Turin_Horse Reviews

Testament (1983)

Makes you feel extremely sad... but not because of the story but for how terrible the film is!

[1/10 · 22 January 2021]

Indescribably bad, ridiculous to the very last detail, unrealistic to the point of absurdity, unbearably cheesy. I can see just one positive point in this film, if someone is interested in knowing what the aftermath of a nuclear attack would NEVER be like then this film is for you. Well, and seeing Kevin Costner and Rebecca de Mornay for a few minutes on screen (although playing as ludicrous roles as the rest of the cast) might also satisfy some.

Many here compare positively this film to Threads and The Day After... I suppose you are joking, right?. These two films are orders of magnitude more realistic, better done, acted and produced than this sad Testament. Anyway the best post-nuclear apocalyptic film is not either of these two actually; watch Dead Man's Letters, a Russian 1986 Konstantin Lopushanskiy's film and judge by yourself.

Many of the comments claim that the film does not pretend to give a realistic account of a post-nuclear Armageddon but just show the psycological and social effects on the life of a community and a family... Yeah, that's obvious, but I cannot think of a more cheesy and clumsy way to depict this. I think the makers of this film did not just lack any knowledge whatsoever on what the effects of a nuclear attack would be like, but also on how the human psyche works at the most very basic level; the script of this film seems to have been written by someone below an age of 12.

Summarizing, a terrible experience, once you get to the final scene you wish the nuke would have exploded right in the middle of the village and thus the film would have lasted just 10 min.

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)

On how to turn a compelling story (First Blood) and an interesting character (Rambo) into a ludicrous joke and a parodic hero

[2/10 · 21 November 2020]

Probably no other sequel in cinema history has so completely turned upside-down the spirit and true meaning of the original film. While First Blood presented an interesting variation of the well-known returned-from-Vietnam character who has been shown in many films, with a pathetic side yet willing and able to fight back when pushed around, Rambo II shows us a sort of reborn superhero who will bring justice to the aggrieved and ruthless punishment for the culprits.

First Blood can play in the same league as The Deer Hunter or Born on the Fourth of July (being, notwithstanding, inferior to these two). Rambo II cannot play in any league aimed for decent films. Leaving aside the campy acting by most of the cast and the laughable characterization of Mexican soldiers as Vietnamese, the main problem with the film is that it takes a well-crafted character from a previous film and turns him into something completely different, bluntly breaching the spirit of First Blood and creating a new scenario fully detached from the original one.

The subsequent sequels (I only watch parts of Rambo III) seemingly follow the same path. A pity, since First Blood could have remained a good example on the topic of unadaptability on returning to homeland, with the additional pull of setting the scenario in a remote deep America location and the clash between the locals and the wandering hero (antihero actually in this case).

The Man from Earth (2007)

ALERT! the rate of this film is a SCAM.

[1/10 · 12 November 2020]

I am pretty sure the 7.9 rate of this film is a scam, there is no other explanation for the abysmal discrepancy between the actual quality of the film and the absurd high rate it holds. The fact that most good reviews rate the film "10" is very revealing. Usually you have reasonable proportions of 10, 9, 8, 7... in films that are highly valued by viewers, to get a final score of 7.5 - 8.5. Here we have a suspicious proportion of 10s that strongly suggests something is going on...

About the film itself I do not want to waste time on commenting it. Suffice is to say that it is among the 10 worst films I have ever watched. Laughable and ridiculous story and script, executed in the most amateurish way (a bunch of friends rehearsing for half an hour and filming their conversation on a Sunday afternoon would have done much better) and with zero production values to speak of. Even the famous (infamous...) Tommy Wiseau's "The Room" is above "The man from Earth" in several of the aforementioned points.

Who devised and implemented this scam and what for I do not know. Many of the rate 10 comments are actually long and detailed, which points to the whole project in itself being an elaborate scam from the beginning. Hey!, let's film this and make hundreds of good reviews (ravishing most of them) at IMDB, and let's monitor what happens: how many people watch the film, how viewers who do not participate in the scam react and rate the film, etc.

So, if you want to participate in the scam watch the film and judge by yourself. You will waste one hour and a half of your life, but then you can come here and give us your opinion.

