POMO

The Dig is a beautiful, lyrically told film in which someone with determination makes the greatest archaeological discovery, someone unfulfilled finds the love of a lifetime, and someone extremely important to someone.... Set to piano music, feelings of anxiety from the onset of war and relaxed sunsets, and existential thoughts associated with art and its eternal nature. All of the actors are top-quality and the editing is atypical in places for effect. No one could say they didn’t like it, or vice versa.

The Night Stalker is a solid TV movie about the dialogue-based relationship between a serial killer and the journalist who visits him in prison, and about a “fragile woman’s” fascination with evil in the form of an attractive “male spider”. The subject matter is similar to the main storyline of The Silence of the Lambs, except in this case it is about a real killer and inspired by the female fans he gained after his arrest thanks to his masculine magnetism (he even got married in prison). In order to understand and appreciate the film, it is necessary to know the story of Richard Ramirez, the horrifying nature of his actions, and his later cynical reflection on them. Lou Diamond Phillips does a good job of portraying Ramirez and the film also works in the psychological aspect, as it reveal the reasons for the journalist’s weakness for the killer’s tantalising, animal magnetism.

Carrying supplies to a mountain cottage as a lifestyle. The core of this documentary consists in the conflict of memories from the erstwhile real world “down below” with the current performance of the hardest possible work in the mountains. Seniors who will not give up what they are doing for anything as long as their bodies allow them to keep doing it, because it fulfils them more than, for example, playing in an orchestra at the most prestigious concert hall in the world. They have the wisdom the comes with knowledge and the possibility to compare, which few people get in life (due to which people are dissatisfied and often unhappy, even though they have no reason to be). Inner peace and harmony are the reward for all of their “wonderful toil”.

At the beginning, you think “maybe it won’t be just a clichéd story about Timberlake’s friendship with the little boy”, and in the end you’re glad that’s exactly what it was. Palmer is a little relationship movie with heart and an excellent Juno Temple in the supporting role of the endlessly high mother.

Even when I can’t have it in real life, the Florida sunshine in January is a delightful thing to see in a movie. And Lopez was also fun to look at. Otherwise, Parker is an absolutely average movie with a hackneyed plot. Considering how well he handled other, significantly bigger genre challenges in the past (particularly The Devil’s Advocate), it seems that Hackford just phoned it in this time.

The Little Things is an average buddy-detective flick with not entirely appropriate music by Thomas Newman and a detective who acts like an idiot in the climax. Washington and Malek are otherwise quite good together, the film isn’t boring and keeps you waiting for the thriller build-up and key plot twist, but in the end it is not in any way surprising. It’s worth seeing for Jared Leto’s bizarre, unsettling psycho character, which deserved a better screenplay.

Promising Young Woman is a revenge-flick product of the #metoo mindset in a pop package with a pleasing cast and more thorough characterisation of the protagonist than we are used to from thematically similar revenge-horror movies. Carey Mulligan is cute, but the mentions of “Oscar-worthy” acting are off base. Besides that, the film in no way goes beyond the creative boundaries of playful fluff, which is original only in its placement of the given theme in the A-list mainstreem. Conversely, the would-be screenwriting magic in the climax serves as confirmation of the film’s creative limits within the confines of a mere fresh teen drama. Plying the same waters, Assassination Nation was bolder and more stylish.

A farmer goes after the mobsters who killed his mother. An Irish accent, Nordic coarseness and strange black humour. The most interesting bad guy (the famous “round face” David Pearse) is unfortunately the first to be taken out and the top boss of the bad guys is ironically the film’s least cunning character. Besides the poorly conceived build-up in this respect, however, the film maintains a certain distinctiveness, thanks mainly to the well-acted, atypical protagonist played by the lesser-known Nigel O’Neill. Bad Day for the Cut is a bit of a festival film that delivers genre themes in its own way.

Miss Sloane has exactly what the similar Molly’s Game lacked – a more in-depth character study of the protagonist, including her private life. And Jessica’s acting performance deserves a deeper character focus! The lobbying and politics here may not appeal to everyone, but I personally find the controversial issue of guns in the US interesting (I’m for gun control) and this film offers a great insight into it.

This tranquil western road movie may not have a substantial dramatic plot, but it does have a humanistic heart. Simply Hanks. Its aim is to again show the slightly different corners and characters of the old American West and its code of justice and hardships in a more realistic way than Costner’s The Postman :-). But Greegrasse’s touch isn’t very apparent in it. Did she really direct it? James N. Howard’s return to the genre is nice, but due to the film’s minimalist approach, we can’t fully enjoy it until the closing credits.