figueroafernando Reviews

Tsodvis shvilebi (1989 TV Movie)

Te estruja el alma hasta hacerte añicos, sublime

[9/10 · 30 April 2024]

I still don't understand why Criterion doesn't restore and subtitle these types of cinematic artifacts instead of Gullermo del Toro? Tarantino? Gosh!! This work is of unusual fascination because it manages to hook you into the impregnable wild ecology of the site, making you complicit in the atavistic quarrels between clans and, from the beginning, with the ancestral prayers for the deceased we feel something extreme, almost extinct; The mixture of stylistic resources is almost rudimentary, it undoubtedly makes this trip to the past of a story, not necessarily so old - without it being the present - peculiar; Compare frames such as the one of the caravan that descends walking with the bridle of its horses in hand, due to the steep slope, after kidnapping the widower Kist who was chopping wood, and carrying him tied up while we listen to the mountain stream and perceive the houses embedded in the serpentine hill. The old people were the first to curse Mgelika "our grandparents never did what you are doing"; and in fact not even the father managed to convince the rabid Mgelika who only repeated "an eye for an eye, do you want me to turn the other cheek again for the second and third time?" . Free him before the snow falls and they can't pay the ransom anyway because the mountain roads will be closed. No and no and no. Nothing defeated Mgelika's obstinacy and resentment. In fact, when he threw the key and the kidnapped Kist refused to escape, when the drunk neighbor sang to him, the Kist again refused to escape and made a sign with his hands that he would wait because they would pay the ransom. In a moment of blind rage, Mgelika stands up, takes the rifle and shoots the prisoner, killing him on the spot with his shackle still on. I will never forget how the end made me feel, while the angry Mgelika, or repentant, we will never know, drags the dead prisoner up the hill and the neighbors of the village follow him, opposing him taking the prisoner to a unfaithful, uphill to their Christian cemetery. And right in the snowy chasm, they run into the relatives of the kidnapped Kist, a woman and some children carrying a huge cow linked to pay the ransom. For seconds, the film explodes in silence and the sound of the mountain is heard and everyone's faces are seen. Mgelika collapses and runs a few meters away to make a sepukku with her butcher's knife.

Robinzoniada, anu chemi ingliseli Papa (1987)

Una fanfarronada y necedad del abuelo incómodo

[8/10 · 30 April 2024]

With the mischievous and, if I think about it, ill-intentioned desire to recover the memory of his grandfather Christopher Hughes, may God rest him in his blessed glory since 1922, his grandson the composer has composed Robinsonada, a musical mischief that is also allegorical. Pretext to revisit the steps taken by the scoundrel telegraph engineer through a sepia color and a footage with his punctilious adventures that start from the moment the grandmother confesses, with a perverse smile but less sinister than justice, how she found the punctilious grandfather in bed with a foreign woman, one of the English gifts or courtesy that were sent by the Telegraph Company and which, according to the good Hughes, it was impolite to refuse. Jorjadze's feature film uses the tricked-out feature film of the grandson in sepia color that tawdryly uses pretty humor to exemplify the ilk of a grandfather - at least ignorant of Georgia -, for example, he loaded his Winchester to hunt tigers? And his hosts, Anna and Lisa, told him that he would only find rabbits, pheasants, wolves and, with luck, the occasional bear. Anyway, the central node of this story is the grandfather's ridiculous determination to keep his capitalist ideas alive in a Georgian village that, thanks to the nefarious Nestor Neoradze, Anna's brother, began by eliminating all kinds of right-wing vestiges, or that they did not smell at all. To communism or collective farms or to the crushed socialist camaraderie over and over again. They began by expelling undesirables like Lavrenti Mgeladze and then they went against the stubborn Hughes who relapsed into entering Sio but riding on a donkey, after having been carried away with everything and bed to the outskirts of Sio for his ideas. Again and again, Anna lying in bed in the middle of a Georgian meadow near the Delhi-London train station that ceased to exist due to communism, coming and going from a brother who could not bear to see Anna in the arms of a capitalist. In the end, Lavrenti ends up eliminating Nestor, and then Christopher who had the revolver ready to shoot his uncomfortable brother-in-law. The old widow singing, reviewing the seconds that pass through her mind, summarizing her life of loneliness, is perhaps the bitter ending that leaves the bitter pill of history.

Red Eye (2024– )

Delicioso thriller

[7/10 · 25 April 2024]

