Detroit

Kathryn Bigelow got her groove back since her sycophantic "Zero Dark Thirty." The movie is well made and instilled with documentary and mock documentary parts. "The Game of Thrones", as always, appears as a star-making factory (Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey, Sophie Turner and now, Hannah Murray).

Valerian

Luc Besson dedicated Valerian to his father. Unless his father would appreciate his son's ability to undress a large number of models, among them some top-bracket and at least one supermodel (Kara Delevigne) and also Rihanna, there is little in the movie, which can make his dad proud. But, as an experience of the Mad Max demonstrates, that it now takes very little besides special effects to impress modern audiences. But Valerian failed even in that. Characteristically, on imdb, there are few stills of movie itself but plenty of photos from post-film party events.

Baby driver

Excessively high ratings of the "Baby Driver" (90%+ on Rotten Tomatoes) cannot be explained rationally. The movie is a well-made but formulaic thriller (unless one excludes illogical last-minute conversion of Kevin Spacey into a sentimental pussy). The movie has certain coincidences with imperfect but rather brilliant and totally unnoticed "Trance", which also had much better acting work by Vincent Cassel and Rosario Dawson (2013), in particular the finale with destruction of the chief villain (Jon Hamm/VC) with a falling car. Anglo "Princess" Lily James is miscast--though not terribly--as a waitress with a deep Southern accent. Obviously, the joy of seeing indestructible Mad Man smashing the cars and firing an array of handheld weapons and the adulation by preteen girls of the male star Ansel Elgort outweighs everything.

The Book of Henry

The movie is not a masterpiece; but it is solid piece of cinematic work acted wonderfully by Naomi Watts and Jaeden Lieberher with a cameo by indomitable but stereotypical Sarah Silverman. Its pathetically low ratings on rottentomatoes reflect the stupidity of groupthink (an oxymoron) of a modern critical blogosphere. The movie must have some of the three components of movie success: gay rights--especially in Chechnya but (G-d forbid!) not in Saudi Arabia or emirates, racial, gender and/or confessional equality--especially for Muslims--and racist attacks on the Russians sometimes totally unrelated to the plot to get high ratings these days (Mars, Bridge of Spies, Gravity). Because "The Book of Henry" touches none of these issues, in the view of American critical universe it falls flat.

Origins: The Journey of the Humankind.

Because too much excitement is prohibited for us the senile loons, we are left with a few options (see the "Young Pope" review), NG is among them. "The Origins" is a brilliant concept, which is pitifully executed. The series are scientifically shallow and jingoistic politically; all human progress since antiquity is attributed to the Americans. In a politically correct fashion, even the plate
tectonics (discovered by A. Wegener, a German) is credited to an obscure American geologist who shamed that "frenchy" Cousteau.

Paolo Sorrentino. The Young Pope.

Superb series by Paolo Sorrentino got high marks on rottentomatoes.com but not nearly as high as usual political correctness movies. In the first series, there were no cliches at all.  Our nurse Ratched forbade us to see the last series and the people told me that they were going from impeccable to just weird. Overall low marks, probably, happened because of the already mentioned inability of American critics' milieu to analyze imperfect heroes and plots without clear delineation of good and evil. They simply cannot imagine good people without character or much personality, villains without obvious vulnerabilities and trauma, but above all, that the most people are neither saints not hobs but somewhere in between. They also could not digest, for instance, that a conniving, spiteful and liberal Cardinal Caltanissetta is genuinely concerned about well-being of the Catholic Church, while a serious and conservative Cardinal Spencer is a power-hungry alcoholic. My only regret is that Torrentino killed Cardinal Dussolier and exiled Diane Keaton too early in the series to sustain the tension of the plot.

Silence, by Scorsese

Scorsese is one of the two most overrated filmmakers in the world. Spielberg is the second, but he assured his place in the history of film by completely changing the nature of blockbuster. Before Spielberg blockbusters ("Lawrence of Arabia", "Cleopatra", "War and Peace") were based on their cinematic strength. After Spielberg and Lucas they are based on the cult following, which happens after the movie has been released and seen by the public, selling of toys, character dolls, cosplay and other emblems of the movie having no particular relationship to the plot or the movie imagery.

The movie has a stunning cinematography (though only showing that Scorsese took the lessons of Kurosawa close to heart) but it is psychologically primitive and cliched. Particularly disappointing is a poorly explained transformation of the zealous missionary into the persecutor of Christianity after he performed the act of apostasy. Much more logical would be him demanding his own execution after the prisoners have been released and perishing in a futile struggle when his request was denied.

A Monster Calls

This is how movies have to be done. Borrows freely from "Pan's Labyrinth" but is much better grounded, psychologically and metaphorically.

La La Land

The chorus of critics predicting the movie a flurry of the Golden Globes to the "La La Land" demonstrates how low the audience of the Hollywood movies has fallen. Not that the moviemakers cannot produce a fairly good fare anymore. The genial "Moonrise Kingdom" and very strong thriller "Drop" and "Hunt for the Wilderpeople" (eccentric tragicomedy) testify to the continuing strength of the movie industry. But it cannot exist without a sophisticated ecosystem of critics, promoters and moviegoing public. And in that department we are sorely lacking. Even traditional Hollywood know-how of the group dances--otherwise uneven "Hail Caesar" shows how to do it--is lame and is performed by a semi-amateur or haphazardly assembled crew.