POMO

The Missing is not a bad film at all. The suspense works perfectly and the bad guys are truly nasty. Some of the scenes go overboard with their cruelty. Cate Blanchett is great from the first moment, Tommy Lee Jones as a long-haired Indian takes some getting used to at first, but you soon come to believe him and feel fine with him. Truly beautiful cinematography, dynamic action scenes, and very nice music by James Horner. The film’s weakness lies in the seriously intended yet comical shamanic scenes (the resurrection of the possessed Cate), as well as in the intermingling of the action-thriller and psychological levels, where the daughter gradually finds her way to her long-lost father. The closer the film gets to the climax and the more we long for the bad guys to be eliminated and the happy ending to come, the more we are denied this moment of redemption, and the pace is slowed by the quiet father/daughter passages. The film thus fails to build and often seems to drag. It would have been better if the subject matter had been conceived strictly as a western thriller.

In filmmaking terms, The Order is solidly made darkness for a very narrow range of (dark) viewers. Its plot is similar to that of Stigmata, but less focused on form and more on content. A film with minimal chance of commercial success.

The first third of The Recruit is great. The plot slows down in the second third and in the final third, it reaches a spasmodic and ineffective climax. It’s a thriller in which nothing is as it seems. And a thriller that doesn’t work the way it was intended. The fine cast can’t salvage it.

Purely superficial, self-indulgent entertainment. As a maker of music videos, director Marcus Nispel is capable of spectacularly filming things of zero narrative value. The camerawork and its colour filters are reminiscent of David Fincher and, together with the dark music, contribute to the film’s dense and bleak atmosphere. But the non-existent plot build-up, the ineffective scares and the absence of mystery are more reminiscent of the cheap assembly-line productions by 1970s Italian trash directors (Joe D'Amato, for example). On top of that, the film is extremely disgusting. Seven also disgusted me in its own way, but it also impressed me with its wonderfully over-the-top and polished screenplay and deep ideas. I simply found The Texas Chainsaw Massacre repulsive. Count me among its victims.

Tiresia is a French intellectual espresso with an interesting story and tiresome dialogue. Despite the sadness and cruelty of the story, the filmmakers keep the typical “artsy” distance in emotions and they express the dramatic nature of the film with symbolism – Bach’s music with footage of flowing lava. A festival affair for private company. It was okay, but I don’t really need to see the Q&A session with the filmmakers.

As a lover of mountains, I expected something big and got something even bigger. With its simple documentary structure, Touching the Void is more absorbing than a star-studded and sophisticated feature film. Brilliant.

An energetic young Tibetan man decides to leave his small Nepalese village for the land of his dreams – America. Along the way, however, he meets a few locals and, mainly, a pretty girl... There’s enough material here for a five-minute short story, stretched out into a two-hour film. Travellers and Magicians isn’t deliberately drawn out and slow because it wants to be “hypnotic”, but because it lacks a dramatic arc, which makes it exceedingly boring, with only a minimum of bright moments that endearingly bring together Tibetan and Western culture.

The energy of this slow-moving film is given by the nuances of the central couple’s relationship. The seemingly dull plot consisting in their simply spending time together on a trip to the Californian outback is loaded with spontaneity and authenticity, open and even graphic intimacy and tense quarrels, abounding with love and hate, shot live as if we were there with them. In an epic widescreen picture, but emotionally barren with no supporting music. Throughout the film, we wait to see if there will be some kind of twist, dramatization, a point. And Bruno Dumont duly defies us and our expectations. A hell of a festival flick.

Bad Taste was imaginative and original, so one could ignore the ridiculous effects and garage music. Actually, it was these cheap features that gave it its particular charm. But the Australian jackasses known as the “Spierig Bros.” just mix zombies with aliens (what kind of combination is that?!) in one absurd mishmash with almost no original ideas, making the eccentric amateurish result almost unwatchable. For more than thirty clichéd killings (grinder, shovel, rifle, etc.), there is only one original (with an airplane propeller). I’m giving this only one very weak star for the certain amount of enthusiastic playfulness I felt from the film.

The key to Underworld is your level of tolerance for the screenplay that pretends to be serious but is actually naïve and unintentionally funny in places. Len Wiseman may have fulfilled a childhood dream, but he’s either forgotten about the more mature audience or he still has a pimply face himself. Even so, I can’t give this less than three stars, which is thanks to the spectacular production. The childishness is justified by the fury of the action scenes, the sets and mainly Kate Beckinsale’s sexy costume. If you’re not an admirer of Federico Fellini, the visual and aural aspects of this film will appeal to you more than its content will annoy you.