It starts out as a social-background version of Stephen King's "Christine," but soon becomes another cinematic instrument for talking about populism, corrupt politics and the climate threat. It is such an ambitious film from the thematic point of view, it wants to tell so many things that it ends up being exhausted in a proposal that does not focus on anything specifically. And it resolved without resolution, in a clumsy and incomplete way.
5 Reviews
Promissing beginning hides a quite bad chaotic film
guisreis16 November 2021
The film begins well, seeming promising, but afterwards it shows lack of focus, becoming chaotic. Afterwards, it turns silly and campy, and finally it continues as just a boring cliché with mostly uninspired acting (but still a messy script). Even the well-intentioned discussion on family organic farming seems out of place. This film is definitely not Christine. On what concerns to the hotest scene, it is not 1983 Brazilian movie Black Beetle (Fuscão Preto, Xuxa Meneghel's second best film) either.
Killer cars
BandSAboutMovies29 September 2021
Warning: Spoilers
Imagine Christine with political messages. Yes, in King Car, Uno - a taxi company owner's son - is able to speak to cars - because he was born in the back of a taxi - and has become close friends with the vehicle that saved him from a traffic accident as a young child at the cost of his mother's life.
Uno gives up on cars from that point on, going to college to study ecology until a new law that bans cars over 15 years old from the roads destroys his father's business. He's never been close with his dad, but his strange Uncle Ze - the reason behind an argument that led to his mother driving into that fatal accident - harnesses Uno's ability to speak to the rusted-out autos.
Now, Uno is listening to the old cars, hearing their complaints of no longer being allowed on the roads. And he's found the car that was his friend from childhood and transformed it into something called King Car.
But King Car may have ideas of its own. And this might be the end of humanity.
The technology that Uno and Ze have invented allows lower-income drivers to remain on the road. Yet why has Uno turned his back on ecology and embraced the machine?
There's a lot jammed into the trunk of this film, as if it were packing for a weekend trip and decided that it needed every single suitcase it only stuffed beyond overflowing. There are mechanics who have become possessed and move in synchronized dances. A car spouting rallying cries and fiery speeches within an assembly line. A man who has slowly become more and more part of the machine, running up a hill like an ape seeking a bone. A woman who yearns to make love to King Car. And plenty of socio-philosophical messaging.
Renata Pinheiro - who co-wrote King Car with Sergio Oliveira and Leo Pyrata - has some great ideas in this film that don't always pay off. You do have to appreciate the audacity, however. There's promise here, however, despite the need for more focus.
Uno gives up on cars from that point on, going to college to study ecology until a new law that bans cars over 15 years old from the roads destroys his father's business. He's never been close with his dad, but his strange Uncle Ze - the reason behind an argument that led to his mother driving into that fatal accident - harnesses Uno's ability to speak to the rusted-out autos.
Now, Uno is listening to the old cars, hearing their complaints of no longer being allowed on the roads. And he's found the car that was his friend from childhood and transformed it into something called King Car.
But King Car may have ideas of its own. And this might be the end of humanity.
The technology that Uno and Ze have invented allows lower-income drivers to remain on the road. Yet why has Uno turned his back on ecology and embraced the machine?
There's a lot jammed into the trunk of this film, as if it were packing for a weekend trip and decided that it needed every single suitcase it only stuffed beyond overflowing. There are mechanics who have become possessed and move in synchronized dances. A car spouting rallying cries and fiery speeches within an assembly line. A man who has slowly become more and more part of the machine, running up a hill like an ape seeking a bone. A woman who yearns to make love to King Car. And plenty of socio-philosophical messaging.
Renata Pinheiro - who co-wrote King Car with Sergio Oliveira and Leo Pyrata - has some great ideas in this film that don't always pay off. You do have to appreciate the audacity, however. There's promise here, however, despite the need for more focus.
Novo-Cinema Novo Meets Post-Nouvelle Vague
EdgarST23 April 2022
Imagine Elliot Silverstein's 1977 "The Car", scripted by a young Glauber Rocha and directed by Jean-Luc Godard in his prime. You will have the same political agenda, the same audiovisual madness, the same slogans turned into dialogue, the same Brechtian performances by non-professionals, and the same script with unconnected scenes, although this one does have a defined structure, and wham!, you have «Carro Rei», a science-fiction pop comedy, with its political primer not at all hidden.
This is definitely a movie for the times of Bolsonaro (or in reaction against his government), but it evokes again the aesthetics of the "cinema novo" and "nouvelle vague", two movements that were crucial in the 1960s for the evolution of film grammar and syntax all over the world (except, I am afraid, Los Angeles).
