POMO

This promising mystery with an interesting location unfortunately ends up making a worn-out X-Files point. Even the characters behave like those in the debut works of less attentive and less detail-oriented filmmakers. The names in the closing credits will bring you the realisation that this is a matter of friends and family getting together to make a movie. A weaker three stars.

American Psycho is a critique of the superficiality of the lifestyle and twisted values of Wall Street businessmen, molded into an entertaining slasher flick with undertones of cynical black comedy. Bale is outstanding in the role of a sociopath, the film looks good and is briskly edited, but it give the impression of being just as superficial and cold as the subject being criticised. For example, the sex scenes are surprising with their openness, but they are not as personal and defining of the main character as in Shame. Rather, they merely intended to surprise and shock in the context of the star-studded mainstream.

This conversational relationship film involving a quarrelling couple takes place over one long evening in a secluded house, as if on a theatre stage. The couple experience a sharp discharge of emotions in order to again remind each other of why they stay together. The duo of actors work well together. Some parts of the film are more personal, others are needless filler, and the motif of (not) accepting film criticism (the couple have just returned from the premiere of the male character’s film) and its content is not connected to the pair’s personal conflict in any meaningful way. Even as a separate storyline, it doesn’t add much to the film. In combination with black-and-white, the opening one-shot exposition indicates greater creative ambitions, but the film remains monotonously average in terms of its content. But there’s no question that Washington and Zendaya make an effort.

Nobody gets off to a nice start with its concept of an action hero hidden behind the façade of an ordinary dad. The film is fresh and dynamic in its editing, and tastefully entertaining and imaginative in the action scenes (such as the ride in the trunk of a car). Unfortunately, after the initial great entertainment, the exceedingly mechanical, simple and unimaginative settling of scores with the bad guys caused me to knock my rating down to three stars. As the protagonist took punches at the beginning and his stamina made him a hero, at the end he gets jumped by the biggest horde of armed goons in a scene staged like something out of Deadpool. Overall, I found the recent genre competitor Boss Level a half-star better.

With practically no negative characters, this sweet feel-good comedy has a heart advocating for the positive values and diversity of Europe, and it’s peppered with apt jokes on social issues (the relationship of Icelanders to Americans; there are no gays in Russia, etc.). I found it genuinely moving and delightful. I’m giving it a fourth star probably because I have a great fondness for Iceland (I only saw Húsavík in the fog and rain despite a two-day wait for better weather) and because I’m one of the few people I know who doesn’t mind Will Ferrell, who co-wrote and co-produced this one, thus confirming his well-deserved position at the top of the genre.

This dark heist flick offers a very, VERY angry tough-guy protagonist driven by vengeance, gangs of exemplary thugs (Darrell D'Silva was the best!), raw shootouts and super-dark, heavyweight music that adds to the film’s gut-punching seriousness. Of course, the action is superbly directed with absorbing camerawork that is magical, even when the film is just building up to the action. The flashbacks in the first two-thirds are also pleasing, with the causes of events told in an original way through editing and the gradual revealing of the main character’s identity. If it had an even more sophisticated climax (which, as it stands, is rather “only” a well-done action scene) and settling of scores with the main villain (who, furthermore, should not have been played by the non-actor Eastwood Jr.), Wrath of Man would have been a reference work in the genre.

This very sweet and unforced film about falling in platonic love perhaps could not have been written and directed without living through a similar experience. Lost in Translation is harmoniously fluid, without a single cliché of the romance genre, with an atypical and yet pleasantly well-coordinated couple, sincere dialogue and a minimalist conclusion with a stronger emotional impact than even the great romantic classics offer. “The more you know who you are and what you want, the less you let things upset you”.

A young Russian woman with an expired passport walks from New York to the Northwest to make her way home to Russia through Canada and Alaska. She spends two-thirds of the runtime walking through the most boring places in the United States, looking around, stealing something, sometimes sleeping rough and bathing outdoors. We occasionally hear an announcement on American radio or someone says something at a community ceremony – for example, an Indian gathering on the issue of oppression – and sometimes dramatic music like that heard in a Hitchcock film as she walks, even though nothing suspenseful is happening or is going to happen. The later northern locations at least give the film some atmosphere, but only the philosophical ending of her journey with one key piece of information brings the film to a higher level (don't read the synopsis).

The Tunnel uses the same methods and gimmicks as The Blair Witch Project and [REC], but set in the sewers and tunnels under Sydney and without showing the monster. Mainly, however, the film loses credibility through cutaways to retrospective interviews with the participants in the event, who we know are actors and not actual journalists, thus giving away who gets out alive. That’s not exactly an ideal concept when the film is supposed to draw us in as a “real story”.

Kids, drugs are bad, right?! This unnecessarily long teen drama tries to present worn-out motifs in a fresh way. For me, however, those motifs were often poorly chosen, irritating and generally inconsistent. Shabby directing of a run-of-the-mill subject that’s watchable thanks only to Tom Holland, who is again great.