[HBO] Corruption is worse when surrounded by silence. Like a matryoshka doll, the story discovers the surprises step by step. And in this game of truth and lies it is Hugh Jackman's performing that masterfully drives towards the end. "Accelerated".
[MUBI] Religiously cinematographic experience. These faces that appear on the screen, inquisitors, inflexible, Machiavellian. And Maria Falconetti-Juana de Arco. Sublime representation of pain in every corner of his face. Yes, a silent film. Because it is almost impossible to express this experience in words.
Ghosts that don't scare us. Her dead husband appears to Mizuki to properly close his earthly life before finally leaving. Or maybe Mizuki has gone mad in the absence. Kurosawa talks about many things, but delicately and quitely. Ghosts also play the piano, and make us shudder. Melodrama with one foot beyond life. "I don't wanna die," says someone who is already dead. That is the sadness of a ghost.
[Amazon] The hand that rocks "the bag". Interesting reflection on how to face the absence of those who are loved ("a dream of love", says Greta). But Neil Jordan seems more interested in the burlesque side of the last part. The great Isabelle Huppert more lost than ever. At the end it is enjoyable if you give up and watch it as one of those "crapy movies" mentioned by the protagonist at the beginning.
[Filmin] Beautiful. Hypnotic. A film with a classic cinema texture but modern camera framing. The use of non-music is absorbing. Paweł Pawlikowski found here his own language that later evolved into the also riveting "Cold war" (2018). Unforgettable images: the convent with "dreyerian" atmosphere, the sea of trees that embraces the decadent Jewish cemetery... Black & White. John Coltrane.
[MUBI] Fire as a reckoning. Docu-fiction works well, and offers authenticity to a story that is mostly fictional. Donoso fondly shows this grandmother with a complex personality who remains enigmatic at the end. But there are too many vacuum moments, too many expendable scenes. And the game between reality and fiction falls apart.
[MUBI] Canadian "realismo mágico". A small, almost uninhabited town receives a visit that is a reflection of its own agony. There are more questions than answers, and that is frustrating. Or encouraging for the viewer. That old movie look chills you. Cinema is not dead yet.
That sense of humor with a dramatic background works best in Nordic cinema. This remake makes the male character more stupid, which plays against history. Here, the comedy remains as frozen as Will Ferrell's expressionlessness. Tip: Watch the original movie.
The comedy works. The mystery staggers in a second part that is saved by some good moments of humor. Great Fabrice Luchini in his composition of an impertinent literary critic. Some ironic darts hit the target.
[Filmin] The short film was Hitchcock. The feature film aims to be Truffaut. The short film was adrenaline. The feature film is a wide angle drama about loneliness. The relationship with the teenager is incomprehensible. Never expand a story that does not need to be developed.
[Netflix] Film noir a little gray. There is too much significance to take it seriously. Valencia. Political corruption. Drugs. An explosive mixture that remains in fireworks.
[Netflix] Enjoy Vaseline Alley. Enjoy Jeff Stryker Action Man with its pose-able penis. Enjoy an endearing story about the last survivors of a time when being gay was an act of heroism.
[Netflix] Don't mess with the past. Reality is just a fiction. A good script is always a good start.
[Netflix] Messy adaptation of a novel whose detective plot is not especially interesting either.
A handful of good Spanish actors for an adaptation as disappointing as "El guardián invisible" (Fernando González Molina, 2017). Little hope that something will change in "Ofrenda a la tormenta" (Fernando González Molina, 2020), the last part of the trilogy.
A classic adaptation of Pinocchio's story, which is disappointing in the work of Matteo Garrone, a director with more talent for having offered that surreal point of view that the story has. In its favor, some darker moments that we had not watched in previous versions.
A documentary whose greatest flaw is Werner Herzog's admiration for Mikhail Gorbachev. This causes the end result to be disappointing.
At first, it has a few stuff in common with "Corpus Christi" (Jan Komasa, 2019), the Polish Oscar-nominated film, but it continues as a forgettable thriller whose reflections on guilt and fate are superficial.
An honest and entertaining film about the failures of the educational system, although it can't help but remember other films that talk about the same subject with better results.
Enjoyable story about unfulfilled wishes and religious oppression.
Humans and machines in an industrialized and repetitive society. A documentary that is intimate in its sample of human faces in a mechanical work chain.
Mike Flanagan successfully combines the universe of Stephen King and the visual iconography of Stanley Kubrick, especially in the parts that most differ from the book.
Scary vision of repressed sexuality.
Yes, it¡s about rats, but also about modern segregation.
This is a wonderful disaster!
