POMO

Sam Raimi is a genius! A small town where you get a wonderful glimpse into the lives of each of its residents, one swamp and one murder. And one abandoned mother of three who sees in the cards things that she would rather not see. Raimi unravels the tapestry of suspicions and viewer’s questions of “Who is the killer?”, bringing us closer to the fragile protagonist and giving us either pleasant chills or first-class cardiac shocks in her visions and nightmares. Raimi has fulfilled his dream and made a horror movie in which there are no rivers of blood, but it doesn’t let us breathe until the final second. The Gift is a nostalgic tribute to the Hitchcock school of pure thriller techniques in a mosaic of precisely defined characters and a sophisticated plot. And that cast! If it weren’t for the revealing of the killer’s identity twenty minutes before the film's conclusion, its climax would have been even more suspenseful and shocking. And The Gift would have been a five-star genre treat.

The first quarter of an hour is an excellent prologue. But then that prologue never ends and the film turns out to be a two-hour, dull and lifeless, albeit visually impressive music video set to Basil Poledouris’s exceptional soundtrack. A film in which every shot lasts five times longer than was really necessary.

The subject is fine, Sigourney Weaver is great as always, the magic with the camera and its lenses in the tunnels of the prison labyrinth is perfect, and the film has Fincher’s typically bold and depressing creative signature. But that somehow doesn’t bring the film to the level of which Fincher is usually capable and which would have helped Alien3 to be as impressive as its predecessor.

The directorial debut of John Ottman, editor of Bryan Singer’s early films (The Usual Suspects, Apt Pupil), for which he also composed the music. And it’s a horrible directorial debut. Ottman went into this project with the intention of making “something different, something Hitchcockian” and today he claims that he “had to adapt it for a teenage audience in the end.” We could get over the fact that it’s a rip-off of Scream and The Faculty, but why does it have to be so awfully stupid?

An impotent cross between One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Gorillas in the Mist.

Road Trip struck me as the first watchable teen comedy. It’s as if DreamWorks wanted to avoid stupidity, vulgarity and general shittiness and instead wanted to make a morally benign variation on teen movies that would be suitable even for the youngest viewers. But I’m not praising this flick for its moral qualities. Road Trip surprised me with its fresh subject and its non-violent and civil (albeit silly) humor, as well as its great cast.

Easy Rider has indisputable depth of thought and great actors. I saw it for the first time as a high schooler, when I identified with the main characters in many ways. Nevertheless, it rolled by slowly and I wasn’t particularly excited about it when it was over.

At the time this flop’s release, it was the worst film that I had ever seen on the big screen. I’m giving it one star only for the make-up and costumes and for the fact that the scene with the mutant’s birth gave me chills. Otherwise, it’s a bad joke in every way, as if everyone involved actually wanted to make the worst movie possible. The presence of Marlon Brando is bewildering!

A boring, lifeless, would-be comical recipe for killing time as “efficiently” as possible by doing nothing all day. Unless you’re an unemployed gangsta American with a Cadillac lowrider and you live in the suburbs of a big city in California.

Subway is by no means a masterpiece, but after watching it, you want to blow off the whole system and just wander around in the Paris Metro, play with Jean Reno and his eccentric band, and fall in love with Isabelle Adjani. Though this goofy Besson variation on a Jarmusch ode to independence is not stunning, it definitely leaves you in a pleasant, contented mood and a desire to weather even the biggest storms.