POMO

Bedeviled is a decent revenge drama with a gory reckoning in which you will cheer enthusiastically for the scythe-wielding female executioner for all that she has been through. And you will empathetically wish that you could join her in the bloodbath. The well-managed continuous building of psychological pressure in a remote place from which there is no escape is effective, but the friendship between the girls doesn’t work at all, even though the protracted ending tries to explain it and give it some meaning.

Beyond is a typical depressing Scandinavian movie whose purpose is to show us glimpses of the protagonist’s difficult past in flashbacks and let us suffer with her. What’s the point? We already know that Noomi Rapace is a great actress.

Buried is surprising in that it’s not an indie festival flick, but a mainstream movie. Some viewers may consider that to be a drawback, but for me, the film’s ability to captivate and move the masses with a single actor in such a small place is its greatest asset. It thus comes closest to Joel Schumacher’s Phone Booth, in which the desperate protagonist squirms in an equally confined space, though standing upright and with a better view:-). Buried is superbly written, filmed and acted, with an ending that delivers an uncompromising knock-out blow.

Conscience and love entrapped by insurance corruption extending to the highest government bodies. Argentina is wild. Carancho is engaging due to its shocking topic rather than to the filmmaking aspect, which is mundane and unremarkable. It is not until the final scene that the emotions escalate enough to really get to the audience. The chemistry between the central duo, which is an important pillar of the film, works well.

Centurion is a historical adventure-hunt movie. Congratulations to Neil Marshall for working himself up to be a director of actors such as Fassbender, West, Cunningham and Morrissey. All of them, together with the fantastic natural scenery, help make the movie fun and engaging. This film is not bloody and brutal just to shock the audience; rather, it is realistic and its violence fits into the concept of a harsh drama in which the likable main characters are hunted in the wild by the bloodthirsty Lady Vengeance hitchhiker. Her anger and cruelty are justified and therefore her character does not inspire disgust and hatred in the viewer, but fear and respect. Less realistic is the make-up and blow-dried hairstyle of the beautiful wild woman living alone by a river in which she catches a fish breakfast with her bare hands – but still we are grateful for a bit of tenderness in the gray world of hopelessness. If the ending had been more confrontational, I would have considered giving this film four stars.

The rulers of heaven, which looks like something from a cheap porn flick, send two “scary” characters – a dimwit from Star Trek and a CGI Medusa with a model’s face – to stop a modern-day Chuck Worthington Norris from preventing Kraken’s King-Kong dinner. If Louis Leterrier really is a fan of the 1981 original, which, as he says, is forever in his heart and on his mind, he should get a brain transplant.

This documentary is able to evoke the atmosphere of Detroit and life within it, but it does not provide the most important thing, namely information either from history or from the present (or a comparison of these periods using facts). As if the creators did not want to deal with the causes of the decline of this once important industrial city, they sum them up in one sentence: “And then came the drugs...” The dialogue scenes with some suburban residents are on point, interesting and funny (the old gentleman growing vegetables in his garden is the best) while some scenes are completely unnecessary. The fact that over the past 50 years the number of white residents has decreased by 93% and the number of black ones has increased by 160%, and that the drugs that destroyed the city were not brought by the former, is not mentioned at all. Even the ratio of the skin color of its protagonists in front of the camera is 1:1. The documentary, especially when intended for festivals, is the last medium that should hide the truth only for the sake of so-called political correctness.

Devil is a horror B-movie with cheap actors and numerous lapses in logic. But the technical aspect is professional, with great opening credits, a solid atmosphere and a more or less functional point. Had it not been for better older horror B-movies like Cube and Saw that got to me and prompted me to give them “only” four stars, I might have gone with four stars even in the case of Devil.

A naturalistic drama set in a juvenile correctional facility. Bullying, seething emotions, desire for vengeance, revenge. Dog Pound is coarse and psychologically accurate, with well-cast and well-played characters. It is a joyless mirror held up to troubled youths in a place where those who still hold on to a shred of positive values are the ones who suffer the most. I rank this film in the indie category characterized by Kids.

One of the most hackneyed horror themes retold without the slightest effort to be at least a bit different or better. It is the type of movie that would be enjoyed the most by children, but their parents will not be inclined to take them to the cinema to see it. Moreover, the children themselves would prefer adult ghost-themed films such as The Others. For whom is this infantile story about small furry creatures from the cellar even intended? The dime-a-dozen ending of the story with its sloppiness is so off-putting that I am in no mood to commend the film for its decent atmosphere or nice camerawork.