alvesmarceloalves-73751 Reviews

Pain and Glory (2019)

A look at Almodóvar's intimacy

[8/10 · 10 September 2019]

Pedro Almodóvar has a phrase that says "the movie theater is the refuge of the murderers and the lonely". It's hard to be sure about someone you don't know personally, but the director Almodóvar is a bit of both. At least figuratively speaking in the case of the expression "killer".

"Pain and Glory" (Dolor y Gloria, in the original), his new film is just a reaffirmation of this condition of Almodóvar's cinema. The Spanish director makes much of his filmography a therapy session in which he tries to deal with the past, exorcising his ghosts while displaying on the screen the loneliness of an alter-ego who, in contrast, lives in a house that for a while. It just seems full of life and color. The so characteristic colors of Almodóvar's cinema, which, as always, abuses the red tones and vibrant colors making each stage a work of art.

And how Almodovar had to deal with his ghosts again. After the faint comedy "Los Amantes pasajeros" (2013) and a "Julieta" who shared opinions, what you see in "Pain and Glory" may not be an Almodóvar in the lush form of "Hable con ella" (2002), "La mala educación" (2004) or "Volver" (2006), but is an Almodóvar who goes back to discussing the themes that permeate his cinema: the pains of the soul, the relationship with his mother, the influence of religious education, homosexuality and the discovery of it, the loves that come and go and the disappointments and marks that arise from it and the mismatches of life. Almodóvar's cinema is about people, it is about the conflicts of the soul, about what must be said to the other and the opportunities that are lost by not speaking and not allowing oneself to feel. It is, therefore, an investigation of the human soul and its subtleties driven by the lightness of the camera in contrast to the complex subjects it proposes to debate.

In "Pain and Glory" the text of Almodóvar is clear and straightforward. At 69, he seeks to reevaluate his relationship with his mother and when he exposes the dichotomy between the tribute and her exposure and the people around him as a source of inspiration for his characters. It is curious how in the movie the mother says she hates the way she and her village friends are portrayed in the main character's cinema, while he states that each line, each film is a tribute to who made him who he is.

In interviews, Almodóvar said that "Pain and Glory" is a film that represents him most intimately, although certain situations suffered by its protagonist, such as drug use and terrible pains are not true, but only poetic license for dramaturgical purposes.

"It's not my biography, but the movie that most closely represents me," said the director, making sure it's not as physically bad as the protagonist and never using drugs like the same.

To live this "worse" Almodóvar we have an António Banderas that we have not seen since "La piel que habito" (2011), one of his last great performances, precisely in a film by the Spanish filmmaker. In the shoes of fellow director and screenwriter Salvador Mallo, Banderas portrays Almodóvar's alter ego very well. Aged, full of physical and soul pain, with shaken or lost relationships for decades with different characters who have gone through his life and a fledgling drug problem, Banderas delivers one of his best performances emulating the director's soul. The Spanish actor seems to have been able to perfectly capture an Almodóvar persona with his silences, tired looks and hesitation in speech.

At the same time, Mallo wants to get back up, back in the limelight of the cinema. And the inspiration comes from the rich material that is your life and the life of the people around him. And that is what Almodóvar does. Using the examples of what he lived, he seeks to connect with his audience, who also live similar anxieties and desires. After all, living, like the title of your movie, is a frequent experience of pain and glory.

The film also features Penelope Cruz, who helps tell stories of a young Salvador who are also those of a young Almodóvar. There we see what we are used to seeing in different passages of the director's films. The economically difficult childhood, the study at the high school and the life for art that rescued him from those moments of poverty.

Extremely metalinguistic and full of reckoning with the past, perhaps "Pain and Glory" only sins because it is overly and so clearly autobiographical, which makes the experience of viewing the film with a sense of déjà vu and without a sign of freshness that accompany him. It's more of a therapy session than a movie and it has a more confessional and less creative text compared to what we used to see in the director's filmography.

But this is an absolutely personal point of view. And it doesn't make the movie experience bad. Far from it. "Pain and Glory" has its value and has a simply unmissable Antonio Banderas. Almodóvar's signature is also a guarantee of pleasure for his fans, who will not be disappointed. But I don't think it's a kind of movie that would generate new fans for the director.

In the final balance, "Pain and Glory" is like rediscovering an old friend whom one admires for delicacy, intelligence, insight and even imperfections. And an imperfect Almodóvar is still an above average Almodóvar.

Us (II) (2019)

The nightmare is us

[8/10 · 29 March 2019]

There is a whole recent rise of horror films that seeks a reflection beyond the scares and tricks that terrify the viewer. In essence, they remain classified as horror, but are quite different from the traditional formula of the genre. It is from there that appear films like "Hereditary" (2018) and "A quiet place" (2018).

Jordan Peele is responsible for two good works within the genre. "Get Out!" (2017) used horror to deal with racism in an approach that used science and the loss of identity at the service of a perverse story.

"Us", his latest film, uses similar elements of science from a question: what if we all had a wicked double coming out of the shadows to take our place? A double that lived in the underground the same life in which we live, but in a terrible and painful way, without being able to decide the destiny itself. What if this double decided to rebel? To leave the darkness to assume a place in which he sees to be also of his right. Is it possible to accept this act of revenge after a lifetime of pain?

It is from there that the family of Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong'o) lives the biggest nightmare of his life. When the couple and their two children go on vacation at a beach house, she finds herself faced with a nightmare of the past. It was here, in that region, that Adelaide lost her parents and lived a macabre experience that definitely marked her.

It is not possible to advance much in the analysis without going into details of the story and, therefore, reveal important passages of the film. But we can summarize that the narrative created by Peele has a different power from simple clues played on the screen. The citation to the biblical passage from the book of Jeremiah, which addresses the inevitable arrival of evil to all people, is the first warning sign.

But how frightening it is to confront the most animalistic side of yourself is a message that permeates the film. The villains, the monsters, are ourselves. Without the brakes of life in society. Peele makes us face our worst materialized nightmares. And few things are as terrifying as that.

If "Get Out!" Had a somewhat rushed ending and with some problems, "Us" turned out to be somewhat predictable, whose events were moving to that moment since at least half the film. But still, how terrifying is this end, and how many reflections bring us from it.

"Us" is a step further in Peele's horror filmography. It is a film with layers that are unfolding every moment and beyond. And it's scary. But it is a fear that, beyond violence, comes from the philosophical and psychological reflection of what history shows us. At that point, Peele hit the mark.

Captain Marvel (2019)

Captain Marvel is a little disappointing

[6/10 · 14 March 2019]

When Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) sent that message for an adapted pager seconds after Thanos' snap, the expectation went up there. After all, almost a year ago we were awaiting the arrival of Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) as the potential heroine who would save the day in a universe that is in a lot of trouble and that was 50% decimated by the villain.

And perhaps the biggest problem of "Captain Marvel" is that expectation generated. Ally, too, to other factors. For example, the threshold that some Marvel films have hit a few years ago. The work of director Anna Boden and director Ryan Fleck unfortunately can not be placed on the same shelf of films as "Black Panther" (2018), "Avengers: Infinite War" (2018), "Captain America: The Winter Soldier", "Captain America: Civil War" (2016) and "Guardians of the Galaxy" (2014), only to stay in some films of phases 2 and 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Nor is it better than "Wonder Woman" (2017), just to compare it with the best DC has created in recent years.

In fact, "Captain Marvel" is an uninspired movie, its action scenes are far from being among the best ever produced by Marvel and fails to explore important aspects of the narrative around which the heroine was inserted.

The question is: Why instead of showing the umpteenth origin story with the same tiresome elements that we have already seen in other films of origin, "Captain Marvel" was not straightforward? In the case, the war between Skrulls and Krees, one of the most classic stories in the comics.

It is understandable the need to introduce the character. After all, so far, in the movies, Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) had never even been mentioned. But the old bow "Who am I really? "Where did I come from?" "What's my job in the world?" "Why am I doing this?" "What are you hiding from me?" - I finally rediscovered myself" it seems a tiresome formula that leaves us with the impression that this story could be better told in another way. Or worse, it seems like a lazy movie.

Of course looking at everything Marvel has built up so far, making the Captain Marvel movie in this format was a well-calculated risk. The studio bet on the late novelty of having a female protagonist in a film of superheroes, while it was overtaken by DC at this point, which launched well before the Wonder Woman´s movie. And the numbers multiplying every day in the cinemas, show that Marvel, at least from the economic point of view, had made the right decision. We hope she now has the boldness to move on and make the Black Widow´s movie, so desired since "The Avengers" (2012).

However, "Captain Marvel" turns out to be a somewhat anodyne film. It has a confusing first part that refers to flashbacks to try to locate who is Carol Danvers, a medium with a long rediscovery and accounts and an end that lacked the figure of a villain who really confronted her while she discovered the full potential of their powers. For a race of warriors, however, the Krees have given up very easily to face it only because it prevents some warheads from reaching the Earth.

The impression is that "Captain Marvel" served more like a movie like "Ant-Man and Wasp" (2018). While it located the viewer where Scott Lang was when Thanos snapped his fingers, it served to give a fairly generalized overview of who Captain Marvel is before the inevitable confrontation with Thanos in "Avengers: Endgame." All the best seems to have stayed for an eventual second film. Especially the Kree-Skrull War.