Highly recommended. It catches you from the first of the 6 episodes because practically the entire series takes place on the flight back to Beijing with which specialist Matthew Nolan and all his medical colleagues - arrested - are forced to return to investigate the murder of Shen Zhao, the daughter of a general and party minister in China; The medical staff attended a series of conferences on Endarterectomy on behalf of World Pacific Medicine, but Nolan suffered a car accident while going to the airport; Only arriving in London and forcibly returning with the others, he realizes that he is accused even though he has never gone out with the girl or been in the car during the crash. Little by little, Director General Delaney begins to follow the case because the ministry in China and Mi6 are involved and officer Hana Li is in charge of escorting Nolan. The thriller becomes interesting because from the beginning of episode one in mid-flight, a passenger who accidentally eats the dish that was intended for Nolan dies of poisoning, then another passenger's dog dies, and later as the episodes progress, his colleague Steven Hurst dies. And then the lover. While all this is happening, the number of deaths on flight 357 is on the news because first officer Hanna and then her sister Jess Li investigate following the video that went viral at the airport where Nolan scandalized to gain media support publications. . When contacted, George Chapman, the head of World Pacific Medicine, is murdered in his home when visited by journalist Jess Li, but before, in a call to the plane, he informs Nolan that the Chinese want something that was given to him by the deceased Shen. Zhao. It will not be until the last chapter, I repeat, because the miniseries is well organized, that the lover of the general director Delaney, Mike Maxwell murdered the young Chinese woman to snatch the nano-SIM card that was buried in Nolan in the wounds that he always he took. The plot is due to Operation Blindside, which is classified and through which Mi6 used doctors, that is, Nolan, as involuntary messengers to transport confidential information from China through that nano memory.

Dges game utenebia (1983)

superb georgian elegy

[10/10 · 18 April 2024]

Authentic gem!, cinematographic elegy whose disturbing story, remembered by Eva, is the result of human vileness crystallized in Spiridon who cut short her torrid love affair with the shepherd Giorgi, murdering him and making him look like the attack of a wild boar, and everything, with the purpose of seasoning his own reality as he pleases where he pretends to be a revolutionary. And the sadder the present story is, the more beautiful it is, because it is real despite its fiction. I am not going to deny my weakness for the very peculiar formal characteristics of Georgian cinema prior to the extinction of the Soviet Union; Indeed, despite being the classic story of loveless marriage - worn and worn to the point of exhaustion in literature, Ghoghoberidze's solution once again shows me that this type of drama is an exemplary quintessence of dramatic effectiveness meticulously woven together with its exquisite folkloric roots. , as can be enjoyed not only through Eva's via crucis, but also in the events parallel to the plot such as the revolutionary Archil and his movement without a future, full of blind fanatics who even justify themselves in killing the bird imitator in the bell tower, or, in the alternating songs and poems in this unparalleled feature film. It is simply beautiful how Eva embraces life again, like spring coming to a deciduous tree, just when she buys little Daredjan with simple jewelry and nothings, after so long of having given up on being happy by agreeing to be married by the ruffian. Spiridon, without knowing then that he is responsible for the death of his beloved Giorgi, much less the evil path that fate would still bring him when Archil is transferred but confesses his love for him, despite the eternal loyalty that Spiridon has had with him, helping him every time he fell prisoner for his incendiary movements. The political chaos that ensued, approximately five years after the Russian Revolution, the unexpected intrusion of the Soviet Union, obviously communist, turned upside down those in Georgia who enjoyed commercial prosperity like Spiridon and Eva: they lost their store and their house and properties because they are seen as bourgeois but Archil, always on the side of the Reds, exerts influence to allow them to move to the countryside, to the town where they came from. When Spiridon and Eva tried to establish a collective farm with the locals, they gained many followers but difficulties began and it did not take long for Eva to learn the truth about the murderer of Pastor Giorgi. What was the punishment for a man wanted by the government who sought warmth from his wife and daughter? The coldness. Immediately afterwards, a shot in the temple in the river. Great ending, great film.

Yama Onna (2022)

Fiasco irreal and mediocre performance

[1/10 · 4 April 2024]

The intentions to revive a spiritual legend of the Mountain Woman may have been promising, but the result is disappointing. It attempts to settle accounts with the same range of melodramatic themes of 20th century Japanese cinema, with topics derived from feudalism and its diversity of agrarian and social caste injustices, but it does so with a narrative that, to begin with, and I am sorry if I am wrong, It demonstrates inexperience in direction evident in the careless editing so that there are no gaps in the cohesion of the script of this film, and is also evidenced by technical clumsiness in filming (it is true that the photography is very good, the Hayachine mountain in fog) but the cameos are beginner's, with confusing scenes, or that seem like they were made for TV, like when Rin runs into the wild man who throws raw meat at him, I repeated it 3 times and I never understood if Rin is scared but moves forward and follows the shaggy guy, or there is perplexity or curiosity that could be a mixture of the girl's bravery, or, if she recognizes the barbarian guy because he is someone she has already seen or known; It is not clear why there is no close up to the expressions of her who takes shelter in the tree); but the worst is reflected in the clear ignorance - let's call it - of the state of canonical art on these topics - of a good part of the cult classic cinema of the last century (Tadashi Imai, Mizoguchi, Shinoda, Ozu or even Yoshida). I don't mean to imitate Kurosawa or any of the greats I mentioned, but absent from the footage is a constellation of details from the era to which it alludes, from the frames with a cherry or willow tree beaten by the wind to any shamisen or other instrument. With a velvety background of drama. The soundtrack begins to play when the saxophone creates an intonation that, frankly, I really liked because it matches the mood or indolence that Rin seems to have before night falls for the second time and he returns to the cave with the stranger. At no point does Rin transmit to me the cold of the mountain - since it is night - or the fear or uncertainty that should be inherent to a girl who has never left her village and gone into the mountains; It doesn't look as if she were out in the open with a stranger, and in fact, the sequence reaches the tone of absurdity because Rin enters the cave and lies down to sleep a few meters from the stranger, with all the confidence that a normal girl would only Maybe you would feel with your dad or grandfather. And the ritual ceremonies are defective, both that of the shaman with the group or council of eminent people in the cabin, after Rin left her village for being punished with slaps by Ihei, her father, as well as the protocol of the offering of Rin to end the village's calamities. Once Rin is found and the bearded, shaggy man or mountain walker is murdered, Rin is forcibly brought to the village and the village's influential people easily convince the ambitious Ihei to offer Rin's life to appease the famine and misfortunes that occurred there. The ending is extremely fantastic, it starts to rain when he was already on the pyre and he starts walking back to the mountain.

