POMO

In terms of plot, Alien: Romulus is more sophisticated than Prometheus and Covenant combined, but it’s not much more clever than Alien vs. Predator. Ridley Scott understood that if he wanted to appeal to a new generation of viewers and successfully continue his Alien campaign, he would have to pass the baton to an energetic craftsman, such as the one who gave an intense restart to the Evil Dead franchise for young viewers. The characters in Romulus are teenagers, a fact that is unacceptable for us lovers of the original, serious genre pillars of cinema. Fedez Alvarez blends together the previous Alien films' iconic moments, which will not surprise the connoisseurs, but will thrill young viewers who are unfamiliar with them. We can appreciate the effort to make an upgrade through innovations (the fine resurrection of Ian Holm), but without using them in a well-thought-out way in the plot, they are there only superficially for effect. The film almost ceased to hold my interest when the characters failed to close behind themselves the huge door to the room containing the facehuggers, in which they had previously increased the temperature so that they could safely pass through it. And there is more such sloppiness that negates the newly shown rules of the Alien world even for novices. And that’s a shame.

The collective terror of the unknown in an isolated environment. The first serious sci-fi/horror movie with a blood-thirsty space monster…and the most artful one to achieve cult status. Unlike Cameron’s follow-up, Aliens, Ridley Scott’s Alien modestly, or even intimately, presents the creature in a gradual way, exploiting the mysteriousness and menace of the perfect, indestructible extraterrestrial organism at the top of the food chain, towering above everything that we know from Earth. The close-ups of the scared-to-death, realistically natural and poorly armed crew members, the visual exploration of the futuristically elegant and industrial bowels of their spaceship Nostromo, the creepy atmospheric music by the unrivalled sorcerer Jerry Goldsmith, and primarily H.R. Giger’s brilliant design of not only the monsters themselves make Alien a unique classic of the genre. It is an establisher of trends and a source of inspiration in which, even after forty years, it’s impossible to find a cliché or guess who will survive.

A gay Vertigo by Tom Ford? While watching Single Man it may seem that it is not sufficiently rich in content and that it is made interesting only by the polished filmmaking and Colin Firth’s excellent acting. After all, it is merely a story about the protagonist’s fumbling around following the loss of the one closest to him, with flashbacks to nice moments in the past, which can come across as kitschy. With the passage of hours and days, however, the film is growing on me as an original creative work with a well-thought-out ending and nice, truthful thoughts in the main character’s monologues. The psychological study of that character in a crisis situation is the heart of the film, while the deeply felt music is its lungs. In the scene that starts in front of a billboard for Psycho, Umebayashi even employs a variation on Herrmann’s “Scotty Tails Madeline” from Vertigo.

A dark historical drama from the Austrian woodlands, which is not about witchcraft despite certain thematic hints. Des Teufels Bad is well filmed, with a superb performance by Austrian actress Anja Plaschg, who is also behind the impressively atmospheric soundtrack. However, it is interesting more for its revealing of shocking historical realities associated with the proclamation of faith (the true story of Agnes Catherina Schickin) than for its thrilling “horror story”, which is probingly slow and, in addition to the main character’s mental breakdown, draws the viewer in with an attentive depiction of the functioning and behaviour of people living in the difficult conditions of the aforementioned setting in the 18th century.

The subject matter alone, involving a charismatic main character who is also a disturbing killer attempting to escape from a trap set for him in a public place, is unique in the genre. And Shyamalan meticulously wrote and directed his search for a way out, even credibly crafting his psychopathic perception and reaction to unexpected stressful situations. And not just in the trap, but also – and primarily – outside of it. Josh Hartnett was interestingly cast in the lead role and performs ably.  The absence of major Shyamalan-esque points doesn’t matter, as the film works adeptly with suspense and swings with unpredictable twists. The protagonist’s abilities are exaggerated in places, but not to the point of losing the viewer’s trust or being laughable. The references were also pleasing, such as Shyamalan in the role of a worker at the concert in which his real daughter Saleka is singing (and whose father would surely like for her to attain similar fame) and the inconspicuous logo of the “The Watchers” on one of the buildings in the background, which happens to be the name of a film by his other daughter, Ishana, released a few months before Trap.

It’s the early 19th century and the protagonist changes masks like Ethan Hunt Mission: Impossible. Otherwise, however, The Count of Monte-Cristo is a spectacular and well-made movie that successfully brings the classic book to the attention of young viewers. With its motley mosaic of relationships and emotions, motifs of love, suffering and hatred, and brisk pace, this is an epic film with a well-thought-out plot to punish the culprits and a soundtrack that is both appropriately fragile and bombastically energetic.

As a film student’s thesis work, Honeymoon would probably be at the head of the class. As a “grown-up” mysterious horror movie, however, it doesn’t offer anything that we wouldn’t see elsewhere in a technically more professional and directorially more inventive rendering. The gradual psychological alienation of the central duo after a mysterious event works and entertains, but the unimaginative work with genre clichés and the only somewhat surprising point leave behind an impression of disappointment. It would have been better suited to an episode of The X-Files in the nineties.

A revival of the best that we have seen from the Marvel and X-Men movies. A nerdishly well-crafted pop-up book of sketches with bold references not only to the characters and relationships of the comic-book world, but also to the behind-the-scenes workings of Hollywood studios, and which are not afraid of being honest and poking fun at themselves. Superbly utilised buddy potential between Wolverine and the comical Deadpool, for whose wisecracking Ryan Reynolds could apply for a patent. The female villain is interesting and powerful, and old characters make surprising appearances. Hugh Jackman performs as if his life depended on it and pretty much everyone gives their all, as if it was a matter of saving a phenomenon. Which it also was.

A rather moronic, yet formalistically playful slasher flick for fans of the subgenre. It attempts to shock with extreme brutality of almost savage proportions, but that is all that it’s capable of, as if it is unaware that the path to unforgettable viewer terror leads elsewhere, through psychology. The RPG featuring a new Jason Voorhees is pleasing and raises expectations of surprises in the screenplay, but those do not materialize. And the dialogue, which is intended to give the “story” some kind of background, is muddled. Actually, there are only two such scenes (if we don’t count those when someone goes into the woods to take a shit): The first á la The Fog, when the camera circles around a group of teenagers around a fire as the legend is being told, lacks atmosphere. And the other, in a car, is needlessly long and tries in vain to give the violence an existential explanation. The only positive aspect in the minimalistic narrative is the slight gradation of what is shown and explained, i.e. the timing of certain moments, such as the first time the killer’s disfigured face is revealed.

The opening attack on New York could have at least approximated the impressiveness of the exposition in Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. I would consider striving for that to be an obvious goal of the filmmakers. And that is reflected in a few shots of people disappearing into clouds of dust on the devastated streets of Manhattan. Together with the dismal interiors of abandoned buildings, those shots create a creditably bleak disaster-movie atmosphere. The film is thrilling in places, but without any of the plot ideas or cinematographic magic that made the franchise’s first two films interesting. Lupita Nyong’o performs as if her life depends on it, but her cat is the most interesting character in the film. The feline’s cautious glances and safely silent walking fit well into the concept of the story and the viewer’s experience of it.