About Brie Larson, the actress seemed to have been a wise choice for the role. She is a good actress who does not have great performance, but has qualities for the development of the character from now on. And the partnership with Samuel L. Jackson worked well in the film. Let's see what it will be like now that she will insert herself into "Avengers: Endgame".

Another positive point is the soundtrack. As "Captain Marvel" takes place in the 90s, the film brought a collection of hits from the decade with songs by Garbage, No Doubt, Nirvana, R.E.M. It was a trip back in time and full of references to the decade, from the Blockbuster network of movie theaters to Tarantino. But some songs seemed a bit out of place. It did not make much sense to "Come as you are" while Carol confronted the Supreme Intelligence Kree.

"Captain Marvel," so got owed. It's ok fun, but it looked like the best kept in store for the future.

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

The Black Lives Matter Manifesto by Barry Jenkins

[8/10 · 23 February 2019]

Cinema has always tried to follow the transformations of society. Most of the time, extremely slow and late. In others, giving a good picture of a very current moment. Another way of seeing, a little more cynical, is true, is that cinema always takes advantage of waves to profit. After all, this is still an industry. And industry needs to make a profit. But I like to think that the thirst for billing may well go hand in hand with the need for a sociological, political and cultural commitment. And what actions and reactions arise from there in peristaltic movements that generate good works and others not so much.

Two moves, in a way, helped catapult to a prominent place, and very near the top in some cases, and give visibility to some black directors who are being responsible for making a range of good films in this decade. One of them is the Black Lives Matter, started from protests surrounding the death of black people by police officers in the United States. Two peak moments came in 2013 and 2014. In 2013, George Zimmerman was acquitted of the death of black teenager Trayvon Martin, which sparked many protests. The following year, street protests intensified after the death of two men in the United States: Michael Brown and Eric Garner. The other was #Oscarsowhite, protesting the 2016 Oscar edition, when there were no black people competing in the major categories.

In the wake, especially from the first movement, Hollywood may have begun to realize that black stories also matter. It was when names like Ryan Coogler, Jordan Peele, Ava DuVerney, Dee Rees and Barry Jenkins began to gain prominence. In addition to Steve McQueen, who is not so contemporary of this quartet.

It was only in 2013 that Coogler reinvigorated the Rocky Balboa franchise with "Creed" (2015) and for making one of the best superhero movies ever, the "Black Panther" (2018). He is still involved in the sequel to the Marvel hero movie. DuVernay made "Selma" on the march of the American city to Montgomery, Alabama, in a campaign devised by Martin Luther King for the struggle of black voting rights. Dee Rees performed "Mudbound," a story of a black man who was a hero of World War II and returns to Mississippi to deal with the terrible racism in the region. For the film, she received an Oscar nomination for screenplay. Jordan Peele performed "Get out!", one of the best recent horror films, which tackles the issue of racism very strongly. And this year will release "Us", another film of the genre and also with a series of black actors. McQueen performed "12 years a slave" (2013), the film for which he won the Oscar, and recently "Widows" (2018), whose protagonist is Viola Davis. And he deserved an Oscar nomination.

Barry Jenkins has made "Moonlight" (2016), a beautiful story about a gay black man whose mother had a drug problem and won the Academy Award, and now returns to three Academy Awards with "If Beale Street Could Talk".

His new film is a narrative about resistance. He has the strength of one who fills his lungs to shout that black lives must matter. At the same time, it is a love story so romantic and traditional, to tell the story of two young people who grew up together, fell in love and planned to build their lives together until a false sentence and unjust imprisonment changed their lives forever. Interrupt dreams that were already so difficult to realize by the stupidity that is racism and judgment by the color of people's skin.

While telling us about this beautiful love story between Tish (Kiki Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James), Jenkins exposes the hardships they suffer from being black, even though they have nothing to disgrace about them. The lack of a good job, the difficulty to rent a house, the skewed look of the police. Each day is a battle won, every new day is a start again stepping on eggs, but without giving up in the pursuit of the dream of a better life to every generation. And the director shows that only the strength of the love of that couple and the family in the surroundings hold this great battle that is to live.

On the one hand, Jenkins tells the present, life passing while Fonny mocks in jail after being accused of rape in a vicious process, full of holes in the narrative, but with little hope of reversal, for where racism still reigns so strongly, its chances are small.

On the other, there is this construction of the novel from the past, before the arrest. The looks of the young, the first night in a touching sex scene. As beautiful as the subway scene, when they admire themselves in such a banal place. All this with a soundtrack to fill your eyes. This is another of the strengths of the film.

Jenkins compiles his story from a mosaic. There is no linearity in actions. It is up to the viewer to compose and comprehend the whole of history from the fragments he puts on the screen. But at the same time, everything has a cohesion that makes understanding relatively easy.

"If Beale Street Could Talk" may not be as bright as "Moonlight," but how beautiful the movie is. How beautiful is the way Jenkins tells his stories. And its outcome shows that racism continues to win and we remain far from equal. Until when?

Vice (I) (2018)

Bush's ruthless and hated vice

[8/10 · 19 February 2019]

Four years ago, Adam McKay made one of the most entertaining and educational films about the economy and the explosion of the great American real estate bubble with The big short. With agile and pop culture language, the director simply explained how some broke down and others profited greatly in the American mortgage crisis. In short, there was a bunch of hawks who caught a chance and went hunting. "Vice" follows the same model of language, narrative, and premise. The only difference is that it does not have the same humor. Perhaps there is a slight irony here, another there, but it was really impossible to portray the life of what must have been the most active vice president of American history with humor.

"Vice" is the story of a man who was no one and who became the powerful vice president of George W. Bush's government (2001-2009). The film is pitiless with Dick Cheney (a Christian Bale in a state where there are no adjectives to praise him). In the first part, it portrays Cheney like a failure, alcoholic and mediocre student. In the remainder of the film, Cheney is an opportunist who knew how to ride the sealed horse of history and lead himself to the highest echelons of American government with an extremely conservative thought, without measuring any consequences and trampling whoever he wants to be on the ridge of power. And definitely this portrait could not being different.

Cheney was for a long time almost a ghost, but the film compacts with and confirms the hypothesis that he was the iron arm of the Bush administration (Sam Rockwell). It was up to him, with a series of maneuvers and counting on the active participation of coreligionists in various instances of power, to stretch US legislation to the utmost to start groundless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. All with the consent of a weak and almost servile president to Cheney's wishes and who did all the will to have him side on the plate when running for the presidency with Democrat Al Gore.

Narrated by an American soldier, which was a good part of the film, "Vice" shows how a mediocre person who had everything to become an irrelevant human being, ended up grabbing an opportunity to do an internship in the US Congress and stuck to right people in power. The first was Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carrell), Gerald Ford's former chief of staff who also held positions in the Nixon administration and became the Secretary of Defense for the Bush administration.

The film gives the impression that Cheney was, in fact, an invisible leader to the public of a whole generation of Republicans and the voice of the American conservatives against the "advances" implemented by the Democrats who, by the way, occupied the White House. In the case, since Cheney emerged on the political scene, the only presidents from the democrat party were Jimmy Carter and Bil Clinton, who commanded the White House for 12 years. The Republican presidents were four - Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and George W. Bush - commanding the White House for a total of 23 years. Barack Obama has come to represent the end of the Cheney generation, now 78 years old. But by then much damage was done.

In fact, the peak of Cheney's power was when he held the vice presidency. Cargo that as the film shows, he only accepted after studying on how to turn it from something he considered insignificant to powerful and without any kind of surveillance. At the same time, it demanded then-candidate Bush the right to take care of a number of strategic areas for the American government, such as energy and the military.

Cheney saw the opportunity, as the movie jokes, to become a Galactus, the devourer of worlds in Marvel's comic books. This is how he did it. With the conviction that he was doing the right thing, and the best of Bale's performance is the demonstration of this conviction so real and crystal clear, Cheney turned the world into a worse place by starting a war in Afghanistan against Al-Qaeda to hunt down Osama Bin Laden. But the Bush administration's so-called War on Terror was not enough to win the support of the American population. It took a palatable target for the people. A country with borders and a leader.

It was in this way that Cheney united the useful to the pleasing, the desire to remove Saddam Hussein from power, and began a war in Iraq with false information and manipulation of news that convinced even the press and the world's leading leaders. In return, what Cheney gained was the direct responsibility for the creation of one of the largest terrorist organizations in the world: the Isis.

"Vice" is relentless, didactic and has a cast of actors who only brighten the film further. Bale is a monster in the lead role, but Amy Adams is not far behind making Cheney's wife, Lynne. And there are Steve Carrell and Sam Rockwell very well, as well as actors in smaller roles who have successfully incorporated Mckay's idea of storytelling based on connections with pop culture and agile and light language, even though at various times the film get nauseous.

In fact, Mckay would be a good history teacher if he did not make movies. And the auto-ironic scene in post-credit is the icing on the cake. In addition to showing how that period helped inaugurate a culture of fake news that prevails today and that helped to choose names like Donald Trump in the United States and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.

Capernaum (2018)

A brilliant masterpieace

[10/10 · 15 February 2019]

An old and famous carnival called Joãosinho Trinta said that "the people like luxury, those who like misery are intellectual." It was one of his most remarkable sentences. It is very easy to sit in the privileged chair of an air-conditioned cinema and all the facilities that a privileged life can give and "admire" with the sociologist's air the misery exposed by the Lebanese director Nadine Labaki, and speak with wonders about "Capharnaüm". It is extremely easy to contemplate the long-suffering Zain saga (Zain Al Rafeea), pose as a bar-table left intellectual, and lecture on social injustices and the need to seek a more egalitarian and less cruel society.