It tells the story of Uno, an adolescent mulatto (handsome Luciano Pedro Jr.), who can communicate with cars since childhood, and who refuses to follow his father's taxi business and begins to study the laws and methods of agro-industry. When the tycoons of power establish a law that prohibits the circulation of vehicles older than 15 years, the people go rebel.
There is also a crazy uncle who creates "Carro Rei", the monster of the movie (which talks, unlike "The Car", "Christine", or "Duel"!), and becomes a monster himself, played by Matheus Nachtergaele (in a Denis Lavant performance), an Argentine woman out of Cronenberg's "Crash" who has a sexual thing with cars, the followers of Carro Rei getting high with phosphorous drinks, a war between students of agriculture and followers of Carro Rei, and "ideological dialogues" in the Godard's and Rocha's tradition that made me laugh.
Go, see it, and bring your own Coke.
This is definitely a movie for the times of Bolsonaro (or in reaction against his government), but it evokes again the aesthetics of the "cinema novo" and "nouvelle vague", two movements that were crucial in the 1960s for the evolution of film grammar and syntax all over the world (except, I am afraid, Los Angeles).
It tells the story of Uno, an adolescent mulatto (handsome Luciano Pedro Jr.), who can communicate with cars since childhood, and who refuses to follow his father's taxi business and begins to study the laws and methods of agro-industry. When the tycoons of power establish a law that prohibits the circulation of vehicles older than 15 years, the people go rebel.
There is also a crazy uncle who creates "Carro Rei", the monster of the movie (which talks, unlike "The Car", "Christine", or "Duel"!), and becomes a monster himself, played by Matheus Nachtergaele (in a Denis Lavant performance), an Argentine woman out of Cronenberg's "Crash" who has a sexual thing with cars, the followers of Carro Rei getting high with phosphorous drinks, a war between students of agriculture and followers of Carro Rei, and "ideological dialogues" in the Godard's and Rocha's tradition that made me laugh.
Go, see it, and bring your own Coke.
Car King.
morrison-dylan-fan21 March 2022
Warning: Spoilers
After signing up to WOW Film Festival,I was pleased to learn about a number of live online Q&A's taking place for some of the titles being streamed, which led to me jumping into a car and driving to the first one.
View on the film:
Revealing in the detailed Q&A after the screening/ stream the long process that went into finding the right voice for the car,co-writer (with Leo Pyrata and Sergio Oliveira) / director Renata Pinheiro closely works with composer DJ Dolores and sound designer Guile Martins in building an incredibly layered, complex soundtrack for the film, via Dolores Techno and Soul score being sliced open with futuristic sound effects, and the electronically filtered psychopathic voice of the car rumbling under the bonnet.
Going behind the scenes in the Q&A on the extremely tight budget the title was made on, director Pinheiro & cinematographer Fernando Lockett impressively put every penny spent up on screen, with the groovy Sci-Fi atmosphere dripping down the neon lights that flood the screen, landing on kitsch gory Horror set-pieces, (and a sizzling seduction number on top of the car) and smooth panning shots over the lush green coloured town, whose environmental balance is being driven off the road.
Introducing Uno being born in the back of a car (which creates a bond that gives him the ability to talk to verticals), the writers display an irresistible level of ambition, which drives full throttle between sweet coming of age Sci-Fi of Uno with the car, tasty Horror sequences of the car taking down brain down idiots, and an overarching, surprisingly more serious exploration about the conflict between protecting nature and continued industrialization, all within a killer king car.
View on the film:
Revealing in the detailed Q&A after the screening/ stream the long process that went into finding the right voice for the car,co-writer (with Leo Pyrata and Sergio Oliveira) / director Renata Pinheiro closely works with composer DJ Dolores and sound designer Guile Martins in building an incredibly layered, complex soundtrack for the film, via Dolores Techno and Soul score being sliced open with futuristic sound effects, and the electronically filtered psychopathic voice of the car rumbling under the bonnet.
Going behind the scenes in the Q&A on the extremely tight budget the title was made on, director Pinheiro & cinematographer Fernando Lockett impressively put every penny spent up on screen, with the groovy Sci-Fi atmosphere dripping down the neon lights that flood the screen, landing on kitsch gory Horror set-pieces, (and a sizzling seduction number on top of the car) and smooth panning shots over the lush green coloured town, whose environmental balance is being driven off the road.
Introducing Uno being born in the back of a car (which creates a bond that gives him the ability to talk to verticals), the writers display an irresistible level of ambition, which drives full throttle between sweet coming of age Sci-Fi of Uno with the car, tasty Horror sequences of the car taking down brain down idiots, and an overarching, surprisingly more serious exploration about the conflict between protecting nature and continued industrialization, all within a killer king car.
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