POMO

Though not very original by today’s standards, 99 River Street is still cleverly narrated, with a fast pace and characters that are easy to navigate despite not being played by more distinctive actors (which is a pity). The best scene, which is truly great, though unrelated to the central plot, is the rehearsal in the theater. It reminds of Naomi Watts’s similar performance in Mulholland Drive.

Formally brilliant, but without any driving force or tension. I plan to give it another chance one day.

A textbook example of poor film direction. Though the movie is visually captivating, the casting and dialogue are simply bad. It’s as if it was filmed by the second crew, which normally works only on the supporting technical scenes without any acting and doesn’t care the slightest bit about the dramaturgy of the story (the last Transformers suffered from the same failing).

The movie’s characters are a bunch of unconventional heroes with believable team chemistry, who do not take themselves too seriously and are played with gusto. Chris Pratt, whose star is on the rise, is a super cool guy, Zoe Saldana would be sexy in any color and Groot is too cute for words. The plot is a total cliché, but the relaxed mood of the film, which shows that nothing is meant seriously, makes that fact less grating. However, I was unpleasantly surprised by the lameness of most of the jokes. Hilarious, imaginative catchphrases with a lot of pop-culture references, were supposed to be the main attraction of the film, and there are almost none of those. Even Seth MacFarlane had more in his recent, rather inane A Million Ways to Die in the West. The crucial scene is foiled by Tyler Bates’ inability to compose an escalating melodic musical theme. The technical aspect is, however, perfect.

The elements of ghost horror movies set in an A-rated thriller a la Se7en – a tough cop with a flashlight finds his way through the darkness. The script is not exactly inventive, but the craftsmanship is perfect. Scott Derrickson knows what he’s doing. The main character is not a one-dimensional good guy; he has his own skeleton in the closet he has to deal with. The atypical priest becomes an important sidekick. The film is aided by its fast pace, the hellish make-up of the main bad guy (Sean Harris, who plays him, also deserves praise) and the instrumentally varied music by Christopher Young, which is monumental bordering on frightening. The slow start escalates into an intense horror experience. The use of music by The Doors is strange, but it gives the film a certain cool feel and individuality. “Vengeance always destroys the avenger.”

The Purge: Anarchy is much better than the first instalment; I considered giving it a fourth star. It is more sensitive in the treatment of characters, with more suspense, a cleverer script and more plot development, as well as more poignant in its provocative criticism of American capitalism. Dark and brutal, depressing due to the unpleasantly realistic subject and entertaining with its thriller pace with a lot of shootouts, Anarchy looks a bit like a video game in which you have to shoot your way to safety through a crowded, damn dangerous city at night.

The Prestige in Woody Allen style. Woody, however, does not delve deeply enough into the characters to make it work between them. The sparks between Colin Firth and Emma Stone work perfectly only in a single scene (the observatory) and do not work at all in the crucial last quarter of the film (after the point has been made). The two are incompatible by nature. If Woody himself played the rational wet blanket, the film would at least not be unrealistic and would not strive for an impossible romantic dimension, but it would be a pure cheerful comedy. Poor three stars.

Three of the short stories are great, but the rest is unnecessary. The “Fruit Cake” story can be described as artistic porn (due to the combination of visuals, editing and atmosphere), the animated segment is well drawn, funny and best expresses the feminist view of sex, while the penultimate “Authority” is rough and disgusting for sensitive people, but also the most intimate and really felt (not played). Watching this in a crowded sports hall of Czech town Uherské Hradiště was an interesting experience (a quarter of the crowd left before it was over) that I had always wanted to have. Kudos to the Summer Film School dramaturges.

A bit of controversial inanity that would have been a nice six-episode sitcom. Great cameos (Marvel with their forced Stan Lee cameos can learn from this), top casting and some cool jokes set in an anti-western world we haven’t seen before, all in a quite long running time. On the other hand, there are a few extremely dementedly embarrassing jokes, and some scenes had such poor direction that they would belong in the bonus material with failed shots. It’s as if Seth MacFarlane didn’t have enough time and didn’t do any reshoots. It’s like the movie was put together in a week. I hesitated with adding the third star for a few days, but I decided to grant it to the film for its good mood. And for Neil Patrick Harris, who is the funniest thing in the movie. MacFarlane, however, fails in the leading role.

A biography of a Hollywood legend, portrayed by a Hollywood star, with the ambitions of a TV adaption of a Harlequin novel. Basically nothing about this movie is good. The usually excellent Nicole Kidman fails to impress, while the experienced actors Frank Langella and Derek Jacobi have only meager roles, the handling of the political problem is not engaging and the production, strangled by the film’s low budget, is only capable of offering the audience cheap, empty kitsch. As much as the opening poetic scene of the film is nice and promising, the last one, following the failed portrayal of a dignified conflict between kindness and power politics, is completely ludicrous.