Elementary, my dear...

Acting: 5/5
Story: 4/5
Perception: 4/5
Rating: 4/5

The follow-up of the Guy Ritchie's tale of the most renowned detective of all times, that doesn't had that much of a connection with the first movie. I mean, the attended characters are there but all the fuss in the previous story doesn't show any materialization in this one.

At a first look there are some differences between the two movies: some are improvements, some, from my point of view, are withdrawals.

First, the ambiance, that became more like a political plot thus loosing its mystical, almost supernatural touch that is had in the first movie. This is a proof for the rational people (which I'm a part of) that control and logic aren't always the key. On the other hand, the stakes got higher and so the efforts to be deployed by the protagonists had to follow the trend, and, fortunately, so it happened.

There's also the level of involvement of the audience, which this time received important investigation elements, thus granting a chance of following the deduction step-by-step, and not to be fed the whole thing at the end. This improvement generated another good aspect: the fact that the backbone of the movie was slightly different from the other one (to be compared to Iron Man where the second story was a copycat of the first).

Concerning the audio-visual performance, everything is a bliss: from the well-paced dynamics of the soundtrack to the brilliant cinematography of the slow-mos. The only downside are some excessively metallic sound effects during several intense action scenes.

I left the acting at the end because any word wouldn't be enough, the cast did an irreproachable job, and the chemistry of the 2 duos revolving around Holmes, with Watson as partners, and with Moriarty as antagonists, is perfect.

Bottom-line there's an evolution from the previous adventures and that deserves appreciation. Now, can and will it go to a higher level?   

Time is of the essence

In this current society where all our existence is an endless race against the clock, our own bodies are the main time mongers.
If you think about it, the human being is, in general, a very high-maintenance organism.
First of all, one needs an average of 6-7 hours of sleep and even with a consistent doze of cafeine this cannot be reduced to less than half of it.

But the time remaining isn't completely active, because of the all the other biological and hygienic needs (eating, washing...). So of the 24 daily hours, 40% is already taken out, which leaves us with 14h to dedicate to work, loved ones, social interactions and active relaxation.

Nowadays there isn't a fully healthy way to mix these stuff, especially when it comes to work. Actually there are very few 100% valid combinations like eating or getting a drink with someone, but it mostly involves the interaction and/or relaxation part.

So actually the activities that require the most of our time sleeping and working are never and, respectively, rarely mixed up with the others. I mean you can say that you enjoy your work and that one top of that you interact with people that you consider close, but still the reality of duty and results still hangs up somewhere in a corner.

All I'm an trying to say is that we should get more information from the sleeping patterns and the way that we could use them especially to complete our work. The brain already does that at some extent why not boost it up a notch. And on top of that an extra 15-30 minutes of sleep in the morning would not be such a bad idea, so what if we could get up already showered and fed.

In the end you might say that the days won't get any longer and that we already live some very routinized lives, so why bother; the thing is that we only have one life and that we sleep during one third of it, letting it pass by.