The Water Diviner (2014)

This film would be better placed under the category of science-fiction

[5/10 · 23 July 2020]

So, we have an Australian superhero who, being a humble peasant and family man in his homeland travels to Turkey in the years after WWI in search for his disappeared sons, and once there he manages to: 1) get to the place of the Gallipoli battle and find the exact place where two of his sons were killed and lie under ground, all thanks to the seeming extrasensorial faculties he possesses, 2) again with some extrasensorial help (intuition will say some...) find his third son alive in a remote village, 3) allow the escape of a foe-turned-friend Turkish military official from a fully armed squad of Greek soldiers using a wicket to fight them, and 4) beat up a group of members of a Turkish family clan one of whose members had been previously insulted by our protagonist (this time he was barehanded and the ones using sticks were the rivals).

Why the surviving son never returned home when he was not badly injured or affected in his mental faculties after the battle (and is now living a miserable life in a small remote village) is not coherently explained, being this the triggering point of a family tragedy that prompted the trip of the protagonist.

Apart from all this... pretty photography in evocative sepia colors, a ravishing Olga Kurylenko playing a Turkish widow soon-to-marry as second wife a rich man (but making googly eyes to our hero now and then), and a playful smart boy intermingling occasionally in the story, may keep you mildly entertained if you do not take the story too seriously.

So Long, My Son (2019)

Attempts much, achieves little, it is extremely messy, and in the end it just turns out to be sort of a feelgood movie

[4/10 · 21 July 2020]

You watch the first hour of the film... and you will have understood absolutely nothing, you will just be puzzled by dozens of flashbacks and flash-forwards and mostly cryptic scenes with personages in different times and places including changed actors occasionally... You are lost. On the other hand, either the meaning of words such as "brother", "sister", "aunt", "uncle", etc. is completely different in Chinese than in other languages or the subtitles are wrong all throughout the film.

Then you go back scene by scene and (recommended) note down the name of each character, the aproximate year in which the scene takes place, and the kinship relations between all the personages... and you may start grasping a little of what is all about.

Ok, so you start understanding something after aproximately 80 minutes into the film (provided you did what I recommended before). Then, a new subplot arises, the pregnancy of one of the personages by another one... given who they are, what they look like at the time of the incident, and the past and present circumstances in which this happens this may be one of the most ridiculous, unbelievable and incongruous stories ever told on a screen.

As we move into the third hour of the film please prepare your handkerchief or lots of tissue paper. But do not worry that much, in the end everything will fit into place, happy ending for everybody, and we learn that every one of the personages acted righteously from the beginning even without others knowing about it.

So, cut some 70-80 minutes of footage, modify the script and the editing so that the whole story can be minimally comprehensible, and delete the whole senseless and badly-timed story of the pregnancy... and you may get a passable film with some socio historical interest.

The Lighthouse (I) (2019)

If the story is flawed, the whole film is no matter how beautifully shot it is

[5/10 · 25 January 2020]

Every critic out there seems to be dazzled (as much as Pattinson in the final scene) by the undeniably beautiful cinematography (every shot an artistic photography for an art gallery exposition) and the solid performances by the two only actors on scene.

However, undeniable too is the fact that this is one of the weakest stories put on a film lately. Yeah, I know, the important here is the atmosphere of abandonment and claustrophobia... the symbolism of the lighthouse as a phallus... the combination of old sea myths with the Prometheus' thing... ok, but either you are able to make (at least) a little sense of all this and deliver a minimally believable and coherent story or you just ellaborate a pastiche, and in the end this is what the film mostly turns out to be. A pity, since the photography is truly remarkable and the natural stormy place chosen for the filming is great.

And one last recommendation for Mr. Eggers, it's not really necessary to put such amount of disgusting stuff (farts, sewage even in drinking cups, semen, feces...) on the screen to transmit the idea of filthiness and squalor... other directors have been able to convey this atmosphere in ways that did not make many people abandon the theatre halfway through.

