Lima

I'm not really into Saleka Shyamalan's shallow pop for teenage girls, but who I absolutely enjoyed was the fan-tas-tic Josh Hartnett. Every look he gave, every twitch of his face, was completely telling of the momentary situation he was in. Great performance. And M. Night Shyamalan proves once again what he's been strongest at his entire career. Namely, coming up with a completely original, unorthodox concept that he has always alternately managed to follow through with. And that's true here too. The first half, about the search for an exit from the encirclement, is a great piece of screenwriting, but unfortunately, after the twist in the middle and Lady Raven's involvement in the plot, it stopped being interesting. Firstly because of the haphazard logic and also because Shymalan's daughter simply doesn't have the acting skills to pull this off. But all things considered, after the terrible Glass, when I had already broken my stick over Shyamalan, I actually liked his last two films quite a bit beyond my expectations. It's not a return to the limelight, more like a light echo of his great beginnings.

A detective story of the absolutely classic old-fashioned style, like from Agatha Christie wrote, the kind our grandmothers loved and read before going to bed. At the end, when Maigret gathers the suspects around a table to uncover the villain, I smiled with satisfaction, this is exactly what my old-fashioned soul needed. Commissaire Maigret, or my favourite charismatic Jean Gabin, has swapped the darkened streets of Paris for the countryside, and he is just as good as he was in the previous film. That former was much more dynamic, with more "cinematic" camerawork, whereas the latter goes for explicit dialogue with more sedate shots, which the current younger generation may find unappealing, but I had a great time. It's completely pointless to compare this to Bruno Cremer (I like him too), as many others here do. Each took the role in a completely different way, and in the cinematic Maigret universe, the two complement each other perfectly.

Nowadays, good visual effects are more of a standard, not extraordinary as they were in the 90s, so the initial fascination is no longer there. Twister didn’t have many iconic shots (the flying cow), and when you remember it today, it feels “overdone”, so this film won't impress or surprise you with anything. And neither is the clichéd plot that brings nothing new and where you guess every scene ahead of time. The only saving grace is the central cast, who have a nice chemistry, although I have to say that I'm starting to get tired of Glen Powell's "wannabe sex appeal", and I've only seen him in three films so far. Maybe in his case it wouldn't hurt to try something different.