POMO

A simple subject that we’ve seen a hundred times before, set in the unusual environment of rival British football hooligans. The film has ferociousness, the fights are shot briskly and clearly, the dramatic relationships between the characters work and the presence of the more commercial icons Elijah Wood and Claire Forlani freshens up the indie feel of this low-budget production.

Walk the Line is a musical biopic in the mold of Ray, but it’s a bit more sincere and concise, without so much Hollywood artifice, which can only be a good thing. Plus the superb duo of Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon. If only they would start making such movies about directors, which are closer to my heart than musicians, with the same degree of love…

Noble near-boredom. It’s as if Rob Marshall didn’t know what he was making a film about, what culture he was operating in, what to emphasize and what was secondary. The only things that make this pile of sexless scenes interesting are the solid actors and John Williams’s beautiful music. Something is also salvaged by the last two minutes (with nicely mixed background colors), which, though destroying the impression of the intentionally non-Hollywood subject, give the film the emotional counterpoint necessary for the satisfaction of mainstream viewers.

An entertaining and, in its own way, very cool account of war without chilling battle scenes? Yes! Sam Mendes is at the top of his game, creating the dense atmosphere of the desert in an original way and, without sentimentality or emotional swings, documenting the depression of the Marines who experience life’s losses instead of fulfilling their American boyish dreams. Jarhead is a remarkably laid-back film about uncomfortable issues.

An Unfinished Life is a quiet, modest and pleasant film that’s a bit on American side for Lasse Hallström. Though it’s predictable and doesn’t have a single really powerful scene, it does have the constant presence of humanity. The film stands on the excellent Robert Redford, while J-Lo doesn’t hurt anything and Morgan Freeman again provides 100% reliable support to everyone. The cinematography and music are rather unobtrusive without fully exploiting the potential of the setting and the subject, which only enhances both the film’s decency and its muted nature.

The Mummy has a pleasant mysterious spirit, which is due primarily to Boris Karloff’s face, make-up and hypnotically slow gesticulations. Even the subject, intercut with a significant love motif in the mold of Stoker’s Dracula, is more than fine. But the screenplay is a bit simple and lacking in twists and dramatic moments. But in comparison with Stephen Sommers’s overwrought and feeble-minded digital popcorn flicks, this is literally a narrative purgation...

Brilliantly shot and acted film noir about an insignificant loser’s descent into a fatal abyss. It's just a shame that the screenplay stumbles in the second half, after it lays its cards on the table in a conceptually brilliant way in the first half. The crucial twists come across as overwrought and the last one does more harm than good. *** SPOILER! *** The scene with the spinning bullet should have turned out differently, and Ed should have grown old knowing that he had destroyed the last, purest thing that mattered to him.

Whereas every image in The Lord of the Rings had its own weight and was an integral part of a well-thought-out, sensitively constructed and complex whole, every image in King Kong is an eccentricity derived from the mood of the moment and a different approach to the viewer. And the result is an enormous incoherent mishmash that begins with the promise of a distinctive Jacksonian flick (romance conceived through crazy cinematography and editing, enthusiastic filmmaking and the nostalgic atmosphere of 1930s New York), but it continues in the spirit of the pre-digitalized calculus where even a dozen bloodthirsty dinosaurs don’t inspire as much awe as the single, herbivorous one did in the first Jurassic Park. Not even James N. Howard’s music, skillfully combining the needs of a contemporary soundtrack with the formula of Max Steiner’s classic score, could salvage this movie, nor could Naomi Watts’s embodiment of celestial beauty or the touching expressiveness of Kong’s eyes, or the endearing juxtaposition of boulders and ice skating. I’m a fan of Peter Jackson, lost worlds and epic films, but I will shed a tear for unfulfilled expectations and watch the more enchanting and well-balanced Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

For adult viewers, this bit of Disney brainwashing is almost indigestible. It conceptually rips of The Lord of the Rings in numerous scenes (mainly through identical camera runs). It’s actually The Lord of the Rings for the youngest children, who can be made happy just by showing them colorful characters running around in a meadow. You won’t find even a nod to adults here.

Cages is a predictable, hyper-sentimental quasi-TV production about an adult daughter finding her way back to her estranged father (and vice versa). It is a small, intimate film that is sometimes disgusting with its sleazy pathos and occasionally delightful with its sincere emotion.