Drive-Away Dolls (2024)

Joel is the mastermind, obviously, what a crap

[1/10 · 21 March 2024]

I am angry at my wasted time; It is evident, Joel Cohen is the intellectual author behind fun works like The Ballad of Buster Scruggs or Inside Llewyn Davis; Ethan can barely make this crap that, if it were a written novel, would be used to wrap ground beef and raw chops when you go to the butcher shop, once you cook it is thrown in the trash can. From the opening 2 minutes, Pedro Pascal's overacting reveals that, after reading the script, the actors must have surely asked Ethan "the script says that the character in the bar is nervous, and looks at the woman over and over again." door.." this scene, do you want him to actually look nervous? Or should it look like we're playing faces and gestures at home, and look like I'm laughing inside, before a cork popper sticks me in the alley?" And then the Viswanathan scene, not even at the time golden age of machismo and hegempionic patriarchal sexism, there was a woman as submissive and self-humiliating of herself as the scene - more false than a 3 and a half dollar bill - where the guy's insistence with Sukie could not be seen as more forced, to the point of dragging himself for a date even though he tells him "I have a commitment today, on Wednesday too". Do Cooke and Ethan really think that there will be a man or woman who would humiliate themselves by insisting on making an appointment with the same person, despite be rejected more than two or three times in the same exhibition? It is believable for a varpin of 50 or 60 to insist on a young girl, but a young man of the same age, with the pride of going and returning to the moon as the Boys and girls today, would you insist more than times after your rejection in the same conversation? Wow, credibility of a script that takes us to the morality and mentality of the Baby-boomers. Please, I apologize if I offend anyone with this, I am not criticizing the morality or the person of Cooke or Ethan, but rather that of their fictional product that very carefully takes us back to the past even though it insists on wanting to deceive us with two women making love, their intercourse interrupted by another woman Sukie. Sorry, it happens that I like comedies that are more realistic to contemporary times and, above all, less vulgar.

Pictures of Ghosts (2023)

Pésima

[1/10 · 19 March 2024]

. ah! How nostalgic, the Boa Viagem Hotel, I am sure there must be hundreds of master's and doctoral projects with that object of anthropological study; DW Deutsche Welle, the BBC, have been doing this type of life story work for decades. "Over time I have learned how time changes places" wow, what a deep script Gosh. All places have history, and everywhere you go, there are legends about the place, if it is very old or has changed too much, the work then moves on from the life story (which I could well have rated as 2, 5 stars) to the Blair Witch project looking for ghosts in buildings?; No, seriously? A ghost for photography with a sweeping effect? Any photo student knows that all you need is a tripod or stable backrest for the camera and you have to slow down the shutter speed, increasing the exposure time to 3 or 5, or 10 seconds on a manual camera, and voila, a presence says the director hahaha and everything that happens through the focal angle will be blurry, oh, a ghost. So, let's add: an ancient or old place + the sayings and legends of the site, the right hemisphere of the relatives (of Maeve and the girls) + the genius of the visual chronicler Mendonça Filho to capture the paranormal of Setúbal and rethink whether to go to a spiritualist center, wow! I seriously don't believe it, that a work like this, so university in its organic incongruity, as if it had no script, so weak in its script and motive if there is any, and so heteroclite in its visual construction (VHS videos, Beta , super8, 35mm, etc). Although the ideas of the film are not at all original, they engage the uncritical mass of the audience from the right hemisphere, that of self-complacency, imagination, morbidity and curiosity, (after all it works with before and after, memory, nostalgia) but Mendonca Filho is so mediocre, he captivates himself with this work that he considers an avant-garde entelechy, he becomes enthralled and falls in love with his work - like narcissu- that it is also endorsed with awards by Cannes and another group of crazy people who try found the "habitus" to which Pierre Bordieu referred, and which imagine that they propose a peculiar and intelligent work but only invent warm water by allowing their alchemist at their festivals, who in reality is just a reporter collecting photos and videos relatives.

