POMO

25th Hour is such a small film, and yet it’s so big! From every minute you can feel the intellectual charge and the director’s commitment and goal. The actors are fantastic, and Barry Pepper in particular is very surprising. The psychological tension in the dialogue could crush an elephant. It’s easy not to give this excellent, distinctive film a full five-star rating, but it’s impossible to reasonably justify why it doesn’t deserve one.

A well-written reproduction of the subject of Romero’s mediocre Day of the Dead, spoiled by unsuitable visuals and music. I want a big-budget, celluloid remake by Guillermo del Toro with music by Marco Beltrami!

28 Weeks Later is aggressive, harsh and self-consuming in its inhumanity. It’s far more of an action movie than a horror one. Fresnadillo uses so much shooting, smoke, flames and explosions that the resulting film looks more like a video game adaptation focusing on the visual-atmospheric aspect (Silent Hill and Resident Evil put together) than Danny Boyle’s existential 28 Days Later. The quality cast is also wasted in the director’s hands – the characters do not have the necessary depth and serve only as guides through dramatic encounters with zombies or soldiers destroying everything alive.

The opening chase is delightful, even if it’s merely the same one from The Fast and the Furious. A feeling of unease builds up over the next twenty minutes. The rest of the film is boring and makes you want to beat your head against the seat in front of you. I swear to God, even the worst episode of Tropical Heat has a better screenplay than this bullshit. The main character is likable, but he’s too soft to carry an action flick. And the other main character is an unlikable and vulgar boor. The bad guy is promisingly conceived but underdeveloped. The plot is primitive and incapable of even tastefully playing with conventional clichés. If it weren’t for the beautifully polished and colorful machines, 2 Fast 2 Furious would be 1-star misery.

Oops. This is no mega epic. 300 is a modest experiment based on a ten-page screenplay and with nice blue-screen backgrounds. The dialogue pretends to be so serious and cool that it’s laughable. The story recycles what we’ve already been told by Braveheart and Gladiator, only shortened and focusing exclusively on the visual aspect. It’s nice to look at and the battle scenes are well done, but everything else is bland. If not for the slow-motion shots, 300 would barely run 60 minutes. It’s fine for what it is, but I hope it doesn’t herald the start of a new film subgenre.

There are films that do not take amoral characters seriously, keep a distance from them and eventually put them in the position of ridiculous nitwits. And there are movies that somehow can’t do that, and their characters are nothing more than degenerates thrust into the role of big-screen heroes. You won’t like a single character in 3000 Miles to Graceland. And its biggest star, Kevin Costner, who is presented as a demigod in an Elvis getup, plays a murderous psychopath. A psychopath about whose cult a cop admiringly comments in the end: “I’m glad he didn’t give up. I wouldn’t have.” I don’t normally moralize, but 3000 Miles to Graceland is a depraved and, what’s more, boring movie. Apparently it was supposed to be a light crime comedy in the style of True Romance – a brisk, entertaining gangster flick full of famous faces, tough guys and razor-sharp humor. But the film can’t even decide if it wants to be a comedy or a thriller. Moreover, its screenplay overflows with improbabilities and logical holes. What is the point of the blonde girl who gets into Costner’s psychopath’s car and a couple of miles later hops over to the motorbike of his old friend (who also plays no role in the film)? Does her role in the story consist only of saying one “cool” catchphrase? If so, isn’t it a little sad that the screenwriter has to resort to such crutches?

A highly spectacular, comic-book-like bloody football match with an irresistible animalistic sex scene at half-time (which turned me on) and a subsequent poetic statement in the climax (which brought me to my knees). Praise goes to the film’s creators for the opulent conception of a sequel as a massive tune-up of the first instalment, which now seems modest in comparison.

The esteemed British gentleman of the theater Danny Huston in the role of a vampire leader in a classically written horror movie? Sam Raimi is a strong and resourceful producer. From the introductory shots, it is clear that this is not a B-movie. David Slade can shake hands with Zack Snyder. He is a master of spookiness and proves that even something as hackneyed as vampires can serve as material for an impressive horror movie. Too bad the film delivers some time-worn genre scenes, which we recently enjoyed – after a very long time – in Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead (the turned girl and the identical scene with having to kill an infected buddy). It’s also a pity that the vampires from the main group didn’t get more space as individuals (as Guillermo del Toro would have given them). Otherwise, it’s amazing.

3:10 to Yuma starts out as a perfectly crafted Western, but it gradually starts to lose its drive in the second half and at the very end becomes a gooey, overly emotional tear-jerker defying not only plausibility, but also common sense. That’s a great pity. It could have been an excellent contribution to the Western genre, as Russell Crowe’s performance alone overshadows all classic Western actors put together.

This film’s climax comes in the first 15 minutes, specifically with the passionate deep-throating with the flight attendant on a private jet. This is a European “Shades of Grey” on an iPad for three visits to the gym. In their American revels, the man was the more tolerable character, but the lady is sexier. The ending is surprising, yet completely unworkable, emotionally and in every other way, because of the film’s awful superficiality.