These are legitimate interpretations, but I'm going to try to run away from them for the sake of appearing as insensitive and distant as the image of Zain's lawyer in the plot, lived by the director herself, who has no reaction to the speech of the boy's mother in court saying that she would never know what it is to have her life. And she could never bear what she endured. This is one of the many very strong scenes in this movie. In fact, as the lawyer, as much as I could sensitize myself with all the drama, as much as I could empathize, I would never know what it is to live and how to describe what it is to be so on the fringes of a society like Zain and your family.

"Capharnaüm" is a masterpiece with which we rarely see. It is also a film about how we fail as human beings in the most varied aspects. The exploitation of misery, slave labor, violation of the most basic rights, families devastated by poverty and lack of perspective of a better situation, the illegality of immigrant life, arranged marriages in exchange for money, negligent parents with their children. "Capharnaüm" is a rosary of personal tragedies exhibited in 125 minutes of film.

It is almost as if the region remained to this day suffering from the denial of Christ. The name of the film refers to the biblical city that was on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. Nearby was the important Via Maris (road to the sea), which linked Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. In the Bible, Capernaum is one of the places where Jesus performed a series of miracles, such as two exorcisms, the healing of Peter's mother-in-law from a disease, and the healing of a paralytic in the well-known passage of the Bible where Jesus said to the man: "Get up and walk." But, according to history, the people of the city also ended up not repenting of their sins and turned away from Jesus, who had foreseen the destruction of the city. From there, Capernaum, which was a center for tax collection and where there was also a Roman military post declined, becoming uninhabited in the fifth century after Christ.

If it is possible to draw a parallel between the Biblical Capernaum and Lebanon drawn by Nadine, it is precisely in the moral misery of the human being who exploits one another, even in the lower strata. The human being who does not repent of his sins and continues reproducing the exploratory and vicious behaviors at every moment.

At the center of the film is the story of the young Zain (lived monstrously by the boy Zain Al Rafeea). The 12-year-old forced to adulthood because of his parents' negligence, was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison for stabbing a man who had married his sister, Sahani. The reason for the crime was the death of the 11-year-old girl shortly after her pregnancy.

Older of his many brothers, Zain had been forced to mature strength to help support the family. And it is because he already has an almost adult awareness in the body of a child that the youngster decides to sue his parents for the crime of having given them life. Zain considers that his parents were criminally negligent with the whole family and can no longer have children. The evidence was in his dead sister and himself, a teenager arrested and not even formally registered.

The film alternates scenes of the trial with Zain's journey in the streets of Lebanon. Difficult life, difficulties to eat, lack of hope after losing the sister who had menstruated for the first time recently to a man who just wanted to abuse her...

Until the escape comes and Zain comes across the Ethiopian immigrant Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw), who welcomes him. Zain then takes care of his son, Yonas (Boluwatife Treasure Bankole), until the day she just does not come back. Illegal, Rahil is caught by the police, leaving Zain alone taking care of Yonas.

It is one of the most dramatic moments of the film the period in which Zain sees himself as a father. It's heart-breaking to see him try and try to do the right thing and turn around like giving to feed the child and take care of it. Everything until the moment when it does not have more forces because the life between those who are at the margin simply can not advance.

We see all this through Zain's eyes. A boy who does not find Hollywood heroes to help him. The closest to it is the old "Cockroach-Man", the "cousin of Spider-Man", which crosses his path. Zain needs to be the hero himself. So young, the boy feels himself carrying a huge burden of existence when all he wanted was to be a good man. And his speech at the end of the film is absolutely touching at the same time that it is very hard.

"Capharnaüm" deserved more than a mere Oscar nomination for foreign film. Maybe it's the best of all those who run for the Oscars. At least Cannes recognized its value by giving it three awards last year. Nadine Labaki has made a hard and brilliant film that deserves to be seen by all.

The Favourite (2018)

Not the best Lanthimos, but still a good movie

[8/10 · 15 February 2019]

It is curious to think that Yorgos Lanthimos' most conventional and less "insane" film is being the most successful of his career. In fact, "The favourite" that has been collecting awards. There are already a total of 134, entitled to a Golden Globe for actress Olivia Colman and seven awards Bafta, The film still won ten Oscar nominations. But "The favourite" is far from having the complications, the sadisms and to cause that discomfort that had its previous works, "The killing of the sacred deer" and "The Lobster". With a more palatable film that was not written by Lanthimos and his latecomer Efthymis Filippou, the Greek director eventually got the chance to win more sympathy from the members of the academy.

And this proves that no matter how much the Oscar tries to be more sympathetic to other, less expensive Oscar production - and the "Black Panther" nomination for the best film signals that - the academy always has its limits. Films in which you have to decide whether or not a family member with echoes in Greek mythology such as "The Sacrifice of the Sacred Deer" or a little more intricate scripts like "The Lobster" still has not come this far. Everything, however, can change with the winds.

But of course "The Favourite" is still a good movie because of it. If there is a mark of Lanthimos in this film is the irony and the almost contempt with which its characters are treated. Lanthimos is almost marvelously cruel to ridicule royalty with a subtlety and at the same time a caricatured tone of a great charizard. All right with a few shots that send a spectator who seems to be just lurking, looking through the keyhole and scenarios of kitschy exaggeration, a luxury that provocatively borders on bad taste.

In their hands, the whole monarchy tradition is pathetic. The way the queen should be treated (never turn to her, do not look at her without being asked) the ridiculous makeup of the men and even a fierce run of ducks and lobsters. Everything sounds kitsch as if Lanthimos told us: "How did we sustain this ridiculous theater for so many centuries and still today?"

In the center of "The Favourite" is a dispute involving hatred, jealousy, envy between two women, Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz) and Abigail (Emma Stone) for the attention of Queen Anne (beautifully lived by Olivia Colman). The fight is ridiculous, childish. Worse, rich and spoiled children.

From the outset a rivalry has been established between the two distant cousins. One wanting to maintain the power of influence over the queen and, consequently, over the government, which is facing a military battle against France. The other, an ex-lady who lost everything in some failed marriage wanting to recover the money and status she had once had. It's all about power, influence, and wealth.

For this, both use all the weapons they have. If they sabotage, they ironize themselves, all with the perceptive look of the queen, who loves the dispute of the two to seduce her. At bottom, the queen has a wit at the same time that Lanthimos exposes the strange eccentricities of the monarchs.

At bottom, the question of war inside the palace has more to do with the mood of the queen and the political and extra political games inside the palace than properly a practical and objective question. But is it so in any political scenario, we could argue? Yes, but when it comes to royalty it gains even more proportions in the futilities and eccentricities of the court.

Lanthimos filmed the ridiculous with a mixture of satire and poison and, best of all, making everything seem very serious. It is not your most interesting film, but how can you not delight in the display of luxury and kitsch in a court of futile and miserable values such as that built by the Greek director?

In fact, Lanthimos did it again. And on this we can only applaud.

The Mule (2018)

The return of the old Clint

[7/10 · 3 February 2019]

In his later works, Clint Eastwood had been focusing on unlikely heroes and tracing an almost memorial in a way that the American sold himself into the world. That figure that in the most improbable moments will save the motherland and will prove a great name for history, even if it presents its problems. "Sully" (2016) is somehow that way. Similarly, "15:17: train to Paris" (2018). And even the "American Sniper" (2014) appealed to this narrative.

By chance or not, these are among some of their weaker jobs. Obvious narratives, few conflicts and even the absence of a story that really deserved a movie to tell it. "Sully" had content for at most one short film.

"The Mule", however, is a return of Clint to his good times. The real story of a nonagenarian gentleman who has seen a mule from the Sinaloa traffic in Mexico, carrying drugs unnoticed on the American roads is a full plate for Eastwood's work not only as a director but also as an actor.

Earl Stone is that anti-hero who usually does good movies. Terrible father, poor husband, poor grandmother, Earl devoted his whole life to flowers. Without realizing it, however, he failed to pay attention to the three women in his life and he lost one by one. The daughter, the wife, and almost the granddaughter, who turns out to be the chance of redemption for him when he realizes that he dedicated his whole life to the work driving the country roads, but never gave the family the deserved attention.

It is precisely when he sees his life and his business crumble by the arrival of the Internet that Earl ends up falling into the hands of the traffic. The aim of the cartel is to make mules circulate around the United States carrying drugs without stopping by police officers. It's Earl's an exemplary talent. In all his life, he never took a ticket.

As he begins his journey through the underworld of crime, Earl also relishes a little of the life he has left so far behind. As he earns money, he recovers some of his lost history through a series of factors: the house from which he was dumped, the Korean War veterans' club, his family's important dates, even though he suffers a lot of resistance.

Earl just wants to recover the time. Just what he can never have or buy, for he is at the end of his life.

It's almost impossible to cheer against Earl, even though we know he's doing something wrong. Clint Eastwood builds an aura of sympathy for that frail gentleman who ventures the roads while seeking a meaning for life, but more than that, redemption. Earl wants his family back, something that hurts him deeply, to the point of rightly advising his executioner, Colin Bates (Bradley Cooper) to remember that special dates, birthdays and family are important.