Teatroteka: Kobieta w lustrze (2015 TV Movie)

Excelente psicodrama en defensa de nuestros 50 años

[8/10 · 28 February 2024]

Psychodrama of a commendable level, and the twist almost at the end, touché! The psychologist Zofia is sued for sexual abuse to the detriment of Jakub, her 17-year-old patient. The 50-minute short begins when Zofia reads the document that her lawyer Anna will present to defend her . Fortunately, the lawyer is a woman, and thus the intelligent beating that Zofia gives him is strictly related to a lawyer with rational slowness and who, prima facie, advises him to accept guilt for the abuse, claiming to have asked for control "in the heat of the moment." based on stereotypes consecrated by popular truths on social networks and blogs, regarding how urgent a MILF may be, but also, using anachronistic prejudices regarding the fact that a beautiful woman like Zofia would have to pay the young man to have a night of passion , instead of being the other way around; which is why he asks you how much did you pay the plaintiff? That was worse than an insult to the pretty psychologist, but she reveled in openly telling Anna that she would not facilitate her naive line of defense, excusing her for having given in to her impulses with Kuba (Jakub) due to her sensitive instability after her recent divorce. Zofia's discomfort is due to the fact that not even she, Anna being a woman, understands that she has accepted the invitation of a very handsome young man, Kuba - under the pretext of having finished her treatment - to go to dinner and drinks. He makes Anna see that Daniel Craig from 007 is handsome and appetizing but he remains within a film, should I feel bad because he suddenly came and invited me to dinner, in a real way? So why blame myself for agreeing to date a very attractive young man who is no longer my patient? But things, the turn that the meeting takes is by no means predictable, at a certain point Anna accepts Zofia's scoldings and forbidden insults, but since she sees that she cannot convince her, she takes an unexpected leap by offering money so that she agrees to sign her defense as guilty. Anna can no longer hide that her husband has been cheating on her for 20 years and Kuba is her son, so she aspires to receive a juicy sum if Zofia pleads guilty. Regarding the outcome, I will only say that Anna finally understands the 50-year-old woman who will not plead guilty even if she loses the case because she does not feel and will not feel guilty.

Ya - chernomorets! (1944)

Un orgullo del Mar Negro justificado

[8/10 · 1 February 2024]

The handling of cameras in the trench at ground level is impressive. After his father Grigory's overwhelming farewell in port, full of philosophical advice rather than tears, naval sailor Stepan Polosukhin is frozen with fear; practically - as the commander said - in his baptism of fire, under the German cannon shots that flank his ship, he receives with rudder in hands, his elusive destiny to the saga of fate as a shadow, to the elements like any mortal being facing the sea , the enemy and uncertainty. This is a somewhat rudimentary artifact because it does not use the classic format of cinematographic techniques, although it is very reminiscent of Karl Ritter's camera tracking and panning; an easel tinged with nostalgia first of all; Stepan is one of those who savors the sea and in his cadence that memory, extracts the fioto of his bearded father; a companion of his plays plaintively on the accordion: "..lay on the boulevard, gray-haired gypsy, the sailor was called by paradise , a beautiful mattress, a gift, I will tell you the fate of a sailor, touched the sailor by divination, I will tell you about the sailor, to serve from China..."; but the film is at the same time a mirror of uncertainty -due to its moment of filming- instead of ideological or warlike convictions. An expressionism is almost achieved in that sequence of the assault in the fray, without batteries or light, which begins in the 27th minute of the film and until Stepan meets Vera again, the girl who they saved from the shipwreck on the way to Sebastopol and who, by escorting her, to their home, they confirmed a peeling property without a roof from the bombing. Stepan will be taken prisoner, interrogated, the German soldier gives him 3 minutes to respond but Stepan spits in his face. The entire sequence of the Soviet army's assault is simply superb, taking the fortress and at the same time rescuing Stepan, between shots and shouting in the dark, the bursts of the shooting illuminate the darkened atmosphere of the interiors and in the background the soundtrack is from the unjustly not acclaimed chamber composer Dmitry Klebanov. As he falls asleep, dreaming about his father telling him about his grandfather, he confirms the argument about the incalculable fortune of being natives of the Black Sea, "they can't break us, they can't break us," says Grigory proudly.

The Wrestler and the Clown (1957)

Furiosa denuncia y comedia de alta factura

[9/10 · 30 January 2024]

Boris Barnet was the intellectual of comedy and drama for the people and a leading figure in the Soviet espionage genre. It is no coincidence that Tarkovsky admired him; "Borets i kloun" radiates spontaneity and sweetness for the artists of the circus tent, but it is also a ferocious ridicule of the authorities with their anachronistic dictatorial and despotic vision, and their high-ranking airs such as Governor Zelyoniy. The giant Ivan Poddubny should belong to the popular legends of universal literature; concocting a smile at his former colleagues, the Odesa dockers who reject him on his return to the port, and instead his staunch fury against the clown who sabotaged his friend Anatoly Durov's powders and makeup, almost causing his blindness. But the height of ideals comes in the fight for the championship against the Frenchman Raoul Buchet, who, using the trick and cunning of himself and the corruption of the judges, illegally smears himself with olive oil to cheat and slip. From Poddubny's arms in the middle of a fight. What will be the response of a champion to such a disappointment? Poddubny does not argue for justice or attempt the fight again to achieve a title that he knows full well he already possesses: he retires to his town and lives on the farm, as if within that colossus there was an ascetic who only cared for little animals and enjoying its people fills up every day, until the circus comes to town and in a matter of time Raoul and Ivan will fight their last competition. The next time Poddubny reached the port, the stevedores no longer turned their backs on him.

