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James Gunn has an incredible talent for creating chaos, humor, and a certain satirical tone, all while emotionally developing his characters. He proved this with great success in Guardians of the Galaxy, making him seem like the perfect choice to tell a colorful, pulp-inspired Superman story.

In this film, he achieves that partially. The chaos and humor are there, and so are the bright, comic-book colors. The worldbuilding stands out in particular-it's fantastic, feeling like it leapt straight from the pages of the comics. This is a sci-fi world extrapolated to its limits, one where Superman actually seems to belong in all its madness. This contrasts sharply with the more grounded, realistic visions of Nolan or Snyder, where Superman often felt like an awkward accessory, hard to reconcile with a world that prided itself on realism.

However, the part Gunn nailed so well with Peter Quill and Rocket Raccoon-the emotional development-is much weaker here. It feels lost in the middle of all the noise. You never truly buy into Superman's internal struggle about the mission his parents sent him on. You don't really believe it shakes his entire sense of self. His relationships with other characters, including Lois Lane, never make you pause, reflect, or feel. The conflicted heart simply isn't there, and the film loses narrative power because of it.

Perhaps the exception is Lex Luthor, who seems more developed at his emotional core, though even he doesn't quite command the attention he should.

In conclusion, it's a beautiful film, with an interesting world, solid performances, vibrant visuals, and a lot of fun. But that's all it is-while other James Gunn movies managed to be so much more.

Sinners is one of those films overflowing with ideas - and some of them are genuinely brilliant. The use of music as a mystical and identity-driven element, transcending eras and contexts, is astonishing. There's one particular scene, powered by this concept, that stands among the most memorable in recent years.

However, despite its thematic strength, the film suffers from uneven execution. At times, the narrative structure feels like it was divided among different people, as if a school group had split the film into segments, each handled separately, and then stitched them together without much concern for cohesion. The first act, for example, sets up atmospheres and conflicts that simply fade away without any genuine payoff.

The supernatural aspect, at times, feels disconnected from the whole - as if it borrows elements from other films and genres that don't quite serve the specific fantasy Sinners is trying to build. Instead of enriching the world, these moments often feel like fragments from different visions, stitched into a narrative that doesn't fully accommodate them.

Likewise, the inclusion of the KKK feels more like an appendix - something tacked on after the climax, with little to no real impact on the narrative. It doesn't build tension, resolve anything, or meaningfully expand the film's central themes. Instead, it feels like an underdeveloped layer that struggles to justify its presence.

In the end, Sinners is a film that's more interesting than it is good. There's a clear ambition to explore complex and unusual themes - and that ambition deserves recognition. But it needed more time, or perhaps more focus, for all these ideas to come together into a cohesive, well-connected script that could live up to the potential the film clearly shows.

Substance is one of the most difficult films to rate I've seen in recent years. At the same time, it is an authorial and purposeful Sci-fi story, with extremely powerful messages for our world tormented by vanity, filters and aesthetic hysteria. Its uncomfortable message and tone are reminiscent of the best episodes of Black Mirror and Twillight Zone.

However, at the same time, Substance is a prolix film, which uses an unnecessary multitude of scenes to convey the same message. It's as if the film really looked like a television episode stretched into a feature film. And in this empty fatness, the film lends itself to being verbose where it could be subtle.

Added to this exhaustion of the script's argument, the film goes on so long that there appears to be a certain indecision on the ideal way to conclude the story. It's a film that ends up on itself so many times that you forget what the point of it all was. Difficult to watch, more interesting than good, Substance is a film that could be a good episode in a Sci-Fi anthology series, but instead ends up being a confusing and exhausting mess of a movie.