POMO

Equivalent to film testimonies of suffering in concentration camps, this raw, silent drama is about the atrocities committed on women (and girls) in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995, as seen through the eyes of a young woman who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Almost the entire film takes place in the dense atmosphere of a women’s camp, a deserted area with three barracks. Most of the unpleasant things (killing, rape, humiliation) take place out of sight, but there is also one naturalistic scene, longer than the audience would be comfortable with. Minimalist Natasha Petrovic is sufficient in the main role, and Stellan Skarsgård’s cameo was nice. In the end, the film changes from the depressing testimony from the camp into the pondering of the consequences of the terrible acts with which the main character not only has to live, but has to accept within her family as her own blood... I can’t give it four stars, as the second half of the film (the affair with the captain) is less believable in terms of the characters’ psychology and behavior. Still, it is a powerful, memorable experience that will haunt you in your sleep.

The Ghost Writer is a feature-length BMW commercial in an unmistakable Polanski style, with dark and rainy images composed in a pedantic way with a collective symphony of actors. The plot is just an excuse for all of that.

Bastards works better as a comedy than as the drama that it aspires to be. The humor brought to the film by children–non–actors with their natural behavior and down-to-earth lines –lighten up the drama, which comes across as naïve or even tacky (the church scene). Which is a pity, because it overshadows the bold move on part of the filmmakers in telling the truth about things we’ve never seen in a Czech feature film and will probably never see again. Tomáš Magnusek is a big filmmaking enthusiast and, unlike some other such individuals, he also makes films himself. As a screenwriter, however, he might be more successful in the field of vulgar comedy.

Conscience and love entrapped by insurance corruption extending to the highest government bodies. Argentina is wild. Carancho is engaging due to its shocking topic rather than to the filmmaking aspect, which is mundane and unremarkable. It is not until the final scene that the emotions escalate enough to really get to the audience. The chemistry between the central duo, which is an important pillar of the film, works well.

Centurion is a historical adventure-hunt movie. Congratulations to Neil Marshall for working himself up to be a director of actors such as Fassbender, West, Cunningham and Morrissey. All of them, together with the fantastic natural scenery, help make the movie fun and engaging. This film is not bloody and brutal just to shock the audience; rather, it is realistic and its violence fits into the concept of a harsh drama in which the likable main characters are hunted in the wild by the bloodthirsty Lady Vengeance hitchhiker. Her anger and cruelty are justified and therefore her character does not inspire disgust and hatred in the viewer, but fear and respect. Less realistic is the make-up and blow-dried hairstyle of the beautiful wild woman living alone by a river in which she catches a fish breakfast with her bare hands – but still we are grateful for a bit of tenderness in the gray world of hopelessness. If the ending had been more confrontational, I would have considered giving this film four stars.

Simple, straightforward, effective and with a great ending. I won’t give it a fourth star, because it’s too brainless for that, but I’ll be looking forward to Isaac Florentine’s next action flick.

Takers is an attempt at a more dynamic, action-packed and less psychological version of Heat. The idea of the key shootout in the hotel is ostensibly stolen from True Romance and, furthermore, is shot and edited in an uninteresting way (unlike the similarly unoriginal, but visually attractive Smokin' Aces). The ending is clichéd and unsatisfactory. Despite all of these flaws, the movie as a whole was sufficiently enjoyable, with a hint of grade-A quality thanks to its cast (who probably expected a slightly better result). Takers is okay as a DVD flick you watch on a weekend evening, but a bad choice for watching at a multiplex.

This documentary is able to evoke the atmosphere of Detroit and life within it, but it does not provide the most important thing, namely information either from history or from the present (or a comparison of these periods using facts). As if the creators did not want to deal with the causes of the decline of this once important industrial city, they sum them up in one sentence: “And then came the drugs...” The dialogue scenes with some suburban residents are on point, interesting and funny (the old gentleman growing vegetables in his garden is the best) while some scenes are completely unnecessary. The fact that over the past 50 years the number of white residents has decreased by 93% and the number of black ones has increased by 160%, and that the drugs that destroyed the city were not brought by the former, is not mentioned at all. Even the ratio of the skin color of its protagonists in front of the camera is 1:1. The documentary, especially when intended for festivals, is the last medium that should hide the truth only for the sake of so-called political correctness.

Devil is a horror B-movie with cheap actors and numerous lapses in logic. But the technical aspect is professional, with great opening credits, a solid atmosphere and a more or less functional point. Had it not been for better older horror B-movies like Cube and Saw that got to me and prompted me to give them “only” four stars, I might have gone with four stars even in the case of Devil.

Very respectable, both as a psychological drama and as a suspenseful thriller. However, it would have been better to focus more on one or the other. The Debt could have then found a more distinctive place in cinema alongside, for example, the dramatic Munich or the thriller Valkyrie, next to which it is more likely to gather dust as it is. John Madden tries at all costs to engage American viewers while intellectually fulfilling Europeans and narrowly misses the mark. Ignore the ending, which is utterly inappropriate and calls my four-star rating into question.