POMO

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the new millennium? Not a chance. Midnight Special is rather like an average episode of The X-Files. Though it is well cast and the plot is well paced, the film is emotionally flat (with only a succinct depiction of the characters), not very clever (a boy is able to knock a satellite out of the sky through force of will, but he can’t stop a car in which he is being kidnapped by two old men?!) and, in working with the genre, it merely repeats familiar motifs without the slightest update or surprise. The climax reaches for narrative grandeur, but it doesn’t offer even a fraction of the awe or intellectual depth of similarly conceived genre climaxes (The Abyss, Arrival, Annihilation). For Nichols, this must have been just a routine studio commission; I don’t believe that he made Midnight Special for creative gratificaiton. Two and a half stars.

Except for two lapses in logic (the gardener’s groundless threats / the probability of using spray) that are utterly obvious in an otherwise decently written screenplay, this is a solid thriller with a precise form and a well-cast main character.

Based on a high-quality novel, Night of the Devils is neither a B-movie nor Euro-trash. Giorgio Ferroni delivers a captivating drama about the members of a cursed family living on a farm in a Yugoslavian forest. Or rather, a drama about a lost passer-by who asks them to help him repair his car. Everything – from the casting and portrayal of the characters, to the revelation of the consequences of the curse, which, together with the main character, we are initially sceptical about – works so well that the purely horror gore scenes are actually surprising with their straight-forwardness. But pleasantly so – similarly high-quality character-based drama is rare, if not exceptional, in old Italian horror movies, which are more or less built on gore. Of course, there is the gothic atmosphere of the location, beautiful women and sensuality, and a tender love motif that lends depth to the film’s conclusion, almost foreshadowing the cult climax of some cinematic masterpieces (I don’t want throw out any spoilers).

Romero was a master. Otherwise, a film about a frustrated suburban housewife with a distracted look could not have been so interesting. But the psychology of the characters works here, as do the sparks between them, the feeling of futility and the seductive desire to finally change something in their lives, to “go over to the other side” and be something extraordinary. And what else could there be for such a character – a jaded woman slapped by her husband and bored with the daily routine of an exemplary American family – if not the role of a witch? Romero wrote, shot and edited Season of the Witch, and even fifty years, the film is still pleasing with its feel for composition and editing, and it’s comprehensible in terms of content. Romero knew what he was doing.

Locke comes across as if you were filming, in real time with hidden cameras, the car ride of a man on the telephone dealing with a tricky life situation that could turn his successful professional and personal life upside down in the course of a single night. It is a situation that tests him on the character level, shaped by his difficult childhood, and on the professional level, in maintaining ambition in his responsibility for successfully carrying through an important social cause. It is also as if he is a charismatic man whose emotions and dilemmas you understand and sympathize with. Then all you have to do is edit it down to a smoothly running 85 minutes and you have a gripping study of a superbly played film character. Not everyone will understand that character and not everyone would behave like him, and the film is thus also an interesting test of the viewer’s hierarchy of values. Life can be a dog, but it only takes a few tricks to make an excellent film. If you know how.

Caged Heat is a Corman-esque B-movie with bare breasts and action. With his debut, The Silence of the Lambs director Jonathan Demme tried to make a guilty pleasure, but he held too tightly to the leash (there is no rape, gore, revenge motif or any attempt to shock) to make an honest grindhouse flick that could have been interesting in the intentions that you would expect from it. And for a low-key adventure flick that could be taken at least a bit seriously, it was filmed in a trashy manner, with cheesy dissolves and an even cheesier soundtrack. And then there’s the comical overacting. Bullshit.

Diverse and complex in the relationships it depicts and with multiple motifs working in harmony, Mud is a drama about love, values, friendship, trust and the consequences of bad decisions that will always catch up with us sooner or later. Some viewers may struggle to understand McConaughey’s character, but he isn’t the film’s main protagonist. Rather, he is merely a character in a story that a 14-year-old boy witnesses and becomes a part of in order to have an adventurous and rewarding life experience at the end of his adolescence. The screenplay is outstanding and Tye Sheridan turns in an excellent performance, which eventually led to his role in Spielberg’s Ready Player One.

This gangster flick with a stellar cast tries for a high degree of originality, but its characters (except for Brad) are goofballs who neither inspire respect nor are humorously cool. And the dialogue is dull and unfocused (except for Brad’s last line). The most interesting thing about the film is the underscoring of the story about a gang of petty criminals with lines from televised speeches by George W. Bush and Barrack Obama about how great America is and will be. The visual gags and slow motion give the film the mark of exclusivity, but they’re nothing new and, frankly, they are better suited to The Avengers. A camera mounted on a car door, mirroring its opening and closing motion, had already been done by Tarantino (and God knows where he stole it from). The playful shifts in the narrative are pleasing, but in retrospect they seem gratuitous (Gandolfini’s character and his importance in the story), and in the climax they still lead to the resolution that we assume just from looking at the film’s poster.

China Moon is solid ’90s thriller with a high-quality screenplay. With no chance to reveal the point in advance, confusing interpolations and characters driven into a corner more than you would expect. And with an ending that is (unfortunately) no longer very much in fashion. What prevents it from getting a higher rating is “only” the lack of value added of more creative directing, which would have turned mere high-quality craftsmanship into a distinctive work with reach. That melancholic jazz soundtrack by George Fenton is literally asking for as much. For Polanski, for example.

Virgin Witch gets off to a promising start full of innocent teen eroticism, shot through a tantalizingly lecherous lens and with the promise of interesting things to come at the homestead, where two naive sisters fall into the clutches of an eccentric gang with nefarious intentions. The members of the witches’ coven are interesting characters, aristocratically understated at first glance, but burning inside with a desire to corrupt virginal innocence. The young, horny photographer of “modeling” nudes, the well-kempt lesbian, the trustworthy doctor who turns out to be... It’s a shame that the witchcraft rituals that everything builds up to are so closely tied to the understated old English cinema, and the film slips away cheaply and unsatisfyingly from the cards laid out between the characters. The prelude was a lot more fun here.