POMO

Bathory is impressive in its intimate moments and very well played by the lead actors. In its would-be spectacular scenes, however, it is ridiculous and the nice outdoor camerawork barely manages to compensate for the cheap interiors. Also notice the facial expressions of some of the extras... ahem. And when I don’t know how to go on because my story doesn’t have a proper dramatic framework, I’ll divide it into three phases, which is supposed to give it some meaning... ahem. This TV-like Czech-Slovak “blockbuster” looks exactly like I was afraid it would, even though Juraj Jakubisko is an inspiring and likable man and artist... Bathory is subject matter for Cronenberg and not for a poetic Slovak storyteller.

Though Wanted is definitely VERY spectacular, with interesting acting performances, it is unfortunately also the work of a director who mistakes a film for a commercial and doesn’t know how to tell a story in a way that would truly engage the audience. Sorry.

If I set aside the well-made first thirty minutes, the occasional funny moment and ingenious iPhone product placement, this shallow, superficial, tacky and protracted bit of nothing left me with less than a well-crafted trailer for any kind of movie. It’s a live-action version of Winx Club for an “adult” audience.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a film that doesn’t need its first kiss boosted by anything more than a two-second quiet romantic tone to make it into the most romantic moment in the film. Forgetting Sarah Marshall has so much sincerity and tangible reality in it, such multidimensional and believable characters, and offers such versatile, fair, non-clichéd comic and dramatic situational clashes of characters that it’s a match for any highly acclaimed psychological drama in terms of having a unique creative touch and quality storytelling. I saw this in a multiplex right after the shallow, superficial, tacky, cheap and unoriginal Sex and the City – and it didn’t just improve my mood for a moment, it improved my whole weekend. Judd Apatow is no less intelligent than Steven Spielberg, and thanks to him, after twenty years of watching movies, I fell in love with a genre that I have always considered only mindless fun. And what about the missing fifth star? You don’t fall in love with a girl because she’s perfect...

This film is hard to describe; you must see it, believe in it, absorb it and then just let yourself be astonished by its infinite originality and philosophical message worthy of lengthy discussions. And all the while it’s just a crazy comedy flick.

It’s not often that you see such an excellent cast in such a bland film. Only one of the three stories is good (the one with Natalie Portman), but the languidness and shapelessness of the director’s narrative takes away her chance to shine.

Just no. This movie has Shyamalan’s typical signature in creating suspense (a spooky house with a spooky landlady), which tempts me to give it three stars, but unfortunately everything essential is amiss. The love motif doesn’t work, the relationship between the main characters is incomprehensible and there is no trace of interesting dialogue or a final point. The Happening is a bland, sometimes exciting and sometimes naïve farce, cooked in water salted with James Newton Howard’s music from Signs.

A hackneyed premise boosted with hits of LSD and a gay dwarf. The successful comeback of former comedy master Frank Oz has juice, is properly British, morbid and cynical, and maintains its quality even when one of the main characters gets feces on his face. Plus it has a not entirely mainstream cast, which is all the more interesting for that. I recommend serving this up after a weekend breakfast.

Constructed primarily on the premise of Eli Roth’s poorly made Hostel, Frontier(s) offers a tangle of plot twists slavishly copied from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre flicks. Add mutant children in the cellars and the treatment of a French historical complex from the rivalry with Germany. Brutal butchery with characters on our side whom we don’t care a fig about and characters on the other side that do not evoke horror, but embarrassment.

Untraceable is the maximum that the skilled genre craftsman Gregory Hoblit could get out of such a dime-a-dozen, unoriginal screenplay. Untraceable is a conventional, mainstream crime thriller, upgraded with the cruelty of the low-budget, fan-based morbid fun of the Saw series. Diane Lane is cool and the suspense works, especially in the climax. If you watch this movie with zero expectations, it will give you no reason to be disappointed.