"The Mule" may not be Eastwood's most brilliant film, but it's a work that deserves to be appreciated for the journey your character has made. It does not bring great reflections, but it is possible to find beauty in Earl's quest for redemption.

At Eternity's Gate (2018)

Van Gogh deserved a little more

[6/10 · 3 February 2019]

Nietzsche once said that there are men who are born posthumous. Contemporary of the German philosopher, although it is not known if at any time he had read it, the Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh perhaps had the same feeling. One of the most interesting moments of "At the Eternity's Gate" is the conversation of a Van Gogh (Willem Defoe) hospitalized in the sanatorium and the priest lived by Madds Mikkelsen. Amid reflections on the roles of God and Jesus Christ, Van Gogh says he may have been born at the wrong time and will eventually paint pictures for individuals to come.

In fact, today the Dutchman who had a life surrounded by medical problems, got mutilated and only knew the misery that was not absolute thanks to the help of brother Theo (Rupert Friend), would only be more strongly recognized after his death. Today, he is a painter celebrated for his technique and the vigorous, exaggerated and intense manner with which he painted his paintings.

Much of what we see in "At the Eternity's Gate" is Van Gogh's quest for an almost divine element for his painting. "I paint the sunlight," he says. In fact, the brightness of southern France is what helps him leverage his technique. Julian Schnabel's film is very involved in this quest for luminosity. There are many ways and places from which Van Gogh looks at the sky to seek the perfect light and paint in a way never before seen.

And the more he plunges into that light, Van Gogh's curiously falls into the darkness of his own confused and restless mind. Neither brother nor friend Paul Gauguin (Oscar Isaac) can get him out of this state, which turns out to be natural.

The period in which Gauguin, in fact, goes to Arles generates another of the good scenes of the film, which is precisely the debate between the two about painting what one sees in the way one wants to see, like Van Gogh, and to paint creatively from the which is in the head, which is what defends Gauguin. Obviously there is no conclusion. It's just interesting points of view.

Unfortunately, "At the Eternity's Gate" is repeated too much in the painting cycle, Van Gogh's madness and does not reveal new layers or reflections on the painter. In the same way, it does not bring new interpretations about its mysterious death, something better worked in the excellent animation "Loving Vincent".

Defoe's participation in the lead role even justifies his Oscar nomination. The actor convinces in the role of a Van Gogh who is at no time in his place and who lives desperately to paint, his only talent, the one that was granted him by God.

But if "At the Eternity's Gate" gives us some beautiful scenes by the light of the sun, it leaves to be desired with its narrative based on a conventional cinebiography and in those insights of always of geniuses. Suffering, pleasure, falling, redemption, death .... Van Gogh deserved more than just that.

Glass (2019)

Shyamalan disappoints in trilogy outcome

[4/10 · 25 January 2019]

I do not know if since 2000, when he released "Unbreakable," M. Night Shyamalan had these two questions in his head: "What if the world really had superheroes? How would they be?" When launching the great "Split" two years ago, however, it seemed increasingly clear the director's idea of creating his own trilogy of original superheroes in an industry where much of the revenue has come from the adaptations from the Marvel and DC Comics.

Now that "Glass," the third volume of his story hits theaters, the feeling that remains is that of frustration. Between the irony and the attempt to build a mythology of its own, Shyamalan got lost in the middle of the road in a film that leaves much to be desired and with a script that did not know where to go.

"Glass" would win more if it revolved around the irony that Shyamalan tries to create in different parts of the film. The way he mocks superhero stories, as he jokes about Marvel (quoted from the cover of a magazine) and the scripts of these same movies and the comics themselves. Mainly from the obsession of Mister Glass (Samuel L. Jackson) on the subject.

But irony requires subtlety and the final third of the film is driven so heavily by the director that he loses his hand and turns everything into a caricature. And, worse, it takes itself seriously to create a whole new mythology in what would be its history of particular origin from a group commanded by Dr. Staple (Sarah Paulson). Maybe that was even her intention. But I think it did not work out well.

In the midst of all this, even the brilliant work of James McAvoy, making a man of 24 such different personalities is kind of lost. Much of the strength of his character is erased by turning him into a mere doormat of Glass, the eternal antagonist of Vigilante (Bruce Willis).

In fact, the three main characters are apathetic and without any chemistry. But worst of all lies in the stillborn presence of the three characters who are the right arms of the three protagonists. Casey (Anya-Taylor Joy), the survivor of the Beast's captivity, Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark), son of Dunn, and Mrs. Price (Charlayne Woodard), Glass's mother, figure out from nowhere to anything in poor interpretations.

Finally, we have a whole plot in a psychiatric hospital that works just like a smoke screen for a group of people about whom nothing is known. An interrogation that Shyamalan leaves in the air for what is perhaps a future project, but which also kills the proposal that was tried to take between the discredit and the acceptance of the powers. There is an attempt of several plot twists that do not work in no time.

And with that, "Glass" walked to a big disappointment. A delirium of Shyamalan who had everything to succeed at the end of "Split". That generated expectation. But whose result almost thwarted how many director's bad works.

Green Book (2018)

A great film

[8/10 · 25 January 2019]

It is possible to analyze "Green Book" from some points of view. It's a film about racism. But it's also a road movie that talks about an unimaginable friendship. It is also a film that shakes the prejudice of deep America, especially the South of the United States. It is still a film about a character who is not in any environment because he is in the rare position of the privileged black and feels a deep loneliness for it. None of this is original. None of this is something that other movies have not talked about in movie history. But how delightful, bothersome and interesting is to follow the journey of pianist Don Shirley (a brilliant Mahershala Ali) and his driver and captain Tony Vallelonga (equally wonderful).

Particularly, "Green Book" has more interesting in two of the points above. The first is such an improbable relationship between Tony, this brassy, simple-minded Italian who sees the world so bluntly and directly, separating people into tribes with their own ingrained and unmixed customs, and Shirley, a black man of erudite education, who lives as an isolated king at the top of Carnegie Hall. And it's amazing that even in such ignorance he made Shirley see how far he was from himself.

The story of Peter Farrelly's film is real. In fact in the 1960s, Shirley was a very popular pianist who decided to tour the most racist chants in America. Your objective is touching people's hearts.

But how difficult it is to break historic and archaic barriers. Shirley has to go through some ridiculous situations. At night, he is a brilliant pianist applauded by all white and wealthy audiences. But during the day it's just another black man who can not eat at the same restaurant in his audience or use the same bathroom.

As much as the film does not portray the hell it was to be a black man in that region, and its name comes from a survival guide there, it's still cruel, almost disgusting to anyone who sees everything that Shirley has to go through to keep the idea of your tour alive. It is important, however, as the character himself states, "maintain dignity". Only by dignity is overcome the rabid prejudice.

But "Green Book" is not only about the pure denunciation of racism in a region of America. It is in the hassle and distance that Shirley himself feels among his peers that the film exposes his signs of greatness. It is by showing that he is not black enough to be among his own, neither white nor man enough to occupy other groups, that "Green Book" exposes the terrible loneliness of a man who finds himself in the middle of the path of a triangle over which he does not have the skills, or the supposed qualities, necessary to occupy no vertex.

In a fragmented society that needs labels Shirley is never to be found. It connects to nothing and feels isolated in all environments. His most faithful companion is a carafe of expensive alcohol, which keeps him away from everyone and plunged even more into solitude.

Who are your peers? It is not whites who hate him when he is off the stage and deny him the right to experience a suit in a shop. It is not the black people, with whom he does not connect precisely because he does not share the same rich but different culture from his classical piano education, and by wearing expensive, well-cut suits.

For him, approaching both sides requires an instrument of conciliation for music. Hence his tour trying to repeat something similar that Nat King Cole tried a decade earlier. Its purpose is to touch the hearts of the people and to approach the vertices so far apart appealing to the sense of humanity. To perhaps feel less alone. But also help change the society.

The work, however, is slow and gradual. And in the great friendship that Shirley builds with Tony, a man who shows himself to be racist at the beginning of the film, but whose friendship and partnership with Shirley grows throughout the tour, is that his success can make itself present.

"Green Book" relies heavily on the excellent work of Ali and Mortensen. It's not by chance that both have received well-deserved Oscar nominations. The first one proves the excellent moment that is living two years after receiving the supporting statuette for "Moonlight" (2016). His work on the third season of "True Detective" also deserves praise. The second is an actor who is in his third Oscar nomination and almost always does good work.

But beyond that, it is a great story and so necessary to be told in times when racism and prejudice in general against various kinds of peoples, ethnicities, sexual orientations and religions are unfortunately so vivid. They are wounds that still bleed too much when one should work to build a more just and balanced society for all. If each sought to create bridges such as those that united Shirley and Tony, it might be a less lonely, richer and more interesting planet to live for all.

Never Look Away (2018)

An artist in search of identity

[8/10 · 25 January 2019]

Many German films reflect on the period between wars. More specifically on the Second War and Nazi rule. Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck seems to like to reflect on how much the reality of this period influences the work of an artist. At least that's what shows his two German films. If "The Lives of Others" (Das Leben der anderen, 2006), it was about a persecuted theater author who knew how to circumvent the censorship and vigil of the Stasi, the police of the former East Germany, his latest film, "Never look away" (Werke ohne author, in the original), is a bit about an artist in search of his own identity in the midst of a fragile life and Germany itself.

