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Reviews
Beast (2017)
Fades away with every minute
The first part of the film sets up a tense atmosphere by keeping the main characters under a mysterious light. It appears that something great is about to be revealed. But as the time passes, it is clear that this movie wants to be something it is not. There are no surprises, no shock value, and no unexpected turns. The actors do their best to save the underwhelming narrative, but they can only do so much.
Beast feels like an overproduced student film that doesn't have anything new to offer.
Tadeo Jones 2: El secreto del Rey Midas (2017)
An ambitious adventure
Considering the fact that this movie cost only ~9 million euros, Lightbox Animation Studios did a terrific job. Characters are developed with tremendous passion and the charm of Momia could rival even Pixar productions. The story is full of warmth and emotion, while the romance sub-plot has the right balance of superficiality and drama. There is not much depth, but it's expected for an U rated movie.
However, while the main characters are animated with love, the environment feels too empty and unpopulated. Even though the car chase scenes take place in the middle of the day, there are barely any visual dynamics in the background, e.g. people. At times, the movement of distant objects/characters looked quite wonky and unrealistic, breaking the immersion of the scenes.
Overall, Tad 2 is a decent movie for the younger audience.
Molly's Game (2017)
A movie without harmony
Molly's Game feels like a movie without the center of gravity. It tries to carry itself on overanalysed, emotionally insignificant environmental details. Methodologically explained poker games are captivating the first few times, but get incredibly dull and underwhelming in the second half of the movie, feeling like redundant content. The protagonist is unable to pull the overexplained and "all over the place" narrative into one harmonious puzzle. When at the end Molly and her father discuss the memories of the past, the movie attempts to have a significant emotional culmination but ends with nothing more but a shallow and uninspired moral of the story - check the path before you follow it.
I would give this movie two stars, but there are some solid performances (especially from Idris Elba). Therefore my score is 4.