POMO

What is apparent from its screenplay and its exposition of 007 is that this 22nd Bond movie was supposed to be a revenge-driven, ferocious and almost furious culmination of Casino Royale. And the producers entrusted it to the artsy director who amputated all of Casino Royale’s powerful limbs and arranged flowers in their place. All the great action, the Bond car and all the stylish opening credits and interesting locations are absent and the bad guys look like they stepped out of a Pasolini movie. The only thing that makes Quantum of Solace a Bond movie, what keeps it kicking and earns it a third star in my rating, is the still great Daniel Craig (Olga Kurylenko is nice, but she’s still just a female background character in Bond’s world). This is the first Bond movie after a very long time that didn’t make me feel that heroic excitement I used to feel after watching action movies as a little boy.

Nobody who knows what high-quality sex is would rate Paris Hilton as good or skilful in this porn flick.

This film has a promising start. With its interesting sci-fi vision, beautiful visuals and the theme of bringing a father together with his son, who is also undergoing a process of self-realisation process, After Earth has great blockbuster potential. Despite the pleasant charm of adventurousness, however, the result is a weak storyline that fails completely in terms of both emotion and message. It is like when you know what you are supposed to be experiencing as a viewer, but it just passes you by due to its naivety and half-baked nature. To a large extent, that is actually Jaden Smith’s fault, or perhaps we should blame Shyamalan’s directing.

With the exception of the mammoth hunt at the beginning, this naïve CGI fairy-tale has absolutely nothing to offer and is not entertaining, not even with Emmerich’s expected trademark silliness. It’s been a long time since I felt that I completely wasted two hours in a theater. From the script to the actors, 10,000 BC is an utterly empty movie. Ugh.

Solid craftsmanship, but the content is so feeble and predictable that you will die of boredom. There have been hundreds of such films and this one does not stand out among them in any way. It’s good entertainment only for viewers who go to the cinema once in ten years. And for small children who are satisfied with the sight of a cute dog and a series of naïve jokes.

Eighty minutes of a drawn-out tangle of several events that lead somewhere, and we don’t know where until the last minute. The movie relies a lot on its sound component (which is unpleasantly aggressive in places) and the constantly accelerating editing. In the end, it turns out to be a self-serving trifle with a pseudo-philosophical “message”, but I still applaud the Polish for being able to pull off a thriller movie like this while being able to hold the viewer’s attention without being ridiculous.

Some films can give us an intellectual experience and others can give us an emotional experience. 12 Monkeys gives us both, presenting each in exemplary form and blending them into a perfectly harmonious form in the climax. It is a form in which one can find something new even on the tenth viewing, thus making 12 Monkeys a gem of the sci-fi genre.

A valuable social testimony, but an unattractive experience for viewers.

After some time, I’m increasing my rating to a “subjective” five stars, because it’s exactly my cup of tea. Danny Boyle once again proves his originality and ability to engagingly tell any story through audiovisual orgies. In an intimate drama with a single character, he doesn’t shy away from strong camera filters, fastforward scenes, split screens or jumping from one flashback to another. These tricks might seem out of place and irritating in a different film of this genre, but they make 127 Hours a fast-paced, riveting story that is never boring while also never straying from the sharp focus on the psychological state of the main character. It is an excellent, almost extraordinary film that made me cry with happiness at the end.

In this remake of William Castle’s classic 13 Ghosts, atmosphere and fear have been replaced by dynamic editing and bloody make-up. And the classic source work with a gothic treatment became another bit of modern bullshit with a polished lens on the camera and nothing in the director’s head.