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he would make odd remarks
about getting her back
and no one would observe she was dead.
Reviews
A Place in Time (2019)
A deep and warm film about politics
This film offers a choral portrait of a handful of characters who live in a remote little town at the arid mountains of La Rioja, northwest Argentina. The common theme, though quite subtle, is the meddling of politics in their traditional way of life -most of the scenes take place against the background of the upcoming elections. Unlike the common take on this subject in recent Argentine documentaries, this film's approach is never direct, dogmatic or moralizing -despite some bizarre scenes of the election campaign, or an even more bizarre, albeit unsettling, scene of election fraud-, but remains strictly respectful to the characters' everyday concerns, reflexions and, above all, sense of humor. It provides an authentic insight on the way politics work in Argentina's "deep inlands". The cinematography is excellent; beyond the easily breathtaking sceneries, it shines in the intimate portraits, indoors and nocturnal scenes. The music keeps good company to those warm and introspective images -suitable enough, at times recalling Ry Cooder's scraped guitars for "Paris, Texas": this is, as well, a film about timeless and forgotten places and lost characters in search of their identity. Highly recommended.
It Follows (2014)
At last a great horror film that's not from Asia
First of all, I'm an amateur of the genre: I watch dozens of horror films a year. It is quite a frustrating habit: very rarely you run into something remotely satisfying, and even more rarely into something that actually scares you. But this has been a very good year so far: first I found Lake Mungo, now this extraordinary gem. It's hard to say anything about it without spoiling the experience on some level. First of all: forget about what you've read as taglines or synopsis on IMDb: nothing of that will give you a clue of what this film is about. Sex is the least of the matters -and by no means this is, as I read here, a moralist or anti-sex film. Please, don't look for such direct and basic metaphors, this is not a high school class. Also forget about the possible goofs or contradictions pointed out in other reviews: would you look for coherence in David Lynch? or in a nightmare? Same indulgence should apply here. What matters are the images that this film succeeds to create, and that will linger in your mind much afterwards. The film avoids all the usual clichés that were just around the corner: no dilemma about the protagonist being or not being crazy, no romantic sub-plot, no one screaming at the camera all-of-the-sudden, no blood, no violence, no FX. Fiends are people -only very awkward people. The horror here is of the most subtle kind: nothing that you can't avoid by running away or even by walking fast. Three images kept ringing in my head while I watched it: 1) the twin girls at the end of the corridor in The Shining (the cinematography is almost an homage to Kubrick, with visually stunning symmetric shots and striking music), 2) a scene of the underrated Tsukamoto's Nightmare Detective 2 (the film also draws from the bone of Asian horror, leaving aside the already boring girls with hair on their faces -namely, the reference to a urban myth, and a story that takes place exclusively among youngsters), 3) Robert Aickman's story The Fetch. I cannot reveal here the reasons why, but I will tell you this: the fiend here has that slow, inexorable, despairing way of approaching you that horror has in nightmares. This film will be a classic of the genre, and I definitely will be following David Mitchell's efforts from now on.
Palestine Is Still the Issue (2002)
Palestina is, indeed, still the issue.
This is a good documentary film about life in the occupied territories of Gaza and Transjordania; it also includes a short outline of the basic historic facts of the conflict, as well as some –otherwise obvious and self-imposed- ideas on the origin of inter-ethnic violence between Palestina and Israel. As many other documentaries around on the subject, this film does a lot by simply exposing some facts that are evident in Middle East, but rarely reach Western medias. After watching some of these films (made both by independent Israeli film-makers as Mograbi or European as Pilger) you realize that what they show is not at all some "unique footage" got by means of deep research, chance or perseverance, nor the product of a good deal of careful edition: once the crew can make it into the occupied territories (which apparently isn't that easy) they only need to shoot for a while the army checkpoints, the Israeli weapons everywhere, the 8 meters wall built in 2002, the "Jews-only" highways, the devastated lands or the towns destroyed by Israeli bombs to show what the Israeli occupation means. Anyway, the most shocking thing in this film -at least for me- are perhaps not these images, but the interviews to Israeli authorities and common-citizens; it is only then that you get to understand how this situation could happen and persists. Now, one of the reviews here shows exactly that point of view (look around for it). This reviewer tries to contest the whole film by pointing-out two alleged "mistakes" made by Pilger (which would show his total dishonesty about the subject): 1) Israel doesn't have the 4th most powerful army in the world, as Pilger claims; and 2) "Pilger makes the mistake of saying that Israel controlled 78% of the land after the 1948 War of Independence". As for number 1), maybe Israel was actually ranked number 4 for year 2002 (but where? by whom? on which standards?) maybe not: it doesn't matter at all. The only point here is that Israel has an army -and a very strong one, including nuclear weapons- and Palestine doesn't have any army at all, nor big or small – in the touching words of the Israeli that close the film: compared to us, Palestine is a mosquito. As for number 2), I'm afraid Pilger is right: even though Israel was given 55% of Palestine by the ONU in 1947, in the facts they were never restricted to that territory. The war began the next day and after it Israel was occupying 78% of Palestine -throwing out 750.000 Palestinians in the meanwhile, who would become refugees and would grow up to be more than 5.000.000 today. Other than this, the review doesn 't say a thing about what we see in the film. Some of its expressions, though, are in perfect harmony with the shocking opinions that I commented before. For instance, it accuses Pilger of using "Nazi-style tactics". In fact, critics to Israeli politics -even when made by reputed Jew intellectuals as Hannah Arendt- are commonly labeled as "antisemitism" or even –as here- Nazism. Far from it, in this case: the most important voices of the film are precisely those of Israeli Jew citizens who give a different insight on the situation and on the deep causes of violence, and even confess to be ashamed of their government politics against the Palestinians. A second example: this film "goes to discredit the only free democracy in the Middle East", says the reviewer. Leaving aside the military occupied territories of Gaza and Transjordania –which wouldn't be called "a democracy" by the drunkest madman on earth- and focusing on Israel itself, it would be a little funny to call that a sparkling democracy, if we remember that non-Jew Israeli citizens just don't have many of the rights granted to Jew citizens: different access –if any access at all- to land, to jobs and -more dramatically- to Law. Depending on your religious beliefs or political ideology, you may or not agree with this discrimination, you may justify it or not; but what you can not do is to call it a "free democracy", not under any available definition of the term.
