POMO

A TV tear-jerker. Blonde is a mosaic of the “experiences” of a tormented girl searching for her own identity and place in the world. It is engaging with its atmosphere, but needlessly long given how little information it provides. The constant illogical alternation of picture formats and switching between color and black-and-white scenes correspond to the protagonist’s confused mental state. It’s a simple yet original technique that works quite well. Ana de Armas is excellent, giving a committed and heartfelt performance. It’s a shame that her efforts are wasted on a film that can’t be appreciated by a broader audience. Andrew Dominik has something going for him as an artist, but he is NOT Terrence Malick.

The suspense sets in early and effectively and the survival-drama potential is solid until the end. Good work with the setting and digital animals, with a likable acknowledgement of Jurassic Park’s inspiration (endangered characters trapped in a jeep). And Idris Elba fits in perfectly. The “broken family comes together in an extreme situation” ultra-cliché doesn’t matter; after all, this is a genre flick that solidly entertains with suspense in an exotic setting. But there are some occasional bits of nonsense. There aren’t many of them, but this high-powered and technically high-quality adventure would be better off without them.

The idea is fine and the visuals are decent, but the screenplay and editing are amateurish. Relationship clichés, terrible physical silliness and, in the tensest scenes, skipping over key moments in movement while overcoming obstacles. That was the thing in the film that bothered me even more than the fact that those engineers searching for a signal didn’t think to mount a mobile telephone on a drone. So stupid. But the vertigo factor is satisfying, though it won’t work for a lot of viewers. On a home cinema with a large screen, Fall is a sweat-inducing physical experience similar to Free Solo.

Meru is not only about the first ascent of an extremely difficult Himalayan mountain, but primarily about the journey of a dream shared between three climbers who returned to the mountain despite a devastatingly unsuccessful first attempt and with a minimum chance of success due to the deteriorating health of one of them. At the same time, it is a film about the loss of loved ones and the determination to fulfil the team’s dream, even though “surviving your own death” clearly suggests “that’s enough of that!”. Shot in the craziest of places in luxurious image quality courtesy of Jimmy Chin.

After half an hour, he only managed to revive a turtle. But there are two passionate, busty ladies around him, one of whom (the brunette) cooks and keeps him company in bed and the other (the blonde) loves him platonically. Besides them, the slow and thin plot is livened up by the rising body count – this Victor is an arrogant prick and spares no one. The monster is OK in terms of musculature but with its eyes of a kind-hearted good guy, it elicits anything but “horror”. The film’s ending is imaginative but unsatisfying after the long slog through the trashy ballast.

So minimalist in its emotional filmmaking tricks, and yet so riveting and powerful! For the entire two-and-a-half-hour runtime... Ron Howard capitalizes on the seriousness of the situation and builds on the detailed perception of the psychological state of those involved. The responsibility that weighs on them to an almost unbearable extent. And the breathtaking rescue process itself. This is a very different experience from reading about it in the newspaper. Viggo Mortensen is perfect and Colin Farrell is great. There is no manipulative music, pathos or movie heroism here. Thirteen Lives is “just” a precisely filmed account of the professionally done, extremely difficult and dangerous work of a few courageous men. It is a low-key film that will only grow over time.

Scott Derrickson is a decent craftsman, and his films always look good. But in The Black Phone, he tries to combine the thriller-style theme of a kidnapper (reality) with a ghost story (fantasy) in a rather more mechanical than creative way, and it doesn’t really work. The ghost-story elements serve only to hinder the plot development. The bad guy is insufficiently scary and underdeveloped. We don’t even find out what his motive is. The dramatic storyline with the weak, violent father is not given enough space. The “someday you will have to stand up for yourself” motif has drive, but it's aimed only at a teen audience. The most stable pillar of the film is young Mason Thames in the lead role. This won’t be the last we’ve heard of him.

Hellblock 13 is a C-movie wanna-be Creepshow with Troma’s amateurish technical rendering and ridiculous acting performances. But fans of the genre will enjoy Gunnar Hansen (the original Leatherface from 1974) in the lead role of the executioner, and lovers of beautiful woman will be delighted by the sinful prisoner Debbie Rochon, who reads her horror stories to him. Unfortunately, nothing that a viewer would want happens between them.

For viewers who are aware of Peele’s filmmaking talent and screenwriting limitations, Nope is exactly the kind of nonsense indicated by the trailer. As a director, he can grippingly shoot practically any scene. But when those scenes only hint at something for a hundred minutes, and some of them (the Asian and the chimpanzee) have no meaningful relevance to the already thin story, it’s merely pretentious bullshitting. Peele’s unusual mixing of genre motifs (in this case, sci-fi horror and westerns) can come across as bold and original, but in a film that is supposed to be scary while balancing on the edge of parody, the creative vision gets lost. In terms of execution, Nope is somewhere between Get Out, which was based on a brilliant idea, and Us, which was ridiculous bullshit.

For a concept involving the authentic night-time doings of a few characters in ordinary locations of Berlin, 140 minutes is a lot. The first half of this film drags a bit in exceedingly trivial scenes and dialogue. But what happens later is all the more surprising and gripping, especially if you know nothing at all about the plot. The troubles come in hints, and we suspect and fear them because the protagonist doesn’t deserve them. This is a very well made, emotive and thoroughly intensifying “one-shot” film with good acting performances.