POMO

Instructions on how to earn a nice afterlife... The director’s approach to the story is minimalistic, is neither riveting nor surprising, and is sometimes even boring, only to make sense of everything in the end. And then, while finally letting Rachel Portman’s fragile emotional music properly resound, moves you and hits you right in the feels. It was a commendable idea to film such a human destiny.

These high-quality contemporary Russian films are amazing thanks both to their wide-screen visuals that enhance the atmosphere of a vast and cold northern landscape, as well as to their textbook precise narration of the story with a focus on characters. These films are slow and long, but everything in them has its place. They smoothly tell a comprehensible and simple story, but the closer they get to the finale, the more concise and creative editing is used. Remarkable, excellent.

Xavier Dolan impressively captures the psychology and sparks between the characters, through which he heals his own demons. But that doesn’t make for a completely satisfying film experience. Tom at the Farm is a solidly developed relationship drama in which the dark secrets and truths of the past are revealed with escalating tension, but in the end it comes across as empty and turns out to be just an engaging but forgettable snapshot.

A concentrated nothing made into a film. Every such film makes the Czech comedy The Inheritance by Věra Chytilová look more and more like an important milestone of Czech cinema. Nowhere in Moravia doesn’t have a single scene that is actually funny and to the point, whereas The Inheritance is full of them.

“Never ask for what ought to be offered.” Winter's Bone impressively depicts the addressing of the difficult situation of an incomplete family in an already tough life in difficult circumstances (where livelihoods are made by hand in the forest). The driving force of the film is not so much its screenplay as the atmospheric environment of the Midwestern backcountry, where gardens are scattered with the rusty remains of cars and sheds are used to make and take crystal meth. And where the social rules followed by the inhabitants will chill you to the bone. The film rises and falls with Jennifer Lawrence, who possesses a talent rarely seen on the screen. Winter’s Bone feels close to the Coens’ Fargo, just without the black humor. I’m not inclined to take a trip to Missouri after watching this.

Cannibal will hold your attention with its creeping pace while piquing your curiosity as to where it will go, but it will leave your emotions alone. Though interesting and provocative, it is also cold and ultimately brings no resolution.

With its sensitive dialogue between four people about hidden proximity, loneliness and loss, in a bilingual presentation with constant interpreting that draws the film out to full feature length, one would almost cynically remark that if it wasn’t the interpreting and the presence of a third person in the intimate dialogue of the couple that brought some alleviating humor into the sad poetics of the film. The mother’s acting performance overshadows everyone else, but she does not pull the film out of the realm of boredom and long-windedness.

Given the director’s youth, Violent will surprise you with its in-depth pondering of existential questions, pleasantly interwoven with poetic perception of the world through the eyes of a young girl. The film’s “metaphysical” atmosphere, enhanced by distinctive, hypnotic music, is impressive.

In the end, the father/son storyline leads somewhere, but everything that goes before it is just an annoying observation of dull, uninteresting prison inmates and their skirmishes with each other or with the prison staff. Even the character of a psychologist who wants to help junior does not add anything useful to the film. The weakest of any dozen brutal prison dramas you can recall.

I Origins is a clever existential musing with attractive, unpredictable genre twists. It is capable of both rousing emotions and conveying a message. “I love dandelions. Because they're free, wild, and you can't buy them.”