the over-the-top brutality reveal the naked truth. The guy's a pure directorial dickhead. And although he can refocus like he has ADHD, he really can't hide the stupidity.

A decently directed procedural sci-fi with a simple premise and a bit too much of a cliffhanger ending. The film has a weaving monologue with the universe and a treatise on the importance of algae and humanity in extreme situations. According to the reviews, it's also a film that causes collective blindness.

Ineffective, poorly coherent, long but sparsely motivated, hollow in terms of the plot, and psychologically ridiculous. Basically, four hours of futile attempts to give the impression of something fateful by staring into the void, overusing slow motion, and commenting music. But there's no such thing here. The characters have no relationships with each other, and everything Snyder has added here versus the awful Whedon version is more masturbatory fanboy filler than any kind of substantial and creative storytelling. The DC universe feels like an epic sculpture, but once you kick it you realize it's not made of steel but plaster. It's a good thing there are legions of fanboys whose standards have been so dulled by a series of cinematic disasters that they bow down even to this false idol. Back to Marvel.

This was the best 3 hours and 37 minutes of schooling I've ever experienced in my life. This observational documentary may be heavy on the runtime, but the story of an old teacher who teaches different cultures to find a common ground is extremely accessible and kept me there with no trouble. Mr. Bachmann loves his class and you will love it too.

This "pub western" pitting a western star against an earthy eastern dude has potentially many layers (the relationship between West and East, gentrification, superficial glamour, loneliness), but Brühl, as director and protagonist, chooses the path of likable caricature. It's nice to look at, but it doesn't leave much of a mark on you, and Peter Kurth wins overwhelmingly in this shootout with his much more believable and nuanced acting. Ironically, the main star gets off too cheaply.

An elegant and beautiful, but in some ways too much of a chic drama, and it’s hypnotic enough and lacks a more electrifying connection between reality and dream. It comes across as a cute vision without any real depth or profundity. In fact, it passed me by in a roundabout way, which I see as a disappointment from the author of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, although the film itself is certainly no disappointment.

Paul went out of his comfort zone into the prairie, where life is a circle, and you have to remember that in order to move on. A simple but beautifully constructed story, told with fluid camera strokes, that you've heard a hundred times before, but that the Hanks-Zengel duo will want to hear again and again. The film is a quiet commentary on America's brokenness and the need for kindness and acceptance of difference. It may not have any dizzying depth, but it's certainly Greengrass' most personal, intimate and moving work, and its simple goodness made me believe at times that the world isn't messed up. Hats off and I love it.