Idefix-7 Reviews

Funny Ha Ha (2002)

outstanding

[9/10 · 10 March 2003]

It is indeed funny, but in a languid and quiet way. Kind of like watching a bird trying to fish unsuccessfully. It is SO damn refreshing to watch a film about young people that doesn't push to show decadence and drugs and sex and self deprecation and alcohol and oh-my-good-we're-so-f**cked-up as the only interesting reality. This film is beautiful because it is about moments and not about plot and beats and resolutions. It is about how complex simplicity is(or so it felt to me). While some script-writers and film-makers try hard to find "alternative" structures to aid their grandeur, this movie just follows and listens. Very carefully. And takes us by the hand as a friendly companion and not a rigid guide. We need more people like this guy making movies in this side of the world.

Pretty Boy (1993)

terrible

[2/10 · 17 November 2002]

Basics of bad European gay cinema:

1) mediocre directorial abilities. 2) mediocre performances by a good looking cast. 3) horrible cinematography and tasteless framing. 4) anodyne art direction. 5) formulaic scripts that also attempt to be sordid and insightful. An unhappy contemplative ending is required.

I could go on but it doesn't deserve it. This film is a piece of trash. If you want to experience its big brother try Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho. The Danish behind Pretty Boy obviously admires it.

The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy (2000)

a good one

[7/10 · 13 May 2001]

Whatever the producers might say, this IS a gay film. And what I mean by it being a gay film is that it revolves around the gay scene, the gay-being inside that gay scene and how does it feel to be gay amongst gays who expect you to perform your own gay stereotype. Gays complain about the stereotyping, I personally could recognize every single one of the characters in people I've known through the years and people I see on the streets all the time act like that, call themselves bitches and do appear to have a certain need to act effeminate while in each other's company. To me, it was a very keen portrayal of how lots of gay groups interact specially in big cities(not only West Hollywood, this could be London, Madrid or Buenos Aires). Instead of complaining about how bad this looks, all of the members of gay communities (I'm talking about places where there are large concentrations of gays and we all know what I mean) should be trying to expand what the community means and offers and not nurture those stereotypes that are so blatantly exposed in films(and of course sometimes exploited).

We could obviously transfer the group of friends into a heterosexual lecture and we'll end up with the same conclusion. This group of gay friends do behave extremely gay and they accept it and some of them even mourn it. Straight groups that act extremely straight(say for example groups of high school cheerleaders or football players) or any group for that matter that asks you to follow a certain pattern of behaviour up to the dangers of depersonalization(think Philosophy students) can only be bad to your mental health and will leave you astray in a world where you are either strong, authentic and in touch with yourself or you'll end up(again) trying to hang on to a group of people for security and acceptance. This film is certainly about that, not about what it feels like to be gay regardless of your geographic situation(you should see Fucking Amal for that). But the director has taken the chance to comprise every aspect of the gay society and make a statement about it in a witty way.

He obviously feels strongly about many issues and he's obviously tired of it too. But then he also relaxes a bit and indicates that it's not really what you do or don't do, it's why you do it. A good example; John Mahoney in drag telling this other guy that he doesn't care whatever statement he's supposed to be making by dressing in drag badly, with armpits unshaved and a dreadful wig; he does it because it is great fun to him and his audience. Period. I'm glad this film was shot, it is certainly one of the few good gay films I've seen. Good gay characters in films whose thematic is not primarily gay are left unnoticed. You want to see a good gay character who is not in a gay film? Think Wes Bentley's father(Chris Cooper) in American Beauty. His character should reflect where you will find majority of gay men still.

La mujer de Benjamín (1991)

A job well done

[8/10 · 18 January 2001]

Ten years after the film came to life in the midst of local critical praise(and in that 'obscure' age of mexican cinema that could be called the fake renaissance without making an overstatement) í´ve been able to watch this film and was proud and joyous to verify that it is indeed well crafted and satisfying. Carrera proves to be a skillful director whose talent resides in giving just enough visual information, not going over the top(something hard to find these days where everyone wants to be a star a la M.Night Shyalaman). Mexican cinematographers are highly regarded and the careful lighting in this film is every bit as worthy of praise. Xavier Perez Grobet paints the landscapes, the sunlit windows, the depressive peeled off green paint on the walls, the gloomy claustrophobic rooms with delicacy and that helps the film carry on like a well written novel. The main plot is not too original but some quirky deviations make it more notorious and believable. The actors are never trying to stand out between the rest but as a good ensemble they respect the complex energy that they all contribute in creating and which gives life to the dull town. This is an intelligent film which never lets you down as a spectator and whose intensity never resides on "shock value" which could have been the easy way out(even the logical way out for another director).

