POMO

A guy with a troubled past is doing some soul searching during a lonely fight for his life… That’s great material for a survival drama, but apart from nice music and attractive locations on the Fuerteventura coasts, nothing here works as it should. The dialogue is clumsily skims over the issue and the narrative might arouse slight curiosity as in “I wonder how this ends”, but it is devoid of suspense. And there is no emotional connection to the characters whatsoever. The director seems to know how to make a music video, but not how to tell stories about people and their feelings.

This movie is fun thanks to its gangsters, humour and, above all, Riccardo Scamarcio, who seems to have been born for this type of role. But its plot does nothing more than copy every Scorsese and Scarface-style movie without living up to their brilliance, neither in its screenplay nor direction. It also fails to convey the twistedness of its characters’ values with the wonderfully ironic but sufficiently serious self-reflection of the genre classics referred to above.

Set against backdrop of National Geographic green screens, Point Break is a testosterone-fuelled exhibition of extreme sports pretending to be a cinematic story with a message, just like the original from 1991. Though it is nicely filtered in terms of visuals and has likeable actors, its narrative is completely retarded. And the sports exhibitions that are at least not ridiculous, such as the final climb over wet cliffs, are neither as easy to follow nor as epically portrayed as in The Art of Flight, which clearly served as an inspiration (look at the similar graphics as the end credits start to roll).

A routine flick without a clear-cut concept that might amuse some non-discerning popcorn-eating teenagers (it contains both jump scares and gore), Pet Sematary will disappoint or anger fans of the original book, as well as thinking fans of the genre. It has some powerful moments (the mom being hugged by her daughter) and nice visuals (the burying ground), but it is also lethally dumb and, what’s more, it lacks any kind of director’s vision along the lines of “I want to preserve the original character of the book by making it into an equally interesting film adaptation”. The cast is alright, the familial ties and the initial atmosphere of the chilling locations work, but all of that is undermined by the further development of the movie.

Nice but bland, The Highwaymen is a safe bet. Any hopes of originality for this version of the famous story die in the first third with the clichéd exposition of the main characters. And the rest of the movie does nothing to counter this assumption. But it’s not boring - Costner and Harrelson hold the movie together with their performances and Costner’s talk with Bonnie’s dad (William Sadler) goes deeper. The final shootout wasn’t all that hair-raising in real life, so the movie cannot have the epic climax that a flick in this genre needs.

Harbour’s good, with all the right catchphrases. The gigantic outcasts from hell in the climax might be the most impressive ever. The casting of Milla Jovovich appropriately defines the target audience composed of fans of bloody, B-level monster freak-shows. Neil Marshall’s imagination knows no bounds, nor does his courage (or lack of common sense?) to flush such a huge budget down the drain. His Hellboy amuses with its stupidity, excess and craziness, but watching it in a cinema seemed extremely out of place, even bizarre. With the right crew at home, beer and popcorn, I might be inclined to give it three stars.

A run-of-the-mill horror flick that, like Anabelle 2, attacks the audience with child endangerment. As is common in clichéd horror flicks without any individuality, it tries to mask the lack of originality of its story and faulty logic with loud sound design and solid production values (read: it sounds intense and looks good). That is nothing that will make you remember the movie a few years later. Zero connection to the Conjuring universe.

The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears is made up of a mysterious mosaic of hallucinations that may or may not be connected to the simple story of “a man’s wife disappearing from a locked apartment”. The film’s rapidly cut dream-like madness with unjustified erotic and gore scenes might catch your attention in the beginning, but they cannot hold it throughout the whole movie. The scenes that develop the plot’s mystery would make for a stylish ten-minute short film.

From the technical point of view, Razorback is extremely outdated. The filmmaking methods of expressing anxiety and fear through camerawork and editing, at the time creative, cool and impressive, are now the ridiculous and distracting stuff of dated B-movies. And that is the difference between visionary filmmakers who can still make genre movies work (Spielberg) and temporary hitmakers who stayed stuck in one genre season (Mulcahy). Imagine Jaws having such music and camera tricks… Razorback’s surrealistic set decorations and atmosphere, however, appealed to me even today. A slightly more perverse Edgar Allan Poe(tics).

A more adult version of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, The Beach Bum is a casual bohemian fuck-off to social conventions and Miami glamor, set in a stoner’s euphoria, without the need for genre-specific plots or realistic basics. Though the humour is occasionally so infantile that it’s no longer funny, and there is less ambition for artistic reflection than we are used to with Korine, there is a non-stop good mood and some definitely iconic details, so I predict that, just like good wine, this movie might get better with age. For me, the most iconic scene is the stoned cruise from Key West to Miami on a shoddy, funnily branded motorboat!