"Never look away" is a brutally beautiful film. It tells the story of the young Kurt Barnert (Tom Schilling), who since childhood shows great talent for painting, but grows with difficulties in Germany about to enter World War II.

It was 1937, Adolf Hitler was a frighteningly idolized leader by the masses while behind the scenes the Nazi government was conducting a terrible policy of purification of the population. Anyone who showed any physical or mental problem was eliminated. The order to the doctors was expressed: the vacancy in the hospitals was only for pure Aryans who could turn Germany into a perfect race.

It is because of this that Kurt finds himself faced with his first tragedy: the loss of his aunt, great supporter of his talent and purely artistic spirit, but supposedly suffering from schizophrenia.

And from that moment the stories of the families of Kurt and Professor Carl Seeband (Sebastian Koch) begin to cross. Seeband is a famous gynecologist who runs the Dresden clinic where her aunt was murdered. Further on, Kurt will eventually join the teacher's family from dating with Ellie (Paula Beer), a young fashion student at the Dresden Academy of Arts.

Each of them finds a way to survive the change of the dictatorial regime. From Nazism to Soviet Socialism, the teacher counts on the luck to guarantee the protection of a general and the resumption of his life of bonanza at the same time that it erases his Nazi past. Kurt, for his part, works hard. The first steps of his art are writing letters in a plate factory. Hence, he gains encouragement to the School of Fine Arts and is gaining jobs thanks to his talent.

Kurt, however, is never satisfied. Von Donnersmarck makes a point of showing that no matter the scheme. When art is not free, it is not genuine. If the Nazis made a point of ridiculing modern art, the Kandinskys, and everything else that was critical, the Soviets were keen to deny artists who did not think of communism and the good of the proletariat. Picasso was the greatest example of what not to follow.

And in the midst of it, Kurt seemed increasingly dissatisfied with his murals displaying the glory of the sickle and hammer worker. Everything was false, everything was unreal, everything was without identity. It was necessary to change to seek the truth. The truth is that he is pursuing so much in the film.

So Kurt and his girlfriend go in search of a whole new world on the west side before the construction of the Berlin Wall. Finding the truth ends up being the password for Kurt to move in and reflect on the purity of the images from old photographs. But until then, there is a long process of learning, deconstruction, destruction, recreation.

Among the merits of Von Donnersmarck's film is to show this painful journey which is that of creation. And how the environment, the environment and the baggage of the artist's life weigh heavily on his work.

It is curious that the director has also chosen to escape the easy path of the Hollywood revelation. Only us as spectators and, in the end, Seeband, we know of the connection of pain and deaths that connects the teacher to Kurt. The main character never knows this, but his work turns out to be, by coincidence, a huge force from these events. Perhaps art has a divine aspect that we will never know to create unimaginable connections.

"Never look away" is a saga very beautiful and deserved two Oscar nominations. It is a film that deserves to be appreciated by the force of this journey of Kurt and by the transformations that the art causes.

Vox Lux (2018)

Nothing makes much sense in "Vox Lux"

[3/10 · 14 January 2019]

Seeing the trailer shortly before its release, "Vox Lux" seemed to me a cross of "Black Swan" (2010) with "A star is born" (2018). The allusion to the first film was clearly related to the fact that it also starred Natalie Portman as an artist. There, a ballerina. Here, a pop star. Already the comparison with the second film came more for the subject of talking about a pop singer.

"Vox Lux", however, talks more about the decay of a star, while "A star is born" is more about the rise of a singer in the midst of the fall of her boyfriend also singer.

Roughly speaking, that's what the movie is about. The difficult thing is to find in Brady Corbet's work a narrative structure beyond this cliché vision. And also a reflection on what the director intended to say with all the elements he gathered in this film.

Lack depth to "Vox Lux". What did Corbet mean by associating attacks and the brutal violence of terrorism and mass murder with the story of a girl who soon became a pop star? Is Celeste the result of violence for being in a school attacked by a boy in the same mold of Columbine? Is that why you want to become a pop star? To bring joy to the fans in the midst of the violence?

Violence is always present in your career. The beginning of the attack on the school, the middle during the attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 2001 and the rebirth when it has to deal with an attack in Croatia that closely resembles that of a Tunisian beach in 2015. And what this all has to do with a young star who turns into a very young mother and becomes an inconsequent adult, drugged and alcoholic, but at the same time a pop diva full of fans?

Corbet is not clear on what he wants with his film. And it is not even intended to leave on the air subjects for the spectator to reflect for itself. In fact, "Vox Lux" is a big mess that does not point in one direction at all.

Meanwhile, Natalie Portman tries to defend her character with claw. We've never seen her so full of trifles. Her Celeste is a caricature of the pop stars, but the way of the sarcasm seems only taken by her and not accompanied by the film, that still counts on a Jude Law rarely apathetic in the paper of the manager of Celeste.

"Vox Lux" still ends with a long take on a show, which reminded me of the embarrassing ending of "Bohemian Rhapsody". If there was any message to give at that moment, whether through the performance or the messages on the big screen, they were not clear. Or even symbolic. It was a big nothing.

The feeling that remains is exactly that void that "Vox Lux" has passed. It could have been better, but it was a waste of time.

The House That Jack Built (2018)

Lars von Trier and his eternal misogyny

[6/10 · 7 January 2019]

Lars von Trier thinks there is no story that does not deserve to be told. Starting from this premise, the Danish director, one of the exponents of the Dogma movement, walks through the most obscure places of the soul in search of the rottenest in humanity. "The house that Jack built", can be seen as a summary of everything that has been his cinema in the last decades. It is also 2h35min of a movie that only he would reaffirm his critics' view of his sickly misogynist behavior and his flirtations with extremism, and remember that Von Trier has already stated "to understand Hitler", which made him expelled from Cannes when the "Melancholy" (2011) was released.

"The house Jack built," can therefore be seen by at least two prisms. Let's start with the first one.

Von Trier's new film can be seen as an exercise in evil without consequences. In the story, Matt Dillon is Jack, an engineer with ambitions to be an architect who dreams of building a house so perfect that it always seems impossible to build it. But Jack is also a serial killer, who in 12 years killed more than 60 people without ever being caught by the police.

Throughout the film, Jack is developing a theory in a conversation with an entity called Verge (Bruno Ganz) about how artistic his life of crime is. He argues that art comes from pain and evil as Verge understands art as the fruit of love. This dialogue of oppositions is mapping the whole film to each increasingly heinous act of Jack, always accompanied by the attentive but placid look of Verge, a character that only in the end we understand what the role is. And it is curious that this character was made by the same actor who played Hitler in "Der Untergang" (2004). Hard to believe it was a casual choice.

With each murder of Jack, Von Trier goes on to illustrate how evil is banal and how desperate each one is so lonely and finds no echo and no solidarity. He is the Lord Sophistication and develops perfect crimes as long as the population inoperative around and the slowness of the authorities.

At the same time, Von Trier develops the thesis that the serial killer is an individual who is born with evil in him and always leaves clues to every crime. For he wants to be found, discovered. There is a vanity in this fight of cat and mouse, because the killer at some point wants to be discovered to have his "work of art" finally disclosed and gaining public and notoriety.

At the same time, the director exposes that we, as spectators, worship these stories and adulate murderers. It is when the director exposes the images of dictators and mass murderers like Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin.

The film, however, ends up dripping in the end by a long biblical strand that seemed to disagree somewhat with the initial proposal. Had he kept the subtlety of the conversations between Jack and Verge with a less long ending, he would have something better to offer.

But it is impossible to see "The house Jack built" on another prism. A of von Trier's misogyny. In the film, Jack says he murdered all kinds of people, but it's the story of six women he decides to tell Verge, the ones who give him some pleasure. One of them, he considers his great work of art, when he treats a mother and his two small children as a hunt and drops them in a field just to play with them. But it is the woman he decides to torture psychologically before offering her a tragic end.

Von Trier is a well-known torturer of women and seems to have no problem in exposing this. In a passage of the film, when Jack is about to kill Simple (Riley Keough), name that by itself is a great aggression and reductionism to the woman that he said until liking, the director comes to expose a subtext in the script speaking of the injustice that is always blame men for everything, while women are always victims. In times complaints of harassment and a necessary call to female protagonism, Von Trier comes to tell us that he does not care about this. So that does not expose a need to be controversial only by the controversy in something that adds nothing to the film?

Simple is verbally assaulted, humiliated and has the most dreadful and sadistic of deaths. And that reverberates during the film, because Jack turns one of his breasts into a wallet.

But as I said, von Trier is a well-known torturer of women in the movies. Nicole Kidman is humiliated beyond the limit in "Dogville" (2003), causing a huge nuisance. Chalotte Gainsbourg is also taken beyond all boundaries in "Antichrist" (2009) and in the two volumes of "Nymphomaniac" (2013). Björk is also humiliated in "Dancing in the Dark" (2000). The Icelandic singer, even, had problems of relationship with the director. And in "The House Jack Built," Von Trier exposes his women to the utmost of pain and horror. Not just with Simple or one of the nameless women, but also with the first victim (Uma Thurman), murdered with a monkey blow while the director makes a point of exposing the huge hole in the head of the character caused by the car part.

