POMO

Pleasure’s theme of success in show business at the cost of losing one’s innocence and friends is not exactly innovative. However, it is placed in the most appropriate setting and flawlessly filmed in technical terms. A documentary that deceives with the form of a feature film better than its actresses feign pleasure. Seeing it in a crowded screening room at a festival must have been a treat, with giant penises and the porn atmosphere dominating the picture right from the beginning. The film is an interesting guide to how the Hollywood porn business works (agents, parties, film sets and communication between filmmakers), and real figures from that business appear in it. The film is maximally open and not afraid to fully portray even the most unpleasant moments that a neophyte porn actress can experience, if she doesn’t refuse to do anything. On the contrary, by escalating those moments, the film cleverly develops the transformation of the main character, who successfully rises “higher and higher” despite her initial inexperience. The Swedish Sofia Kappel does a good job of personifying the blonde angel with lascivious appetites and the femme-fatale brunette Evelyn Claire is her ideal alter ego, whom she looks up to and with whom she shares the film’s best, climactic scene. I don't want to bring up Mulholland Drive again, but David Lynch is simply a huge influence on the new generation of filmmakers. This time with a thematic shade of porn along the lines of Lost Highway. If the technically brilliant Pleasure wasn’t so cold in the Swedish way, but instead possessed the absorbing poetics and sensory complexity of Lynch’s aforementioned films, it would make the viewer mentally avaricious even sooner than physically.

Prey is a high-octane adventure with pleasant Indian poetics and the spectacular return of the second-best movie monster ever. The screenplay flows and contains nice details and surprises, and the action is beautifully fluid and kinetic. The woman-power element is natural and believable, while the attractive “savage versus savage in the wilderness” motif is put to excellent use. The actors and costumes are respectable, and the unknown Amber Midthunder puts in ten times more effort than the Oscar-winning Adrien Brody (in Nimród Antal’s otherwise solid Predators). There are a few minor things in the film that could be open to criticism; for example, the final fight could have been better thought out and less rushed, but these are just details in relation to the general level of viewer satisfaction. No film franchise is ever dead; it’s just waiting for the right guy to come along. Within this one, Dan Trachtenberg went the farthest in choosing his own path, put his heart into it and achieved the greatest success. This is a film by a talented filmmaker and movie fan, made for movie fans.

A dramatic arc turned upside down. Snake Eyes has one of the most cinematically substantial openings in the history of film, conjuring pure cinephile euphoria from the interplay of camerawork, sound and editing. And even after that, De Palma spends a long time reminding us of how much he loves FILM and Hitchcock. However, the potential of the brilliantly initiated plot is later severely dampened. The screenplay focuses excessively on details, loses momentum in the main storyline and switches from playful and clever mode to screenwriting futility and farce.

Tom Hardy turns in a great acting performance. It’s unbelievable how he manages not to overact for even a moment in such an eccentric portrayal of such a wacky character. And he portrays that character in dozens of mental states with absolutely unpredictable reactions. In the screenplay, however, Refn did not sustain the gradual, precise psychological analysis of his character throughout the film’s runtime (interactions with new characters in new settings), and instead of a meaningful build-up, his creative vision is crushed under the weight of repetitive artsy abstraction. And that’s a shame, because with its unique stylisation, Bronson could have been the successor to Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.

Antlers is technically outstanding and benefits from having a cast of high-quality actors, but the screenplay is average, without a single idea that would make the film memorable. And it’s also dumb in places. A similar theme received a significantly better rendering in The Ritual, not only in terms of genre techniques, but also in the psychology of the character. A weak three stars.

Though Watcher is a clichéd film, it does have a pleasant lead actress (I have a particular weakness for a blonde bob cut), solid production, a feel for its cold setting and the ability to raise goosebumps. The film’s best target audience is young American women who are planning to visit or move to Eastern Europe, ideally Romania. In addition to English, Romanian is spoken in the film and the main character is the only foreigner in the country. The film would have earned four stars with a more imaginative and clever climax. As it stands, however, the climax is embarrassing, though for a moment it looked like an ending that you wouldn’t expect and that I personally would have been very pleased with (and which would have pissed off mainstream viewers).

Borders of Love is banality that’s precise in dialogue and authentic in acting, with one casting surprise. From the first moment, you figure out where it will go and that’s exactly where it goes and ends up.

“The only place socialism works is hell – and they don't need it there.” Triangle of Sadness is a satirical ode to the inevitable inequality in society. Balance is utopia. In terms of entertainment value, this dinner tasting from The Square colossally developed into a concert of absurdity on a luxury yacht trumps anything we have seen in the comedy genre in recent years. And it’s not even a comedy genre film. I also enjoyed the hard shocks of the panning camera. When you have something to say, you can repeatedly remind yourself that form is only a means of saying it. Just as all of the whimsical glamour propriety of the passengers on this grand voyage is unnecessary... I’m not giving the film a fifth star because the last, “island” third of the film falls short of the “boat” part in terms of both humor and the effectiveness of capping off the scenes. But the ending is excellent!

If Strickland had applied all of the feminine sensuality, feel for production design and mystical poetics to subject matter that is more accessible to viewers, we would have revelled in a cinema connosieur’s idea of heaven. But no, he enjoys messing around with obscure ideas torn from reality and evoking a dreamlike phantasmagoria in which it is impossible to find a connection with real fantasies and desires. And he needs to lubricate the lead actress in the theatrical act with shit from the gassy documentarian’s bowels. Why?? In Flux Gourment, you will find, if you want, parallels with Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, which was released the same year. Alternative forms of artistic acts. But Cronenberg's opus, though also very much outside of the mainstream, is a more complexly thoughtful reflection on the existing themes. [KVIFF]

Crimes of the Future is a bizarre, visually polished movie with an interesting dystopian vision of society compelling music from Howard Shore, a charismatic Mortensen in a black martyr’s cowl and a sexually and irresistibly unique Kristen Stewart. Every second with her was entrancing for me. It’s just a shame that the film didn’t culminate in her delightful, loud orgasm on the operating table while surgically connecting her open wounds with the tumor-ridden Mortensen. When I was a young boy, the message of Hellraiser that “pain is pleasure” was instrumental in helping me overcome getting stitches for my busted head and other injuries from doing what boys do. Crimes of the Future gave me the idea that having something unwelcome and malignant growing in your body is not only a natural genetic process of life, but also a unique work of art created by our bodies. This is a strange, fascinating film that is difficult to understand, and I will definitely watch it again. [KVIFF]