Legal Affairs (2021)

The reckless Leo defeating Goliath

[7/10 · 4 January 2024]

The camera pans from one side to the other turn cinematography into an original journey through format. A resounding way of winning in the legal field when she was almost knocked out, Leo Roth takes risks close to the implausible but gets away with it as in the case of the bus that crashes and there are dead and injured people; He managed to have a second autopsy performed for María Pérez, the driver who, according to witnesses, argued with her daughter María Pérez and died in an accident, but the press, especially the vulture Götz, destroyed the mother because she was taking antidepressants simultaneously with weight reducers; Leo's ambitious strategy does not rule out bribing or exchanging other explosive news - such as the photos of Thomas Rehm - with the press, in order to shed a bad image on the Pérez family and, instead, he put his finger on the sore spot of the company Nightbuzzz who forced double shifts and mistreated employees without breaks.

Zlociny Velké Prahy: Host do domu (2021) Season 1, Episode 10

Regular but fun noir

[7/10 · 2 January 2024]

Assuming that the two monks, Father Lawrence and Augustine, were the murderers of an unjust, rude and unfaithful employer with his wife, despite not having any connection and only due to circumstantiality, was less intelligent than thinking about the maid Betka Kominkova as follows. Candidate to get rid of the jeweler and goldsmith Mr Vejvoda; and while detective Novacek and Julie, the Chief Inspector's daughter, continue their picaresque romance, the wooden figures of Saint Margaret the one who defeated the dragon, made by Ferda, Betka's lover barely allowed them to infer that he would never forgive the goldsmith patron for infecting her with a sexually transmitted STI, although the inspectors lost sight of that due to the adultery of the victim's wife and regardless of the fact that the monks were not Benedictines but Franciscans. It's a shame that the nervous murderer committed suicide by throwing himself out of the window.

Kolos (1993)

Proud nineteenth-century romanticism

[6/10 · 9 November 2023]

The frustrated romance of this work has its source in two aspects that also seem suspicious to me - but it is only because I insist on not seeing the aspect of nineteenth-century romanticism and, therefore, of fatality included: on the one hand, passivity, or should I say family obedience? Of Liv who, under the anachronistic yoke of her father, hinders even if involuntarily, and I would say that even if it is unknowingly, provides to a large extent the dose of instability for the failed relationship, and on the other hand, Brage's stubborn, determined and reckless temperament - to a certain extent understandable due to his enthusiasm for having overcome being a paraplegic before - to insist on courting the daughter of the owner of the house in the mountain, without paying too much importance to the father's reluctance. The retrospection not only of the relationship with Liv, including the trial for having unintentionally murdered one of the 5 Germans who attacked him and his half-brother Dagestad, but of his retractability of not accusing his half-brother Bentein from the beginning of having The fight started, but modified after 8 weeks passed without a letter from Liv, who has disappeared in the mountains skiing. I will find it? Yes, and it will fulfill its objective, that that surviving lawyer from AUschwitz, Stefan Borovitz, officiates their marriage and pronounces them husband and wife, him with the skis on and her, as if asleep, frozen and wrapped, being carried slowly through the snow by the foolish but loving Brage.

Nowhere (II) (2023)

Espantosa e inverosímil

[1/10 · 5 October 2023]

All that was missing was for Mia to make a cape and fly to the coast with Noa. Lousy, implausible, unreal. The panoramic shots of the container at sea are the only thing worthwhile besides the photograph of Mía giving birth to Noa with the aquatic effect inside the container. Everything else is atrocious nonsense. I was willing not to consider it false that the couple managed to make a mobile phone call in the middle of the ocean where it is known that there could not even remotely be telephone coverage, but My fisherwoman? And if that were not enough, how long would a person last without relapsing from the damage caused by the enormous hemorrhage in his leg? And the sequence at the end is the worst, Mía and Noa are discovered and when the fishermen rescue them, they wear hats and thick jackets denoting that they are in Irish waters.

Poison (II) (2023)

majestic farce

[10/10 · 4 October 2023]

Another gem from Anderson in which, deftly, the dramatic genre is carried with a metanarrative dental floss to the paroxysm of another very common genre in it, the farce. True, with the director's style the literary naturalness of Dahl is lost, but those of us who love theater win, even if it is overacted! Woods, the officer who narrates - not at all omniscient - seems immersed in a chronicle of the event that he is unaware of - the super poisonous Bungarus snake - since his arrival in the jeep but, simultaneously, what his speech recounts in "object language", or That is, which refers to the hardships and feverish calamity of Harry Pope feeling the snake sleeping in him, intelligently passes to the "metalanguage" with the presence of Dr. Ganderbai who, in situ, in the midst of a crisis of snake and danger, awaits the metadiscourse of Woods as if Ben Kingsley himself, carrying and showing his hypodermic syringe, were like an airplane stewardess showing the masks and emergency exits of the aircraft, waiting for Woods to continue with the script, which, by the way, is not the script but internal, because the commentary or epilogue by Ralph Fiennes, a transcript of Roald Dahl, is missing. As if the lightness of the drama were not shaved by the delicacy of the black humor, Anderson streamlines the staging following his usual style, sometimes cutting into two frames (that of the neurotic Woods and that of Dr. Ganderbai exhibiting the utensils used in the inert and sweating Harry), in others with a panoramic cameo of rugged verticality, seen from the ceiling that adds drama attenuated to half laughter by the rueful face of Dev Patel's character. Dev Patel is majestic, top-notch.

