POMO

The first 20 minutes are great and very promising. But after the cards are dealt, the screenwriter doesn’t know what’s an ace and what’s a jack. And the director, Harold Ramis, is a bit bored. The actors are outstanding; Robert De Niro excels again. A few of the jokes are worth seeing and hearing, but overall the film is half a star weaker than the original Analyze This.

Greg Kinnear and Willem Dafoe are unique, but this movie set in the porn business is somehow inappropriately negative and unlikable. Boogie Nights, for example, is in a completely different league, with a wonderful balance of humor, satire and tragedy.

Bad Company is an exceedingly drawn out and monotonous action movie about secret agents. It’s outshined by the first Mission: Impossible in terms of power, screenwriting sophistication, atmosphere and action scenes. It’s just a routine, unoriginal movie with no build-up, and it fails to utilise the mentoring potential of Anthony Hopkins. Anyone else could have been in his place and it wouldn’t have changed anything.

Below is a sometimes suspenseful and sometimes unintentionally ridiculous variation on Event Horizon that attempts to be a serious drama about guilt, responsibility and a bad conscience in its secondary storyline. As a sci-fi horror flick, it’s worse than Pitch Black, but better than Ghost Ship.

Bend It Like Beckham is a charming comedy that reminds that you that you should follow your dreams and never give up. Director Gurinder Chadha’s cultivated, gentle humour benefits from the contrast of two diametrically opposed cultures. And she knows how to work with actors like few others. The young Parminder Nagra is especially memorable. If you like distinctive comedies with a British touch, believe that dreams are achievable and you’re perhaps a bit of a misunderstood outsider, don’t hesitate to watch this movie. It's not Billy Elliot, but it is definitely a film that will give you something.

While the first Blade was a standard cliché with decent dynamics and a visual gorefest, the second one is a standard cliché with excellent dynamics and a visual super-gorefest. Wherever possible, Guillermo del Toro pushed the limits and the result is grittier, slicker and more exciting that the first one. It’s an upgrade similar to that seen in Terminator 2. If those great characters had been a bit more well developed, Blade II would have been worthy of five stars!

Blood Work is and old-school and somewhat predictable mystery with a more or less satisfying point. The film is kept afloat by Clint Eastwood’s charisma, but it would have been a better fit for Jack Nicholson guided by Sean Penn as a director.

This digital amateur movie suffers from a terrible lack of professionalism in places (particularly the use of original music). On the other hand, however, it scintillates with humor that could be the envy of more than one Hollywood blockbuster. A fresh, on-point and heartfelt and uncritical parody of Britney Spears and everything around her. It’s also an effective balm for the misery of her “real movie”, Crossroads.

Cabin Fever is a boring, unintentionally funny patchwork of clichés and twists borrowed from a dozen celebrated horror classics. The filmmakers, however, are utterly unable to take a detached view and just helplessly, amateurishly embarrass themselves. There’s not a hint of suspense or atmosphere. This is the weakest of the “kids go to the cabin” horror movies. Even the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre outshines this.

Catch Me If You Can is a very pleasant movie to relax with whose biggest positive is that, unlike Minority Report, it does not contain a single misstep for which it could be faulted. Written and directed with sensitivity and elegance, with a great balance between humour and drama. But the stars of the film are not Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks, but the amazing Christopher Walken and Steven Spielberg.