Short reviews - Set 2 (Chronicle, Cinema Paradiso, Troy)

In the lack of free time necessary for complete reviews we'll post short reviews of some random, usually just seen, movies.

Chronicle (2012)
USA, 84min
Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Director: Josh Trank
Writers: Max Landis, Josh Trank
Stars: Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, Michael B. Jordan

 Found footage movie about three teenagers who managed to gain telekinetic abilities from some strange object in a strange hole in the ground. That doesn’t sound too good, doesn’t it? But surprisingly it is.
Character development is very good, especially for this genre, although it’s far from being original. Visual impression is great and problem of bad camera job in found footage films is easily removed duo to telekinetic ability of character who records his daily routine.
Chronicle won’t leave good impression on everybody but it definitely will on young Sci-Fi lovers.



Cinema Paradiso (1988)
Italy, France; 155min
Drama
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Writers: Giuseppe Tornatore, Vanna Paoli
Stars: Philippe Noiret, Enzo Cannavale, Antonella Attili

Very emotional movie about growing up, love and Italian south, about movies and return to personal history and birthplace and a lot of other things. Old filmmaker remembers his youth on Italian south were he became great friend with local theater's projectionist.
Beautiful and relaxing but with domination of sadness. Italian acting/yelling is usually 'special' and hard to digest for non-Italian viewers and here that’s even harder due to few really bad acting performances but overall feeling stays intact. Cinema Paradiso is a must see for every film lover.



Troy (2004)
USA, Malta, UK; 163min
Adventure, Drama, History
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Writers: Homer (poem), David Benioff
Stars: Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom

It's far from being perfect but it's definitely most realistic approach to Homer's poem. There's no gods, no myths, no supernatural, just one historical event that probably happened on similar way.
Fighting scenes are weakest point. If we put aside that almost every single soldier has iron armor, what probably never happened in any battle, that whole battlefield stops to look at two men fight and that Greek army, which is famous for their use of battle formations, fight like Germanic tribes, battles still look far from being well made.
But everything else works nice. Acting and directing are the top class, dialogues and characterization are very well written, in brief, I have no major complaints.
Lovers of history and epic movies will probably like it while others shouldn’t rush into seeing it.