In a world full of unwanted sequels, The Peanuts Movie makes you yearn for more movies of its universe. A lot of present adults grew up in the world of Peanuts, it’s about time the torch was handed over to the today’s kids.

Ultimately as a demo for showing Hardy’s range on screen, Legend is a fairly good attempt but as a gangster epic this is neither fun nor deeply nuanced. A far more capable filmmaker could have made this film live up to its title.

In the Heart of the Sea is exactly the kind of sentimental populist Hollywoodised claptrap that Howard is famous for and most of it grates more than entertains. After Life of Pi, which so beautifully established the metaphor for cannibalism on a stowaway raft, and the first act of Unbroken which captured a true story of being cast away at sea and then becoming a prisoner of war, In the Heart of the Sea seems like an unnecessary add on to an already consumed meal.

The film works best in the scenes without any dialogue – the visuals are so powerful they either warm your hearts or bring some onions close to your eyes, and sometimes both. Dialogue was not needed in any scene. Had this been a totally silent film it would have become a real masterpiece. For now, this is merely a really good film that everyone should go and watch to have a good time.

There’s a layer of meta in the film as well; Creed is unwilling to take on his father’s surname, and this film in unwilling to take Rocky’s name to promote itself – this is Creed’s film and will be recognized as such, rather than ‘just another Rocky sequel’.
It doesn’t reach the iconic triumphant running scene from Rocky but it almost gets there, and leaves you pumped by the time you leave the theater.

The special effects are fine, but never surprising. By now the dystopia of the universe depicted in the movie has become old hat. So when there’s nothing new to look at it becomes easier to spot the shoddy CGI in some of the scenes. It’s not entirely clear if the Young Adult audiences will show up in droves to watch the film – the falling box office numbers of all the films of this genre indicate the genre has reached a saturation point. It’s up to the finale of The Maze Runner trilogy to turn things around, or at least end on a high.

Since Mendes already dealt with humanizing Bond in Skyfall, this time the filmmaker gives us the Bond from the Roger Moore era. Which means everything that was ludicrous and over the top in Bond movies makes a grand return in Spectre.

…ultimately is more an annoyance than a grand series finale. It neither ups the stakes nor does it offer anything new or interesting to take away from the franchise. The Saw series at least had a schlocky punch in the final movie, this one ends on a mere belly flop.

Most films often portray the process of making food as a romanticized procedure, and we’re always told how cooking can make on intrinsically happy. So it’s fascinating to see people in the restaurant work in furious technique. If the rest of the film had the same nervous energy and pace of these sequences, it would have been far more watchable.

Hollywood still hasn’t figured out that a fantasy film needs some genuine scares to keep things interesting – excessive CGI doesn’t really cut it nowadays, and FX as unimpressive as the ones in this movie signal a disaster. In the 90’s this film would probably have been a semi hit, in 2015 The Last Witch Hunter is so unimaginative, it digs its own grave.