Butcher's Crossing (2022)

God's punishment?

[8/10 · 24 September 2023]

After the disturbing scene it is as if nature was playing its own cards, after all, we are in the middle of winter: a sudden snow storm batters them as if they were draft animals themselves; There is time, in fact, to discuss stupid things while they shiver from hunger and cold, and also later as night falls, to return to a Pleistocene skepticism, a maddened Fred takes Charly's Bible without permission and makes fun of it "it says here. Spring is coming, time to "open" your eyes. They warned young Milly, it will affect your senses to "go hunting" and seek adventures as you wish. But as if that were not enough, the cart with all the skins collapse with everything and Fred. I truly believed, but it's because I'm not religious, that the ending would be different and he would be judged for his insanity. But many times justice will come in mysterious ways, whether we believe in God or not.

Cassandro (2023)

Awful cliché

[2/10 · 21 September 2023]

Pathetic! Was the film about making vice romantic and achieving sporting victories by chance? Sniffing coca, drinking beer but almost became champion, almost beating the saint's son? What happens when you put together a terrible actor like Gael García with a reggaeton singer who struggles to sing like Bad Bunny? A script is awful but the worst thing is the implausibility of the results of Saúl - the Cassandro - just for putting on lipstick and becoming exotic? I repeat, pathetic collection of clichés: the miserable family, abandoned by the father and helping the migrants from Tijuana. Terrible movie.

Riff Raff Girls (1959)

The successful rififi that no one enjoyed

[9/10 · 14 September 2023]

The prickly human soul, which barely approaches what makes it shine, hurts those around it in its bliss, perfectly crystallizes in the haughty Vicky Berlin, paragon of hidden pride in the simulation of the varietés of "Raison and Co" in which displays the most sophisticated insolence of singing about "l'argent" money, while meandering among the sleepless tables, there is no room in her mental representations of anything that is not the same theme of her melody, money!, placing herself in the I quarreled in the making that forges with Marcel and other henchmen of the Marquis in Paris... but there are complications for Vicky: first the operation, the rancor of her past full of abuse at 15, the lover Jürgen, oh and how can I forget the wuss of the corrupt inspector behind the Capo Bug, the same Bug who wants to snatch the cabaret from Vicky at a low cost while he is preparing to get information from Madame van Steen of the Bank of Belgium where the rififí is taking place. The Pirate, Capo de capos, must intervene so that Bug grants a truce to Vicky and Marcel oero during the bank robbery, the riffraff, Bug betrays everyone and they eliminate Berta and the obedient Jean. Bug arrives with his hit man Luigi and others just when the robbery had already been carried out and Marcel was about to escape with Vicky. The feelings surface in the end in her who realizes what she felt for Marcel but when she descends the long rope with the sack of money. Everyone eliminated everyone, this should be written in the epitaph of each one.

Breakfast with the Devil (1971)

Oh true lie is communist camaraderie

[8/10 · 14 September 2023]

Disturbing exploration of false cohesion in Yugoslav communism. Apparently, Comrade Bata Radulaski always missed the human enigma of free will in the equation he raised for communism in his enormous preserve of power in Vojvodinian; No one prepared Lenin to be called a spy and a suspect when he was arrested at his summer home in Poronin in 1914, so who would have predicted that Bata would receive a beating from the same party colleagues and indestructible communist creed with whom he lived? Diary on collective farms? An ideology as such by demanding the depersonalization of each member, school teachers haranguing boys to cooperate with a sack of oats or harvest even though they are in extreme poverty, Bogdan being a scoundrel around here and Crvenjak tying up his wife Julka, but Bata himself is mean and every time he, accompanied by Comrade Olga, confiscates his companions' crops, he reprimands them with the same story of having gone to war and fought for everyone, and they must sacrifice themselves even if they go hungry. Olga, who falls in love with Bata and is reciprocated, does not regret not having a private life or family or children, she even states "You see, If I'd come again to this world, I'd dream the same dream again" is that dream? To remain a communist and fight for the party, could we expect more fanaticism? Sreten Crvenjak questions God: "this prayer goes to your forgetful brain, don't you see, damn it, that I live neither for the first nor the last but for the only occasion?", while Brother Pantelija seems to obey the directives of the partisans and At night he steals from the community and if that were not enough, Mikula is beaten by his son because the son is a communist and does not accept listening to his father stigmatize him. And just when Bata and Olga, expecting his child, decide to try again to take the communist reins, a mine closes the episode of their - in itself - sad future.