Some might say, and it is a valid argument, that it is all the art of Von Trier. That the actresses keep bumping into working with him and in the case of Charlotte, they make even more than one movie. But when it comes to stop being something punctual to become a brand, and an uncomfortable brand, as it is not a style trait, but a hate speech imputed in their work, becomes a problem.

Thus, "The House Jack Built" does not add anything too new to Von Trier's biopic, which continues releasing its Dogma-style sparks to film, and making their stories follow the same narrative looping of earlier works. Interesting is Dilon's work in the leading role. If there's a spark of value in the film, it's in the sadistic-boring look he set for his Jack and the benefit he had from the ironies of the text to use in his character. But still, "The house Jack built" is far from the best works of Von Trier.

The Kindergarten Teacher (2018)

When art comes up against dilettantism

[7/10 · 7 January 2019]

Many definitions have already been written about art. In general, the artistic making is divided between those who advocate by natural talent the margins of a divine gift and those who affirm the need of sweat to lapse talent. "The kindergarten teacher" is a story of frustration and a constant struggle against the feeling of emptiness and inoperability for being nothing of what was wanted. And what every aspiring art most desires is recognition of his talent and work.

Lisa Spinelli (Maggie Gyllenhall) does not have both. Her poems are as mediocre as the life she thinks she is. She is a kindergarten teacher with a typically bourgeois family who leads a life that, for her, is suffocatingly simple. Lisa is very good as a teacher and mother, but the frustration of her gaze at every crooked scrawl in the notebook proves that she is not satisfied with the life she takes.

The lessons of a nocturnal course of poetry serve to stir the artist inside her and, perhaps, to awaken her natural vein from time to time. How frustrating it is for her to understand the realization of her teacher, Simon (Gael Garcia Bernal), that there is an abyss between the artist and the dilettante, the connoisseur of art.

Lisa is a dilettante. Artist is his young student, six or seven years old. Jimmy Roy (Parker Sevak) looks like a "Paterson" (2016) before he becomes an adult. He has a natural talent for making poetry with the depth that a child would rarely achieve. And how incredible is the performance of the young Parker, who declaims the deep texts with innocence and childish eyes.

Jimmy is a rare talent Lisa wants to lapse, show the world. The problem is that she puts her frustrations to Jimmy's service, rather than making him develop naturally. Thus, it cannibalizes it while getting lost in lies until the melancholy outcome of this teacher who could not only encourage her student correctly, because she wanted to project herself on him and see someone from her orbit be big and not mediocre as she thinks she and her family are.

Much of the strength of "The kindergarten teacher" is in Maggie's work. It is one of his best performances. She transposes through every pore of her body the frustration and nonconformity of being Lisa, the mere teacher of children. The blank stare at each rejected poem and seen as mediocre contrasts with the gleam of his eyes as he contemplates every poem by Jimmy. The child is your world. Trouble is, nothing in her world belongs to her. Which causes a spiral of pain and annoyance almost unbearable for her.

"The kindergarten teacher" is based on an original Israeli film of 2014. I have no basis for comparison, but it is possible to say that the work of director Sara Colangelo is a pleasant and uncomfortable experience on the frustration of being a dilettante and nothing more of this. It hurts. It must hurt even more to those who do not live well with it.

The Old Man & the Gun (2018)

The Redford Swan Singing

[7/10 · 7 January 2019]

A few months ago Robert Redford announced that he would be retiring. His last film as an actor would be "The old man & the gun", in which the 82-year-old actor plays the true story of bank robber Forrest Tucker.

The role of Tucker, who lived a lifetime of crimes and escaped from 17 prisons until his death in 2004, is the swan song of an actor who has always been known for his class and haughtiness combined with the well-known blue eyes that stamped the screens of cinemas for more than five decades.

"The old man & the gun" is a delightful accompanying and tailor made film for Redford to shine. Director David Lowery takes advantage of all the subtleties, minimalism and half-smile of Redford to tell an incredible story with a classic style of film that emulates the great films of the 70's.

Redford is impeccable and deserved an Oscar nomination, award, incidentally, that he only won once as director for "Ordinary people" (1980). He was also nominated as an actor for "The Sting" (1974), and as director and for the film "Quiz Show" (1994).

Tucker's story is so unlikely that it's even hard to believe it was real. He stole more than a hundred banks in his crime career. All without a single shot - some say that he even fired his gun - and always using the same approach. Being gentleman and smiling and calming the impassive victims before his old features and his term impeccably cut.

Redford brilliantly embodies this seductive type who uses so well the few words he utters in the same way that he has an irresistible art for robbing banks. The life of crime was the greatest pleasure for Tucker, who apparently only felt free in the eternal cat-and-mouse fight with the police. So much so that he could not settle down in the quiet life with his third wife, Jewel (Sissy Spacek).

Lowery also enjoys the film to pay homage to Redford. In illustrating Tucker's different escape scenes, the director uses scenes from the actor's old movies in a brilliant move, as well as a handsome research piece.

The success of the film, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination for actor, may have made Redford rethink his retirement. At least that's what the director says. But if this was even his last work as an actor, what a beautiful final chapter had his biopic.

BlacKkKlansman (2018)

Spike Lee in great shape

[9/10 · 26 December 2018]

One of the best Spike Lee movies. It's incredible that this story really happened. And interesting is Spike Lee's connection between the past and the contemporary, bridging the events of those years with the recent manifestations

Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

Not so magical

[6/10 · 26 December 2018]

The magic of Mary Poppins remains intact in the style that Emily Blunt imposed the character, but the film is too silly and the songs are not as striking as those of the original film

Aquaman (2018)

Aquaman, another flop of DC

[5/10 · 24 December 2018]

Marvel x DC is the rivalry of this century. Clearly, though, Marvel has always taken a lot of advantage in this confrontation. Simply because their adaptations are better, better done, and especially, have infinitely better scripts.

It's amazing that at a time when technology is so advanced as to create amazing scenarios and great underwater scenes, perhaps what "Aquaman" does best, DC can not get someone decent to write a story that is minimal enough evoke Freudian problems with father or mother, and embarrassing situations. The scripts are the greatest Achilles heel of DC productions. If "Batman vs Superman" (2016) had that embarrassing scene of the two heroes resolving a fight just because they discovered that they had the same name of the mother, in "Aquaman" we were presented to the monster alone and with depression. Alone and isolated from the world in the depths of the endless sea, Karathen warmed his heart just because Arthur (Jason Momoa) talked to him.

"Ohh, you talked to me. How beautiful. In a thousand years, no one has ever done that. Can take the trident for you".

This is just an example of how "Aquaman" is flopped, although it had great potential.

Overall, the tacky aesthetics established by Zack Snyder also tired. And let's face it, never worked very well in the DC film series. The best works in this sense were precisely the "300" (2006) and the "Watchmen" (2009), perhaps one of the best films based on comics.

Joining this to the moments worthy of a cinema that is not practiced more - what was that kiss of the Aquaman in the princess Meira (Amber Heard) in the middle of the war? - there is very little left to praise about the film.

But let's try a few moments. For example, the underwater scenes are actually very good and well made. The special effects idem. The whole fight in Sicily is also a high point. All the aesthetics and design of Atlantis, a civilization extremely advanced in relation to the human, have also been very well made, although sometimes Atlantis looks like a scrap of "Avatar" (2009) with "Carbono Alterado" (2018) .

On the other hand, it is too tiring Aquaman's quest for such a magic trident. Was it even necessary to show in detail and with generous time all the peoples of the seven seas? If they were more restrained, it would save at least half an hour of film. And there was still the parallel plot of the Manta (Yahia Abdul-Mateen II), a surface villain who gave a hook for a second movie.

Speaking of villains, King Orm (Patrick Wilson) is an embarrassment that only DC gives us. He has tantrums because he has a half-blooded half-brother, wants to start a war with the surface based on a supposedly nasty assault. In addition to becoming the Lord of the Oceans, what ambitions are Orm wanting to start a war with the surface? Want to be the lord of the planet? After all, you can not believe that men are polluting the planet and you have to act before it's too late. And all part of an anger of the half brother, whom he blames for the death of his mother, in short, everything very badly counted.

Speaking of the relationship of Atlanna (Nicole Kidman) with her children, another DC problem arises. Lack of care with what we call transmedia storytelling. This is another moment in which Marvel is giving a bath in the rival. During the film, Princess Meira quotes that the Aquaman needs to reclaim the throne or the brother will initiate a war. And it recalls its importance in defeating Stepenwolf, thus implying that the film follows the events of the "Justice League". So far so good. The problem is that in "Aquaman," Arthur says that he never treads on Atlantis because of what the people did to his mother. Only that of stepped there in "Justice League" to speak and fight Steppenwolf.

In addition, in "Aquaman", it is clear the love and devotion of Arthur for the mother since always. The problem is that in "Justice League" he speaks of Atlanna with rancor, as if he had been abandoned ("Your queen left me at the door of my father's house"). But in "Aquaman," it is shown that both had a coexistence in Arthur's childhood and the clear love between them, in addition to the devotion that has lasted forever. That is, the DC multiverse has holes and contradictions. And it is not tied tightly. And this is further evidenced by the lack of planning for the next steps.

James Wan did not deliver the Aquaman to his full potential, but Jason Momoa looked very well in the lead role. It looked like it was the right choice, though the alpha male bombed look was very different from the original Aquaman.