The Abandoned (2006)
a nightmare
Do you remember the ending scene of "Blair Witch Project", when the two survivors finally get into the witch's house? OK, just imagine a whole film that takes place in such a house, that is exactly the atmosphere of The Abandoned, a cruel and yet beautiful horror film that keeps away of the many clichés that overwhelm this genre. I've read here some reviews pointing out that the story doesn't make much sense. That is almost true, it does have some black holes, but then: do films like "The hour of the wolf" make perfect sense? Well, no, and it doesn't really matter: this film (as Bergman's) could be best described as a nightmare, and we don't expect any logic from a nightmare; we just suffer it. The film doesn't fail there, cause it hardly tries to keep a straight story line. It knows that is not a logical story what will terrify you (and that is the only goal of the film, a pursuit in which it doesn't stop for a single minute), but very subtle and difficult to create images and feelings and atmospheres that for some reason we usually find terrifying -for instance, far away from vampires or ghouls or zombis that don't mean anything to us, right from the begging you'll find here the most terrible doppelganger cinema has ever showed. So do give this film a chance, despite the ridiculous low rate given here. Cheers!
Historias para no dormir: Freddy (1982)
Creepiest of the series
I write this review in awful conditions: more than 20 years after I saw this film on TV, when I was a little child. I must confess I don't remember much of the plot and I couldn't comment on any technical aspect of the film; so I'm only going to say this: I was a fanatic of this series -I still am- and this episode was the scariest. It gave me nightmares for weeks. It is about some murders in a theater linked to a sinister ventriloquist's dummy (Freddy); and it has a really twisted ending. If I don't remember wrong, this would be the best horror film about a dummy I've ever seen (along with "Magic", of course). Unluckily this episode wasn't included in the series DVD pack and thus it is impossible to get anywhere...
Stay (2006)
Worst thing I've seen
This is a film about a girl who blew a dog when in college (literally) and doesn't dare to tell her boyfriend. The only reason you could see this movie is if you are drunk with friends and want to watch a really bad film to laugh about. Forget Ed Wood films, this one is worse than anything you know. You arrive to the first hour without really knowing if it's a milded comedy or a drama -and not because it goes, as a Korean movie, between genres, but just because it is NOT funny NOR dramatic. The acting is poor, the lighting is terrible, the script is absolutely pointless and irritating (the dilemma is ridiculous, the characters are stereotypes or simply lame), yes, but the cinematography is the worse part; the direction is the same as in a porn movie (without the benefits of a real porn movie, of course), as if it were shot by a party-cameraman. You have the feeling it was shot in two days, I don't know why. If you arrived to this page because you liked the movie, go on and vote you didn't like my review; if you haven't seen it yet, you are warned. Cheers!
Corto Maltese: La cour secrète des Arcanes (2002)
A perfect film
I think this is the king of all animation films. Pratt's "economic" drawing and his particular use of time are fully followed here. The action scenes are outstanding. The choice of the voices was accurate even if one could think that Corto's voice should have a mix of different accents instead of speaking perfect french. It is, indeed, difficult to get into Corto's world at the first try; but I think the film slowly starting, as in the original comic, with some kind of remembrance or reverie, an outside-of-time dialog with Bouche Dorée does a great work in that way. Anyway, if at the end Corto's personality remains a mystery it must be said that it is the same for those who have read the whole series: Corto is an enigma, and the films succeeds in respecting that instead of turning him into a simple adventure hero. Thus, the question "what is he really looking for?" remains unanswered. From my point of view, the difficulty of the film is not to get into Corto's universe for the those which are not familiar with it, but that it requires a minimum of historical knowledge. Indeed, some notions about the Russian revolution and the political situation of China at the beginnings of XX century are really helpful for the fully understanding of the film. In fact, the comic book includes some pages outlining this historical context; also, a map is as useful here as in The Lord of the Rings. In a word, watching this Corto Maltese film is as delightful as reading the comic book and that is saying enough.