POMO

A routine flick without a clear-cut concept that might amuse some non-discerning popcorn-eating teenagers (it contains both jump scares and gore), Pet Sematary will disappoint or anger fans of the original book, as well as thinking fans of the genre. It has some powerful moments (the mom being hugged by her daughter) and nice visuals (the burying ground), but it is also lethally dumb and, what’s more, it lacks any kind of director’s vision along the lines of “I want to preserve the original character of the book by making it into an equally interesting film adaptation”. The cast is alright, the familial ties and the initial atmosphere of the chilling locations work, but all of that is undermined by the further development of the movie.

Nice but bland, The Highwaymen is a safe bet. Any hopes of originality for this version of the famous story die in the first third with the clichéd exposition of the main characters. And the rest of the movie does nothing to counter this assumption. But it’s not boring - Costner and Harrelson hold the movie together with their performances and Costner’s talk with Bonnie’s dad (William Sadler) goes deeper. The final shootout wasn’t all that hair-raising in real life, so the movie cannot have the epic climax that a flick in this genre needs.

Harbour’s good, with all the right catchphrases. The gigantic outcasts from hell in the climax might be the most impressive ever. The casting of Milla Jovovich appropriately defines the target audience composed of fans of bloody, B-level monster freak-shows. Neil Marshall’s imagination knows no bounds, nor does his courage (or lack of common sense?) to flush such a huge budget down the drain. His Hellboy amuses with its stupidity, excess and craziness, but watching it in a cinema seemed extremely out of place, even bizarre. With the right crew at home, beer and popcorn, I might be inclined to give it three stars.

A run-of-the-mill horror flick that, like Anabelle 2, attacks the audience with child endangerment. As is common in clichéd horror flicks without any individuality, it tries to mask the lack of originality of its story and faulty logic with loud sound design and solid production values (read: it sounds intense and looks good). That is nothing that will make you remember the movie a few years later. Zero connection to the Conjuring universe.

The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears is made up of a mysterious mosaic of hallucinations that may or may not be connected to the simple story of “a man’s wife disappearing from a locked apartment”. The film’s rapidly cut dream-like madness with unjustified erotic and gore scenes might catch your attention in the beginning, but they cannot hold it throughout the whole movie. The scenes that develop the plot’s mystery would make for a stylish ten-minute short film.

From the technical point of view, Razorback is extremely outdated. The filmmaking methods of expressing anxiety and fear through camerawork and editing, at the time creative, cool and impressive, are now the ridiculous and distracting stuff of dated B-movies. And that is the difference between visionary filmmakers who can still make genre movies work (Spielberg) and temporary hitmakers who stayed stuck in one genre season (Mulcahy). Imagine Jaws having such music and camera tricks… Razorback’s surrealistic set decorations and atmosphere, however, appealed to me even today. A slightly more perverse Edgar Allan Poe(tics).

A more adult version of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, The Beach Bum is a casual bohemian fuck-off to social conventions and Miami glamor, set in a stoner’s euphoria, without the need for genre-specific plots or realistic basics. Though the humour is occasionally so infantile that it’s no longer funny, and there is less ambition for artistic reflection than we are used to with Korine, there is a non-stop good mood and some definitely iconic details, so I predict that, just like good wine, this movie might get better with age. For me, the most iconic scene is the stoned cruise from Key West to Miami on a shoddy, funnily branded motorboat!

I love this show for several reasons: 1) I like the hotel business, customer service, real estate and interior design and its functionality; 2) apart from interesting real estate rentals, the series presents the most attractive Australian tourist spots, where these properties are located, which also determines their local architectonic character and leisure facilities; 3) the selection of the couples renting these properties is clever and, thanks to their different personalities, the testing of the individual houses through cohabitation leads to intriguing clashes of opinions; 4) hotel interior design expert Juliet Ashworth, who finishes the show with her assessments, is great thanks to her vast knowledge of the field as well as her professional self-presentation. Instant Hotel is an incredibly likable reality-TV show with a beautiful opening theme song, witty sociological insights and huge added information value for real estate geeks. It’s the Friends of real estate, which I had the good fortune of seeing just before my month-long trip through Australia.

Holiday is notable for having zero characterisation and unjustified and unexplained plot events, while the actors and technical side are so clumsy that they border on amateurish, making you ponder whether it’s on purpose (given that it’s shown at festivals) with the intention of brutally and “realistically” showing the normal workings of a bizarrely composed group of spineless individuals on vacation. One star for being self-serving, but the only memorable thing in the film is the ejaculatory porn scene; the second star is for the puzzled interest I felt while waiting to see what the movie would come up with next.

Mankind, nature, eternity. Visually and in terms of screenplay, At Eternity’s Gate is a sensual, wellthought of portrait of an artist experiencing rays of light from the depth of darkness. Schnabel skilfully and clearly expresses the main character’s mental states, whether related to anxiety or poetic dreaming, using the interplay of all basic means of filmmaking at his disposal. An artist who lives only for painting and satisfactorily answers those existential questions, that might interest you in the context of the mysterious historical personality named Van Gogh. All shades of his moods and thought processes are stated or implied in a mosaic with the mature thematic complexity befitting an experienced director. And Willem Dafoe, who showed great dedication and deep understanding of the difficult personality of the main character. Here, even the biggest European stars were content to work for food. At Eternity’s Gate is small film classic.