Strafbataillon 999 (1960)

Superb chill, neither life nor war have logic or meaning

[9/10 · 14 September 2023]

From beginning to end, a disturbing work by Konsalik instructing, first, that at the end of the battle the bold or the noble or the good will not remain: neither life, much less war, has logic or meaning; secondly, revealing corruption and more corruption of the German militia, seen by a German director determined all his life to avoid - almost in an unhealthy way - the spotlight and fame; Martin Hollý in "Signum laudis" reveals with respect to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, (and does nothing more than echo multiple voices such as that of Joseph Roth) a mafia of sinister high command and scoundrel-key politicians nothing different from this one; Here the initially indiscernible outrages are supported by a Wehrmacht High Command Council and the feature film exposes the hardships of the victims in a penal battalion, such as Colonel Von Barlitz, demoted and sentenced for insubordination, because by human instinct it occurred to him to save 500 lives of his subordinates withdrawing from the front without waiting for orders from superiors; Barlitz is accompanied on his way of the cross by the "thief" Schwannecke, rugged and proud, and by the doctor Deutschmann, a doctor convicted of using gas gangrene serum on himself, for the court, guilty of self-mutilation but, in reality, guilty where the for focusing on his investigations without permission from the Führer, owner of what he had to think and investigate every tiny piece of the Thousand Year kingdom that he dreamed of; It was of no use to Deustchmann that his wife Julia advocated for him. The pretty woman immediately fell prey to Dr. Kukill, who repeated to her that her husband could have used sulfonamides instead of gas, and with vulgar coquetry he hinted to the desperate wife that he would support the doctor with ulterior motives. Sergeant Krull seems very strict and imposing from the beginning, when ordering the scum who arrived at the battalion the evil exercises of burning and pain for their training, however, when Obermeir orders him to stay in the fiery trench to continue his drawings of maps, in the middle of the fray he cowers in a bunker - in front of Ernst Deutschmann and Barlitz - when the grenades explode near them, is there no greater sarcasm of destiny?,He who punishes Barlitz as a deserter, who did what he did with his regiment to save him, cannot be a deserter to save himself as a coward, in the middle of the line of fire when he finds himself in the middle of nowhere! But the height of arrogance and disdain is reached with the newcomer to Battalion 999 to help, Lieutenant Bevern, spontaneously mistreats and humiliates the captives with unnecessary orders and humiliations that included ordering them to do their inhuman outdoor exercise routine. When many were sick or injured from the previous night of fighting in the trenches. But there is also time in the film for the ironies of war, because while the lascivious Dr. Kukill disputes with Colonel Wendt for fornicating with Julia Deutschmann, to charge her husband Ernst to leave Battalion Camp 999, the husband rejects the proposal. Sexual orientation of the beautiful Tanya, the nurse in the middle of the camp, a relative of Tartushing and the enemy partisans of the Nazis. Who will get the Iron Cross of Courage? Exactly: the one who escaped in the middle of crossfire, the one who fled and was saved, Sergeant Krull, and Deutschmann? He dies almost instantly after being blinded by the fire while checking Tanya's body in her hut.

Ojô Okichi (1935)

WOnderfull canned

[8/10 · 25 August 2023]

Jewel rediscovered in 2006 and restored. One of the rare cases where the con artist at a wedding is much more beautiful than the real bride who was impersonated. In the midst of the spiritual fervor and the street parades that represent the culmination of the delivery of the wife to the Kazusaya heir, said family of samurai is visually swindled by the beautiful Okichi, who impersonated the maiden for 20 ryo of gold that she did not even receive. Complete (only 5) of the rascals Shohei and Senta5 gold ryo. The momentary reverie lapse of both those involved - the fiancé - and the families involved prevent the deception from being evident until it is too late. The worst thing is that Nisaburo, Okichi's brother, for whom the beautiful liar carried out such frauds, could not save his bankruptcy or the Yamakichio lodging inherited by his parents and had to flee. So, here we go again, to pay off her debts, against her pleasure or will, Dame Okichi agrees to con one last time, cajole Hanjiro, son of the owner of the Kadomasa lumberyard by pretending to be Ohana. Except that she betrays herself and confesses everything to the son of the rich merchant who, even more in love, decides to follow her despite his criminal record and the enemies he has now made. The scene where Okichi makes the shamisen living on the sly with the disinherited youth, is very significant. In the end, the return of the brother and the defense of Hanjiro only causes problems for her, there is not much to understand why Okichi abandons Hanjiro when saying goodbye to his parents to escape from Edo.

