ricardojorgeramalho Reviews

Full Throttle (1995 TV Movie)

The Bentley Boys

[6/10 · 24 May 2024]

Rowan Atkinson's passion for cars is well known, so it was certainly with great pleasure that he was involved in this project of a television film (just 50 minutes long) dedicated to the biography of one of Bentley's heroes of the 1920s, Tim Birkin, winner in Le Mans twice, in 1929, for Bentley, and in 1931, with an Alfa Romeo, after Bentley was acquired by Rolls Royce and abandoned the competition in 1930.

Despite being short, low budget and clearly intended for television, it features an impressive collection of old four-wheeled glories in action, filmed with special enthusiasm and with a main actor in pure ecstasy, clearly delighted, to flesh out this character and for the opportunity to drive so many historic machines, on a pleasant journey back in time, to the automobile competition of the 1920s.

Motorsport fans will certainly love it. Rowan Atkinson's will criticize the lack of humor, as the film is much more a biographical drama than a comedy.

Sanjuro (1962)

Yojimbo, part II

[8/10 · 19 May 2024]

Less known than Yojimbo, released the previous year, this Sanjuro is, in fact, a sequel to the first, albeit with different characters, but with the same main actors, Toshiro Mifune, in the role of the invincible ronin, and Tatsuya Nakadai, in the role of the villain.

Yojimbo's success led Toho to ask Kurosawa for a sequel. He then took a previous project, which was intended to be a faithful adaptation of Shûgorô Yamamoto's novel "Peaceful Days", and transformed it into this Tsubaki Sanjûrô, reusing the musical theme, characters and main actors from Yojimbo.

Interestingly, the same thing that Sergio Leone did with the success of "For a Fistful of Dollars", a remake of Yojimbo, and "For a Few Dollars More", a sequel with an original script, which only takes advantage of one character, the theme and the main actor of the previous film.

Sanjuro is a good samurai film, in the best style of Kurosawa and Mifune, but it is not Yojimbo. It's fun, there's a lot of action, it even has what some say is the first blood explosion scene in a duel, in what would become a hallmark of the genre, copied by Tarantino, but it lacks the charisma of the prequel. There is a side of farce that corrodes the drama of Yojimbo, even with the final duel at sunset, like in cowboy films.

Still, it is highly recommended for lovers of the genre.

Lady Snowblood (1973)

Revenge in the Snow

[7/10 · 19 May 2024]

Lady Snowblood is a manga written by Kazuo Koike (author of the also famous Lone Wolf and Cub) and illustrated by Kazuo Kamimura, published between 1972 and 1973.

It was immediately adapted to the cinema in 1973, in this film directed by Toshiya Fujita, with Meiko Kaji in the main role, and a sequel was produced the following year.

This character and film were also Quentin Tarantino's main inspiration for his Kill Bill films and for the main character, the bride, played by Uma Thurman.

I am a self-confessed admirer of the original manga and Kazuo Koike's work, so it was with great curiosity that I saw this contemporary film adaptation. The result inevitably falls short of the manga, but it doesn't disappoint either. The character is well embodied by Meiko Kaji, although not as sensually as in the manga, and the environment of obsessive revenge is well recreated, with the plot being, in general, faithful to the original.

There is, however, a touch of gore, of pulp fiction, which does not appear so much in the manga and which would have been especially attractive to Tarantino. The abundant blood, the severed limbs, the kitsch music, the exaggerated, photo-novel color (the manga is in black and white), are distinctive features of the film, which are not present in the original work. Good cinematography, however, gives this whole an original character, which transformed the film into a cult work, parallel to the manga itself, with its own personality and public appeal, influenced by a pulp/kitsch aesthetic, which culminates in Tarantino.

A classic that, although not a masterpiece, is an unavoidable reference to a style, a time and a cinematographic genre.

Zatoichi's Pilgrimage (1966)

Zatoichi Yojimbo

[7/10 · 13 May 2024]

There is an indelible connection between this saga of the samurai masseur Zatoichi, blind but invincible and avenger of injustice, and spaghetti westerns, at their best, such as the work of Sergio Leone.

Kurosawa set the tone, with masterpieces such as Seven Samurai (1954) or Yojimbo (1961), both adapted into westerns, the second by Leone in A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and the first by John Sturges in The Magnificent Seven (1960), this one with several sequels.

