Nej Hrib

Underrated by critics and overrated by audiences, Hot Summer Nights is a heady coming-of-age romance cross drug-dealer film with unlikely circumstances, a sleazy rags to riches drug theme, and an over-reliance on soundtrack to drive emotion. A fun escape except for the particularly grim ending.

Production quality and star power aside, Juror #2 is another engaging Eastwood-directed film, but suffers with stiff acting from secondary characters, and a painfully smug pregnant partner.

The Abandon is a budget one-room military sci-fi with a respectable production and performance, even if the story is not as intriguing as it would like to be.

It's blaringly obvious that the score is the driving force in Contempt. The film has a number of other things going for it, but the frustrating philosophising and mired dialogue is a bit of a chore. Beautiful colours. Lots of red, yellow and blue. You have to love a classic tragedy-romance in a vacation setting. The problem is that the central premise is exceedingly simple, once it is finally divulged, and is followed by an unlikely and bizarre turn of events at the end.

It's a fine documentary. More interesting if you are concerned with gender identity challenges in the context of skateboarding. Personally I don't care who people want to be, or be with. Skateboarding is for everyone. But I guess this is part of that story.

Whatever is going on in this film, it's dull and pales in comparison to the original. Even the mere casting of its protagonist was a bad call.

An addictive show. Thrilling, humourous, sentimental, 'patriotic'. It is, though, laughable how the Costner's main character is treated in the end, with all the other characters acting almost like nothing happened. The threads may be starting to unravel. Beth has been grating for a long time. It's still good.

Coppola seems to be in denial, considering his response to critics. It was off to a bad start with the narration. There's a lot going on but nothing seems to happen. Whoever decided Adam Driver should lead major motion pictures should be fired. Aubrey Plaza also should not have made it past the small screen, and Nathalie Emmanuel is a major snooze. It's a kind of pastiche but hard to put a finger on. Perhaps a trashy cross between Fellini and Luhrmann. Slapping an ancient Rome theme onto modern New York City just doesn't seem creative, even when the film is constantly trying to prove its creativity. One positive is that, in the right state of mind, you can let it roll in the background and flow with it. The problem is you can't fool yourself that it's actually engaging or worthwhile.

A gripping series that suffers with some lulls but is redeemed by a number of sublime moments and Colin Farrell's consistently mind-blowing character and performance.

Over-sentimental, with no redeeming dialogue or unexpected turns beyond its simplistic, idealised long-distance childhood fantasy romance. A typical boy-obsessed-with-girl story, wherein the woman magically becomes a successful writer in New York and winds up with an insecure white guy, while the Korean man sees her every 12 years with his autistic-like social skills. Still, the film provides some laughs, watching it with someone and picking out the tropes.