POMO

Gone Girl is a compact mosaic of events chiseled to perfection. Surgically confident and precisely timed in every scene and every shot. That is why, and for my admiration of David Fincher’s talent, I regret that it is also very cold and impersonal. That it does not allow the audience to engage, only to observe from a distance. That’s all part of the maestro’s game, but it’s a shame. Electronic music composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross once gave the musical identity to the world of heroes who created an internet phenomenon out of ones and zeros. Original and effective. But what is this detached, chemical-like music doing in the story of a relationship between two people? Wouldn’t Gone Girl be an even better movie had it been driven by passion and emotion? It is a film about the disintegration of a marriage that looks and sounds the same as Steven Soderbergh’s thriller about a lethal global virus.

Dracula Untold is a silly but entertaining flick kept afloat by the well-cast and charismatic Luke Evans. A B-movie script with simple character motivations and barely tolerable catchphrases. But the movie is well paced and playful, the emotions work and the digital effects are of sufficient quality.

A few minutes of over-digitalized introduction suggests that the second instalment bet on a completely different horse than the first part, where digital monkeys complemented an emotionally charged and dramaturgically sensitive story about people and the place of animals in the human world (and vice versa). It was a cleanly made film in the Spielberg tradition. The second film drowns in digital effects, is action-packed and, following the current trends set by Nolan, visually dark. Which in itself might not hurt if all of its characters had a meaningful place in the story and if it didn’t provoke emotions with cheap sentiment. I really expected more from Matt Reeves than a mere flashy but empty blockbuster.

This 80-minute montage of fictional reporting that is about as inventive as a half-hour TV report on the evening news, except it’s fictional and thus has no impact on the viewer at all. No reoccurring characters, no surprises or frights. In the 1970s, The Bay would have been noteworthy as the first representative of this particular subgenre, but today it’s just an insignificant DVD title with an alluring cover. A very weak two stars.

Slower but all the more focused, subtly escalating and with a perfect performance by the main villain. Washington is approaching the position of an A-list Seagal and soon we’ll see a halo lighting up over his head. I was delighted with the character balance between him and Csokas, the dialogue, Bill Pullman’s small role, more blood than we are used to in Washington movies, and the closing music by Moby. Fuqua is back!

It’s been I while since I saw a movie that would defend family values so cleanly, strongly and without sentiment, while at the same time confronting two diametrically different cultures in an intelligent, emotional and witty manner. The two scenes where the natives wandering in the bush stick a hollow straw into the ground to drink groundwater, and a few years later intuitively stick a plastic straw into a MacDonald’s cup to drink Coke, are top notch. The Good Lie is well written, acted and directed. I was moved. Reese Witherspoon sells the film in the posters, but appears in the film only after half an hour. The true main characters are a group of Sudanese, of which at least the woman is not even an actress (you couldn’t tell, though). Produced under the auspices of Brian Grazer and Ron Howard. [San Diego Film Festival]

Bill Murray is back, and he’s great as always. It looks as if he’s completing the trio of characters from Lost in Translation and Broken Flowers. But while his story and the stories of his neighbors and the lady of the night are conveyed in a relaxed mood and contain a handful of humorous episodes, the film suffers from unoriginality and sentiment, and is quite forgettable. All those comic grimaces, the mentor/boy relationship, and Naomi Watts’s eccentric performance in the role of a Russian bimbo come across as a little self-serving. [San Diego Film Festival]

Bad Country is an average crime film without an original touch. It looks like a made-for-TV production, recycling what we’ve seen a hundred times before. The narrative dynamics are there, but the characters lack more distinctive features. It’s enough if you watch it just once, mainly thanks to Willem Dafoe, who is the most convincing in his role. Matt Dillon seems unsure at first, which turns out to be a possible intention not to show emotions and not to reveal the character’s nature. Tom Berenger’s big mafia boss is questionable. He seemed more like a drunken uncle from a retirement home than a fearinducing villain. A TV film for viewers who like to remember the good old days.

Do not expect an action flick just because it’s Liam Neeson. The only action scene takes place in the first minutes. This film is closer in spirit to Joel Schumacher’s 8MM, but it’s afraid to become too dark and heavy. For incomprehensible reasons, it lightens up and mocks the aura around the main bad guys, who should chill you to the bone. Philosophizing over guilt and redemption does not work very well either – in one of the final scenes it sticks out like a sore thumb. Neeson is OK, but Ólafsson is the best, albeit in a smaller role (he was also the best in Walter Mitty). [Cinemark 18, Howard Hughes Promenade, LA]

The film that kick-started Keanu Reeves’ illustrious career. A police thriller that takes place in an attractive surfing environment. The pace speeds up only in the last third, as everything that happens before is about getting to know the characters. Their relationships are well-developed, although today they seem a bit cliché. The last third, however, is surprising with unpredictable twists and its skydiving scenes complement the surfing ones in creating the pleasant poetics of a free lifestyle (which defines the characters of the film). The ending adds a bit of depth, but it was obviously added as an afterthought half a year after the film was originally completed. What is hard to swallow in this film today is Mark Isham’s terrible “action” music (a motif-free mess of percussion), which makes one realize how dramatically Hans Zimmer and his disciples changed the face of Hollywood action-movie music.