POMO

Given how dumb it is, Queen of the Damned takes itself way too seriously. It would have been better off with a proper action hero in a leather jacket and with a shotgun in his hand. At least it would then have an obvious target audience (e.g. viewers of Dracula 2000).

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!

Don't expect this intimate drama to be a suspenseful crime thriller about a detective tracking a murderer. That is not at all what Sean Penn had in mind. The Pledge is a sad drama about a loner whose unyielding effort to get justice and to preserve his honour deprives him of his last chance to fill his personal life with happiness. For Penn, the thriller plot about the search for a killer is the most viewer-friendly way to make a personal creative statement. If it weren’t for the needlessly drawn-out runtime, there wouldn’t be a hint of boredom in this film and it would be worthy of an excellent four stars.

A remake of Besson’s cult movie La Femme Nikita by Hollywood craftsman John Badham. If I hadn’t known the original, Point of No Return would have come across as a standard Hollywood action flick with an interesting subject. But since I do know it, this version instead seems like a poor imitation of the great original with no sign of its creative touch. My three-star rating is only a compromise for those who haven’t seen Besson’s classic.

Compared to his Hollywood debut, The Replacement Killers, Chow Yun-fat’s second American film is an enjoyable step in the right direction, but it’s still not the real deal. Whereas The Replacement Killers was spectacularly filmed fluff, The Corruptor has a real screenplay and the story of the complicated friendship between an honest rookie cop (Mark Wahlberg) and a ruthless dirty cop (Yun-fat) is compelling. Though the plot is full of holes, the bleak atmosphere of the dirty big-city streets and the dramatic potential successfully pull it together. Training Day, a later thriller paradoxically made by the director of The Replacement Killers, has an essentially identical subject, but polished to perfection.

Solid craftsmanship, but the content is so feeble and predictable that you will die of boredom. There have been hundreds of such films and this one does not stand out among them in any way. It’s good entertainment only for viewers who go to the cinema once in ten years. And for small children who are satisfied with the sight of a cute dog and a series of naïve jokes.

I like romantic comedies with Meg Ryan. Most of them (e.g. Addicted to Love) are standard fare that you can relax with and then forget about before you even leave the cinema. But the better ones are among the best of the genre. And French Kiss is one of them for at least two reasons: 1) it’s set in Paris, 2) Meg’s love interest is Kevin Kline.

This sequel to Cronenberg’s The Fly, directed by the creator of its special effects, has nothing in common with the original’s intimate psychological vision. It has a banal, empty subject, no atmosphere, a few high-quality make-up effects and a more action-packed ending so you have the feeling that at least something happened in those 105 minutes.

Antonio Banderas is cut out for the role of a medieval hero, Jerry Goldsmith’s music is fantastically monumental and the individual (mainly action) scenes are also very nicely filmed and sometimes chilling with their dynamics and dark atmosphere. The scene in the caverns is flawless. But all of those nicely filmed moments are oddly patched together into a sprawling and inconsistent whole that is disconcerting. Supposedly, this is the fault of Michael Crichton, whose contract allowed him to interfere with the final form of the film. An angry John McTiernan therefore dropped out of the project before it was finished. The result is thus not McTiernan’s, but Crichton’s. And frankly, it’s not worth much. And that’s a shame, because this could have been a first-rate adventure.

A BEAUTIFUL adaptation of Bronte’s novel. Its atmosphere and the poetics of the black-and-white imagery have no equal today. Wuthering Heights is one of those cinematic classics that are a heart-warming celebration of moving pictures.