The Irishman (2019)

Not as much a film for the big screen as a Netflix miniseries

[6/10 · 21 November 2019]

Size matters... or not, depending on the point of view of who is opining. But length matters for sure, independent on enything else. 3 h and 20 min???... are you sure Mr. Scorsese you have enough to tell to fill every minute of the footage with reasonably interesting scenes and dialogues?. Well, I understand that Netflix would not have put such a huge amount of money to gather such an splendid cast and offer such great production values should it not have received in turn a product that could be splitted in 3 or 4 parts for streaming broadcasting. But hey!, we went to the cinema to watch it, and the rules of the game are different here. No less than 1/3 of the film is redundant, uninteresting and lacking of rythm, and the second half ends up really boring and tiring. Interpretations are fine in general, great Pesci and Keitel, good De Niro, Ok Pacino (in line with his performances of the last 45 years); a pity that Anna Paquin and her character were not given more time and relevance in the film and instead so many tough guys hard-talk that goes nowhere is allowed so much footage time.

Finally, was it really necessary yet ANOTHER Mafia film with basically the same premises as the old good ones we all have in mind and in this occasion centered in a dark, and nowadays forgotten, personage as Jimmy Hoffa??. Silence was also a flawed film, but at least it had the interest of showing us some relevant historical events that are very unknown by the public. However, In the case of The Irishman, it all feels as a Déjà vu, a product crafted specifically for the show of a bunch of actors in the very last stages of their (otherwise) brilliant careers.... 6/10, mainly for respect to Mr. Scorsese and most of the actors, but actually it would deserve less.

Address Unknown (2001)

Manipulative cinema to the utmost

[3/10 · 10 November 2019]

First thing coming to my mind after having watched Adress Unknown was: would this guy (I mean, Kim) prefer to be living right now in a unified country ruled by Kim Jong-un?, because the odds for this would be extremely high should the American army happened not to be around there. Well, I do not want to discuss on Kim Ki-duk political ideas, but regarding cinematography this is very likely his worst product, which is a pity since I highly appreciate some of his other films, mainly Pietà and Moebius.

Cinematographic manipulation hardly can go that far as in this film, we should turn to Soviet cinema from the 20s-30s to find something of a similar level. But even getting rid of any contextual historical and political issue does not improve the film in the least: it's not much more than a piling up of rough (bordering disgusting), senseless violent and dim-witted scenes in a bleak, desolate landscape (which seems to actually honour the equalizing merits of the plot and execution of the film).

Sadly, my opinion on Kim Ki-duk cinematography has received a strong blow with this film... anyway, I'll give him another try, maybe he just had a bad day when decided to film this thing.

The Way We Were (1973)

Amazingly... bad!

[2/10 · 20 September 2019]

So far I considered Love Story as the likely worst love film in history, but then I came across this... film?. Just terrible, not even the efforts of Barbara Streisand to make her character minimally believable can make this film watchable. The evolution of the characters throughout the film does not make any kind of sense whatsoever, I guess the writer and director tried to show that personal beliefs and political commintent may be stronger even than love, but I cannot imagine a more clumsy way to depict it. The same characters develop a strange assortment of relationships along time with the background of political and historical issues taking place in the US during the 30's through the 50's, in the end it all results a mess of incongruent situations, unbelievable leaps in the life stories of the characters, absurd scenes of arguments between the two main characters... Well, it's not worth to go on. Skip this one and do not let yourself be fooled by the good reviews this film is given by some... maybe they just listened to the famous main theme of the soundtrack.

An Elephant Sitting Still (2018)

Style over substance

[7/10 · 19 September 2019]

Four hours is too long for me to watch a film all at once, so I went two alternate days to watch the first and second halves of the film, and neither of the two days I came out fully convinced of what I had seen. I enjoyed the style, the introversion mood that permeates all the scenes, depicted in close shots of the characters' heads with a usually blurry background; it seems the intention is that you perceive the world through the minds of the characters, yet this is a failed attempt often since the situational context does not manage to tell you much about what's inside the characters' minds. Conversations do not manage to solve this problem and to provide some more information on each character's perspectives, they are scarce and tend to be superficial, adding little for the comprehension of their attitudes to life (bleak without exception). This is one of the main problems of this film, the poor dialogues, although maybe a good deal is lost in the translation and they are more meaningful in Chinese.

Basically the film brings together a group of interrelated personages which experience (and sometimes cause) in the course of a single day all the imaginable sufferings a human being can pass through: loneliness, family tensions and conflicts, indiference from others and your own relatives, public exposure of awkward secrets, accidental killing, death of a relative, suicide, adultery, lies, scams, violence in different degrees, including shooting... Obviously there is no realistic intention in the development of the plot, instead all these misfortunes are piled up together to explicitly show how awful life is, something that is also bluntly expressed by some of the characters during the film... I would have expected this was transmited with some more subtetly.

