POMO

The Animatrix: Final Flight of the Osiris is like the best action sequence from Final Fantasy. In fact, it’s even better. The film completely fulfilled its ambitions and to want more from it than a feast for the eyes would be nonsense.

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.

Matrix Revolutions has a more tangible and meaningful plot, less pseudo-philosophising and less gratuitous action for effect than in The Matrix Reloaded. I’m satisfied with that. You’ll find yourself yawning through the first hour, but the subsequent “war of the machines” is amazing. If there were more emotion in the final digital fight between Neo and Smith, Revolutions would have been a class better than Reloaded. The film’s ending has an appropriate amount of the pseudo-depth that the whole saga has been faking. Those who thought that there was something big behind everything will be disappointed. Unavoidably disappointed. Three and a half stars.

The first third of The Recruit is great. The plot slows down in the second third and in the final third, it reaches a spasmodic and ineffective climax. It’s a thriller in which nothing is as it seems. And a thriller that doesn’t work the way it was intended. The fine cast can’t salvage it.

Tiresia is a French intellectual espresso with an interesting story and tiresome dialogue. Despite the sadness and cruelty of the story, the filmmakers keep the typical “artsy” distance in emotions and they express the dramatic nature of the film with symbolism – Bach’s music with footage of flowing lava. A festival affair for private company. It was okay, but I don’t really need to see the Q&A session with the filmmakers.

As a lover of mountains, I expected something big and got something even bigger. With its simple documentary structure, Touching the Void is more absorbing than a star-studded and sophisticated feature film. Brilliant.

An energetic young Tibetan man decides to leave his small Nepalese village for the land of his dreams – America. Along the way, however, he meets a few locals and, mainly, a pretty girl... There’s enough material here for a five-minute short story, stretched out into a two-hour film. Travellers and Magicians isn’t deliberately drawn out and slow because it wants to be “hypnotic”, but because it lacks a dramatic arc, which makes it exceedingly boring, with only a minimum of bright moments that endearingly bring together Tibetan and Western culture.

Mandatory viewing for everyone who thinks that Gérard Depardieu is no longer funny. Shut Up! is wonderful entertainment for all fans of the two most iconic French actors of our time. This comedy is a testament to their mastery and brilliance. *Merde!*

The energy of this slow-moving film is given by the nuances of the central couple’s relationship. The seemingly dull plot consisting in their simply spending time together on a trip to the Californian outback is loaded with spontaneity and authenticity, open and even graphic intimacy and tense quarrels, abounding with love and hate, shot live as if we were there with them. In an epic widescreen picture, but emotionally barren with no supporting music. Throughout the film, we wait to see if there will be some kind of twist, dramatization, a point. And Bruno Dumont duly defies us and our expectations. A hell of a festival flick.

Bad Taste was imaginative and original, so one could ignore the ridiculous effects and garage music. Actually, it was these cheap features that gave it its particular charm. But the Australian jackasses known as the “Spierig Bros.” just mix zombies with aliens (what kind of combination is that?!) in one absurd mishmash with almost no original ideas, making the eccentric amateurish result almost unwatchable. For more than thirty clichéd killings (grinder, shovel, rifle, etc.), there is only one original (with an airplane propeller). I’m giving this only one very weak star for the certain amount of enthusiastic playfulness I felt from the film.