Oi! Warning (1999)

Mild

[5/10 · 5 June 2000]

It's true people usually thank any kind of information about skinheads and punks that stand apart from the usual 10 o'clock news report. I saw this film in a German Festival and had the chance to listen to one of the directors talk about his film. No matter what he thinks I believe the film is biased in the sense that apart from the characters that we are supposed to find interesting(the skinheads, the punks, all male) the rest are portrayed as absurd, unintelligent, superficial... the parents, the teacher, the girlfriends, the girlfriends' parents...everyone except the three main characters are totally dumb and when one of the girls decides to take a stand against her boyfriend's unacceptable demeanor considering he's a father already it is too late...we don't care what anyone else does apart from Koma and Janosch(and personally, not even them). There's an interesting part regarding Janosch getting involved with a punk(by the way, there are no gay skinheads-they are blatantly homophobic, it's punks that are accepting of gay behaviour) but this only starts way until the last part of the film, and eventually neither that nor a good camera work can save it from it's dullness and lack of orientation(irt doesn't work as a drama, it is not a documentary). The director said at the ending of the Q&A session what he really likes about the story is that "this boy decides to not stay at home with his parents watching television and runs away to live life"...well, I don't know why anyone might consider that losing all individuality to join a group of nonthinking violent white males who won't argument a single thing they do because they can't is a better choice than staying home or studying. One thing is living life, another thing is destroying other people's. The fact that we are not given one clue about why Janosch runs away from his parents because it should be OBVIOUS that it is what anyone that age would want to do doesn't help...the fact that we have to take so many things for granted as if we and the directors have led the same life and share the same conceptions of what it is or should be is nothing less than egotistic. Do not misunderstand me, it is not a nazi film of any kind and the last reflection left for us is of much humanity(though a bit trite) but the fact that if you have not been a skin or lived around them(like the directors) you will be treated as an outsider by the film; you will not connect to the fact that," well, skinheads talk much less than in the film, it's already inaccurate because Koma wouldn't make any single speech in real life" so we shouldn't ask for more depht in the characters because the directors had already sacrificed silence for the sake of dramatization....wrong! One thing is that that skinheads might never think about the causes of their violent behaviour and an entirely different thing would be that there weren't any. The directors missed that cinematic point where certain images speak more than a thousand words.

eXistenZ (1999)

Amateur

[6/10 · 13 July 1999]

I have been in contact with David Cronenberg's cinema and I must say this is the only one of his films that I haven't enjoyed in ANY perspective. It felt the whole time as if eXistenZ was an experimental film by an amateur(say, the kind of film that creates a buzz around a fresh new director). While it is not a bad film in the whole sense, anyone that has seen Crash knows that Mr.Cronenberg can be more subtle in the middle of shocking and gross sequences and possesses the talent not to insult the audience by giving them the plot on a silver plate. The plot isn't even that different or original or complex..it is nothing that we have never seen before in order for him to prepare us so much to digest(specially the ending which came out as an easy way out of a dead-end in which he probably found himself while writing the film). The performances lacked humanity and the script wasn't really helping the actors (how can anyone believe that the designer of the game was on a same level as the newbie played by Jude Law all the way...it was so stupid that there had to be something there to explain..something as stupidly convincing as what we get to know really happened in the ending). I can completely understand how some people might really enjoy this film because it looks as if it were directed to a certain group of movie goers and not your average spectator and I must say that the whole anal reference regarding the bio-ports was a pretty good idea as the chinese restaurant sequence has some of Cronenberg's best injected into it.

Sexo, pudor y lágrimas (1999)

Disappointing

[3/10 · 26 June 1999]

I have to say I was really looking forward on watching this film and finding some new life in it that would separate it from most dull and overly crafted mexican films. I have no idea why but I trusted Sexo, Pudor y Lagrimas to be the one to inject freshness and confidence to our non-existent industry. Maybe it was because the soundtrack(which I listened to before I saw the film) sounded different from others, maybe it was because it dared to include newer faces(apart from Demian Bichir who is always a favorite of mexican film directors) and supposedly dealed within it's script with modern social behaviour, maybe because it's photography I saw in the trailers was bright and realistic instead of theatrical. The film turned out to be a major crowd pleaser, and a major letdown. What Serrano actually deals here with is the very old fashioned "battle of the sexes" as in "all men are the same" and "why is it that all women...;" blah,blah,blah. Nothing new in it, not even that, it uses so much common ground and clichè that it eventually mocks itself without leaving any valuable reflexion on the female/male condition. Full of usual tramps on the audience like safe gags about the clichès I talked about before(those always work, always) and screaming performances(it is a well acted film in it's context)..and by screaming I mean, literally. The at first more compelling characters played by Monica Dionne and Demian Bichir turn out to be according to Serrano the more pathetic ones. I completely disagree with Serrano, they shouldn't have been treated that way only to serve as marionettes for his lesson to come through...he made sure we got HIS message and completely destroyed their roles that were the only solid ground in which this story could have stood. Anyway, it is after all, a very entertaining film at times and you will probably have a good time seeing it (if you accept to be manipulated by it).

