POMO

The first film didn’t deserve this. John Cho and Kal Penn are equally great, and the buddy chemistry still works perfectly, but the humor is mostly a level below that of the original. The plotline with government agents is particularly tacky and lame. I did have a few laughs, and the “bottomless” party and the final postcard from Amsterdam were nice. But if it weren’t for those things, this sequel wouldn’t merit even these two stars.

In terms of style, Spun is very similar to Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, but it’s not as serious. The goal is to entertain the Tarantino generation with brutal, decadent humor. The initial self-serving visual tricks are gradually set aside and the film starts to rely on its actors, who become its main attraction. John Leguizamo, Mena Suvari and Peter Stormare are okay, but Jason Schwartzman, Brittany Murphy and Mickey Rourke are EXCELLENT. I dare say that the roles they play here are among the best of their careers. By the way, Rourke plays a caravan-dwelling wrestling fan...

A cute B-rated flick, in which a bunch of dogs posing as huge rat mutants threaten a group of people in a house on a remote island. The mediocre script is dragged further down by the low budget and the filmmakers’ ineptitude. The Killer Shrews is irresistibly naïve in everything from the horror scenes to the relationships between the characters. I don’t regret a single minute spent watching this guilty-pleasure :-)

Why is Paris, Texas so slow that it seems endless, just like the endless Texan plains, adorned with greenery and blue skies, which is a balm for my soul crushed by the Prague winter? Because that incredibly beautiful ending, which makes you bate your breath and won’t leave your eyes dry, must be earned. Add in the young Nastassja Kinski, who is the spitting image of my first girlfriend. This movie really got to me.

Made by creators with courage, Gomorrah is an authentically chilling work with great informational value. Rather than being a handicap, the deliberate coldness of the film and the distance from the characters is suitable for the world it depicts. What is a handicap, however, is the film’s unnecessary length. Select only the most important things, shorten it to 100 minutes and it could have been a hit!

If you get over the extremely tacky and sentimental packaging, you can enjoy a nice movie with a charismatic Jeff Bridges and beautiful shots of the ocean, palm trees, sky, etc. But when reading the script, Ridley Scott must have known that this would be more of a relaxing experience than something that would help him develop as a filmmaker.

Given the absurd subject matter and pure B-movie quality of The Dentist, it is actually rather entertaining. That is, if you know how to watch films without taking them too seriously, even if they have Mark Ruffalo in the cast.

The International is a decent, though somewhat chatty, political/espionage flick with one excellent shootout. The characters are not exactly depicted in detail, which makes the audience appreciate the expressive body language of Clive Owen. He’s a perfect fit for his agent character. Naomi Watts is just there for marketing purposes, so that her face could be put on the posters. The story is overly contrived but interesting and the soft, pulsating electronic music helps to keep the suspense going (it’s simply fun to root for a bold, likable guy standing up against the most powerful manipulators in the world). There’s also an atmospheric manor on a cliff, looking like something from a Bond film. It’s no new Bourne and Michael Clayton went deeper, but Tykwer’s commercial flick does reach the level of Sydney Pollack’s The Interpreter.

This film is like a piece of raw meat, lying on greasy, blood-smeared butcher’s bench. But this meat is of organic quality from a healthy bull, and if it had been cooked properly, it could have been turned into a delicious steak. John McNaughton, however, makes B-movies, so his steaks are uncooked and served raw. Henry is a low-budget psychological shocker focusing on dialogue around the kitchen table surrounded by three losers: one is a stupid girl without a home, the second an abhorrent retarded redneck with a beer in his hand, and the third one is an introvert with a messed-up childhood (Michael Rooker in his debut role) and making his life interesting with numerous murders, which don’t make him feel any emotion or remorse. By some miracle, this not exactly family-friendly film works, holds the audience’s attention, rouses their curiosity and makes them try to understand the characters and their actions. And this turns the director of cheap B-movies into a creator of quality underground works. If you’re fascinated by the psychological aspects of brutal violence and you’re irritated that all those Eurotrash nasty slashers serve it up in such a retarded manner, Henry will be the film of your life. The whole of Haneke’s Funny Games is squeezed into one several-minute-long scene that caused the film trouble with its distribution and rating. And I’m not surprised, because its raw brutality is something else.

[Full disclosure: I’ve never read the comic books] Twenty percent of the running time comprises the events that actually happen in the film, while 80% consists of flashbacks familiarizing us with the characters, who didn’t grow on me and of whom only one – Rorschach – is well-written and acted (i.e. interesting). There is virtually no action here, but everything is wrapped up in beautiful visuals full of imaginative montages and slow motion shots with a feeling of fantasy, where nothing is impossible and where a neon blue superhero is constantly philosophizing about something very clever beyond the understanding of us Earthlings. Through the first third of Watchmen, I was filled with awe and excitement (and pleasantly surprised by the amount of sex and violence and the moral depravity of the main characters), but I was looking forward to the end of the flashbacks and the start of a proper film adventure. As there was no change in the second third, I started to feel bored and irritated. I literally suffered through the final third. Had I been the producer of this megalomaniacal political, (pseudo) philosophical, fantasy conversational, R-rated flick, I’d off myself.