But DC still owes a string of great movies in its new phase. The only one that deserves all the praise remains "Wonder Woman" (2009).

Roma (2018)

The strength of two women

[8/10 · 24 December 2018]

At first glance, "Roma" looks like an endless 2h15min movie where nothing happens. But it is in the drama of life that lies the strength of the new film by Alfonso Cuaron.

In the one-year history of the life of a middle-class Mexican family, Cuarón was able to grasp and understand that the essence of everything is in the details. She is in the expansive pain of Sofia (Marina de Tavira), whose husband changed her by the lover leaving her alone to take care of the four children. Or she is in the silent pain of Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a young housekeeper who finds herself involved in a problem when she becomes pregnant with a man who has just used her.

The journey of love, care, pain and respect unites Sofia and Cleo, mistress and maid, worlds so different, fragments of their families that unite to maintain sanity while following the course of this often painful walk that we know as life.

From the beginning Cuarón breaks the signs of this story to show the union of two women so different that they try, in a certain way, to find forces in each other as they deal with the absence and inoperability of their garbage men who left behind.

"You're always alone," Sofia warned, at a gutter moment when she got home drunk and crashed the huge car across the walls of the narrow garage of the family home. A clear contrast to her husband's caring at the same time he did not show the same zeal with his own family.

In a time of great success in the work of Elena Ferrante, the tetralogy that begins to come alive with the HBO series and tells a story of empathy and rivalry between two friends, "Roma" is also a story of two women so different they need support to maintain sanity. Although in this work there are not moments of rivalry, but the pain of each one that crosses the other and that empathizes on both sides.

When it is expected that the film is going to show the difficulties of the maid in the face of the lack of compassion of the bosses, Cuarón shows that its film will go by another slope. It is in the reception of the mistress in front of the employee who is afraid of losing her job when she discovers that she is pregnant, which strengthens the relationship of these two women.

Cleo's journey, however, is nevertheless the most interesting. As much as she feels embedded in that family, that is never her family. When you walk through the house, your steps are marked, your eyes are self-guarded, your discomfort is evident, because your home is not your home. She just feels comfortable with her sister.

Maybe that's why she tried to find a love like her sister. And the association with Fermin (Jorge Antônio Guerreiro) was the worst possible, as he turns out to be someone who is not trustworthy in every respect.

Cleo also finds herself in a deep discomfort with her pregnancy. She does not like it, guilt only consumes it. And only the sea cleanses her soul to the point of finally letting it out, in the midst of tears, how unwanted that son was.

"Roma" has a huge force, but it's not an easy movie. There are many slow scenes where nothing but life happens. But there is a lot of beauty in Cuarón's work. And in this journey of life, with different turning points, deep marks and the need for resignifications is that "Roma" is so great.

The Image Book (2018)

Godard's Minimalism and Reflections

[7/10 · 24 December 2018]

For years Jean-Luc Godard has been reducing his cinema to increasingly symbolic and minimalist layers. If in the 70s and 80s, his work already called attention to an "absence of script", which in fact was a text with broad lines that played for the improvisation on the scene in the following decades until the work of the actors began to be kept to a minimum.

His films today are like collages of history and reflections on the subjects to which he have more interest: history and cinema. And the parallelism that one has with the other.

The prolific director's newest work, "The Image Book" is the apex of his cinema of symbolism and collage. There are no actors. At most Godard's cavernous voice, today with 88, narrating the film is making reflections on the twentieth century, the new century, humanity, society, and, of course, the cinema.

For Godard, cinema is the book of images of the twentieth century. Just as the Bible, the Koran and other religious texts are the basis for life in society and tell the story within their respective religions, cinema is the documentation of the history of modernity and contemporaneity.

Through "The Image Book" Godard invites us to reflect on history. And it builds a journey through the twentieth century in an incessant collage of images and sounds that permeate the history of art in its most different forms. All divided into five acts, as five are the fingers of the hands, as five are the senses. Five is a number that runs through the entire film, as well as the metaphor around the hands and their symbolic meanings in each attitude.

It is through this metaphor of the hands that Godard draws attention to a history constructed by the signs of body language. They are the hands used for love, but they also bring disappointment in the first act, the hands used for the violence of the second act or the hands that legitimize the use of force by the spirit of the laws of the fourth act.

The first part of the film is a set of reflections of what Godard had already somehow talked about in other works like "Film Socialism" (2010) or "Forever Mozart" (1996).

The last part is that it brings a Godard with a look at the Middle East rarely, or perhaps never before, shown so deeply. From a play on words stating that "Sheherazade would have told a different story in 1001 days," and not nights like the traditional story, Godard displays the bankruptcy of the west's gaze over the east.

For him, we see the Orient as a unique cultural mass, and not as if each country had its own culture and worldview. In the same way that we look to the east as the mirror of what we are not. And this is reflected in the way the cinema portrays the Orient. It is when the hands arise in delicate movements, painted with symbols that we do not understand or hold tightly the Koran in his prayer.

In a more controversial moment, Godard supports the bomb. Appeals to the positive side of the bomb. The bomb, he sees, is the revolution as it once was in Europe. It is the reaction of the oppressed. It is difficult to support this in times when Europe suffers so much from terrorist attacks. But it is possible to understand Godard's side by trying to show this as reaction rather than action. Hence the parallel with revolutionary movements.

Godard is a genius. Often misunderstood, often seen as annoying and difficult to understand. But his film remains alive, thought-provoking and pleasurable for those who accept the challenge of trying to decipher it with each job.

Robin Hood (2018)

A Robin Hood to Forget

[2/10 · 11 December 2018]

From time to time Hollywood likes to revisit the legends of medieval England. The problem is that the new readings, in an attempt to give an original vision to these legends, end up risking to create some aberrations. A movement that comes back and a half appears is to create the "movie of origin". Motivation is: the main story you already know. Now you will discover how the character has become what he is.

It was so with King Arthur, who generated an embarrassing film of Guy Ritchie, now it's with Robin Hood. "Robin Hood - the origin," aims to expose "the truth behind the myth," which is somewhat surreal, or even anachronistic, since we never knew if Robin of Loxley actually existed, as well as the legend that he stole from the rich to give to the poor. In fact, Robin is merely a character in English folklore.

The exit given to create this source is so embarrassing that the desire one has is to drop the film with little more than half an hour of projection. Now starring Taron Egerton, the Eggsy of the "Kingsman" movie series, Robin is a bon vivant Lord of Nottingham until he falls madly in love with Marian (Eve Hawson), no longer a lady but a thief he discovers trying to steal one of his horses.

But life can go round and one day Robin is recruited to become a crusader and fight in Arabia, the military service of the time. After four years in which he shows all his "bravery" and "nobility of spirit" culminating in the attempt to save the life of the son of the Moor John (Jamie Foxx), Robin returns home, where he discovers that he lost wealth, confiscated by Sheriff of Nottingham, and the woman, now married to a plebeian of political ambitions named Will (Jamie Dorner).

What follows is a blend of what we know, namely, Loxley becoming the thief Hood, with hints of a history of political corruption, conspiracies with the Church, interests of wealth with an unfounded war, and the people more and more poor and dying in mines while the rich are getting richer. At last it seems that it was necessary to "update" the story of Robin Hood drawing parallels with contemporary life.

The question that remains is: why? Why do that? Maybe for an attempt to get a new audience. But what would lead audiences to be interested in a version of a story that does not convince, with embarrassing performances - Ben Mendelsohn's sheriff of Nottingham and Eve's Marian are sad and erased - a terrifyingly bad script and even action scenes , which should be the high point of this type of film when nothing else works, of questionable quality. Only one or two can be considered close to good.

The origin of Robin Hood is a failure as a film, but the outcome of the journey is at the point where we know it well. Robin and his group hiding in Sherwood Forest, a new sheriff of Nottingham who knows him well and stole his wife (let's not comment on Dormer's bizarre scene with Eve and the whole course of pathetic jealousy) and the prospect of a second film. Even a new franchise.

Robin Hood, however, will need to improve his speech and his adventures too much to have a life a little further. Director Otto Bathurst's work was far below criticism.

Beautiful Boy (I) (2018)

Fathers and sons

[8/10 · 8 December 2018]

Perhaps because he´s coming from a more solid career in comedy films and even out of gender bias, we rarely realize how good actor Steve Carell is. His recent choices, however, only serve to reinforce the talent of the "40 Year Old Virgin" (2005) as a dramatic actor. "Foxcatcher" (2014) and especially "The Big Short" (2015) already exhibited its versatility. And when he plunged into dramas like "Last Flag Flying" (2017) and the most recent "Beautiful Boy" (2018), Carell further justified the choices made by different directors for their work.

There are some similarities between these two more recent films. "Last Flag Flying" is the story of a father who loses his son in the Iraq war and only wants to bury him while he lives his mourning alongside fellow friends of the Vietnam War. "Beautiful Boy" is the story of a father, a family, but very focused on this father, who deals with his son's drug addiction. In both Carell's work is accurate, touching and with the safety of veteran experienced dramatic actors.

