Manuel São Bento 
Unlike the experience I had yesterday with Mercy, I walked into the theater to watch Send Help with considerably high expectations. Not just because of the positive reception circulating among most of my colleagues and the general public, but because the prospect of seeing a master like Sam Raimi (Spider-Man) …
Entering a movie theater with low expectations is a dangerous yet necessary exercise. Two weeks after its release, I finally sat down to watch Mercy, and I couldn’t escape the wave of negative reception that’s been flooding the internet. That said, I’ll confess I held onto a sliver of hope. …
Whenever I see the names of Matt Damon (The Martian) and Ben Affleck (Argo) together on a poster, my attention is captured by a nostalgia that goes back to their earliest successes. The dynamic between the two is one of the most solid pillars of contemporary cinema, and the prospect …
I still feel the disconcerting echo of the ending of the previous film in this saga. I confess that my approach to this new chapter was cautiously nervous, the result of that highly dissonant conclusion of 28 Years Later that left me, at the time, not quite knowing what to …
Even in a recent attempt to rewatch the original film, Greenland, hoping to find something I might’ve missed, most of my issues remained unchanged. The exhaustive repetition and manufactured melodrama continued to prevent me from truly connecting with that story. However, cinema has these curious quirks: for some inexplicable reason, …
The first film of the new year is always an exciting moment. Why this specific movie to kick off 2026? The answer is simple: Daisy Ridley. Despite being familiar with some of the previous work by filmmaker Zak Hilditch (1922), my interest in this feature resided 100% in the lead …
I’ve always supported the idea that entering a movie theater without the weight of preconceived expectations is one of the greatest and rarest luxuries. In the case of The Housemaid, I didn’t read the source material, nor did I seek out details about the premise, allowing my interest to be …
I started my home viewing of Goodbye June with no real expectations, being solely driven by a genuine curiosity about what Kate Winslet (Titanic) could achieve now that she has taken the director’s chair. I didn’t know much about the project, other than it was set during the Christmas season, …
South Korean cinema holds a prominent place in my cinematic preferences, being a passion that makes me follow almost everything coming out of that region with genuine excitement. Beyond that, disaster movies are my ultimate guilty pleasure. I didn’t have any prior knowledge of director Kim Byung-woo‘s work, nor was …
Writing about James Cameron (Titanic) is always an exercise in managing expectations. It’s a precarious balance between recognizing his technical genius and the hope, sometimes frustrated, that the narrative can keep up with the visual evolution. When Avatar: The Way of Water hit theaters thirteen years after the original production, …
I watched Dust Bunny without much baggage. I read the premise, knew this marked the feature directorial debut of Bryan Fuller, but I don’t carry with me a deep familiarity with his acclaimed television work. Thus, I was motivated solely by curiosity to see a film that attempts to balance …
Expectations were low. My relationship with this saga has been, I admit, troubled: mixed feelings regarding the original film and manifestly negative regarding the second chapter. Despite being aware that this third entry, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, has received the warmest reception of the entire franchise so …
I walked into the theater to see Zootopia 2 in a state of almost blessed ignorance. I religiously avoided every trailer, looked away from every promotional image, and stayed far away from the social media buzz. I knew nothing about the critical reception or the general audience sentiment. My only …
My viewing of The Running Man was, honestly, one of the “blindest” I’ve had all year. I wasn’t familiar with the original novel by Stephen King, nor the first 1987 film adaptation. I managed to completely avoid any images, clips, or even reactions to this new release. My expectations, however, …
I confess my expectations for a new entry in this saga were modest before Predator: Badlands, despite Dan Trachtenberg (Prey) returning. While Prey excelled at simplifying the formula and returning to basics, the ambition to completely shift the franchise’s point of view — transforming the antagonist into the protagonist — …
Cinema has the power to drag us into the depths of conflicts we’d rather ignore in real life. The driving force behind Anniversary started for me long before the movie itself: in its brilliant ensemble. Someone had the fantastic idea of bringing together some of the most promising and underrated …
The expectations surrounding A House of Dynamite, Kathryn Bigelow’s new and highly anticipated film, were understandably stratospheric. After military tension and psychological analysis masterworks like The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, the prospect of Bigelow returning to a theme of war and existential crisis — dealing with the nuclear …
Following the intense and visceral rawness of All Quiet on the Western Front and the meticulous religious intrigue of Conclave — both of which are among my absolute favorites from their respective release years — the mere idea of Edward Berger tackling a psychological thriller focused on addiction and moral …
Before I even sat down to watch The Voice of Hind Rajab, its real-life story had already flooded my soul. Contrary to my personal tendency to go into screenings with little to no familiarity with the respective film, this time, my prior knowledge was complete. My curiosity and, frankly, my …
My expectations for Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt were, I confess, moderate, but they leaned toward cautious optimism. I like most of his films, with Challengers being my favorite, and I generally admire his work, even if I don’t consider myself an unconditional fan. However, the initial reception of this …