POMO

Figure skating through different film genres, with a boldness spiced up with a unique creative signature. Sam Raimi is a genius who has mastered everything from jump scares and spooky atmospheres to social humor and Hitchcock-like family dinners. But the combination of witty humor and polished horror is not to everyone’s taste. That’s why I prefer the first Evil Dead to the second for the reason that it is a pure horror movie... and I love Jackson’s Braindead for the reason that it is a pure comedy. I’ve never liked when these two genres get mixed. But I’m still giving this film four stars, mainly for Sam’s refined perfectionism.

Transsiberian features properly built suspense and unease in a strongly atmospheric setting, which is something that is not often seen in a thriller. The acting and directing are excellent. If the script, which otherwise works nicely with the characters’ psychology, came up with something original within the genre rules, I could have given this four stars.

I have a problem with Fargo. It contains a dozen unforgettable scenes, great characters and one of Carter Burwell’s best soundtracks, but it tries so hard to be a caricature that it loses touch with reality. It thus loses some of its seriousness, which was supposed to be its key element, and remains only an original film curiosity. I spent a long time vacillating between three and four stars. I settled on four, but only for the individual scenes. The atmosphere and omnipresent snow are not enough to make a movie complex and relatable.

Excellent. In comparison to the first instalment, this is a full-blooded FILM, in which technical brilliance goes hand in hand with a good story. Vincent Cassel shows us every aspect of Mesrine’s character, which make sense from the psychological point of view, unlike in the first film. His character has only properly started to develop in this instalment. The movie keeps a steady pace, sensitively altering action with the personal life of the protagonist, and also makes better use of the supporting characters. The only reason I’m not giving this a five-star rating is the fact that Mesrine was something of a dumb asshole, and no matter how good the film you make about such a guy is, it cannot reach the stars.

The first part jumps too much between events... many of those that are at first introduced as important for the story are in the end over and done with in a few words before the film goes on. The viewer thus cannot get closer to the characters, especially to the character that is constantly on the screen and the understanding of whom should be the key to the movie. Or is this only a necessary, excellently crafted prelude to the more full-blooded second instalment?

Here we have another opus in which Christian Bale plays second fiddle. This is also one of the reasons that Michael Mann did not achieve the perfection of his classic Heat, in which the protagonists were equal. Here, the star is Johnny Depp, or rather his Dillinger, a tough bank robber with a heart in the hands of his beloved Marion Cotillard. I also perceive the disadvantages of the digital camera (cheap home-made visuals, noise) as a handicap; what worked effectively in Cloverfield, because it is a mirror of current technological development and the definition of a new sub-genre, cannot work well in a gangster film set in the 1930s. Despite that, the film has numerous positive aspects. It is an elegantly directed, manly retro crime movie with a brilliant Depp, who is the film’s alpha and omega. It also has excellent shootouts, quality set designs and costumes, as well as great dialogue between Depp and Cotillard. Mann brilliantly captures the period atmosphere, makes the film dark in the proper noir fashion and doesn’t forget to pay homage to the golden age of Hollywood. Public Enemies is not as deep as Heat, but it’s not as shallow as Miami Vice. It’s something in between and even though I expected a little bit more, I’m still satisfied.

The recipe behind the success of this series was never to go deep like Pixar movies, but to present the youngest viewers with an adventure full of episodic humor and funny animals. This instalment sticks to this recipe: the exotic dinosaur environment provides ample space for a load of rope-climbing, jumping and flying action, while the dinosaurs can be both cute (Tyrannosaurus cubs) and scary (Velociraptors, Spinosaurus) and, above all, they are filmed with familiar Spielberg-like optics (the only thing that’s missing when the big T- Rex lets out the final shriek is a billboard spelling out “When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth”). Add the pirate Jack “Buck” Sparrow as our protagonists’ guide through the dinosaur world... what more can you offer to the child viewers of today?

With water, slow pensive music with saxophones and Sean Penn, this excellently atmospheric film is a little bit like Scott’s White Squall. But the script is completely different: through a framework story set in the present day (two couples on a yacht), it tells a different relationship story about murders that took place in the past (a family tragedy in a house on a small island). Paradoxically, though, we are more interested in the story taking place in the present day (thanks to the excellent casting and the completely believable sparks between the characters) than in learning the identity of the murderer from the other story (uninteresting, TV-like narrative style). The stories are linked in the movie’s climax, but they prove to be not very compatible (you feel that what you’re watching is supposed to be deep but it simply isn’t). The film is not very well known and not attractive to the masses, as the two types of environments in which the stories take place mean two very different target audiences. P.S. Liz Hurley is fu*king irresistible.

I kind of don’t see this shown anywhere except at electronics fairs. Eighty percent of the shots do not bring anything that we haven’t seen elsewhere (the Earth and Water chapters) and, moreover, they lack any commentary. You can only choose between the pure “sound of nature” or the average music normally found in television documentaries. Still, I give it a solid three stars because the 20% of shots not seen elsewhere contain the Aurora Borealis in the mountains (the Atmosphere chapter), which is simply breathtaking when seen on a Blu-ray projected on a screen with an HD projector. But I would be hard pressed to give this film two stars if I watched it on DVD on a small screen.

I think that perhaps this good, albeit far from excellent, comedy with an unoriginal concept didn’t appeal to me as much as it did to others because such nights out are a pretty common occurrence for me.