POMO

Ciarán Hinds was given a well-deserved lead role, but unfortunately by first-time director who doesn’t know how to see the filmed subject through the eyes of the viewer. The film’s plot is full holes and just doesn’t work. It does not want to answer the basic questions on which it is built and the answers to which should comprise its essence. The only thing you’ll remember from this is Ciarán’s tormented character watching the ocean in long, melancholic shots that pretend to be deep.

If you want to visit a small, isolated lighthouse island where there is no shelter from a tyrannical dad and take a look into the cruel Nordic fates of his wife and children, The Disciple will deliver. Although the story is not original, it is well told and the atmosphere of the island is compelling.

A dusty black-and-white, bitter-comic look at contemporary Berlin in the shadow of Germany’s grim history, and one slacking young man without a future. He meets a few people (old and new friends), talks and repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) tries to order his dream coffee everywhere. The film has a few good moments and a good actor in the lead role, but overall it isn’t very entertaining, nor does it have any kind of message. And the jazz music in the background like in a Woody Allen movie doesn’t fit the mood at all. It’s an okay film for killing some time in an art-house cinema while waiting for the next Jim Jarmusch film to come out.

You spend the whole time wondering where this is going and looking for the driving force, and in the end you are moved to tears. As a screenplay and the directorial debut of a young actor whom no one has ever taken seriously, this is a revelation. A small Czech film that has achieved world-class originality with small means, without calculations, and with a desire to tell a powerful story with autobiographical elements.

This schizophrenic trifle is comprehensible, but it seems aloof due to its pretentious surrealism; it’s impossible to connect with it and enjoy it. An interesting form with a grim noir environment, high-quality actors, but no content. I recommend that you rather watch Lost Highway, which is less comprehensible but it will captivate you and won’t let go.

The second Captain America, reasonably moved to the “present”, is more serious and filled with more physical action. It takes place predominantly in the streets (cars and shootings) and it’s nice that the movie’s best scene is dominated by Samuel L. Jackson. However, the conspiracy plot is unsurprising and becomes chaotic in the second half. The initial diversity of the action-scene settings also disappears in the second half. And the action scenes are not helped much by being finished with contrived twists (anyone can be rescued from anywhere at the last moment). However, the audience will be kept on their toes with respect to the identity of the intriguing villain until the end. And the villain’s shared past with the Captain saves the plot. As a spectacular comic book blockbuster that you can watch with your brain turned off, it’s not bad.

Stoker is a visually charming version of the plot involving psychopathic intruder in the family, as defined by Hitchcock in 1943 and then repeated in every detective TV series ever made. Except that this time it is presented through compelling acting performances, but without emotions, tension and credible psychology of the characters, so it doesn’t work in the slightest and ends up being completely useless.

The mood of this film is in the spirit of Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River mixed with Ben Affleck’s The Town, but slower, more extensive, more attentive to the characters and with more layers of thought. It is a powerful film about people, actions and consequences, responsibility, guilt and forgiveness. The viewer’s engagement in the story deepens with every tenminute increment. Its music is unconventional, even hypnotic – the silent chants used as the background to the last quarter of the film lend it, in the context of a culminating relationship collision, the fateful depth that Terrence Malick’s recent films only pretend to have by using similar chants. I was looking forward to seeing Ryan Gosling, but Bradley Cooper overshadowed him by delivering his best, most intimate performance to date. I am surprised that producer Sidney Kimmel didn’t do more lobbying at the Academy, because this is an independent American film at the level of Sergio Leone.

Never have I seen in a film such precision and conciseness that Susanne Bier has in depicting the feelings of characters using fast-paced but detailed shots of the actors’ faces. An unexpected development of the storyline and the number of relationship nuances and their complexity would be enough for two separate feature-length films. Brilliant. Also due to the acting performances. The occasional milking of the audience’s feelings can be forgiven, as it’s balanced by the social intelligence of the film. After the Wedding is an excellent relationship film.

A visionary’s life-view expressed through film images and music in a sci-fi environment. The thematic scope is absolute, from the birth of thought and awareness of one’s own personality at the very beginning of humanity to the threat of the dominance of artificial intelligence over advanced civilization in the future. The patience-requiring pace of the film aptly symbolizes the human life span and, in conjunction with the depth and mystery of the universe, also the distant-nature of the answers to our existential questions. Except for the old-fashioned inverse filters in the final fly-overs over the land, it’s an amazingly timeless movie. The picture quality of the restored version shown in cinemas in 2014 is perfect.