POMO

Creature from the Black Lagoon is a surprisingly imaginative and effective adventure movie that entertains, doesn’t offend and, mainly, doesn’t seem ridiculous, even after several decades. There is no verbose prologue, no attempt to put across rigid ecological ideas. Instead of that, there is a pretty girl in a swimsuit in the arms of a monster. The titular creature enters the scene immediately at the beginning, and the film offers a great atmospheric swamp location and an unpredictable plot. If Creature had kept up the suspense and charm of the first half until the end, I would have given it four stars. The repetitive attempts to escape the swamp and to destroy the monster wouldn’t have been hurt by a little inventiveness.

Indie nonsense in which everyone has sex with everyone, but men with women only rarely. And when they do, it’s with unattractive women or emotionally vacant dominatrixes. A nice mirror of our times, um... Softcore erotica during which you’ll die before you get hard.

Compared to the first one, The Beginning has a more action-oriented screenplay and a better ending, but the filmmakers forgot that a horror fan and a sadist are two different things. This is not a film for horror fans.

Though I’m a fan of the period and the genre, I can’t give this more than three stars. George Waggner’s The Wolf Man lazily moves in safe clichés. It’s predictable and there is nothing surprising about it, the Roma actress doesn’t know how to act and the foggy setting of a 20-square-metre forest doesn’t add to the film’s charm. Furthermore, the father/son drama doesn’t lend it a deeper dimension either. Perhaps only Lon Chaney’s performance makes this film a classic. If nothing else, at least Werewolf of London, made six years earlier, offers a screenplay written with more imagination.

A brilliant cast led by Kristin Scott Thomas. Masterful screenwriting combined with Robert Altman’s perfectionist directing. Gosford Park is exceptional in how engagingly it manages to tell a story about practically nothing and, what’s more, in a place as boring as an aristocratic mansion over the course of a single weekend. This is true of the first, better half before the murder. The second half is unfortunately too quiet and modest, and the ending is insufficiently satisfying. It would have benefited more from Hitchcock than the restrained intellectual Altman. That said, it is still a clearly above-average work that ranks among the best films of the given period (where James Ivory’s films reign supreme, particularly The Remains of the Day, in my opinion).

The Weather Man is a melancholic “drama from life” about a guy who comes to terms with his own shortcomings and thus finds himself. It is less sentimental and episodic than The Pursuit of Happyness and less theatrical and superficial than American Beauty. Talented craftsman Gore Verbinski affirms his feel for impressive visuals and an original take on relatively conventional material. The film loses its clear direction in places, but the accurate and intelligent expression of the final idea makes it work well as a whole. If you watch it at the right time, you may find itdd unforgettable.

The Queen is respectably and sensitively filmed and acted, but I was not at all interested in its content.

A sad “film from life” that tells you that you are not alone and that things will get better someday. The Pursuit of Happyness is melancholic, with a slow pace, but it’s not boring. The film’s driving force is the focused performance of Will Smith, who brilliantly portrays all of the situations of a troubled man and thus elevates the film above the level of average. An actor who had not gone through something similar in his own youth wouldn’t have done such a credible job.

This hyperactive indie flick is never boring even for a moment – as long as you have popcorn. The deeper intellectual dimension is only artificially grafted on and, together with the gratuitous violence, undermines the film. Apocalypto could have been either an excellent family film or a great existential drama, but it’s unsuitable for children because of its brutality and it turns off adults with its thematic shallowness. On top of that, the visuals look cheap due to the large number of shots filmed with a digital camera. The dynamics and editing are great, but the filters could have been put to better use, which would have helped the appearance of the film, giving it the look that makes The Passion of the Christ an audio-visual gem. Apocalypto is a thrilling experience, but a few days after watching it, you remember it as a forgettable farce that missed the mark.

Rocky Balboa is a dementedly simple but pleasantly honest and modest little film about a washed-up boxer who still has something to say, and not just with his fists. The film’s prelude is a bit drawn out and, conversely, the climax is rushed, but *nostalgia* has its indisputable weight of likability, which irons out a lot of the wrinkles. Sly Stallone managed to do the same thing that his hero did – he didn’t make a great comeback, but he acquitted himself with dignity.