H0kv5

The Fantastic Four First Steps begins with promise. After years of false starts, this new version tries to reintroduce Marvel's first family with energy and style. The world feels bigger, the visuals sharper, and the cast more grounded. Yet by the end, the film burns bright but shallow. It looks powerful but leaves little behind once the light fades.

The movie wastes no time. We meet Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm already functioning as a team. There is no slow origin, no long setup, just immediate immersion into cosmic conflict. The tone aims for old fashioned wonder mixed with modern pacing. The design choices are bold. The film leans into a retro futuristic style that feels like a love letter to the early comics. Every costume, city skyline, and lab scene carries a bright, clean energy. It looks excellent on screen.

The cast deserves credit. Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards brings calm intelligence. Vanessa Kirby gives Sue Storm quiet strength and emotional weight. Joseph Quinn's Johnny Storm delivers energy and humor, while Ebon Moss Bachrach as Ben Grimm carries sadness behind his rocky skin. Together they feel like a family, and that chemistry gives the film its strongest pulse. Their arguments, jokes, and moments of care feel natural. The balance of personalities is real.

The problem lies in the script. The story rushes ahead without allowing the characters to breathe. We are told they have been through battles, but we never see how they became who they are. Skipping the origin could have worked if the film replaced it with emotional context. Instead, we are left to fill the gaps ourselves. It moves fast, but not deep.

The main conflict with Galactus and the Silver Surfer should have felt mythic, yet it comes across as routine. The threat is massive, but the meaning is thin. The Silver Surfer is given a new twist, but the film barely explores it. Galactus is treated as a storm of energy, not a godlike presence that challenges human understanding. The film keeps aiming for grand scale but forgets to give its ideas room to expand.

Reed Richards is portrayed as likable but almost too safe. He never shows the obsession or arrogance that make his character compelling in the comics. Sue Storm's leadership and internal struggles are present but underwritten. Johnny and Ben have heart, but their arcs feel incomplete. Each character gets a spark of development, yet none fully ignite.

The pacing compounds the problem. Every quiet scene is cut short for another action sequence. The editing feels impatient. It is as if the film fears silence, though silence could have given it weight. The action is loud, clean, and visually thrilling, but without emotional buildup it becomes empty spectacle.

By the time the credits roll, the movie feels like a first draft of something great. It builds a beautiful world but does not stay in it long enough to make us care. The tone is confident but not curious. It entertains but does not challenge.

The Fantastic Four First Steps is not a failure. It is a functional blockbuster with style, heart, and potential. But it never rises beyond its surface. It gives you a glimpse of greatness and then moves on. You leave the theater impressed by what you saw but unsure of what you learned. It is a spark that burns fast, looks dazzling for a moment, and then fades before it can truly warm you.

James Gunn's Superman arrives like a bright flare in the sky-loud, vivid, and impossible to ignore. Yet after all the soaring and spectacle, it leaves behind a strange emptiness. It is different, yes, but difference without depth becomes decoration. This Superman is reimagined, reframed, and re-energized, but not re-understood.

The film opens with promise. The visuals are clean and the action moves like a comic panel in motion. Metropolis glows with cinematic muscle, and every punch feels weighted. Gunn knows how to make a frame breathe. His style is confident, and the film never looks cheap or rushed. You can tell every scene has been engineered to impress, and often it does. For the first hour, the excitement holds.

Clark Kent himself feels more human than we have seen in years. He bleeds, doubts, hesitates, and tries to reconcile being a savior with being a man. His relationship with Lois Lane carries genuine warmth. The two share moments that remind us what Superman is supposed to stand for: connection in a world that misunderstands strength. There are flickers of emotion here that work beautifully, fleeting as they are.

But then the story begins to split. Gunn's desire to set up a larger universe becomes a trap. There are too many faces, too many hints of other heroes, too many threads reaching for sequels instead of staying rooted in this one story. The film grows busy and loud, chasing scale at the cost of soul. Scenes that should hit with emotional clarity get buried under setup and exposition. By the time Lex Luthor appears as the supposed central villain, the focus is already lost.

Luthor himself is reimagined as a tech titan obsessed with control, but his motives are thin. The battle between him and Superman never evolves beyond the surface. Power, morality, alienation-these ideas hover but never bite. Gunn introduces moral questions and then abandons them before they can mature. The result feels like philosophy written in pencil, quickly erased for the next explosion.

