POMO

The tension of rivalry between John Travolta and Christian Slater doesn’t reach the massive proportions found in Woo’s similarly conceived Hong Kong classics, and in places the whole film slides from healthy good humor into unhealthy silliness. But the attractively sun-drenched setting in the Utah desert, Hans Zimmer’s dynamic score, the badass Hummers and Travolta’s bastard Vick Deakins are enough ingredients for two hours of decent action entertainment.

One star for the cool Kyle MacLachlan and the second for the shag in the swimming pool.

What can I write about this film if I don’t want to just dryly pull out all of the superlatives and assign them to every single component of its filmmaking? Welles had Citizen Kane, Coppola The Godfather, Kubrick A Space Odyssey and Spielberg has Schindler’s List. Portrayed by Ralph Fiennes, Amon Goeth is the personification of the collapse of the human spirit responsible for the greatest tragedy in our history. John Williams’s score is the pinnacle of contemporary film music, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski is an idol to me as a lover of black-and-white composition and the extermination of the Krakow ghetto is one of the most horrifying scenes that I have ever witnessed in a film. With Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg fulfilled the purpose for which he became a director. And I would love to frame every shot from it and I wish that I could turn back time and prevent the events on which it is based.

Everyone expected a serious sci-fi movie in the spirit of Schaffner’s original and Tim Burton tricked them by turning the subject into a joke. The film’s biggest stars are not the humans, but the apes, and the conclusion isn’t shocking and thought-provoking, but popcorn fun. The spark in the love triangle between the American hero Mark Wahlberg, the chimpanzee with beautiful eyes played by Helena Bonham Carter, and simple Barbie Estella Warren is as irresistible as Tim Roth is repulsive in the role of General Thade. The film offers brilliant technical execution, verve and action, as well as a helping of ironic humor. I applauded and laughed with gusto at the end. And I almost fell in love with the eyes of Carter’s chimpanzee character, who was prominently featured on my desktop for months after the premiere. Don’t take this film so seriously. Times are changing and not everyone needs to see the story of Planet of the Apes the same way Schaffner did.

“No growth without assistance. No action without reaction. No desire without restraint. The world is full of tigers and dragons.” The first viewing was for acclimatization, full of wonder and slight uncertainty. The second was for accepting the rules that formed the foundation of the previously unseen world of the film. And the third through fifth viewings comprised the most spiritual and moving emotional experience that I have ever had in front of a movie screen. But rather than a film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is an epic cinematic poem that I can watch again and again, and that, like good music, never loses any of its impact. Ang Lee took the motifs of unrequited love, betrayal and responsibility and set them in a socially neutral, spiritually pure environment in which he could give them previously unseen dimensions. The “I’ve already wasted my whole life...” scene will resonate with me forever.

John Carpenter modernized and commercialized the classic substance of the original. The shining of the children’s eyes looks sexier, the black-and-white image has been replaced with colorful sets and the costumes of the protagonists, and a broad range of stars appear in the film. But even that wasn’t enough. Because even though Carpenter tried to wrap it all in a veil of gloomy mystery (have a listen to his typically dark soundtrack), the result utterly lacks the atmosphere of the original. It’s as if Carpenter himself was hypnotized by one of the children during filming. This new Village of the Damned is worthy of attention perhaps only for Star Wars fans who want to see Mark Hamill in the role of the neurotic priest.

I was dumbstruck at the “showing of the cards” and remained in a state of indescribable chilling ecstasy until the closing credits. I didn’t know if I should cry, jump for joy or just sit quietly and savor what had just been conveyed to me. After getting home from the cinema, I turned off the lights, put on Thomas Newman’s soundtrack, lay down and tried to hold on to that ecstasy for as long as possible. The Shawshank Redemption is a film that slowly introduces you to the two main and a few supporting characters behind prison walls, in a world with its own rules, and then explains to you what their coming together in that place of pain and hopelessness has given them. It is a film about “hope that gives us wings”, a film with the most surprising, most powerful and most beautiful ending ever.

The cast is great, the visual effects are excellent and the film’s dramatic poetics are also pleasant – it’s not just another popcorn, eye-candy disaster movie. The script, however, is too contrived, unoriginal and predictable, as if it was written at the last minute. What, for example, was that secondary storyline with the helicopter rescue of the boat passengers supposed to mean when it was in no way related to the rest of the film’s plot?

Sam Raimi is a genius! A small town where you get a wonderful glimpse into the lives of each of its residents, one swamp and one murder. And one abandoned mother of three who sees in the cards things that she would rather not see. Raimi unravels the tapestry of suspicions and viewer’s questions of “Who is the killer?”, bringing us closer to the fragile protagonist and giving us either pleasant chills or first-class cardiac shocks in her visions and nightmares. Raimi has fulfilled his dream and made a horror movie in which there are no rivers of blood, but it doesn’t let us breathe until the final second. The Gift is a nostalgic tribute to the Hitchcock school of pure thriller techniques in a mosaic of precisely defined characters and a sophisticated plot. And that cast! If it weren’t for the revealing of the killer’s identity twenty minutes before the film's conclusion, its climax would have been even more suspenseful and shocking. And The Gift would have been a five-star genre treat.

The first quarter of an hour is an excellent prologue. But then that prologue never ends and the film turns out to be a two-hour, dull and lifeless, albeit visually impressive music video set to Basil Poledouris’s exceptional soundtrack. A film in which every shot lasts five times longer than was really necessary.