Lima

A big void plotwise. It’s quite a simple, almost trivial story, which is why I miss the reason for the Oscar nomination. In a nutshell, it’s a couple of artfully stylised violent scenes, diluted by two passionate love acts, all with a poor psychological background. Fortunately, Cronenberg directs in such a way that there’s no chance to get bored and the hundred minutes or so pass quickly. The actors are above average, Maria Bello is great, but Ed Harris – whenever he appears, he lights up the screen with his presence; it’s a pity that he has so little space, but still more than the few minutes (literally!!!) of barking from William Hurt, whose Oscar nomination I don't quite understand! With exaggeration, this really smacks of a plot by the members of the academy :)

I’m thrilled. A slightly different, but no less interesting view of military conflict, which goes the way of depicting the feelings and frustrations that must be experienced by guys trained in elite units only to cover the backs of their colleagues deployed directly in the heat of war. We see their eagerness to fight in the scene where they chant and scream with enthusiasm during a screening of the bombing of a Vietnamese village in Coppola's Apocalypse Now, just as I felt first-hand the frustration of one of the characters at not being able to take part in "it". The impressive scene when, with desperation in his eyes, he begs his superior to shoot at least one soldier, has more power and meaning than half an hour of uninterrupted action. When the protagonist vomits among the charred bodies, the more perceptive viewer will shudder. The apocalyptic image with a horse, greasy with oil all over its body, and the burning oil wells glowing into the darkness in the distance, takes on a kind of mystical beauty thanks to the evocative cinematography. Jake Gyllenhaal continues to grow as an actor and delivers a terrific performance (an Oscar nomination would be fitting), with the reliable Jamie Fox backing him up. Not since Russell's Three Kings has there been such a cool war-themed movie.

At a time when the most profitable business is terrorism, such artistic experiments are very necessary. Andrew Niccol has once again proven himself to be a perceptively intelligent filmmaker who knows very well what he is talking about. Lord of War doesn't tell anything new, but with a great deal of irony it glosses the current international situation, full of military conflicts, especially in third world countries, and makes a lot of insightful and pertinent observations ("There's nothing more expensive for an arms dealer than peace." [...] "All right, forget it. I'll reroute the shipment to the Balkans. When they say they're going to have a war, they keep their word!”) It's just a pity that the film sometimes slips unnecessarily into family melodrama. Five years ago I had already given up on Cage, but lately he seems to have resurrected, going from one interesting role to another. Carry on.

There's no denying that Sofia has directorial talent and knows how to work with actors, who perform like a dream in each of her films. But somehow I just didn't get why the girls did it, I didn't understand the motivations behind their actions. I mean, I understood, but Sofia must have had an ultra liberal upbringing if she found an act as horrible as taking one’s own life adequate to the situation these girls were in. Because if everyone who has such "terrible" parents were to kill themselves, an entire generation would die, including a significant portion of FilmBooster users. :)

Beware, there are plenty of psychopaths around the world who will offer you seemingly selfless help, and if you live in the southern Australian outback where you can't get help, you're sure to get into trouble... A likeable representative from the land where horror movies are a rarity and certainly one of the better The Texas Chainsaw Massacre clones. It’s unnecessary to introduce the characters of the three leads because the director doesn't work with them in the second half and whether "he likes this one and she likes that one" is quite irrelevant, but I will probably be one of the few who didn't mind the long introductory first half. I let myself be lulled by the idyll, which was replaced by a premonition of something bad (which started with the presence of the locals with a rightly boorish expression), only to be grabbed by the neck by the director with an unexpected and surprisingly brutal plot development. What brings this film down from a four-star rating are a few perhaps too spectacular scenes and a somewhat tired game with the viewer in the form of presenting the film as a "true story". Not a chance. For fans of movie brutality, however, this piece is a certain notch in the axe's bloody hilt.