Also Zatoichi, debuted in cinema in 1962, based on a literary character created by novelist Kan Shimozawa in 1928, is a direct heir of Yojimbo, Kambei Shimada and his North American disciples, played by Yul Brynner and Clint Eastwood, among others. And it originated 26 films and a 100-episode television series, with a North American remake of the seventeenth film in the series, Zatoichi Challenged, under the name Blind Fury (1989), directed by Philip Noyce.

We are thus faced with an institution of Japanese cinema and television, which I cannot help but see as an extension of these classics, of Kurosawa and Sergio Leone's solitary hero-villains.

This episode, Zatoichi's Pilgrimage, the thirteenth in the series, is particularly evocative of Yojimbo and, therefore, of Toshiro Mifune and Clint Eastwood, at their best. And Shintarô Katsu, the man who embodied Zatoichi, during 26 films and 100 television episodes, between 1962 and 1979 (with a final film in 1989 which he also directed), is certainly not behind them, in terms of the charisma and talent with which he enriches the character.

Out of curiosity, it appears that Miramax purchased the rights to this film, allegedly to make a remake, directed by Quentin Tarantino.

A Trip to Mars (1918)

A Piece of History

[7/10 · 12 May 2024]

This celestial journey, which takes humans to Mars for the first time, is very much a result of the time in which it was produced, in the middle of the First World War.

More than science fiction, the film expresses a desire for peace and harmony among men. The planet Mars, far from the values of the God of war that gives it its name, reveals a peaceful and vegetarian civilization, which managed to abolish violence and live in an Olympic paradise.

Highlight for the fantastic restoration. Not only was the image impeccably repaired, but the entire film was colored, in a soft tone, inspired by the first techniques before Technicolor.

The weakest point is the representation, a prisoner of the dramatic mannerisms of silent cinema, here made more evident by the excellence of the restoration.

A piece of history, stolen from the past for future memory.

Goto: Island of Love (1969)

A brief and bitter reflection of humanity

[7/10 · 10 May 2024]

An interesting work that seems to present an allegory about power and the human condition.

In an absolute, immobilist monarchy, installed on an isolated and sparsely inhabited island, we witness the meteoric social rise of an unscrupulous thief.

Everything served in a decadent, minimal, grotesque environment, but well framed, with a good taste in black and white cinematography (with rare and brief incursions of color), which does not go unnoticed.

The film is certainly pretentious and at times even hermetic, but the end result is still a very interesting challenge for the viewer.

More than a critique of regimes, social inequalities, customs, the work seems to provoke a deeper and more philosophical reflection on the very essence of humanity.

The Trap (1946)

The Farewell

[5/10 · 9 May 2024]

This was Sidney Toler's last film as detective Charlie Chan, the last in a series of twenty-two, produced between 1938 and 1946.

The physical fragility of the actor is visible, as he appears in fewer scenes, moves slowly and even demonstrates a relative verbal economy that is not characteristic of the character. There is, for example, not a single "correction please" in Toler's farewell to the character. A film where we have more "number 2 Son" and Birmingham than Chan.

The plot is what you would expect from a banal television police series and the value of this work is above all historical and sentimental, for fans of the character.

The Noose Hangs High (1948)

Weak

[5/10 · 9 May 2024]

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello formed a successful comedian duo in the 1940s, especially in the United States, following traditional parameters of circus and vaudeville comedy, such as the rich clown (Abbott) and poor clown (Costello).

The duo's best moments were certainly the equivocal dialogues, often based on homophones, which they explored to the point of exhaustion. In this film there is one of those dialogues, at the dinner that they don't intend to pay for, which is probably the highest and most entertaining point of the film.

The drawback of this type of dialogue is its difficult translation, which perhaps explains the duo's lower popularity abroad, when compared to other successful duos, such as Laurel & Hardy or Martin & Lewis.

The problem is that the argument of this film is very weak, it insistently resorts to physical comedy, on the part of Costello, and the narrative construction, which is not very consistent, ends up serving as a mere pretext for the succession of popular and somewhat cheap, vaudeville comedy duets , from the duo.

It certainly won't be one of the duo's best films, not even for Abbott and Costello fans. For others, it is just another consumer product, produced in Hollywood, for undemanding moviegoers.

The Fear (1966)

The Beast

[8/10 · 9 May 2024]

The Fear, a 1966 Greek film written and directed by Kostas Manoussakis and with beautiful cinematography by Nikos Gardelis, is a powerful parable about human bestiality.

