[Filmin] Few elements to build a drama that overflows tension. It is the director's work that creates this atmosphere. In simplicity is virtue.
[Filmin] The intention is clear. Religion as an excuse for oppression. A young woman alienated in an environment that devours her. The problem is the way of talk about it, repetitive, without a clear path. And that last endless stretch.
[Filmin] Jessica Hausner embraces the fantastic genre without fear. This botanical "body snatchers" is haunting but also conveys the irony of false happiness. The camera leave behind the actors, and their dialogues remains in the background. Violence is also collateral, reflected. A remarkable style exercise.
[Filmin] First scene: Henrietta behind a large bouquet of flowers. Women as a decoration element. The ironic title refers to a passionate suicide, but the portrait of Heinrich von Kleist is devastating. "I do not serve to live", but neither does he serve to die alone. In the middle of German Romanticism, the interests of Jessica Hausner are the same. Last scene: the girl entertains the guests. Nothing changed.
[Filmin] Balance between distancing and a friendly look with these characters who are looking for a miracle to make sense of their pilgrimage. There is no religious feeling, not even in the young nun who accompanies Christine. The miracle is or is not, but as it usually happens in Jessica Hausner's cinema, the answer will not be so easy to find. Her best movie.
[Filmin] One of the funniest and also most disturbing proposals by Jessica Hausner. A young woman prepares in a kitchen one toast after another. A long take shows us this act as a repetitive representation of a banalized society, underlined by the visual texture and music on tv advertisement. What begins as a domestic act ends up becoming a disruptive loop and the smile disappears.
[Filmin] Jessica Hausner's first female portrait surrounded by an oppressive atmosphere. Searching for sexuality with a very Austrian ending. Interesting video treatment with amateur texture and "soap opera zoom-in". But the director had not yet found her own language.
[Filmin] Another emotional journey from director Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Curiously, despite being a commissioned work with political view, it is one of his most personal films. Some elements of his J-horror movies accentuate the culture shock. But there are also elements of melodrama, musical, comedy ... Mix of genres that ends up being equally confusing and fascinating.
[Filmin] While their parents forage for food, the cub wolves remain safe in their dens. Reasonable resemblances with "The Florida project" (Sean Baker, 2017) but less profound. Here it predominates the emotion of personal memory, the good feeling between the two brothers, the tenderness of those little touches of reality. That's enough.
[Filmin] Shot in Super-8, surreal humor, one shot only... Apparently, it could be a disaster, but in the end it's a fresh although repetitive proposal from a kind of cinema that follows its own rules. Or the freedom to do what you want.
[Filmin] A frustrating experience. You hope that the boring dialogues, the endless songs and the walks around Seville (always so beautiful) have raison d'être. But in the end everything remains in a non-sparkling version of Richard Linklater mixed with Jonás Trueba.
[Filmin] The war in the most traumatic concept. Corpses on the roads, soldiers with injuries more psychological than physical. 28 long takes, most of them with fixed camera. There is an undeniable aesthetic quality in the images. But we miss a conclusion that makes us think that aesthetics also has a narrative reason for being.
[Filmin] A double love story that is slowly created. Grandfather's love and husband's love. The madness of the husband is only controlled by the love of the grandfather. The drama becomes a kind of twilight thriller. A day of fury in Iceland's gray landscapes.
[MUBI] Burn in order to sow again. The fire to be reborn, but above all to rebel against the established society. Subversive, sometimes unfriendly characters. A puzzle of small flashes that finally complete a generational portrait. Ema says that she doesn't teach dance, she teaches freedom. But freedom also produces victims. Pablo Larraín constructs another complex and fascinating portrait of a female character.
[Filmin] A film noir with more claims than results. It works on your police job description. It fails in a second part devoid of suspense and interest. You hope that some gesture, some dialogue, will move you, but the wait is endless.
[Filmin] Tiny movie. Comedy with some brilliant moments. It's easy to empathize with the lovers, it's easy to fall in love with Chiara Mastroianni. A little more depth in development is lacking. An end of the road that does not give us the feeling that we have walked at all. Everything remains the same. You must be faithful to infidelity.
[Filmin] Modern neorealism. Coming of age story with stereotypical characters who confront this supposed reality. The documentary part works in the portrait of the community. Individual narration is weaker.
[MUBI] Baroque. Old-fashioned Production Design. Brilliant in dance performances. Imperfect in the middle. I thought Liberace was going to show sometime.
[MUBI] Pressburger and Powell return to black and white after their exuberant use of technicolor. Portrait of a character with physical and emotional scars. Touches of expressionism. Suspense. Elements handled with intelligence.
[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.
[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.
[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] 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 documentary whose greatest flaw is Werner Herzog's admiration for Mikhail Gorbachev. This causes the end result to be disappointing.
