POMO

A bunch of uninteresting characters running around the interiors of a ship and experiencing unpleasant things. Not only have we seen all of this a hundred times before, but it’s made even worse by the twists that become increasingly absurd and stupid with every passing minute. I was calm during the opening credits, but I found myself irritated by the time the end credits rolled.  That's what I call emotional gradation! One star only for the A-list actors and a bigger budget than similarly bad movies have.

A standard psychological television production. Two stars on the big screen, three on TV, four on the theatre stage.

An intelligent movie treat in which everyone goes full throttle, but its extraordinary subject still seems to be not fully developed in the end. It stumbles somewhere along the way, but it’s hard to say where exactly.

The Time Machine is beautifully filmed and has amazing visual effects, and Guy Pearce does the best he can, but it’s almost as stupid as Wild Wild West in terms of content. Fortunately, however, it’s significantly shorter and comes to an end before it can make you angry. With a wink, in a weak moment of viewer naïveté and modesty, I’d give it three stars.

Greg Kinnear and Willem Dafoe are unique, but this movie set in the porn business is somehow inappropriately negative and unlikable. Boogie Nights, for example, is in a completely different league, with a wonderful balance of humor, satire and tragedy.

Bad Company is an exceedingly drawn out and monotonous action movie about secret agents. It’s outshined by the first Mission: Impossible in terms of power, screenwriting sophistication, atmosphere and action scenes. It’s just a routine, unoriginal movie with no build-up, and it fails to utilise the mentoring potential of Anthony Hopkins. Anyone else could have been in his place and it wouldn’t have changed anything.

Below is a sometimes suspenseful and sometimes unintentionally ridiculous variation on Event Horizon that attempts to be a serious drama about guilt, responsibility and a bad conscience in its secondary storyline. As a sci-fi horror flick, it’s worse than Pitch Black, but better than Ghost Ship.

While the first Blade was a standard cliché with decent dynamics and a visual gorefest, the second one is a standard cliché with excellent dynamics and a visual super-gorefest. Wherever possible, Guillermo del Toro pushed the limits and the result is grittier, slicker and more exciting that the first one. It’s an upgrade similar to that seen in Terminator 2. If those great characters had been a bit more well developed, Blade II would have been worthy of five stars!

This digital amateur movie suffers from a terrible lack of professionalism in places (particularly the use of original music). On the other hand, however, it scintillates with humor that could be the envy of more than one Hollywood blockbuster. A fresh, on-point and heartfelt and uncritical parody of Britney Spears and everything around her. It’s also an effective balm for the misery of her “real movie”, Crossroads.

Cabin Fever is a boring, unintentionally funny patchwork of clichés and twists borrowed from a dozen celebrated horror classics. The filmmakers, however, are utterly unable to take a detached view and just helplessly, amateurishly embarrass themselves. There’s not a hint of suspense or atmosphere. This is the weakest of the “kids go to the cabin” horror movies. Even the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre outshines this.