Humanity, reduced to its most basic condition, is nothing more than animal instinct, hostage to its basest desires and interests.

Man, victim to fear, lives under pressure, due to his uncontrollable instincts and the terror of the imminent loss of his worldly and material interests.

Served by black and white cinematography, which highlights this human beast and its harsh habitat, with an unsettling soundtrack by Giannis Markopoulos, and some memorable performances, especially by Anestis Vlahos, this is a film that will not be forgotten and that the most cynics will not hesitate to call it a masterpiece.

Beware of a Holy Whore (1971)

Una Cuba Libre Por Favor

[7/10 · 13 February 2024]

Fassbinder ends this film with a quote from Thomas Mann that expresses his tiredness in representing the human species, without being part of it. This could well be the key to interpreting not only this film, but almost all of Fassbinder's work.

In a world divided between capitalist tyranny and socialist hypocrisy, there is no real place for Fassbinder and his troupe, representative of a generation that wants to be above bourgeois values, but finds no alternatives, falling into nihilism and depression.

In retrospect, we can believe that Fassbinder's discomfort stemmed, in large part, from the rejection of homosexuality, whether by fascist moralism or socialist progressivism. The sexual freedom of the sixties did not yet include homosexuality, and Fassbinder, using shock therapy in his films, was one of the staunchest critics of this hypocritical sexual revolution.

The film tells the story of a film production, which takes place in a haphazard manner, in a Sorrento painted in Francoist Spain, as a metaphor for a society and a revolution of mentalities, which is also slow to happen.

Meanwhile, Cuba Libres are drunk, in honor of the revolution.

The Creatures (1966)

Between Luck and Destiny

[7/10 · 5 February 2024]

A hermetic work, where fantasy and reality mix, in a surreal universe of a writer, locked in a strange beach house, almost a fortress, with his pregnant wife, while writing a literary work.

Both suffer injuries from a road accident. He has a deep feeling of guilt, marked by a scar on his forehead, which symbolizes a healthy madness, which he channels into literary creation. She, a loving muteness, the reverse of her husband's guilt, which she only overcomes at the end, with the birth of her son.

Meanwhile, like a demiurge of the small world that surrounds him, he plays the luck and destiny of his characters and of his own life and family.

Of course, with all the hermetic surrealism that dominates the film, everything could mean something completely different to other viewers.

It is certainly not Varda's most representative cinematographic language, nor is it her most inspired or influential film.

A Time of Roses (1969)

Democratic Roses and Thorns

[7/10 · 28 January 2024]

A surprising Finnish film from the end of the 60s, which proposes, in a science fiction environment that could have inspired Woody Allen's Sleeper, a reflection on the concept of democracy and the utopias it gave rise to, which kept the world divided and suspended at the time of the Cold War, which nevertheless caused episodes of enormous violence, permanently threatening the world with the total destruction of humanity.

The conclusion seems to be that totalitarian democracy annihilates the individual, and that only the imperfection of the democratic social struggle guarantees individual freedom, even if it generates violence and social confrontation.

However, totalitarianism inevitably imposes itself on the annihilation of the individual in the face of the collective interest.

An interesting reflection that well reflects the ambiguity of political thought at the time, which is still relevant, even in current times, when the Cold War has become history.

What is democracy after all? Are these regimes, in which we currently live, truly democratic?

Doesn't the ghost of totalitarianism remain suspended, waiting for the bankruptcy of social democracies, victors of the cold war?

Grandma (1979)

She eats everything

[8/10 · 27 January 2024]

Like José Afonso's vampires, this grandmother who eats everything, exhausting her family to death, would perhaps be, in 1979, when written and directed by Hector Oliveira, a metaphor for American capitalism and the Argentine ruling class, which, insatiable, consumed the country's resources to exhaustion, literally pushing its inhabitants to a miserable death.

There is always a grandmother in every political regime, in every country, in every family, so the metaphor remains timeless, capable of pleasing successive generations and different cultures.

A classic that, despite the years, remains lively and relevant.