His David Sheff is one of the strengths of "Beautiful Boy." The other is the work of his colleague Timothee Chalamet. At just 23 years old, the actor has been consolidating himself as a strong name in cinema with ever better performances. Chalamet had already drawn attention in the drama "Call Me by Your Name" (2017), when it was the young Elio, who fell in love with an American writer, his first love. In "Beautiful Boy" he brings the necessary dramatic charge to Nic's story and does not fall into the exaggeration of the daydreams of madness by the use of drugs so frequent in films reporting this type of problem.

Nic's pain is absurdly palpable. Your desperation to get out of it too. Depression interspersed with moments of false joy, for it was known how much Nic suffered from within, are alive in Chalamet's eyes.

"Beautiful Boy" is a hard movie to watch. A real story about a family that had everything to be perfect and is dredged by the drug problem. Especially the use of methamphetamine. But at the same time it is of a unique beauty, or perhaps difficult to describe by showing this strength of the relationship between father and son. An almost unbreakable force even when David sees the need to leave the scene to recover. And how beautiful Carell's work is by carrying all these nuances with her.

And at this point it is necessary to speak of another fundamental question in the construction of this story. The edition of the film of Felix van Groeningen, the same director of "Alabama Monroe" (2012). The idea of building a fragmentary history with bits of past and present mixing together was risky, could cause confusion, but it was very well done. In her, we gradually understood that relationship of love between father and son, the way Nic immersed himself in drugs, moved away from his father, his mistakes, his comings and goings, the bottom of the pit. A structure that brought to the film moments of pure poetry.

"Beautiful Boy" speaks of a very serious subject, the chemical dependency, but without falling into false moralisms. On the other hand, it is also a movie about the force of love. The love of a father for his son, for a whole family for this son and for never giving up. Even when everything seems lost. And it still has an excellent soundtrack.

Suspiria (I) (2018)

Dancing with the devil

[5/10 · 7 December 2018]

It is inevitable to get caught up in the ways of comparison when you see the remake of a movie from the past. Italian director Luca Guadagnino set himself a challenge by plunging into the darkness of "Suspiria," but without making a frame-by-frame copy of the 1977 work of the Italian Dario Argento. Guadagnino preferred to rephrase the original story and recreate the trajectory of dancer Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson today and Jessica Harper in the original film) from other premises and with a different outcome for its protagonist. What was a classic, normal ending in the 70s, turned into a turnaround in the hands of Guadagnino.

However, the result of the work as a whole left something to be desired. If the original work grew in layers under psychological terror until its end culminated by a revelation, in the remake of the Italian director, the premise of the horror is established from the beginning, but so many cards are thrown on the table, right up to the reflections on the politics and Germany of the 70's, that the film is lost in a tangle of concepts without delving into anything.

Guadagnino's "Suspiria" also decided to relinquish the benefit of the initial doubt by revealing right away that there was something about witchcraft and the presence of a Helena Marko, that original witch whose story is told in the first film and in this one one never incurs its origins. On the contrary, new elements emerge, such as the presence of a sort of five upper mothers around Marko, entitled to Madame Blanc, played by Tilda Swinton, who feeds a rivalry with the original witch on the macabre or not school dance.

Marko is the witch who demands sacrifices, Blanc is the one who understands magic as an extension of art. Not that they do not sail through the waters of horror, but the art of dance taught at the academy still seems to speak louder to Blanc, who nurtures a sympathy, to an empathy for the voracity, shocking savagery and surrender that Suzy imposes upon herself when she dances.

And in that the film is lost. Even the setting of the story does not seem to have any connection. What Berlin divided by the wall in 1977 has in relation to the events of the witches? What parallels is it possible to draw from the policy and the Baader-Menhoff attacks? Is Germany at that time a time when horror was seen on every corner while witches fed on the fear of who they captured? It did not seem to me to make any sense to exchange the original Freiburg for this dark, icy Berlin.

And there is the question of messages. The irreplaceable mother, the word of freedom on the wall in front of the dance school. Everything seems to have some connection, but the links are fragile. Just as the role of the psychologist Josef Klemperer (also lived by Tilda Swinton) seems almost useless.

Faced with the holes and pallor of the film, "Suspiria" holds only three really good scenes. The first one is Suzy's dance that reflects on the horror lived by Olga (Elena Fokina) in the mirror room. It's brutal, it's terrifying, and the ending is worthy of the best exorcism / witchcraft films. The second is the scene of the presentation of the musical "Volks", a choreography almost perfect, but at the same time so tense, breathtaking and deep terror that perhaps is the best moment of the film. The third is the final turn of the film, its macabre and enduring ritual.

It is praiseworthy that Guadagnino ventured into a completely different genre immediately after the resounding success of "Call Me by Your Name" (2017), which won an Academy Award for Adapted Screenplay. But the result fell short. "Suspiria" delivers the weapons early on, does not perfectly fulfill the function of imposing the horror, gets lost in history and appears very pale for a film that had much potential taking into account what the technology of 2018 could compared to that of 1977.

In the end, what is most beautiful is the soundtrack composed by Thom Yorke, Radiohead. A job that deserved a better movie.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)

The imminent war in Fantastic Beasts

[6/10 · 22 November 2018]

If there is anything interesting to note about what is being built with the saga of "Fantastic Beasts" is the genealogy of the Harry Potter story and all that involves the events we saw in seven books and eight films whose successes gave JK Rowling the power to do what she wants. Among them, writing the screenplay based on what would have happened before Potter got to Hogwarts.

The second installment of the new franchise, "The Crimes of Grindelwald," begins to swallow the Potter story and bring the time line further separating the events of the future already reported with those of the past yet to be known.

And David Yates knew how to lead a little better story than in the first film. Rowling's veteran collaborator - he directed half of the Potter films - Yates gave the second film tones of doubt and uncertainty, and let the fears and insecurities of the characters speak louder in the story. What may be related to a Europe in a period between wars. The film takes place in 1927, when the continent is still rebuilding at the same time as there was the fear of a new war that would actually begin 12 years later.

Moving into the magical world of Rowling, the division is even more glaring, as Grindelwald escapes from prison and begins to gather a series of wizards unhappy with the life they lead, hidden from humans, living in the shadows, unable to use their powers or even to marry someone who is not a witch. Many want to be the dominant species on the planet. Natural evolution. And Grindelwald's speech, lived by a Johnny Depp in a slightly more accurate tone, without exaggerations and eccentricities of his later works, is highly seductive and gregarious for those who feel excluded and oppressed by the ministry of Magic and its aurores. Depp's scene in Père Lachaise's cemetery is one of the best in the film.

The point of the story is one. It is J.K. Rowling's motto at this point: "You have to choose a side." It's what Theseus (Callum Turner) tells Brother Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) at the beginning. Throughout the film, each one is choosing its side and regrouping its armies in the war that seems imminent. Scamander, who, in theory, has no interest in choosing sides, but only wants to take care of his creatures, gives his answer only at the end, although we always knew what it would be. He is the hero and has been proving much more than an expert on exotic animals, but a powerful and shrewd wizard. At the same time he has a shyness and the difficulty of relating to humans in general. Maybe that's why the person with whom he feels more comfortable is another strange being in the magical world, the human Jacob (Dan Fogler), whose participation in the film, however, borders the nullity.

Another interesting point of this second work is to know a little more of the past of one of the most beloved characters of Harry Potter fans. Alvo Dumbledore, who was very well into Jude Law's hands. Better than Michael Gambon ever was. Incidentally, in a general way, an advantage of this still beginner franchise of "Fantastic Beasts" over that of "Harry Potter" is the quality of its actors. Many of them are very good and occupy leading positions. And this was a problem in the previous franchise, because some actors, especially the protagonist, were suffering.

But back to Dumbledore, in "The Crimes of Grindelwald" we know of the teacher's once solid alliance with his former friend. Something well documented in the books of the Potter saga, we see how Professor Dumbledore was, always loved in the school of magic, and we know a little more about this honorable character, the eternally pacifist arm of the relation between the wizards and the defense of a peaceful coexistence between witches and humans. Dumbledore is the education bias in Rowling's world. It is the way out of education and knowledge that brings prosperity, tolerance and empathy. At least that's what Dumbledore believes. And he sees in Scamander the same spirit detached from power, at the same time curious to participate in the events and to seek justice, which he would see in Harry Potter. Certainly pure spirits who do not crave the power awaken in Dumbledore a father figure and the need to welcome these souls he foresees as vectors of change in the history of humans and magicians.

Therefore, we must not deceive ourselves. What J.K. Rowling is trying to do with "Fantastic Beasts" is to reproduce the same "Harry Potter" narrative. Scamander, as we have seen, is the counterpart to the wizard protagonist of the previous story. Grindelwald, it's Voldemort's turn. Jacob is the idiot friend doing the times of Ron Weasley, while Tina is Hermione of the time. Dumbledore is himself younger, while Queenie is a bit like Gina Weasley.

In comparison to the first film, which seemed to me too long and with little relevant content, the story advances considerably in "The crimes of Grindelwald". Which is a plus point. There are also some shadowy and unnecessary elements in the trajectory and holes already common in Rowling's work. But I understand that the interest in accompanying the main narrative still prevails.

And what remains is the mystery about Creedance (Ezra Miller). What is your real past? Where does it really come from? The movie plays some cards in the air, but you can not trust any of them. At least for now, was Grindelwald right? Or is there more to Creedance than we need to know? What remains, however, is the knowledge that he is one of the most powerful wizards to emerge. And that war, whether between humans or between wizards, is imminent.