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Reviews
Mr Selfridge (2013)
Perfect in all counts
I'm an investigator for more than 2 decades of these late Belle Époque days and I can assure that I saw few shows or even books with this accuracy. It's outrageous what I read here in some ignorant bad reviews that stated otherwise. And the complexity is incredible. This is a 360 degrees look to the world and to the small things of everyday life. I also disagree with what has been said about the poor acting of Piven. Not everyone has to be Antony Hopkins. If you see some episodes without Piven you'll notice that something's missing. He may not be the perfect performer, but he has a strong presence and that also says it all. Finally, a word for the best actor in the show and for the lack of nominations for what's already, for me, the best Belle Époque tv show of all time: Kitty Hawkins. I was shocked that Amy Beth Hays has no known awards: the part is good, well written, but she's memorable. I always regret when a memorable performance is forgotten. Amy is a superior actor away from the eyes of the public for some years now. She would deserve alone the watching of the show. A show that I prefer to see in streaming because it allows us to stop. Well done to all. Thank you for this inspiring and simple sofistcation.
La tortue rouge (2016)
An absolut crime to miss this: One of the best moviee of all times in all genres
One of the last artistic acts of the master Isao Takahata, director of what I consider the best film ever in any form or category, Tomb of the Fireflies, here as artistic producer of a film signed by the no less brilliant Michaël Dudok de Wit (Oscar winner Best Animated Short for the film Father and Daughter in 2001 and nominated in the same category in 1994 for The Monk and the Fish, which would win the César and the Cartoon d'Or). Michaël shows the breath for a feature film of almost an hour and a half of absolute wonder. Simple, beautiful, grandiose and suitable for all audiences. Never mind review averages or mass reviews. This film is a 5 out of 5, it would be 10 out of 10, 20 out of 20, 100 out of 100. We can't ask for more as a movie moment. There's nothing to point out, it's all superlative. The sound, the image, the light, the characters, the music, the literary options, even, that is, the plot. We've all imagined going through here. That's why no one can stop feeling touched and I doubt there's even anyone who doesn't leave the film surrendered. It immediately rises to my top 5 and I believe that time will make it rise. And it's not an animation top. It's a top of all movies. Absolutely wonderful and I will never get tired of saying it. I repeat: Simple, beautiful, grandiose.
#pedroguilhermemoreira
#red turtle
#theredturtle.
La vie nous appartient (2013)
Astonishing and fondamental
The only review here was from someone who didn't understand all the characters said and called the film boring. I assure it's the exact opposite. Not only we have here an astonishing young Alix Bénézech with an already very mature acting, but the dialogs are perfect and even ahead of time, since this movie has 10 years now (2023). It's a movie that should be watched by parents and young people because it had a fundamental approach to modern society with quality. It's not booring a single second. One a single appointment: the synopsis shouldn't say the two protagonists meet for: it's a spoiler, don't read it. I started the movie without knowing it and that is a powerful step to who's watching.
Blonde (2022)
It hurts that ignorance is avoiding people to see a master piece and an actress for all times
As Wittgenstein said, "what cannot be spoken about must be silent". After having seen and reseen the film, there is one thing that deeply shocks me: that globalized ignorance is pushing away intellectually serious and sentimentally capable people (in the sense of seeking the purest emotion of art and humanity, not egocentric self-pity). To see a masterpiece, therefore a work of art. Not one. Various. And it's not so much about the artistic options that I'm going to write, because, if I think it's a masterpiece, it's because for me the options of Andrew Dominik and Ana de Armas, among others, are all close to perfection. I know that, not being really my type seeing films 2 or 3 times, I'll repeat this one for decades: too bad we can't carry films, like books, in our pocket. I have so much to say that I have to organize myself. True sages do not flaunt or distance others from the enjoyment of art just because they want to show off. As I am not wise, I will have to say what I know. Forgive me, but I do it because this indignation that runs through me is for seeing the transparency, better in this case than in others, the point where the world finds itself. It is a global film, so it may well serve as a paradigm. What you're going to read is written by someone who likes to get to the bottom of things, is passionate and has been trying to inform himself about the Marilyn topic for some 36 years and 36 years ago there was little about the whole person beyond the movies (there was, yes, the dumb blonde cliché that some dare to say is what the film sells). Who read, heard and saw everything he knew to have been written, said and done about Norma Jean Baker or Marilyn Monroe or even about satellite people (almost all toxic and incapable of giving protection to a genius). Who has seen all her films, some several times (Misfits is in my top 3) and has already seen this Blonde several times, having lasted a minimum of 4h each viewing (the film has almost 3h), because I had to stop several times in several scenes, which I paused admiring, crushed, enraptured. In fact, I believe that every opportunity to understand what Ana de Armas has to say about something that changed her life - and almost everyone is interpreting this as an opportunity to reach the top and no, it's not like that, it changed and marked the person forever and you can see that in her eyes and in what she doesn't say.