The pacing, too, is restless. There is no room to breathe. Every quiet scene is followed by another burst of chaos, and the transitions feel mechanical rather than emotional. Superman's identity crisis is treated more as a plot device than a character arc. What should have been a story about hope and belonging becomes a collage of moments that never fuse into meaning.

What Gunn gives us, essentially, is a spectacle of fragments. It looks extraordinary and sounds heroic, yet when the credits roll there is little to take home. The heart of Superman-the question of what it means to be good in a flawed world-is buried beneath the machinery of franchise building. It is a film about greatness that never pauses long enough to be great.

Still, it is not a failure of craftsmanship. Gunn is a skilled filmmaker, and the performances, especially from the leads, show care and conviction. The problem lies in the foundation. The film wants to be profound but never commits to stillness long enough to earn it. It wants to teach us about humanity but ends up showing us marketing.

In the end, Superman by James Gunn is a paradox: a strong movie that leaves you feeling weak. It is polished but not powerful, bold but not brave, emotional but not enlightening. I left the theater with my eyes full but my mind empty. It soared, yes-but somehow, it never truly took flight.

In the quiet shadow of the John Wick universe, where bullets write poetry and every kill is a stroke of calculated intent, Ballerina emerges not as a spin-off, but as a statement. It is cinema painted with violence and grace-an assassin's lullaby performed by Ana de Armas in what is, without question, the most defining role of her career to date. This isn't merely a performance; it is a transformation. She does not act the part of Rooney-she inhabits her, breathes her, becomes her. And in doing so, she delivers a masterclass in emotional restraint, devastating physicality, and sheer cinematic presence.

What strikes first is the control-how Ana balances the vulnerability of loss with the discipline of a killer. There's a quiet fire behind her eyes that never dims, even in moments of stillness. When she moves, it's with a dancer's rhythm and a killer's clarity. Every fight sequence becomes choreography. But this isn't spectacle for the sake of spectacle-it's storytelling through motion. The camera doesn't just capture action; it captures intention. Every swing, every shot, every fall is infused with the personal weight of Rooney's mission. This is vengeance delivered not through rage, but through resolve.

Director Len Wiseman wisely understands that Ballerina doesn't need to shout to be heard. It operates in the same sleek, underworld of codes and contracts that John Wick introduced, but this time, the chaos moves to a different rhythm. The Continental returns, as do echoes of the High Table and the Ruska Roma, but they serve only as backdrop to Rooney's singular path. The film isn't cluttered with universe-building or fan-service detours-it trusts its lead to carry the gravity, and she does, with elegance carved from steel.

Ana de Armas delivers the kind of performance that redefines her as more than a rising star-she is now a force. There is magnetism in her restraint. A lesser film would demand loud monologues or melodramatic breakdowns, but Ballerina knows better. Like its central character, it is silent until it strikes. When Ana does speak, her words cut. When she's silent, her presence screams. It is a performance born from training, pain, and precision-every inch as worthy as the stylized legacy of Wick, and perhaps, in its own way, more refined.

The cinematography leans into contrast-soft, cold blues and deep blood reds-mirroring the internal war of Rooney herself. The sound design is crisp, minimalist, yet brutal. When violence erupts, it does so with a visceral clarity that refuses to glorify or soften. It reminds us that even in a world of aestheticized death, there is a human toll. And Ana carries that weight without letting it crush her character's spirit. She's not unbreakable-she's already broken, and yet she moves, kills, and survives anyway. That's where the power lies.

This film doesn't apologize for being beautiful or brutal. It dances between both with the poise of its protagonist. There's no need for excuses or comparisons. Ballerina doesn't want to be better than John Wick-it wants to be different. And it succeeds. By the final act, it becomes clear: this isn't just a spin-off, it's a coronation. Ana de Armas is now firmly entrenched as not just a leading lady, but a cinematic titan of her own league.

It's not often you witness the precise moment a career goes supernova, but Ballerina is that moment for Ana. Her performance is not just unforgettable-it is undeniable. And if you feel yourself falling a little in love with her after watching it, you're not alone. The world just met its new icon of cinematic vengeance-and she moves like a whisper before the storm.