POMO

This is a decent but not outstanding giallo flick. And giallo movies, at least the traditional ones, now all strike me as being very much the same. A mysterious killer, of whom we only ever see gloves and a stabbing weapon plus the back of a coat with a cap/hat, a bloody murder, an investigation, more gloves and murder, more investigations, the gradual endangerment of the detective and his loved ones, culminating with an effort to save them and reveal the identity of the killer at the last moment. Every time, there is a similar atmosphere and odd, baffling characteristics of the killer. Only the visual aspect occasionally stands out as being more refined, such as in Argento’s films. In this opus, there’s just more nudity and beautiful women, mainly at the beginning. The opening-credit scene with a massage to the strains of Morricone’s seductive music is the film’s best moment.

Though it has a plot concept with a point, in terms of filmmaking this almost psychedelic horror C-movie remains below the threshold of watchability in every aspect. Dull, non-acting performances, missing sound, poorly framed and out-of-focus shots, haphazard editing (or rather no editing). That’s not what actual filmmakers do. Why am I even reviewing this?!

Hotel Artemis kills precisely that which elevates John Wick from a simple shoot ’em up to a thoughtful, attractive escape. The world of a secret hotel for criminals is depicted stylishly in terms of both its visuals and its internal rules. Not to mention its characters. However, Hotel Artemis is absolutely disconnected from the viewers’ needs and expectations, from what we want to see in a movie like this and how we want to see it. With the exception of Sofia Boutella in a high-slit burgundy dress, throwing knives at a bunch of bad guys. But we wait more than an hour for that scene. Did Jodie Foster take this on voluntarily, or because no one is offering her anything better?

In the post-9/11 era, watching this expensive B-movie takes on a new dimension. The terrorist attacks in the film are so straightforward, crude and treacherous as to arouse a feeling of repulsion. It would absolutely fail as action entertainment today. Even the bad guys are effectively cast and acted, as their hatred for the US, their pleasure in killing carefree innocents and their determination to bring the country to its knees are chilling. And then the jeans-clad Chuck enters the scene and turns it into a parody. The second half of the movie, pieced together from attacks on civilians, where Chuck luckily shows up to save them and eliminate the terrorists (accompanied, of course, by overdone one-liners) reveals the fatal stupidity of the screenplay. And the climax is pretty much embarrassing, making a mockery of common sense. However, the scene with Billy Drago in the exposition was a praiseworthy surprise. But the scene with the red Cadillac was genuinely laughable.

Such aesthetics in the form of blonde feminine beauty, angelic white ladies’ costumes and melancholic poetics, almost reminiscent of Polanski’s Bitter Moon...diminished by so much empty and uninteresting dialogue, as well as underdeveloped characters, on whose intimate interaction the whole film was supposed to stand as a psychological analysis of the fascination with violence, helplessness and surrender to higher powers. Even the nudity is not used purposefully and satisfactorily enough. However, the face, hairstyle, wardrobe and calm, seductive voice of Delphine Seyrig as Countess Elizabeth Báthory cannot be forgotten.

Pigs is a surprisingly good bit of bizarreness from Troma. This exploitation horror flick about a farmer who feeds human corpses to his pigs turns out to be a gripping psychological drama. The girl who lodges in his house in order to hide out and earn extra money at his café carries with her a secret that brings numerous surprises into the story. The B-movie visuals and seeming superficiality of the subject matter uniquely contrast with the unpredictability of the screenplay, in which everything, including the psychological interplay of the characters, makes sense in the end. And the film provides a satisfying, even fully formed view with a pleasant tinge of trash. The film also has a likable bit of value added in the fact that it is an original work (screenplay and directing) by Marc Lawrence, who also embodied and excellently played the main character of the pig farmer Zambrini. And that he cast his own daughter as the girl who takes shelter on his farm. The relationship between their characters in the film – in which she, suffering from childhood trauma and looking for a father figure, and he, an old recluse with whom she finds refuge – is an important part of the story.

Right from the start, House at the End of the Street comes across as hackneyed, but at least the actors’ faces and the nicely depicted relationship between the characters are pleasing. In terms of horror, however, it doesn’t work at all. At least some thriller-style suspense eventually comes in the final scene, but it’s not enough to make up for the film’s unoriginality, sometimes dumb editing and generally bad directing, not to mention the silliness of the screenplay.

This decent crime flick offers dark anti-heroes/assassins, but I didn’t start enjoying it until the last location, because everything before that is based on the chemistry between Bronson and Michael-Vincent, whose patter is not interesting enough. Vincent’s character of a young buck is half-baked and too untrustworthy for Bronson to rate him as a promising recruit. That’s the more interesting aspect of the underworld that The Mechanic serves. It is the film’s atmospheric engine. Three and a half stars.

This film is inordinately long for such a simple plot premise. And for a director who is unable to reveal the inner selves of his characters and evoke emotion. We are therefore only distant observers of the events, of which are needlessly too many for the given runtime and for the fact that we know where they are leading.

This is only film in the franchise that I have seen, and I don’t want to see the others. It’s a comedy full of jokes at which I barely laughed twice, and even then only “consolingly”, so that at least something drowned out the infantile spasms of everything around. Rowan Atkinson plays an idiot, but he’s funny with every gesture, facial expression and tone of voice. Adam Sandler plays an idiot and he’s funny through that admitted awkwardness that comes with knowing he’s not that funny. But Mike Myers and his jokes are NOT funny. They only make the viewer wonder, “what the hell was that supposed to be?” Even the would-be parodic references to well-known movies exist only for their own sake with no connection to anything in the film.