POMO

Though it has a nice ending, Life is otherwise just a well-crafted yet routine genre movie that was born out of the possibility to use the audiovisual trends from Gravity. You won’t be bored, as the tension works and the cast is pleasant to look at, but the story is clichéd and the occasional lapses in logic and at least two poorly edited scenes drag the film down to the level of forgettable average.

An action flick for adults that works with characters and emotions as though it was an epic drama, Logan is set in realistic locations overflowing with atmosphere, with action scenes worthy of James Cameron and the most effective, ultra-dark music Marco Beltrami has ever made (though not suitable to be listened to on its own) plus one soundtrack hit from Tarantino’s Django Unchained. It’s only once in a few years that I give five stars to a movie based on a comic book.

This movie enables you to experience a nine-month rowing journey from California to Australia (!) with a group of girls. Two hours of sleep or rest, two hours of rowing, rinse and repeat for nine months. It is an admirable feat both physically and especially mentally. They don’t experience lifethreatening storms and no sharks attack them while they are swimming, but the mental burden that they must bear (and confess to the cameras) lend sufficient drive to the documentary, which is a psychologically intriguing study of a decimated person in an unusual situation. Admirable!

The Unseen tells the story of two young people trying to get to the coast through war-torn Bolivia and to see the ocean for the first time. And to meet the father who left long ago without a word. Weaker and more banal than it sounds, the movie depicts war in a naive way, without a broader context. [Sitges FF]

This lovingly made film works with painted images, carefully directed voices of the actors and Mansell’s characteristically deep music eliciting a sense of fatefulness. Loving Vincent has the framework of a detective story with a gripping mystery and misleading questions, varied with the diverse characters whom the protagonist meets and made beautiful with poetic thoughts from the letters that van Gogh wrote before his death. The heart of the film comprises van Gogh’s life itself, his outsider existence tormented by self-doubt. His was an existence with exceptional perception of life and the ability to transform the positive face of his soul into works of art. His intimately dramatic story as a now celebrated artist is particularly attractive for viewers generally, and not only for people who feel misunderstood and naturally long for recognition and wider acceptance. The film concludes beautifully with the song “Starry Starry Night” performed by singer Lianne La Havas.

An old man chattering about nothing in particular rather than about life. Lucky offers likable characters and an attractive environment, but both are underused. And Lynch spouts one inanity after another, without adding another dimension to the film by linking it to the motifs of his works. I can imagine a more atmospheric, poetic and meaningful version by Jim Jarmusch, for example. And that’s a great idea.

A chaotically plotted story with a good casting and unfailingly attractive (at least on the screen) Scandinavian snowy atmosphere, The Snowman has a weak ending that knocks another half-star off my rating.

For a ninety-minute feature, The Beguiled doesn’t have much of a plot. Kirstens' Dunst’s well-played Victorian restraint and innocence (read: sexual desire ready to be awakened) and another great performance by Nicole Kidman as the head of the household are the only things that interested me here. Many scenes had half the screening room (including me) in stitches. Sofia Coppola forgot that the contemporary viewer is not one of the protagonists of her film and its time. If a remake for a contemporary audience really was necessary, it should have been made by Guillermo del Toro. With a healthy dose of ketchup. [Cannes]

Though impressive with its dark atmosphere, The Maus is a not very well executed film dealing with the trauma of the Bosnian war. The incoherent sequence of scenes in the first third is later explained but doesn’t erase the impression of the director’s failure. An unnecessary, supposedly disturbing epilogue that does not make any sense in the context of the plot only serves to further prove this point. [Sitges FF]

Though definitely not breathtaking, Menashe certainly offer an interesting insight into the rules of operation of the Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn. The community’s rabbi decides whether a little boy will remain in the care of his father, the main character of the film, who has been a widower for a year and is a somewhat clumsy, hapless individual… [Karlovy Vary IFF]