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Jaime_Fernandez
Reviews
Agora (2009)
The best of Amenabar
I have to admit that I am not a fan of Amenabar. For me it's an overrated director with one interesting movie (Tesis) and a lot of nonsenses. So, it was an incredible surprise when I saw Agora (on a previous screening in Madrid) and it happened to be a good movie. It's true that the use of English in Alexandria is a bit strange and that there are too many zenithal shots (really too many), but the story is incredible. When I heard Amenabar talking about the movie I was a bit afraid because he simply said that it is an homage to astronomy. OK, it is. But it is much more. I guess the director knows it but he is afraid to tell the real story behind the movie: the beginning of Middle Age. Meaning with that the beginning of a dark and long period, controlled by ignorant people, proud to be ignorant. That's something that normally we can't read on History books: religion destroyed art, science, justice and intelligence and everything and substitute them for god, who is much poorer than art, science, justice and intelligence. So, that's Agora about, and I love it. Thanks, Amenabar.
Los girasoles ciegos (2008)
It has all the worst of Spanish cinema
This movie is based in a very famous book published in Spain with the same title. The book is really hard and very moving. I know many people who has cried reading it, and that's really complicated. The film, on the contrary, leaves apart the hardest chapters of the books and they only appeared at a tangential way. So, the story focused on the problems of a priest-soldier and practically the whole 100 minutes are about this boring character and his boring conversations. I'm really sorry about the result, because there were many great expectations about this movie in Spain. Everything is bad in the movie and reminds all the worst of Spanish Cinema. For instance, the scene when the hidden father jumped through the window to suicide is absolutely surrealistic with the boy (it is supposed he is clever) asking his mother why is she crying. "'Cause your father has killed himself! Didn't you notice?" The mother should have answered that to the boy to make the scene even more surrealistic, or just to turn it directly into a comedy. A missed opportunity to create a great movie with a great story. Just for the record, none, absolutely no one wept at the crowded press preview, not even a singe teardrop.
The Others (2001)
Amenábar is the copy-paste master
We can begin with the best thing in The Others: Kidman, no doubt.
And the film itself is not a bad movie, but something worse. You can wonder what's worse than a bad movie? The answer is a non-original movie. And talking about Alejandro Amenábar a non-original movie is something really serious, because this boy has no one single original idea in his brains.
I mean, everything in his movies is copied from another film. In this case, even the idea and the lights are copied from another movies and not only the images, so this is something incredible. People who doesn't know much about cinema (or that are too young to have seen much movies) can see an obvious linking between The Others and The Sixth Sense (Night M. Shyamalan, 1999), but that is just one of the multiple copies of this film. And I write copies and not references or tributes, because I truly believe that Amenábar is a master in the copy-paste style. When you pay attention to The Others you can see images from The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973), Room at the top (Jack Clayton, 1959), The Haunting (Robert Wise, 1963), The Changeling (Peter Medak, 1980), La Chute de la Maison Usher (Jean Epstein, 1928), The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980), Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975, here the use of lights), and many others, including also Luis Buñuel (Viridiana, 1961) or Federico Fellini (Amarcord, 1974). So, there is an absolute lack of new ideas in this movie, what is an incredible pity, but a cruel reality. So, why much people love Amenábar? Well, it's really easy. When you are young you have no idea about what is already filmed. So you can create something incredible out of modern style just going to your videoclub and copying every single scene you love. But there is also another question more difficult to answer? Why do experts love this movie? OK, there are different possible answers. First, they are also too young and they have to learn much more. Second, they are Amenábar's friends (in Spain there are a lot of them, but even here there are some critics that have seen much copies in this movie than in any other filmed by the director). Third, they are in love with Nicole Kidman (and that's really normal). Fourth, they haven't seen the movie (this is not so impossible. I am a journalist and I know people who do it). Fifth, a mystery I don't understand. Summing up, Alejandro Amenábar is not a genius neither a clever director. He is just a lucky boy who knows the best way to make a movie without wasting a single minute of thinking: to copy. And in that he is really a master, or at least, one of the best plagiarists of the world. Congratulations for that.
Snitch (1998)
In Spain is called Código de Lealtad (Loyalty code) or Noose
Ted Demme is a director with a lot of fans, but most of them know him only for one of his films (Blow, Beautiful girls or this Snitch). I think there is nobody who loves his entire work and that's because every movie is different and they have not much contact points among them. Snitch (or whatever is the real title) is a good movie, but it has a tiny problem: you know what is to happen, unavoidably. A group of Irish living in the typical neighborhood where a man makes the rules. Everything goes ahead and never changes. The only possible change comes when someone in the group feels that his own world is falling apart and then... the end.
There is no need to be a genius to know what comes later, because we have seen it many, many times. But there is a single thing that makes this movie different (and that's why I am writing about it): the cast. The real Irish origin of most of the actors makes the movie specially realistic. That accent that is almost impossible to understand and that way of walking and even of drinking is really well filmed by Ted Demme. For once, you can believe you are between a group of Irish that have not found a place in the United States. The film doesn't pretend to be critic with the political system, because it shows just a small neighborhood where even the policemen are Irish.
The way of filming Snitch makes us to think that all the characters are living in a kind of prison and they can't leave it but dead. No one moves from those dirty and dark streets.
Both things (actors and filming) are really different from other films about the same topic. The problem is that nobody is to pay much attention to this movie, because the story is too much typical. At the moment, in Spain it has been almost unnoticed.
El reino de Víctor (1989)
There was a time a director I loved...
Juanma Bajo Ulloa was a young director really sensitive, but one day he lose his mind or something similar, maybe it was the power of money... But, back in 1989 he still was a great director with a lot of ideas and with many things to tell us. This film is about a young handicapped man that lives in a special world, a special kingdom (reino) only for him. He believes he is living a wonderful life, but the audience can see exactly what is happening. There is only a person who lives in the kingdom of Victor and the rest of humanity is out of it. Bajo Ulloa was able to show us the feelings of this young man and how they interfere with normal life. It's something similar to what he did in his two first long films, Alas de Mariposa and La madre muerta. All of them were dramas, incredible ones to be sincere. But suddenly, some chip in his head exploted and he changed to slapstick Spanish comedy, something unusual and much boring. Maybe some day Bajo Ulloa is to see again his first movie and is going to rediscover himself, and everyone is to have back one of the most promising young directors of Spain.
Las seis en punta (1987)
This is a very positive comment about this short film
Julio Medem is one of the most important directors in Spain. In fact, his way of filming is unique and nobody can compares to him. Maybe is not the best director, but is really personal and that is strange in Spain. Talking about Las seis en punta, this is one of the earliest films by Julio Medem, but you can see on it a lot of the subjects that have made him so great. First of all, the story. A man has a clock and suddenly (exactly at six o'clock -las seis en punto-) he starst to shrinken as fast as possible. In this film there are no FX or something similar. Everything is just a game of editing. You can't never see him going smaller, but you can imagine. I mean, just with some images, Medem can make you think what he wants, and that's magic. That´s the magic of cinema. Te way of filming is also special and the end (I won't clear it out) is much better than the classic of The Incredible Shrinking Man. I guess is almost impossible to see this film abroad Spain, but if you have a chance to see it, you are going to discover a great filmmaker.