Monsieur Verdoux (1947)

Chaplin Noir

[8/10 · 31 December 2023]

Curiously based on an idea by Orson Welles, although written, directed and performed by Charles Chaplin, this Monsieur Verdoux adapts a true story, that of the infamous Bluebeard, Monsieur Henri Désiré Landru, a french serial killer, executed in 1922, specialized in seducing and killing widows and then make the corpses disappear, to construct a metaphor for the society of the time, still dominated by the terrible effects of the 1929 financial crisis and the Second World War.

When America emerged victorious from the conflict and reborn from its own ashes, as a global economic and military power, the public and some critics did not like seeing Chaplin playing the villain (although as tragicomic as always) nor the capitalist model criticized at a time when the Cold War began and the Soviet Union emerged as the new enemy to be defeated by the North American empire.

Chaplin, who was already persecuted and criticized by the FBI as a communist sympathizer, saw his destiny in exile determined after this film.

Monsieur Verdoux is a delicious black comedy where Chaplin plays a character as poetic and human as the others. He just has the peculiarity of having a business of killing wealthy widows, after being fired from a bank. But he does it to support a handicapped wife and a young son, so he has a clear conscience.

He ends up defeated by the economy and war, after years of deceiving the police.

Irony at the best level. It was a timing error. It emerged in a moralistic era that was unreceptive to the humanist theories of Chaplin, critical of war and savage capitalism.

Limelight (1952)

The False Farewell

[10/10 · 31 December 2023]

Limelight is the film that marks the beginning of Chaplin's exile, after several years of persecution by American authorities, who accused him of communist sympathies.

Far from being a bitter and adversarial film, this cinematic response from Chaplin is a farewell of an old glory, full of panache, sweetness and poetry.

Chaplin says goodbye to Hollywood with a smile and a white glove slap, with the enormous elegance and critical sense with which he always acted throughout his career.

Interestingly, this film would give him the only competitive Oscar of his life, for the soundtrack (he would receive another, an honorary award, in 1972, for his entire career).

It wouldn't be Chaplin's last film, as he might have thought when he made it, but it is certainly among the best that has been done in cinematographic art, to this day.

A Night in Casablanca (1946)

Madness in Casablanca

[7/10 · 30 December 2023]

One of the last films by the Marx brothers where, despite adding nothing relevant to their cinematic routine, they also don't clash, building a coherent work and where there is space for each of them to express their enormous humorous talent.

The theme of the hotel managed by the chaotic brothers is recurrent in their work (the four coconuts, a day at the races (here a sanatorium hotel), room service), and when it is not a hotel it is an opera or a circus company, a university or even an imaginary country called Sylvania. The important thing is to create chaos, where the healthy madness of the Marx brothers prevails, to the undeniable pleasure of the viewer.

This film is also a nice parody of the classic Casablanca, at the time at the peak of popularity.

A film that no Marx Brothers fan will want to miss.

A King in New York (1957)

A Bath of Humility

[7/10 · 30 December 2023]

Charlie Chaplin, exiled in Switzerland to avoid answering to the infamous Commission on Un-American Activities, prevented from working in the United States and at the age of sixty-eight, returns to New York, in his metaphorical condition as king of comedy, in exile, to expose to North Americans the absurdity of McCarthysm and literally give a shower of humility to the members of the Commission on Un-American Activities.

It is certainly not one of the best films by the genius Chaplin, but he, as usual, is not afraid to put his finger on the wound (as he does with the hose in the elevator) to expose his democratic and inclusive ideals, which earned him exile, for alleged pro-communist sympathies, and refusal to testify before the McCarthy commission.

A respectable and courageous work by someone who never knew how to remain silent when time demanded to denounce injustice.

Topper (1937)

Screwball Comedy

[7/10 · 22 November 2023]

Topper is a 1930s screwball comedy in the full sense of the term. The very fragility of the argument elevates it to the healthy madness that characterizes this type of comedy.

Nothing in this story makes much sense, but the truth is that the whole works as exceptional entertainment, with some of the most fun and charismatic actors of the time.

It's no wonder why it was a tremendous success and even led to two sequels, although without Cary Grant, who only appears in the first film and Constance Bennett who plays the first two but does not appear in the third film. The duo Roland Young and Billie Burke, however, complete the trilogy.

A film with the density of a sheet of paper, but still downright fun.

The Seventh Seal (1957)

Between life and death

[10/10 · 20 November 2023]

Rarely have the human condition, the permanent struggle between life and death and the search for knowledge, for a meaning to existence, been presented in such an eloquent and poetic way as in Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal.