Les volets bleus (1987)

cute bizarre short-haired creature

[8/10 · 4 August 2023]

The close similarity of this short with the passwords of Rohmer and Bresson is extraordinary. Voilá, all the stratagems of the pleasant evasion of the peak of voluptuousness and eroticism in a couple who, by chance? (Rohmer) run into each other on the street; the perversely spontaneous but believable dialogues where she, Anne, equips her virginity and also the aimless vane of her self-love, while he, a boy who glances at the ladies and assumes that he has been courting for 3 months, spoiled child and gourmet Full of ephemeral relationships, he accepts that the female voice predominates - Anne's domain - as a tacit authority in the fortuitous meeting, and the superstition regarding cards, the spontaneous mood of the couple in the form of a flaneur, sneaks in (Rohmer again). By Marseilles (Rohmer and Bresson) and the romance interrupted to press chance; in fact, starting with the musicians with the guitar, it seemed to me that Bresson (Quatre nuit d'un réveur) achieved hegemony. "Ten years more, ten years less, Please get me a train, so i can escape, go far way", isn't the lyrics succinct and simple enough for there to be magic hocus-pocus? For this reason, lying in bed after her shower is the re-beginning of the ritual, from years ago between the couple who was about to re-separate, and from the current moment in the apartment. Between the four walls it is not assumed that they love each other but neither are they going to make love; It doesn't follow with certainty that she wants it, but it doesn't follow with certainty that he's going to beg her. The last part, however, reminded me of that piece by Michel Deville that so many disliked and I was completely pleased with: NUIT D'ÉTÉ EN VILLE.

Saiylyk (1992)

A diamond inside a rock

[10/10 · 17 July 2023]

The age of this type of houses in Saiylyk, like the one recently bought by Tolya, has reminded me of the ancient "canti" technique of gluing without cement addressed by Süha Arin in "The ballad of the wood" anyway,in a macabre twist of fate, the return of Tolya to his town of origin, to acquire a summer house, will also be his impossibility of inhabiting it as if it were a kind of Zone like the one observed by Tarkovski's Stalker from "Roadside picnic", only that here there are no reminiscences of outer space but, in my opinion, a Christian spiritual transcript and in any case an autochthonous legend of the region; the return to the town, without suspecting it then, will be the bed for his last breath; from the first night a nightmare precedes his ghostly walk, but playing with the ambiguity that has always existed between the dream realm and reality, the director weaves a few minutes of trance in Tolya between the nightmare and what will be his, i repeat, walk metaphysical where he will see Mikhael walking and other dead people on the hill near the purchased cabin, one of the "souls" or beings living in the middle of the world tells Tolya: "Sometimes we are so close to the Saiylyk, we even hear everyone sing, the Saiylyk seems to be so close to us, and yet it keeps getting further and further away." The ending is radical, Tolya and the other ghosts observe the moment when Tolya's body is found, thanks to the lost horse? The body is alive and Tolya decides not to return, even if it means never finding the Saiylyk. Wild feature film, wild in the sense of rustic because it is devoid not only of commercial intentions but also because it has a narrative with a vaguely defined stylistic format, at minute 27, both actors sitting outside smoking, before looking at the ducks, one of them, the one in the blue coat, even looks directly at the film's cameraman, which suggests amateur directing or actors. This rusticity due to the theme is advantageous, the work is an unpolished diamond. If it had occurred to someone to cut the "errors" we would have a diamond perhaps, but this stone with the diamond inside is worth as much or more.

Few of Us (1996)

sublime silence wrapped in reindeer and almost extinct beauty

[10/10 · 27 June 2023]

Photographic masterpiece. An Evenk smoking a type of local tobacco, reindeer herding across frozen springs that descend from SIberia and gazes at the Sayanes mountain range as the protagonist of the feature film. If you are looking to detoxify yourself from the stupid verbiage of commercial cinema and, on the other hand, photographic shots not only from the ground but also from the air -with a helicopter- of excellent quality, surely this is your film. It's not even tainted with voiceovers or gimmicks like that. The young newcomer to the place sits next to the Evenk while he takes out a loaf of bread, the contrast between his wrinkles and the chiaroscuro is sublime. But the unforgettable scene happens later, when the old man's shack (presumably the young woman's father or grandfather) is filled with visitors and what reigns is everyone's singing -happy but with an undeniable nostalgic tone- to the beat of an accordion merciless and full of history in its sound, while the young woman seems to sob in the gloom. The blizzards at the end are the precious hymn that for its part -who knows, Siberia, Mongolia,...?- invites the tiny piece with those human beings in silence.

Evolution (I) (2021)

agreable dyptich

[8/10 · 20 June 2023]

Refreshing diptych that explores the harsh coexistence, sometimes antagonistic, between the blurred past and the present with its imponderable consequences; Léna and her mother, Jonas and Léna; The most serious thing is that there are millions like Lena and Jonas, today suffering the fate of the plot due to similar circumstances, while the rest of the world senses that it is just another version of the anachronism of the Holocaust. I suppose that after the Holocaust the memory is often suppressed, the past healed and hope is kept in the present; The paradox is how would those who, like Lena, cannot continue in the contemporary world overcome hopelessness if they opt for oblivion? She can't get her little one out of the country or enroll him in kindergarten until she gets his elderly mother's birth certificate, which proves her Jewish ancestry and which she refuses to provide. But in part two, "Jonas," can the son be blamed for not thinking like mom, and barely knowing what that flódni cake grandma used to make is? Can one blame Léna's mother, a mother who was born in Kasernenstrasse, Auschwitz, who saw her own mother tied by the breasts so as not to breastfeed her,...can she be blamed for proudly showing off the Guard as a survivor? Hlinka, not to grant your daughter so as not to grant the contemporary German state, not even a paper proving her Jewish caste? "Give me this document or my life was about the Holocaust for nothing."