POMO

Meru is not only about the first ascent of an extremely difficult Himalayan mountain, but primarily about the journey of a dream shared between three climbers who returned to the mountain despite a devastatingly unsuccessful first attempt and with a minimum chance of success due to the deteriorating health of one of them. At the same time, it is a film about the loss of loved ones and the determination to fulfil the team’s dream, even though “surviving your own death” clearly suggests “that’s enough of that!”. Shot in the craziest of places in luxurious image quality courtesy of Jimmy Chin.

After half an hour, he only managed to revive a turtle. But there are two passionate, busty ladies around him, one of whom (the brunette) cooks and keeps him company in bed and the other (the blonde) loves him platonically. Besides them, the slow and thin plot is livened up by the rising body count – this Victor is an arrogant prick and spares no one. The monster is OK in terms of musculature but with its eyes of a kind-hearted good guy, it elicits anything but “horror”. The film’s ending is imaginative but unsatisfying after the long slog through the trashy ballast.

So minimalist in its emotional filmmaking tricks, and yet so riveting and powerful! For the entire two-and-a-half-hour runtime... Ron Howard capitalizes on the seriousness of the situation and builds on the detailed perception of the psychological state of those involved. The responsibility that weighs on them to an almost unbearable extent. And the breathtaking rescue process itself. This is a very different experience from reading about it in the newspaper. Viggo Mortensen is perfect and Colin Farrell is great. There is no manipulative music, pathos or movie heroism here. Thirteen Lives is “just” a precisely filmed account of the professionally done, extremely difficult and dangerous work of a few courageous men. It is a low-key film that will only grow over time.

Scott Derrickson is a decent craftsman, and his films always look good. But in The Black Phone, he tries to combine the thriller-style theme of a kidnapper (reality) with a ghost story (fantasy) in a rather more mechanical than creative way, and it doesn’t really work. The ghost-story elements serve only to hinder the plot development. The bad guy is insufficiently scary and underdeveloped. We don’t even find out what his motive is. The dramatic storyline with the weak, violent father is not given enough space. The “someday you will have to stand up for yourself” motif has drive, but it's aimed only at a teen audience. The most stable pillar of the film is young Mason Thames in the lead role. This won’t be the last we’ve heard of him.

Hellblock 13 is a C-movie wanna-be Creepshow with Troma’s amateurish technical rendering and ridiculous acting performances. But fans of the genre will enjoy Gunnar Hansen (the original Leatherface from 1974) in the lead role of the executioner, and lovers of beautiful woman will be delighted by the sinful prisoner Debbie Rochon, who reads her horror stories to him. Unfortunately, nothing that a viewer would want happens between them.

For viewers who are aware of Peele’s filmmaking talent and screenwriting limitations, Nope is exactly the kind of nonsense indicated by the trailer. As a director, he can grippingly shoot practically any scene. But when those scenes only hint at something for a hundred minutes, and some of them (the Asian and the chimpanzee) have no meaningful relevance to the already thin story, it’s merely pretentious bullshitting. Peele’s unusual mixing of genre motifs (in this case, sci-fi horror and westerns) can come across as bold and original, but in a film that is supposed to be scary while balancing on the edge of parody, the creative vision gets lost. In terms of execution, Nope is somewhere between Get Out, which was based on a brilliant idea, and Us, which was ridiculous bullshit.

For a concept involving the authentic night-time doings of a few characters in ordinary locations of Berlin, 140 minutes is a lot. The first half of this film drags a bit in exceedingly trivial scenes and dialogue. But what happens later is all the more surprising and gripping, especially if you know nothing at all about the plot. The troubles come in hints, and we suspect and fear them because the protagonist doesn’t deserve them. This is a very well made, emotive and thoroughly intensifying “one-shot” film with good acting performances.

Pleasure’s theme of success in show business at the cost of losing one’s innocence and friends is not exactly innovative. However, it is placed in the most appropriate setting and flawlessly filmed in technical terms. A documentary that deceives with the form of a feature film better than its actresses feign pleasure. Seeing it in a crowded screening room at a festival must have been a treat, with giant penises and the porn atmosphere dominating the picture right from the beginning. The film is an interesting guide to how the Hollywood porn business works (agents, parties, film sets and communication between filmmakers), and real figures from that business appear in it. The film is maximally open and not afraid to fully portray even the most unpleasant moments that a neophyte porn actress can experience, if she doesn’t refuse to do anything. On the contrary, by escalating those moments, the film cleverly develops the transformation of the main character, who successfully rises “higher and higher” despite her initial inexperience. The Swedish Sofia Kappel does a good job of personifying the blonde angel with lascivious appetites and the femme-fatale brunette Evelyn Claire is her ideal alter ego, whom she looks up to and with whom she shares the film’s best, climactic scene. I don't want to bring up Mulholland Drive again, but David Lynch is simply a huge influence on the new generation of filmmakers. This time with a thematic shade of porn along the lines of Lost Highway. If the technically brilliant Pleasure wasn’t so cold in the Swedish way, but instead possessed the absorbing poetics and sensory complexity of Lynch’s aforementioned films, it would make the viewer mentally avaricious even sooner than physically.

Prey is a high-octane adventure with pleasant Indian poetics and the spectacular return of the second-best movie monster ever. The screenplay flows and contains nice details and surprises, and the action is beautifully fluid and kinetic. The woman-power element is natural and believable, while the attractive “savage versus savage in the wilderness” motif is put to excellent use. The actors and costumes are respectable, and the unknown Amber Midthunder puts in ten times more effort than the Oscar-winning Adrien Brody (in Nimród Antal’s otherwise solid Predators). There are a few minor things in the film that could be open to criticism; for example, the final fight could have been better thought out and less rushed, but these are just details in relation to the general level of viewer satisfaction. No film franchise is ever dead; it’s just waiting for the right guy to come along. Within this one, Dan Trachtenberg went the farthest in choosing his own path, put his heart into it and achieved the greatest success. This is a film by a talented filmmaker and movie fan, made for movie fans.

A dramatic arc turned upside down. Snake Eyes has one of the most cinematically substantial openings in the history of film, conjuring pure cinephile euphoria from the interplay of camerawork, sound and editing. And even after that, De Palma spends a long time reminding us of how much he loves FILM and Hitchcock. However, the potential of the brilliantly initiated plot is later severely dampened. The screenplay focuses excessively on details, loses momentum in the main storyline and switches from playful and clever mode to screenwriting futility and farce.