John Singleton's work leaves me pretty indifferent, and Four Brothers is hardly going to change that. I was only looking forward to Wahlberg, whom I've known since Boogie Nights, and he didn't disappoint with his furrowed brow, perpetually pissed off expression and macho walk. Otherwise, this story has nothing worth remembering. Some clichés here and there, a lot of fucking and testosterone, one pretty decent gunfight, but a pretty stale straightforward and far-fetched revenge story in which you can walk around Detroit with a gun in your hand, or even shoot yourself, and the police will stay calm. A movie like this should at least have a decent villain, but I didn't believe the overacting Chiwetel Ejiofor (the likable guy from Dirty Pretty Things) as the bad guy. Bottom line: passable for a boring evening of TV, but a visit to the cinema would be an unnecessary luxury. Two and a half stars.

This film was a see-saw ride for me, from indifference to the plot to utter fascination. I like it when directors don't make it easy for the viewer, but it took me a while to get used to the strange narrative style with the interweaving of several time planes, but then I was "riding" and enjoying the beautiful cinematography, the unknown to me but all the more enchanting charismatic actors, and the slowly escalating story itself, which Medem skillfully coaxed to a close in the absence of violent tears on the viewer. The erotic scenes, which may be daring for some, are shot very tastefully, but the film's greatest strength is definitely a kind of poetic power that permeates it whenever we get to the island, where Medem revels in beautiful visual compositions. It's just a pity that from a purely subjective perspective I didn't find catharsis in the main character's relationship with the mother of his daughter. But otherwise excellent and I am definitely curious about Medem's other works.

If I may express the opinion of an ordinary Muggle such as myself, Newell has not spoiled anything, but neither has he impressed. First of all, there’s not a single scene or a single character that impressed, intrigued or frightened me. I recall with a tear in my eye Cuarón's stylish dementors who strummed the dark string of the story so perfectly; in Newell's film, the darkness is represented by Voldemort, who wouldn't scare my hamster (and I like Ralph that much) and whose overacting theatrical finale is one of the film's weakest moments. But the main problem is the lack of deeper emotions (at least for me) and the too fragmented narrative. Many scenes are plotless, Newell hastily, probably thanks to the script, jumps from scene to scene, a person untouched by the book's source material gropes, and the bare fact remains that only readers who can compare their visual imagination with what is happening on the screen can fully appreciate this film. I believe it would have helped to "stretch" the film, or divide it into two parts and make the plot feel fuller. Oh, and by the way, I no longer want a hypogryph, mow I'm longing for a "frogwood", with my swimming misery it would be good to show off in front of the women in the pool :)

I love P.T. Anderson's films and consider him a genius, but this is a step backwards. A brilliant directorial, genre-unclassifiable flick, but the plot is absolutely nothing, without any emotions or deeper message. There are a few promisingly conceived motifs, when I thought "this could be interesting", but before he can elaborate on them Anderson suddenly cuts them off, doesn't finish them and leaves a strange aftertaste on the tongue of the film gourmet. I'm not saying it has to work that way for other viewers, but it did for me, and with the beginning of the closing credits I realized that the film didn't really give me anything at all, although I love this kind of cinematic escapades. PS: I wasn't expecting it, but Sandler was excellent and his irresistible declaration of love in Hawaii made me laugh out loud.

Just as the glam-rock era of 1970s Britpop, ushered in after sobering up from the flower power ideals, was a road to nowhere, so this film thrashes from nothing to nothing. It’s only the musical numbers that keep it afloat; you can soak up the atmosphere of glam rock, with all its glitter and pervading decadence, with its high boots, tight-fitting costumes and colourful hairstyles; the musical era from whose visuals Freddie Mercury drew in his early days, or David Bowie. The latter and his fictional alter-ego Ziggy Stardust have a point of contact with the film’s main character – Brian Slade – in a quite convincing performance by Rhys-Meyers, while McGregor, sticking his privates out at the audience during a performance, is strikingly reminiscent of Iggy Pop, the enfant terrible of the rock scene, with his excess and wildness, and although he surprisingly doesn't have much space in the film, he makes the most of those few minutes. But in the main storyline, the film doesn't work. The journalistic investigations of Christian Bale, whose surprisingly bland delivery consists only of staring fascinatedly at his idols, are tedious, along with the almost dreamlike scenes that don't hold together, and the filmmaker goes to great lengths to communicate dubious ideas ("A man's image is his life."). It's like glam rock with this film – interesting, but it gets boring very soon.