POMO

This trashy would-be erotic flick is just uninteresting. The scenes in which various characters tell the protagonist about Greta in flashbacks are in 3D, which is supposed to enhance the experience of delving into her uninhibited sex life, so you see them split and recolored. The plot itself is feeble, has no build-up and the eroticism is only hinted at. Pretty girls, weak screenplay.

Audrey is magical in this sweet film, but Peck is stiff, though charismatic. Or maybe you noticed the look of being in love on his face? Still, that doesn’t detract from the chemistry between them. Roman Holiday offers a playfully imaginative screenplay, the foolishness of Italian culture, humor and adventure, and mainly a nice idea derived from the premise on which the romantic plot is based.

Lesbianism, cannibalism, butchering and dismembering of men, sexy costumes ranging from a pink princess to a fascist dominatrix, a cripple in a cage, and fetish-porn queen Belladonna in the most innocent role of all involved. The Ladies of the House is an amateurish-looking exploitation flick with a certain aesthetic level, a seductively twisted mood and well-cast, stylish girls. And the guys didn’t deserve anything else in this case, so why not? The film is unpredictable in its second half and has an interestingly conceived and edited ending. I’m rating it as if I had seen it at a trash festival or at Sitges in Spain, where it would surely have been applauded at the end. But these are three very different stars that I would give to normal films! It’s available in Prime Video’s VOD offer in the US, like it’s nothing usual.

The initial enthusiasm for Outbreak’s lean filmmaking – the long shot in the laboratories, the introduction of likable characters played by great actors, the appealing hints of strong drama – dissipates as the film transitions into an action movie with helicopter chases and a clichéd and predictable ending. The film becomes a sillier affair than it would have been if the screenwriters had aimed for a nerve-racking realistic thriller instead of an overwrought action flick for a popcorn audience.

At the moment of the off-screen abduction, Egoyan used the exact same shot that Villeneuve had used in Prisoners a year earlier. Otherwise, however, he goes in a different direction, showing us the villains and the background with the kidnapped victim right from the start while continuously introducing the main characters. Mixing up the chronology of certain events makes watching the film interesting. Everything starts to become clear to you after a few dozen minutes. Then there are some impressively chilling scenes and decently portrayed bad guys that give you goosebumps. The Captive is a decent, not entirely typical contribution to the category of similar genre films.

Unbreakable for unimaginative simpletons. Death Wish is a remake without ideas or character. Even Willis didn’t really fit. You won’t believe this chief surgeon, who in a garage in a single night learns how to shoot better than professional gangsters. The murders are gritty, like the catharsis brought by the administration of justice. But when justice is meted out to uninteresting, undeveloped bad guys, that catharsis is weak.

Eighties B-movie bullshit, but it’s entertaining. A crazy electronic soundtrack, bare breasts, jocks and nerds, a fast pace, super-cheesy dialogue and splatter head explosions. Chopping Mall is Wynorski’s punk Short Circuit!

An uninteresting screenplay without a single idea. The logic is silly in placess, the characters are miserable to the point of being annoying and the directing is sexless. Carriers is a bland movie made up of scenes that we have seen elsewhere in secondary plot lines.

Light of My Life is a gentler version of The Road, kept afloat by Affleck’s traditionally effective “emo speech" and an interesting performance by little Anna Pniowsky. It is a very minimalistic film; the only dialogue through nearly the entire runtime is between father and daughter in the woods or in abandoned houses. Plus an examination of their behaviour – survival strategy – consistent with the gradual uncovering of the secret of what happened in their world and how it changed the society that they are avoiding. This is an intimate film for patient and perceptive viewers. Three and a half stars.

As much as I’ve been getting used to praising the casting of films lately, here it is just bad. Forgotten ’90s comedian Rosie Perez as a serious cop? Ewan McGregor as a bad guy holding a knife to a little girl’s throat? And that bland Birds of Prey team, overshadowed by the weaker characterization? Another very bad thing: the combination of deliberately childish “playfulness” that doesn’t elicit laughter, with serious tones that in some cases are almost chilling (the undressing of the girl in the bar). And the constant sloppiness of the creative vision and dumb, insensitive directing.