Stories from the Kronen (1995)

Flawed

[3/10 · 20 February 1999]

Montxo Armendáriz has done much better work than this rendition to clichè in films about young lost teenagers. Historias del Kronen is a boring tour de force throughout the lives of a bunch of kids living it hard and loud in the spanish capital, Madrid. If you are into watching a dramatized european version of the superiorly achieved Kids but with higher classed boys and girls prancing around an importantly less developed script, you will surely like this. You will get your share of drugs, sex, stupidly rebellious behaviour, closeted gay characters; you will get your hero, shy guy, wiseguy bla bla bla. There are no plot twists whatsoever, you know from the beginning what we are supposed to think is wrong and right, and who is good and who is bad. You just patiently wait for the death sequence that is also supposed to turn into deep audience introspection about the miscarried youth of the 90's. Mr.Armendáriz might even think he has shocked you and made you see in a realistic way how the young unadapted mind mechanizes its own self destruction. After 15 minutes you just have to wait for the film to crash on its own pieces. You feel the pretentions in every dialogue and you can't but remember the mass quantities of times you have seen the same situations been caught in film and with much better results.

Divine (1998)

Fair

[7/10 · 17 January 1999]

As usual Ripstein manages to construct a beautifully crafted, intensely acted (watch out for Katy Jurado's comeback and new talent Edwarda Gurrola) dark as hell film about extreme human condition and emotion, except this time he doesn't get away with the feelings he must now be used to bringing in us with such films as Principio y Fin, El Castillo de la Pureza, La Reina de la Noche and Profundo Carmesí. It is a fairly good film though, had it been directed by another person our expectations would have been considerably lower, but being this an Arturo Ripstein film I must say it was a bit of a deception....it's all there, the ambient, the dialogues, but at a certain point you realise what you are seeing is easily becoming pure shock value instead of a profound reflection of what ignorance and sheepesh behaviour can lead to (nothing we haven't seen before too, and specially in a religious context). I even found certain parts (like the belief that Tomasa's hand held video game was the voice of God) to be ridiculous. Still, it is worth watching and if anyone can tell me what the hell the ending was about, I'd be glad to be emailed an answer because I still can't figure it out.

Thesis (1996)

Scathing

[9/10 · 17 January 1999]

Amenabar's debut film is truly a unique example of the perfect mixture between sordidness and exquisite black humour. The film's penetrating plot is at times disturbingly graphic but never to the point where you can't take it anymore, you just have to keep watching. It is also a triumph in involving the spectator with the moral issue of this film (the pleasure of watching snuff video); Amenabar knows the easiest part is touching the soft fibers of the audience by making us comprehend torture and murder for commercial reasons is gross, yes, but aren't we all expecting to see a bit more than what the director shows us? Don't we get shocked at out own reactions and shamefully empathize what moves people to buy this video, and so what moves people to create this video? That is the true genius of the spanish director, and if you flavor all that with the correct cinematographic choices for every bit of dialogue (talk about close ups,fade outs,subjective cameras,black outs) and down to earth characterizations, you get this gem. Spanish cinema is truly revolutionizing.

Tori Amos Live from NY (1998 Video)

Memorable stuff

[10/10 · 10 January 1999]

The only in form recording of who's been called several times "one of the most underrated artists of our times" while it was still her and her piano on stage(now she's recording with a full band). The beauty and simplicity of her performance in such silent but cathartic gems such as the a capella version of Me & A Gun or the outstanding duet with Tool's Maynard and at other times intensely vibrant and loud such as Cornflake Girl or Caught A Lite Sneeze are worth the buying. Tori Amos has paved the way to what is now a market full of female composers that are making much more profit than her(even Alanis Morissette said she listened to Tori Amos' highly acclaimed album Little Earthquakes during her Jagged Little Pill sessions).

Home for the Holidays (1995)

A cathartical experience

[9/10 · 9 January 1999]

Jodie Foster managed to give us(with an outstanding ensemble of actors)a deliciously written and directed film about the tribulations of belonging to a family and the consequential heartache brought by growing apart from them as one becomes an individual. The sincerity of the script turns out to be one hell of a smash in the head to anyone that can empathize with the basic situations confronted in a typical holiday gathering. Probably the saddest part(and one that most of us who have brothers/sisters will understand) is the sudden knowledge that blood sometimes isn't enough to love somebody. The crackings in fraternal relationships are deeply touching and hard in this one, and while it is not my case, I think a mother and father will break a few tears too as the going away of children and subsequent cutting of the umbilical chord is depicted as an evident transformation that is usually more painful to the elder than to the young. The cast is magnificent, and while the film is very simple in its construction, I would avidly recommend it.

Savage Nights (1992)

Masterpiece

[10/10 · 20 December 1998]

I should probably take back the word masterpiece since Cyril Collard's directorial debut was actually his only film. The director, writer and main character of the film died just three days before his film swept the Caesars(the Oscar's french counterpart). Collard died of AIDS and brought to life one of the most compelling films surrounding this theme. It is not just people whining because of the departure of the beloved one but a tour de force involving hatred, passion, self destruction, and all those "nice" feelings that accompany a person who knows that he will die sooner than the rest, and culminating in spiritual redemption. This film also portrays one of the finest love triangles on film; the at times sickening at times profoundly erotic and at times inevitably cathartic relationship between Jean and his two lovers is a genius example that love is not "Sleepless in Seattle". Romane Bohringer(probably best known for her character as Verlaine's wife in Total Eclipse) is a must see in her breakthrough performance as a confused and VERY passionate young girl.