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I love a poker game. I even love watching a poker game in which I am not a participant. Nevertheless, Rounders is a not very exciting and rather forgettable film. Matt Damon should be a boy scout or a wellfare worker and definitely not a poker player. And though Edward Norton fares a little better as Damon's sidekick, the character he portrays is so utterly irritating that he too isn't much fun to watch. One strong point of its predecessor The Cincinnati Kid was the fact that one couldn't predict if Steve McQueen would win or lose the final game against "The Man" Edward G. Robinson. This element of uncertainty is sadly lacking here. John Dahl proved in The Last Seduction and especially in Red Rock West that he is a fine director. But somewhere along the way he certainly lost his grip on Rounders.

La vita è bella sucks. The first half of the movie is mildly interesting and sometimes even funny, but from the moment daddy Guido and son Ferrucio are heading for the concentration camp, director Begnini's hideous master plan takes over. Guido explains to his son that an unforeseen and rather unpleasant truck ride is part of the kid's birthday present. Once they enter the concentration camp, Guido has a lot more of explaining to do. The reason they are here, he tells the bewildered kid, is that a huge game is going on. There are many different ways to score points, and the first contender to reach a thousand points will win the first prize, consisting of a real tank! In order to avoid a one way trip to the gas chamber, Guido orders his son to hide in his bed all day. Now that is real fun! Day after day the kid is running or hiding. All part of the game. Sometimes his father's romantic nature takes over. For instance, he makes an old gramophone blast his favorite love song all over the place, so that his wife in one of the other barracks will know that Guido is still alive and very much in love with her. Happily, at that moment there is obviously not a single German soldier in the camp to shoot this loving soul right through the head. Apart from the whole story being silly and incredible, one may wonder if on the long run it is a wise idea to frame a series of very unpleasant experiences in a kid's life as a game. If he gets out alive - and of course he does - how will he feel later when he discovers that he has witnessed one of the biggest crimes off all time, believing it was all just a game? The answer is: he will feel guilty as hell and, to make things worse, he will think of himself as a particularly stupid and trusting person. If I was a psychiatrist, I would try very hard to have this guy for a client. But Benigni is such a romantic and caring person, that he doesn't seem to realize that sometimes thinking can be a great asset.

At last The Truman Show has reached the mainland of Europe. And after all the hype I saw on IMBb reviews, I must confess that I am a little bit disappointed. True, the movie makes its depressing theme "life imitates the media" very clear, and I would advise every critic who mistakenly calls this a comedy, to look up that word in a dictionary and compare the result with the things he has witnessed on the screen. The view on society that is pictured in The Truman Show is very bleak indeed. Still, good drama should be believable all the way and it is here that director and scriptwiter let us down. The suggestion is that people are watching the show day in day out and never consider switching channels. Why? Of course the idea of an actor believing he is leading a normal life is appealing (to the audience), but is it entertaining as well? What happens when Truman goes to sleep, and his house is dark and silent during seven or eight hours? In fact, what happened in the first couple of years of his life, when he wasn't up to anything more substantial than crying while lying down or whatever an infant does to pass the time? It is hardly likely that viewers enjoyed the continuous sight of an infant solely for the reason that it wasn't aware of this "immoral" intrusion of its privacy.

Another weak point in the story is the fact that the artificial nature of Seahaven becomes rapidly visible during the film while up to then the phoney aspects of life in Truman's hometown were successfully hidden. How come never before a lamp fell down from the ceiling? How come never before the local radio channel was inadvertently intruded by conversations of the film crew? How come it took Truman thirty years to discover that the elevator in the building next to his office really wasn't an elevator at all? In short, what are the odds that it takes a not too dumb guy like Truman thirty years to discover within a few days the extent of the manipulation by the film makers? The really amazing thing of the movie is that, despite all these silly loose ends in the script, the viewer is as indignant as he should be about a man being manipulated for such a long time, for no other reason than making a megalomaniac getting his kicks.

I am sure that director Peter Chelsom isn't in the same league as Steven Spielberg. Nevertheless, he almost equals the master in the art of manipulating the audience into whatever emotion he deems appropriate. Time to weep? Chelsom makes us weep. Time for an outburst of laughter? Everyone is laughing madly. I would have to watch the movie a couple more times to be able to analyze what does the trick, and I don't either have the time nor the motivation to watch this film once more, let alone three or for times. Even while shedding a few tears or laughing aloud I was very much aware of being manipulated, but that didn't prevent me from behaving in the "right" way. This is not to say that The Mighty is a worthless movie. The two main characters (Elden Ratliff as the dumbest kid in town and Kieran Culkin as the paralyzed and soon-to-die genius) do some great acting, and some of Culkin's wisecracks are hilarious, as are his impersonations of Groucho Marx and Marlon Brando. A less Spielbergian approach might have resulted in a really great film. As it is, The Mighty will reinforce the point of view shared by many European critics (not me) that every Hollywood production is an all too obvious vehicle to make a lot of money, while furthering the corruption of western culture.

Robert Guédiguian, director of the film Marius et Jeannette, loves the working class people. I have no quarrel with that. On the other hand, being a socialist director doesn't guarantee a movie that has much artistical merit. The message is loud and clear: working class people are happier than the guys with all the money, because their emotional lives are purer and not spoiled by capitalist values. The problem with this kind of film is that people who adhere to democratic values need not be taught this stuff at such a childish - and sometimes downright stupid - level, while the capitalist viewer sees a conformation of his prejudice that a "communist" director has neither the intelligence nor the good taste to make a film about the working class that is worth spending his costly time on. Guédiguian's intentions are admirable, the result is hard to take seriously.

The Replacement Killers is as mindless, senseless, tasteless, worthless a movie as you will ever watch on the big screen. It consists essentially of one huge shoot-out which is interrupted a couple of times in order to give the characters the opportunity to walk from one building to the next or to exchange a few comments on the last shoot-out or the one that's going to take place within a couple of minutes. If you love the sound of machine guns, this is definitely your movie. If not, beware!

While watching The Big hit I couldn't help but wonder what kind of audience would leave the theater afterwards entirely satisfied and next day at school or at the office tell everyone who was paying attention what a terrific movie it was. I came up with a blank. The film is too lame for people who have a sense of humor, too bright for people who are really stupid, too obvious for people who like an entertaining storyline and too highbrow for people who never wonder what the story is about in the first place. The Big Hit is a empty film in no man's land, enjoyable for the kind of average person who doesn't exist. If only the director and scriptwriter had thought about these matters before the shooting (no pun intended) started.