POMO

A masterfully crafted arrow which, however, takes a too direct path to its target and is above all TOO LONG, in addition to being made of components that we already know too well. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button spoke to me with its magical first third full of sincere kindness and breathtaking effects that turn the digital Brad Pitt into a better actor than the real one we see later. But the rest is filled with cotton wool, having little to offer beyond things that are superfluous to Benjamin’s story. Overall, it’s a nice movie, but not the film of the year. David Fincher is wasted on such mainstream audience ass-kissing. This is paradoxically his least interesting and controversial work.

Out of Time is a simple chill-out movie in the attractive setting of sunny Florida, where even the police chief wears a Hawaiian shirt and the sky is so beautiful that it borders on kitschy. Add in beautiful tanned babes in a story with a crime plot that is full of suspense and somehow contrived, but fortunately also a little predictable. I say fortunately because this movie doesn’t aspire to become the second The Usual Suspects, but a sexy, old-school chill-out movie. Mission accomplished.

Children of Men, with an IQ lowered to the level of xXx. If you found Cuarón’s work too clever and technically inventive and you felt disappointed that Clive Owen didn’t shoot anything over the entire course of the movie, Kassovitz and Diesel will make it up to you. This is the crème de la crème of apocalyptic sci-fi B-movie trash (like Ultraviolet, Soldier, etc.), worthy of a solid two stars.

After a crucial scene, the initial disgust over the cheap attempt at shocking the viewer by depicting the sex life of Los Angeles teenagers turns into respect over the believably depicted reaction of these brats to the crime they committed. Its concept is not as clear and precise as that of Kids, but also not as fumbling and empty as that of Ken Park. Bully is somewhere in between. A weaker three stars than those I gave Alpha Dog.

A soap opera made into a feature film. An erotic one.

In its ending, the film tries to make up for everything it had botched earlier. And the final twist is supposed to make a major point. Ahem. Traitor is too dramaturgically inconsistent for me.

Guillermo del Toro can turn even a B-movie premise with mediocre digital effects into a decent, original horror flick. Especially thanks to the unique script, the great use of interiors from the Manhattan underground and, last but not least, the unconventional characters that are typical of del Toro works (the shoeshine guy and his son). Mimic is an action-free, more deviant version of Cameron’s Aliens, which is exactly to my liking.

This cheap, TV-like thriller has a single good (surprising) scene and one well-played character (young Remo). Overall, however, the only thing that makes this less of a failure than Argento’s previous Sleepless is the lack of glaring lapses in logic. The rest is just stagnant water in a vase with half-dead flowers. Don’t waste your time on this and instead watch Untraceable, which is based on a similar premise, but is better in the technical aspect with a more dramatic ending.

Valkyrie will be enjoyed the most by those who like to dig into this particular historical period. Bryan Singer approaches his subject matter responsibly, without twisting history to better suit his movie. Valkyrie doesn’t pretend to be anything it isn’t; it has no ambition to be a piece of “high art” and it doesn’t comment on politics like Spielberg’s Munich. It just reconstructs events as a solid conspiratorial thriller with high production values, exciting and well-cast (despite being a small part, Kenneth Branagh’s General von Tresckow is the film’s most interesting and best played character). And its ending doesn’t lack emotion or depth, which reminds us that someone was courageous enough to at least try... P.S. John Ottman’s choral main theme is beautiful!

Clint Eastwood with fragile piano music is the Danielle Steel of serious topics. But for topics as serious as those addressed in Changeling, and especially for tying them together in some meaningful way, a big heart alone is not enough.