The first step is validation of Andrew Dominik's argument and realization. Author Joyce Carol Oates clearly told the New Yorker, in an interview ("Joyce Carol Oates Doesn't Prefer Blondes," September 25, 2022) in which she affronts all the tics of Katy Waldman's literary journalism, that the screenplay makes a difference. Remarkable summary of the eight hundred pages of her book. Then she says that she had to stop watching the film several times because she was uncomfortable - like all thinking and sentient beings, not because the film is difficult to understand (as I came to think before seeing it, based on everything I was seeing written) , but because the film does what all great works should do with us: it moves, disturbs, changes us, takes us inside the person who supported the greatest art icon that cinema is. So it's validated by the author of a remarkable book that I read some twenty years ago in deep discomfort (and I don't know where the book is now, what an affliction) and has always struck me as Joyce Carol Oates's Ulysses. It is a difficult and profound book that I even saw called, in one of the ridiculous articles in the Portuguese press, "light" and "frivolous". I realized right away that this idiot hadn't read a line from Blonde. And he probably saw the movie with blind eyes.
I add my voice to the author's voice. It is one of the rare films that adds and respects the book. And hey, anyone who really knows most of the quality material that has ever been published about Marilyn will find the film, in fact, the most faithful biopic of the actress and the person. And I've read a lot of nonsense, including the most laudatory review for Blonde by Bilge Ebiri of Vulture, New York, warning that this is fiction. No, it's not. This is art getting closer to the truth than any essay or investigation ever can. This is the closest thing I've seen to the thousands of pages I've read and minutes I've seen on the subject of Marilyn. These idiots even childishly interpret the "intrusion" of Norma Jean Baker's fetus in the film, when the script itself clarifies it (and it didn't even need to), clarifying that baby was Norma's aspiration to motherhood, nothing more. And only a very stupid person doesn't realize this, just as he doesn't realize that the abortions that appear are of an aspiration, making us feel (and I don't believe that any woman doesn't feel it deeply when watching this film, but also any man minimally sensitive and empathetic, and we are not talking about the option of the fetus-cgi, we are talking about the mention of Norma Jean's aspiration to motherhood), in the mix of scenes on the subject, which she wanted a lot and was always dragged into out of motherhood by the perfidious world that shackled her.
Everything I've read is true treatises on ignorance and misinformation. Of course, being uninformed and ignorant are also fundamental rights, but daring to give an opinion on a subject as a supposed expert no longer deserves any respect: then the right to subjectivity falls before boçality.
Is it possible to truly cultivate Marilyn Monroe and not like this movie? Not. Is not. It's perfectly legitimate to disagree with this statement, but that's not to say I'm uninformed or inattentive, which is what I've noticed in every article I've read about the film. Everyone, which is shocking. All I've seen is mental laziness and people who haven't even skimmed through the book or any background material on Marilyn beforehand. Even the most flattering ones. They do not like? I concede. Saying the film is weak because you don't like it? Never. I also committed this sin when I considered LaLaLand weak and unworthy of Oscars. But what do I perceive of musical films? In fact, I'm nothing, I've only seen two or three films a week in theaters since 1985. And I watch and re-watch brutally more at home. I'm nobody. Long live Marilyn, Norma, Dominik, Oates and Armas. Now forever. And, ironically, this may be the Oscar year for Elvis and Marilyn: the themed year that Oscar producers like: but this year would not be a theater coup, it would just be fair.
As for me, from now on Ana de Armas is not a person, she is a monster. Profound bow: I saw practically every minute of her at Blonde with my mouth open. That's how I'll stay. A monster.
#blonde #anadearmas #marilyn #normajean #joycecaroloates #pedroguilhermemoreira.
Klangor (2021)
You want to be with them forever: a masterpiece
Maybe because it's polish critics are afraid to say how sublime this is. I'm demanding in my choices. How have to have good wtiting. But this has that and much more. And it's one of those you start jumping in front of tv, talking alone to the tv, telling them what to do or what no to do. Nordic noir. Remember The Killing? This is even better. Everything is good. The story. The filming. The images. The beautiful locations. The ambiance. The actors. I saw in a day hill, at home, with severe headaches, so imagine how good this is for me to see all 8 hours in a day. There are no repetitions, no forced writing. It's literary. The acting is beautiful. For me the best is Hania (Katarzyna Galaska), because it's the one that shows us the wisdom of a young girl facing the absolut terror. But all characters are perfect. Realistic, like the story, that makes us face our own fears and understand some people that don't live or behave like we do. Emil, Rafal, Magda, Ewa, Gabi. And the ending is just as perfect as the crescendo of all this series. It's apotheotic without losing this absolutely wonderful Nordic noir that I found I love. Well, i am Portuguese, but from the north. Now what? How am I gonna live without Klangor (beautiful name, by the way, the distant sound of a horn that could be the ferry's or the boat's) now?