POMO

When Irishman Jim Sheridan arrived in New York with his wife and two daughters, the four of them had been severely shaken by the death of their fifth family member, a little boy who had fallen down the stairs. Based on a screenplay about the members of his family, Sheridan made an autobiographical film in which he exorcizes his old demons together with them. It is a very sad and personal account, dedicated to the memory of his son. If I were in Sheridan’s shoes, I would do the same thing, though such an effort would be more of a bandage on my wounds than a full-fledged viewing experience. Cinematically, there’s nothing for which to fault In America. The actors are decent and the psychological aspect is strong, but the content won’t tear you apart unless something similar has happened to you and you found the answers to your questions in the same places Sheridan found them.

Angela’s Ashes is a family drama that, in visual terms, perfectly captures the setting and period in which it takes place. However, it’s a shame that it was filmed with too much cold detachment from the characters, preventing it from truly touching the viewer’s soul. Beautiful music by John Williams.

Anaconda is run-of-the-mill popcorn trash with a slimy monster, but with no suspense, no emotion and no characters. Curiously, the biggest bastard in the film is not the aforementioned monster, but Jon Voight’s bad-guy character.

Resurrection is an innovative, exotic and, in terms of directing, pleasantly distinctive instalment of the Alien saga. It’s a film during which you don’t know what’s going to happen every ten minutes. It’s technically brilliant, and the underwater scenes are perfect!

A Civil Action is an intelligent, elegant and well-acted drama, but it is unsatisfying in terms of story. Francis Ford Coppola’s similar The Rainmaker was more powerful and had greater depth.

Reloaded is a completely different film than the first Matrix. It seems as if it wasn’t even made by the Wachowskis, but rather by James Cameron in cooperation with Paul W.S. Anderson. Cameron is brought to mind by the bombastic set design in Zion, Anderson by some of the excessively digitalized visual effects (Neo’s face during the fight with the Smiths is a bad joke). The content is for nothing – whereas the previous film’s dialogue got its charm from the interesting idea of a parallel world, the dialogue here just messes around with words in a pseudo-intellectual way. The fistfights combined with the exotic techno soundtrack are very elegant and all the action on the highway is fantastic. And the nice costumes and detached humor (Frenchman Lambert Wilson and his vaginoscopy) are also pleasing. Beyond that, however, The Matrix Reloaded is just a synthetic formalistic diversion and fashion bubble.

The Blair Witch Project is one of the most innovative and sophisticated films in its genre, without any inkling at the time of its creation that it would become just that. If you like HORROR and you WANT to be scared, that’s exactly what you’ll get.

Along with Memento, this is probably the most original Hollywood movie of the 1990s. The idea behind it is brilliant, executed in a perfect symbiosis of depth of thought with tremendous emotions. I admire The Truman Show for absolutely every component of it. I understand that it may not captivate everyone, just as the supposedly brilliant American Beauty, for example, didn’t captivate me.

It’s a shame that this comedy is so needlessly long. Thanks to the pleasant last quarter of an hour, I would be more forgiving toward it. Kate Hudson are Matthew McConaughey are very good in it.

For an audience interested in such things, this is the most wonderful bedtime story.