POMO

The initial enthusiasm for Outbreak’s lean filmmaking – the long shot in the laboratories, the introduction of likable characters played by great actors, the appealing hints of strong drama – dissipates as the film transitions into an action movie with helicopter chases and a clichéd and predictable ending. The film becomes a sillier affair than it would have been if the screenwriters had aimed for a nerve-racking realistic thriller instead of an overwrought action flick for a popcorn audience.

At the moment of the off-screen abduction, Egoyan used the exact same shot that Villeneuve had used in Prisoners a year earlier. Otherwise, however, he goes in a different direction, showing us the villains and the background with the kidnapped victim right from the start while continuously introducing the main characters. Mixing up the chronology of certain events makes watching the film interesting. Everything starts to become clear to you after a few dozen minutes. Then there are some impressively chilling scenes and decently portrayed bad guys that give you goosebumps. The Captive is a decent, not entirely typical contribution to the category of similar genre films.

Unbreakable for unimaginative simpletons. Death Wish is a remake without ideas or character. Even Willis didn’t really fit. You won’t believe this chief surgeon, who in a garage in a single night learns how to shoot better than professional gangsters. The murders are gritty, like the catharsis brought by the administration of justice. But when justice is meted out to uninteresting, undeveloped bad guys, that catharsis is weak.

Eighties B-movie bullshit, but it’s entertaining. A crazy electronic soundtrack, bare breasts, jocks and nerds, a fast pace, super-cheesy dialogue and splatter head explosions. Chopping Mall is Wynorski’s punk Short Circuit!

An uninteresting screenplay without a single idea. The logic is silly in placess, the characters are miserable to the point of being annoying and the directing is sexless. Carriers is a bland movie made up of scenes that we have seen elsewhere in secondary plot lines.

Light of My Life is a gentler version of The Road, kept afloat by Affleck’s traditionally effective “emo speech" and an interesting performance by little Anna Pniowsky. It is a very minimalistic film; the only dialogue through nearly the entire runtime is between father and daughter in the woods or in abandoned houses. Plus an examination of their behaviour – survival strategy – consistent with the gradual uncovering of the secret of what happened in their world and how it changed the society that they are avoiding. This is an intimate film for patient and perceptive viewers. Three and a half stars.

As much as I’ve been getting used to praising the casting of films lately, here it is just bad. Forgotten ’90s comedian Rosie Perez as a serious cop? Ewan McGregor as a bad guy holding a knife to a little girl’s throat? And that bland Birds of Prey team, overshadowed by the weaker characterization? Another very bad thing: the combination of deliberately childish “playfulness” that doesn’t elicit laughter, with serious tones that in some cases are almost chilling (the undressing of the girl in the bar). And the constant sloppiness of the creative vision and dumb, insensitive directing.

There aren’t many ways to film this subject without it coming off as bullshit. And this isn’t one of those ways. It is rather a short-sighted concept that works with the motifs of the story in a self-destructively half-baked way.

With its great screenplay and directing, this very well-made comedy turns horror clichés on their head through parody and offers great one-liners, funny and sumptuous killings, and even a likably human dimension.

1917 is a gut-punching cinematographic exhibition with stunning sets, a pulsating rhythm and cinema-loving details (I was most pleased by Mark Strong’s entrance into the scene). All of that is true of the first half. In the second half, less comprehensible things start to happen and the whole thing becomes a forced march towards the story’s conclusion. Nothing else in the plot is surprising, which only confirms the excessive simplicity and transparency of the subject, relying on clichéd symbols (sacrifice for a higher purpose, milk – unboiled?? – given to a child). It is far from the philosophical statement that it pretends to be. But the visuals are truly outstanding, and it was pleasing to see Thomas Newman step out of his comfort zone. It would be wrong to see 1917 anywhere other than at the cinema. Just like Gravity the other day.