POMO

A retro farce with great costumes that nonetheless unfolds at a sluggish pace and is full of actors showing off unnecessarily. I consider American Hustle far from masterfully directed. On the contrary, at such a slow pace, it is striking that the ambitious plot disintegrates in the tangle of character motivations that got out of hand. But would you do any better if there was a scantily clad Amy Adams prancing around your set? The acting performances are fantastic, however. Christian Bale tries hard, but Jennifer Lawrence turns in the best performance here. Amy Adams is super-hot (let’s be honest – would you be able to restrain yourself in the bathroom scene?) and the icing on the cake is the unexpected Mr. “XY” from Miami in the best mafia role in recent memory. With his appearance, the pace picks up a little. The nomination for best film and director was probably secured by Bale’s necklace.

I’ve been struggling with Walter Mitty, even after watching it for the second time on the big screen. It has beautiful landscapes, an upbeat soundtrack and a positive mood. But when I stop to look at it intellectually, it seems like a coloring book that doesn’t make much sense and its message about life is too half-baked and insubstantial to be more than an exotic yet forgettable family flick. Walter Mitty sees the world through the eyes of a carefree and cheerful child with no real life experience.

If I was a director, I’d rather shoot nothing than these harmless banal flicks blatantly advocating positive values, which would end up with a “TV film” label if it wasn’t for the expensive cast. The four acting aces are of course super likable, but the story’s too lame for words.

Kevin Hart as a chatty black sidekick is more unbearable than any other chatty black sidekick before him. But if you set him aside, Grudge Match is a clichéd but funny, well-balanced feel-good chill-out movie, which you might find even touching in places. And that’s all I remember from it, so two weeks after my initial evaluation I’m decreasing my rating from four to a strong three stars.

I can’t wrap my head around the fact that one of the most significant European filmmakers (producer Luc Besson) put his signature on such a script.

The introduction is OK. The middle – and longest – survival part of the film is stunning, visually well-arranged and efficiently conveyed, with several chillingly brutal scenes. The climax is ridiculously simplistic political propaganda for the average US viewer. Overall, Lone Survivor is good film for relaxation, but it will sink into oblivion as fast as all of Peter Berg’s action flicks.

The first two-thirds of the second Nymphomaniac retain the power of the first film and, with the sadistic “Mr. K”, increases the audience’s discomfort to risky heights. But the final, “criminal” third raises the suspicion that Lars von Trier either didn’t know how to appropriately and meaningfully finish his work or he was overruled by the producers, who aimed for the biggest box-office profits possible (the absence of Shia LaBeouf in the role of Jerome, while all the others actors reprised their roles, suggests that the last third was filmed as an afterthought, after his contract expired). Finally, the last scene of the film is a bad joke, a slap with a glove full of coins that Nymphomaniac earned also by being split into two parts. In said scene, Trier completely (and unnecessarily) destroyed Stellan Skarsgård’s Seligman, a very important character for the story.

A three-hour long joyride full of sex and cocaine, cool and base at the same time, trying to hide behind the proverb “sow the wind, reap the whirlwind”. I enjoyed myself immensely and I’ll definitely watch this again, but I don’t consider one dramatic scene (with the daughter in the car) to be enough for a three-hour film. The Wolf of Wall Street has perfect catchphrases and is never boring, but it made me realize that this type of Scorsese movie (starting with Casino) is great to watch but won’t leave you with lasting impression. Shutter Island, dark and mystical, perfectly escalated, with a surprising, sophisticatedly ambiguous ending, is much closer to my heart, and I consider it Scorcese’s masterpiece.

Lars von Trier deserves a lot of credit for daring to film such an uncomfortable topic that everyone’s interested in, but few would find the courage to tackle. Let’s be happy that it was done by a filmmaker with such screenwriting and filmmaking talent. Who else could have gotten Hollywood stars to perform in such an explicit movie, which features hard-core footage even in the edited version for release in cinemas? (maybe Michael Haneke, but that’s about it.) The dialogue, work with the actors, escalation of the scenes, atmosphere… everything works perfectly. Nymph()maniac is a film for adult viewers, but not because of its erotic content. The more you know about sex and the more experience you have, the more you will understand it. It is a psychologically contemplative, serious and sad film, but it is narrated with wit, through metaphorical comparisons. The definition of polyphony is at the heart of the film and the Rammstein déjà vu of Lynch’s Lost Highway gives it some extra flavor. I am curious about the second part and even more curious about the full version, which already has a place reserved on my shelf of essential films.

A movie that will captivate you just like Gravity without having to see it in 3D on a big screen (the only added value of the cinema is the spatial sound of rumbling water or a thunderstorm). Though it is not as sentimentally touching and contemplative as Gravity, it is more exciting and realistic, building on a similarly close look at the thinking process and behavior of its protagonist and finding the way out of situations using the things he has at hand. Even with the bold, more than a hundred-minute running time, the film works without a single boring moment or stumble in telling the story. Robert Redford excels with his believable facial expressions. But the ending shouldn’t have… you’ll see.