POMO

With water, slow pensive music with saxophones and Sean Penn, this excellently atmospheric film is a little bit like Scott’s White Squall. But the script is completely different: through a framework story set in the present day (two couples on a yacht), it tells a different relationship story about murders that took place in the past (a family tragedy in a house on a small island). Paradoxically, though, we are more interested in the story taking place in the present day (thanks to the excellent casting and the completely believable sparks between the characters) than in learning the identity of the murderer from the other story (uninteresting, TV-like narrative style). The stories are linked in the movie’s climax, but they prove to be not very compatible (you feel that what you’re watching is supposed to be deep but it simply isn’t). The film is not very well known and not attractive to the masses, as the two types of environments in which the stories take place mean two very different target audiences. P.S. Liz Hurley is fu*king irresistible.

I kind of don’t see this shown anywhere except at electronics fairs. Eighty percent of the shots do not bring anything that we haven’t seen elsewhere (the Earth and Water chapters) and, moreover, they lack any commentary. You can only choose between the pure “sound of nature” or the average music normally found in television documentaries. Still, I give it a solid three stars because the 20% of shots not seen elsewhere contain the Aurora Borealis in the mountains (the Atmosphere chapter), which is simply breathtaking when seen on a Blu-ray projected on a screen with an HD projector. But I would be hard pressed to give this film two stars if I watched it on DVD on a small screen.

I think that perhaps this good, albeit far from excellent, comedy with an unoriginal concept didn’t appeal to me as much as it did to others because such nights out are a pretty common occurrence for me.

Michael Bay’s lack of taste and sense of proportion in the magical, polished world of the first Transformers?! Transformers has undergone a similar shift as Bad Boys. Spielberg's touch has disappeared and Bay has gone rogue. The first instalment was great thanks to several pleasant, well-proportioned aspects – the visual celebration of Megan Fox’s beauty, the sparks between her and the shy Shia LaBeouf, getting to know the cool robots, with each of them having their place in the script and rousing astonishment and fondness. The film didn’t hurry, but rather took time to relish every scene and its only weak spot was the chaotic action climax. In the second film, Megan and Shia merely evade explosions (in similarly chaotic action scenes) and the humor relies on scenes like the one in which a little robot humps Megan’s boot like a dog (!). The robots’ potential is wasted here, especially in terms of their individuality, and some are even annoying (the “couples” accompanying the main characters). And when you finally see a truly impressive robot, it’s immediately made ridiculous by his “funny” huge steel testicles from underneath which John Turturro radio-calls the Marine Corps (!!). This is simply not a direction I wanted Transformers to take. And that’s not even to mention the weak script, barely holding together the continuous action orgies, which just don’t satisfy after two hours. Michael, you obviously have no idea why the first film was such a nice surprise.

I Love You, Man is a pleasant movie that lies someplace halfway between the traditionally shallow Hollywood mainstream (Hitch) and the likeably earnest, no-punch-pulling Judd Apatow (Forgetting Sarah Marshall). And that’s only thanks to Jason Segel and a few good screenwriting ideas.

Too bad that the screenwriters focused so much on the journalist plot, which is not that important for the audience. The editor-in-chief character, played by Helen Mirren, and her effort to publish the best article just slows the film down. The viewer is not interested in newspapers, but in revealing secrets, developing relationships between superbly played characters and the threats to their lives in a dangerous high-stakes political game. Wouldn’t Russell Crowe be enough for the journalism plot? Otherwise, however, State of Play is a very decent film, Ben Affleck is fine and the emotions between Crowe and Robin Wright Penn are completely believable.

Home is effective ecological agit-prop that doesn’t just criticize and warn, but also provides advice on how to fight against the issues being criticized, giving some hope for a turn for the better. The two-hour running time does not do the film any harm; on the contrary, it gives it the possibility to be more complex and remarkable. And the creators made good use of this possibility. If not for the oversimplified straightforward voiceover, I’d give it five stars because it has a MESSAGE. P. S.: I love skyscrapers and I don’t mind a little megalomania, but I absolutely agree with the critical attitude toward Dubai. This film said it for me.

Earth contains some incredibly beautiful pictures that make you bate your breath in places, but they remain only pictures, even though it didn’t have to be this way.

How do you freshen up the most hackneyed thriller plots about psychopathic neighbors so that you can sell them with a straight face and the audience eats them up again? We set them in the historical period everyone associates with a natural disaster, more specifically the California wildfires. Samuel L. Jackson tries very hard and the psychology of the characters is solidly constructed, but this psychology is superficial in the Hollywood mainstream fashion, its only purpose being to entertain us over a tub of popcorn on a Saturday night. Not that I’m complaining; we grew with this and keep consuming it on a daily basis, but for God’s sake – would at least one original plot twist be too much to ask from the screenwriters?

This film starts off as the coolest post-apocalyptic action orgasm since Mad Max 2. It takes only the names of the characters from James Cameron, while providing the well-cast Worthington/Yelchin duo with an interesting introduction. Terminator Salvation is engaging with its atmosphere, deadly new T600s and Transformer-like giants emitting sounds reminiscent of Spielberg’s Tripods. It is a great visual experience relishing its B-movie but extremely entertaining and spectacular take on the subgenre. BUT... in the second half, the creator of Charlie’s Angels seems to acquire the unfortunate impression that he can master Cameron’s reason-governed universe and starts to reference and alter it, and all of the enthusiasm for this film gradually evaporates. It seems like McG hasn’t even watched Cameron’s movies. At most, he has seen Scott’s Blade Runner, about which he was intrigued the most by fire lashing out of chimneys. P.S.: Worthington plays a more remarkable and important character than Christian Bale.