POMO

What was this supposed to be? A family psychological drama in the guise of a thriller about a time-share hotel chain run by a cult? In any case, it doesn’t work and just leaves the viewer waiting for the bizarre, question-packed plot to make sense and develop into something proper. And it remains undeveloped, nonsensical and dramatically defective. Whether or not the screenwriter had a lousy experience with the time-share concept and needed to put it down on paper, he could have used it as the inspiration for a thousand plots more interesting than this.

Peter Sasdy was a rather mediocre director in the case of the feature films he made for Hammer. Countess Dracula, based on the story of Elizabeth Báthory, has the beautiful Ingrid Pitt in the lead role, as well as a rather bountiful screenplay with some dramatic links between the characters. However, the directorial grasp of the film is very weak, as it evokes television entertainment more than a big-screen historical drama. That becomes obvious in the illogical behaviour of the supporting characters in the first half of the film and in the action’s lack of naturalness. In the second half, when the plot unfolds between multiple characters, this careless approach is a shame. And don’t look forward to any horror, as there are only a few such scenes lasting a few seconds each. A weak three stars.

I thought it was okay. Wheatley brings the famous story to viewers who wouldn’t watch an 80-year-old black-and-white film. This Rebecca offers faster edits, heightened drama in selected scenes and even the well-depicted anxiety of the protagonist in her unfortunate position. And, in this case, remaking Hitchcock isn’t stupid or unethical as in the case of Psycho, because the original Rebecca was, after all, more Selznick’s film than Hitch’s, as it didn’t have the master's distinctive signature, but was “only” a polished Hollywood production. Lily James is good, but Kristin Scott Thomas is perhaps too literally demonic with her dark makeup and lighting.

The opening scene, in which Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Donald Sutherland and three other passengers successively enter the train compartment, exchanging glances and examining each other’s reactions to define their social commonality, is a treat. It is thus unfortunate that the future life events that Cushing begins to divine from his cards make for six rather ridiculous “horror” stories. Only one of them has any thought to it (Lee) and one has a surprising point (Sutherland). That, coincidentally, is the last one, which is followed by the overall point of the story. And taken together, these offer a nice conclusion.

Visually and sonically refined, this Australian variation on the night-time haunted house motif is made distinctive by its editing. The film plays powerfully on the unhappy mother/problematic son relationship and their lonely world after the loss of their husband/father, and delivers the haunting quite nicely in technical terms. But the characters’ reaction to it is strange, as if it’s not a life-threatening curse, but merely a seasonal metaphorical embodiment of a lousy time that can be endured through force of will. According to the director, this is most likely a more interesting and “artistic” take on the substance of the genre, but I did not find it entirely satisfying.

Is it possible that this was made by the creator of the brilliant Get Out?! Us does not work on any level as an attempt at horror with certain (perhaps philosophical?!) overtones. Though it is a technically flawless Hollywood movie, it is laughable and unbelievable in terms of its content. Scenes that are supposed to be scary are instead embarrassing to the point of being ridiculous; the dialogue, which is supposed to be wittily cool, is unnatural and silly. There is seemingly an attempt at an interesting existential element in the uncovering of the story’s mystery, but it turns out to be WTF nonsense. It’s as if the sophisticated violin of Shyamalan’s early originality and Stephen King’s thematic distinctiveness were supposed to be employed here, but there was only enough talent for a child’s ukulele with half of its strings missing.

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.

Though it has the same parameters of the later, highly successful series True Detective, Texas Killing Fields does a conspicuously bad job of telling the story and sticking to its foundations, thus confusing the viewer with asides. The things that the investigation depends on the whole time are sloppily left unexplained, because the truth is elsewhere, the probability and logic of the time sequences get put through the wringer and you will get nothing out of the poorly constructed characters. And why was it necessary to put Jessica Chastain in such a minor supporting role?

I can count the films from the 1990s that I haven’t seen on one hand, since I watched everything back then, including romantic comedies starring Meg Ryan. U Turn was one of them and now I regret that I don’t have more of them in reserve, because thinking back to the actors of the day is great fun. Just when you think that nothing in this film can surprise you after the crazy, greased-up car mechanic Billy Bob Thornton or the violent pervert Nick Nolte, along comes the nervous Joaquin Phoenix with his gelled hair and you have Christmas for movie viewers. Despite that, I have a bit of a problem with this Stone flick – as great as it is in its atmospheric beginning and the accelerating drive into the main character’s ever more absurd, fucked-up situation, it’s incongruous mix of drama and comedy, which even Morricone couldn’t handle, becomes increasingly frayed at the edges. And in the climax, everything gets completely out of hand with respect to specific screenwriting sense.

A decent drama set in the time of totalitarianism with a slightly cynical tone and the chilling message of “they are still among us”. Zuzana Mauréry excels and, of the rest of the cast, the wrestler as the “hero of the people” stands out the most. The film is well written and Hřebejk skilfully directs the subtle, mostly negative character conflicts between the protagonists. However, the exaggerated nature of the film comes across as a bit like a TV movie and doesn’t delve into the wounds of the past with much force. Next to other cases of unscrupulous conduct seen in the given period, this story is actually rather banal.