[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.
Interesting series of spies in the eighties. The second season, after replacing Sundance TV with Amazon Prime as a production company, is more and action tv show, with less focus on the generational portrait of a Germany broken by political division. In this sense, "Deutschland 86" has less historical depth than "Deutschland 83".
Beautiful friendship story with well-written characters in one of the best television adaptations of a hit novel. There is a delicacy in the portrait of these characters, who sometimes act almost incomprehensible, but always consistent. And a perfect portrait of the annihilation of women as a person: "They had been devoured by the bodies of their husbands, fathers and brothers ..."
One of the best tv shows about religion, without being strictly a religious series. The first season focuses on loss of faith, the second one on guilt and forgiveness. Accurate and intelligent, slow in its development but full of non-superficial characters.
An implausible story about a girl journalist. There is not a single moment in the season when young people behave like children, especially the principal character, a 9-year-old girl who speaks as if she were 90 years old. A more realistic approach is missed.
[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.
From clever Season 1 to silly Season 2. Little funny reference to Monty Python's films. As a television medieval parody, "Galavant" (ABC, 2015-2016) was more entertaining.
[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.
The mix of thriller and indoctrination works in part. The messiah (good Mehdi Dehbi) loses interest after the first chapters, because his message is repetitive. Starting in the fifth episode, it works only as an entertaining thriller.
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.
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.
