POMO

This animated movie for adults is impressive due to its originality and creativity, amusing with great humor and fulfilling with its touching narrative of a life story that presents enough material for a feature drama. The picture is made more unique by the purely female view of certain things, often resulting in the best jokes.

The esteemed British gentleman of the theater Danny Huston in the role of a vampire leader in a classically written horror movie? Sam Raimi is a strong and resourceful producer. From the introductory shots, it is clear that this is not a B-movie. David Slade can shake hands with Zack Snyder. He is a master of spookiness and proves that even something as hackneyed as vampires can serve as material for an impressive horror movie. Too bad the film delivers some time-worn genre scenes, which we recently enjoyed – after a very long time – in Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead (the turned girl and the identical scene with having to kill an infected buddy). It’s also a pity that the vampires from the main group didn’t get more space as individuals (as Guillermo del Toro would have given them). Otherwise, it’s amazing.

I dreamed about a movie like this when I was a teenager. Too bad it only came out now. Unleashed is a rarely seen combination of an effective drama, a simple action premise, excellent fight choreography and French charm. We see Jet Li as finally humanized and relatable, Morgan Freeman plays his most typical mentor role and Massive Attack provides the music.

Fortunately, this movie is as much fun as it is stupid. Inspired by Woo’s Hard Boiled, this film presents non-stop action entertainment for uncritical fans of 1980s action movies and classic rock hits. As for me, I preferred Paul Oakenfold in the scene with cars and a toddler on the road. It’s interesting to watch Clive Owen repeat his role from Children of Men in such a different film, and it suits him just as well.

Extremely difficult material to turn into a script and film, but Bill Condon did an excellent job. Kinsey is a wise, freethinking film with a dozen acting stars big and small who relish their performances and are honored to take part in this project. That is one of the most valuable things a contemporary – more or less mainstream – film can provide to the viewer. Liam Neeson is perfect as Kinsey – rational rather than emotional, a little weird but charismatic. Add to that the masterful directorial balance between humorous and more serious moments and the complete absence of sentiment (although the Oscar ambitions were certainly considerable) and we get a pleasure for film connoisseurs. I count Condon in the group of great European talents such as Marc Forster, Michel Gondry and Tom Tykwer.

Vanished is a decent conspiracy-theory series with constant new twists, seductive mysteriousness and relatable characters. It’s too bad that the casting is rather conservative – someone more prominent should have appeared in the leading role of the agent.

Knocked Up is an intelligent, realistic and, given its genre and target audience, incredibly mature comedy. On the other hand, it’s not that amusing and the characters are not very charismatic; the guy, in particular, is actually a redneck dumbass.

For fans of the genre, The Invasion offers a decent dose of spookiness with the still beautiful Nicole Kidman. Casting Daniel Craig as the male lead was a bit strange, but interesting. The biggest failing of the movie is its unoriginal script, which just recycles what we’ve seen in all those “invasions of body snatchers” and The X-Files, without throwing anything original into the mix. On the other hand, I wasn’t bored for a single second. Of course, Spielberg’s War of the Worlds is more exciting and powerful, but The Invasion doesn’t lack some decent tension. This tension is doled out gradually, in a more intimate way and with more subtle emotional nuances.

The Riches is an intelligent, satirical series full of dark humor about a poor American family who “accidentally” moves into an affluent neighborhood. There are no pretty TV faces or angels without a skeleton in the closet. This family’s closet houses an entire cemetery. Sometimes it’s serious as hell, sometimes wacky, and sometimes there’s even action. And it’s always fresh. In the serious passages, we listen to music by Toby Chu in the style Gustavo Santaolalla, while in the comic bits we get the music we can imagine when hearing the name of Harry Gregson-Williams. A great role for Minnie Driver, whom I don’t like much and usually find grating.

Windfall has a good premise, but it would need more humor and chill rather than depression and dealing with issues. People (audiences) expect positive things from winning the lottery and this series tramples on their dreams and illusions. That’s why it flopped and ended with the 13th episode of the first season.