Stanislaus

The first Shazam! was a pretty nice and unpretentious flick, but Fury of the Gods, unfortunately, flirts with moments of awkwardness for a noticeable part of its running time, offering a predictable and overly instructive story about the importance of family (and no, it's not another Fast and Furious). It also has reprehensibly overlong running time and, at times, rather poor CGI. Fury of the Gods wants to be fun and brisk, but it fails badly. In this case, I'm not so sorry that I didn't catch the film in the cinema and watched it in the end thanks to Netflix.

I'm definitely not a fan of spiders, but my curiosity lured me to the cinema to see Infested, as I have a bit of a thing for animal horror movies (about overgrown crocodiles, snakes, boars, sharks, etc.). Sébastien Vaniček's film impresses with a soundtrack I would have expected in a film about drugs or the mafia rather than deadly eight-legged creatures - though drugs are often mentioned. As far as the action-horror level is concerned, it works on the whole; here I would highlight especially the scene with the flashing corridor, which gave me solid goosebumps. But the overall experience is noticeably marred by the characters and their actions, it was really hard to root for them to escape the "web of death".

I thoroughly enjoyed Fury Road in the cinema nine years ago and, to be honest, I don't know if I've ever seen a more action-packed film. Furiosa raised great expectations in me precisely because of that cinematic experience and also because of the female lead. After watching it, I have to say that I was probably expecting a slightly different film, but I don't mean that in a negative way. Furiosa is again full of brisk action with imaginative choreography – this is especially dominated by the tanker chase scenes and the confrontation in the mine – and tries through a kind of "biblical plane" not to be just a pure action film. I was surprised to see Anya Taylor-Joy arrive on the scene relatively late, and I would fault the film for having too tidy an ending for my taste. Still, this is a high-quality audiovisual spectacle that would be a sin not to see on the big screen, where it certainly belongs.