This is certainly why it is seen by many not only as the Swedish director's masterpiece, but as a pillar of 20th century cinema and culture.

The Seventh Seal is much more than a film, it is a work of art. A bold visual poem, beautiful but frightening at the same time, where each viewer is deeply confronted with their own mortality and the search for meaning in life.

It's not worth asking many questions when the answer is just one, and inevitably painted in black.

Bandits of Orgosolo (1961)

Omerta

[8/10 · 15 November 2023]

A portrait of misery and ignorance, in a Sardinia lost in its ancient traditions of isolation and distrust.

A shepherd finds himself unjustly involved in an escape of bandits, which resulted in the death of a police officer. His survival instinct pushes him to flee. He fears continental justice, the loss of his sheep, the prison that would prevent him from supporting his old mother and brother.

But it's a dead end. He manages to escape the police, but not the poverty and violence, which push him into a life as a fugitive, a criminal, condemned and persecuted by everyone.

A harsh and merciless vision of the isolation and ignorance, imposed by the law of silence, in the pastoral communities of Sardinia, filmed in the mountains in the center of the island, using only amateur actors, belonging to the local communities.

An excellent example of new cinema from the 1960s, at its best.

Return to Seoul (2022)

Reencounter

[7/10 · 12 November 2023]

A story about the search for identity that can equally be seen as a metaphor for a country divided by a suspended but omnipresent war.

Freddie also lives suspended, not only between her biological and adoptive parents, but between East and West, between the present and the past, between war and peace.

She is the product of war and misery, despite having lived far from it all. Confronting the pain, shame and suffering associated with her birth and adoption imposes on her a need for reconciliation with her origins, with her identity lost and never found again.

But it is an impossible task. Life doesn't stop, the past cannot be redone. Freddie is condemned to live on the border, an outcast, lonely without integrating anywhere.

The Magician (1958)

The Great Illusion

[8/10 · 11 November 2023]

The Face (The Magician) is a curious incursion by Ingmar Bergman into the territory of the occult, fear, illusions and superstitions that still mark, in an indelible way, the human condition.

Despite the evidence, the tricks, the manifest mystification of occultism, there is always a doubt that hovers, an atavistic, or perhaps mystical, desire to believe that life is not just this, that reality is too absurd to be simply accepted and that It takes faith in something superior and supernatural to be able to survive, to overcome the banality of life.

In the absence of love, even the cheap tricks of some charlatan seem to be enough.

Bachelor Mother (1939)

Once upon a time

[8/10 · 11 November 2023]

Bachelor Mother is one of those romantic comedies, written in the good tradition of farce, that delighted audiences in the 30s and 40s of the last century, and still do.

It may not be the most dynamic, the most hilarious, the most wildly romantic of the thirties' screwball comedies, but it is well written, well directed by screenwriter/director Garston Kanin and well acted by the always charismatic Ginger Rogers, the friendly heartthrob David Niven and the unavoidable Charles Coburn, a habitual and almost essential presence in these works that fill the collective imagination of successive generations of cinephiles.

Highly recommended.

La sombra del Caudillo (1960)

Political Portrait

[8/10 · 4 November 2023]

A very curious film because, based on the 1929 work of Martin Luís Gusmán, it denounces the dirty struggle for power within the revolutionary army and in the intricacies of supposedly democratic politics in Mexico in the 1920s.

With fictional characters, Gusmán and Bracho put their finger on the wound of the struggle for power, not just in Mexico but in general. Even in current representative democracies, the ruling generals are replaced by other caudillos, but the principles and ethics are the same, an indignant struggle for power and wealth, where everything goes and the ends always justify the means.

Mexican political power was so well portrayed in the film that banned it for 30 years, with it only being released, abroad, in 1990.

A picture that shows politics in its true grotesque face.

Identification of a Woman (1982)

Between reality and fiction

[7/10 · 2 November 2023]

The story of an artist, film director, divorced, who seeks, in a new woman, to rebuild a meaning for his life and work. A muse that inspires a new film at the same time that fills the obvious gap in his life.

Antonioni thus mixes reality and fiction in the protagonist's journey, in a challenge equally launched to the viewer, who slowly separates the waters between the work and its creative process.

It is an intelligent film in which the master returns to his favorite theme, the relationship between man and woman, although it is hardly comparable, in form and content, to the classics that elevated him to the status of star of the new Italian wave.