POMO

Infidelity, jealousy and passion through the poetic eyes of a woman – in other words, a load of talking and no action. Anne Fontaine successfully draws the eroticism out of what’s left unseen. And any screenwriting missteps that would bore male viewers are justified by the ending, which makes the film an extremely refined “thoughtful romance” for more mature viewers, particularly for individuals wandering in the mazes of faltering long-term relationships.

I’m giving this a very questionable four stars. Unfortunately, Spielberg has grown up and the emotional flatness and academic coldness that could be excused in his War of the Worlds cannot be forgiven in Munich. War of the Worlds worked perfectly as a pure horror movie that delivered amazement and chills through its technical aspects. Munich is an attempt to inventively examine serious issues for which supreme technical precision is not enough. Therefore, only one thing in this long film really works, namely the naturalistically cold-blooded murders, especially that of the female assassin on the boat. Some may argue that Munich didn’t appeal to me because the Muslim-Jewish conflict is beyond me, but I’m not Jewish and Schindler’s List is one of my top ten favorite films. Because it has a huge heart.

Shades of Happiness is a run-of-the-mill drama about relationship problems, filmed through the lens of a television movie. It is not for those who want to escape from reality into the world of a film, but for those who want to compare their own reality with someone else’s. Personally, that’s not my thing, but on the other hand, it’s definitely better than soap operas made for the same purpose.

Though it doesn’t have the impact of the first one’s originality and the opening scene of the second one, Final Destination 3 is the juiciest and sharpest of the bunch, including the splatter-packed scenes of the individual killings. And the chemistry between the likable and well-acted duo of actors works surprisingly well. In the context of teen horror flicks and the fact that this is the third instalment of the franchise, it’s satisfying.

A cheaper, blue-filtered version of Van Helsing that becomes ever more predictable as it draws closer to the end credits. Thanks, however, to the shorter runtime and Kate Beckinsale’s great image, I found this less boring than Van Helsing.

Harrison Ford is the exemplary and wealthy head of a “perfect family”, which he must now fight for… This American thriller promises more than it delivers. The first half is very routine, dull and drawn-out. The second half gains dynamism with the arrival of a twist stolen from a Mel Gibson thriller that shall not be named and alternates between good scenes and clichéd filler. Harrison plays Harrison, while Paul Bettany’s bad guy is surprisingly one-dimensional. The other characters are just makeweights. Overall, this is a relatively entertaining, occasionally suspenseful and sometimes unintentionally comical genre flick. Personally, I enjoyed the old car and the sunny rural locations in the final sequence, which brought both a warm nostalgic memory of Hitchcock’s adventures and a pleasant contrast with the preceding high-tech (blue filter) visuals. You simply can’t condemn Firewall for that last shot. :-)

Mature in its opinions, Syriana is an intelligent political thriller involving the business machinations carried out among oil tycoons. However, most of the connections escape ordinary viewers (i.e. those who are not familiar with the given issue) and only the decent atmosphere, the cast and the impressive ending are memorable.

Three gangsters on the run terrorize a group of young girls in a secluded beach house. The Seventh Woman is an entry in the category of nasty-euro-trash, specifically revenge flicks (such as The Last House on the Left and the American movie I Spit on Your Grave) with typically terrible actors and dialogue. The camerawork is done well and the locations around the house are fine. The nasty bits are adequate for weaker stomachs, but they are delivered in the form of strange hypnotic slow-motion shots that spoil more than they improve.

One would expect that the protagonist would spend the first hour coming up with an invisibility serum and that the drama would come after he drinks it in the last half hour. However, the screenplay by R.C. Sherriff draws us into the drama of the scientist’s efforts to rid himself of invisibility in the initial seconds of the film and it is so packed with ideas and exciting scenes that it could fit in with contemporary genre productions. With great actors and incredibly good effects for its time, The Invisible Man is a treat for connoisseurs.

On Cate Blanchett’s part, Veronica Guerin is a superbly acted one-woman show which, however, leaves a somewhat flat overall impression, though the last ten minutes don’t leave a dry eye in the house. That the screenplay tried to remain as complex and faithful to the actual events as possible is fine, but in order for this to work as a truly compelling film, it needed to settle more comfortably into the personal lives of the protagonist and the two main bad guys (instead of familiarizing the audience with the other five insignificant ones). From Veronica’s investigation, which doesn’t come to any point (so it is not as important as in sophisticated fictional thrillers), only what is essential for the build-up of a film should have been used. After all, a film is constructed according to different rules than television journalism. Joel Schumacher made Veronica’s story into an honest, cold deposition. Ron Howard would have made it into a fine Hollywood tear-jerker. I would have preferred something in between.