Unfortunately we will not be able to see more films from this director, sadly he decided to follow the fate of one of the characters (at least) in the film. He seems to have fully exposed his view of life in this film, and then act accordingly. May he find now the harmony of mind he apparently could not get during his short life, and rest in peace.

Long Day's Journey Into Night (2018)

Long Day's Journey Into... Confusion

[6/10 · 9 July 2019]

I have mixed feeling towards this movie, it has undoubtedly a Tarkovskyan air, and while I very much appreciate some Tarkovsky's films (Solaris, Andrei Rublev, Sacrifice), I consider others are just empty boxes (The Mirror, Nostalghia), and unfortunately this film resembles more the latter. Let's say in the first place that the cinematography is rather good, creating an atmosphere that goes to and fro the protagonist mind and invites to reflection. However, there seems not to be much more than this premise in the long footage of the film. While the idea of moving apart from reality to introduce us into a dream (shot in 3D) where the protagonist seems to find a more solid asset to fulfil his wishes may be original and appealing, the overal result of the film feels flawed and... yes, empty. The first part of the film, which presumably describes real events, looks as much a dream as the second (supposedly dreamy) part, it is confusing, muddled, disjointed... as a dream actually. Paradoxically the second part is more straight and comprehensible (shot in a single take of nearly one hour), showing straightforward carachters that seem to fulfil the protagonist's "dreams": a guy who helps him go where he wants by sort of magic; an attractive young common girl in a red dress, which points to sexual desire and may reflect the protagonist's wishes about meeting again his 20-years ago-gone love and expecting she remains as attractive as she was, but this time more attainable and lacking the intriguing air she possessed; a gang of easily defeatable guys, so unlike the real mafia dudes of the first part...). Who was Wildcat by the way and what role did he have in the film...??? Well, I suppose I would need a second view of the film, maybe even a third one, but frankly I do not consider worthy watching a film twice just for the sake of the director's deliberate intention of making it difficult to understand (I feel he is just trying to collect more money with such a trick).

Did you feel my comment confusing?... well, you may expect exactly the same from the film, I have just tried to reflect what the film is like transcribed into words (but maybe I also have failed in doing so...)

Roma (2018)

ROMA is cinematography taken to a new level of excellence, art and mastery

[10/10 · 28 January 2019]

BRAVO, BRAVO, BRAVO!!!. I have no words to describe this. Thank you Alfonso Cuarón for having given us such a wonder of a cinematographic experience. Technically I cannot imagine how a film can be better. But this is not the whole story, actually technical aspects are just a complement of what is one of the greatest stories ever shown on cinema. Sadly many people here say things like "it has no story", "it's boring" and so on, how unfortunate it must be to lack the sensitivity to appreciate and properly understand a story which is as compelling as the most intricate imaginable plot. The personage of Cleo is one of the most moving, elaborated, complex and realistic in cinema history, and the interpretation of Yalitza Aparicio is of eleven out of ten, perfection made intrepretation; each of her facial expressions throughout the film describes a whole inner world so precisely that you can actually read her soul. The story may seem simple at first sight, but it is full of details of deep meaning and complexity, from the small stories of every personage to the Mexican society and urban life in a particular historical time (amazingly recreated down to the most intimate details). It's many years since I had not seen people applauding at the end of a film, today it happened, and I was touched. BRAVO!, again.

Thelma & Louise (1991)

Thelma & Louise has by now reached the category of both Classic and Cult Film

[9/10 · 5 September 2016]

I saw this film at the cinema in 1991, I remember how much I enjoyed it, the great cinematography by R. Scott, the witty and insightful script, and the nearly perfect interpretations of Geena Davis, Susan Sarandon and every other actor/actress on it. I am not one of those who like to re-watch films, instead I prefer to see any new or old previously unseen film. So when I sat in front of the TV this August and started zapping my intention was to check what was on in Sundance Channel, but then I came across Thelma & Louise, and lazily decided to put down the remote.

I cannot describe the emotion I felt as I recalled with unexpected precision scene after scene what was going to happen, some exact script lines and even the particular mood and gestures of the actors before they executed some of the scenes. It was then that I realized that film had had an impact on me, few times I have enjoyed that much in a theater, and recently on the TV. The film has not aged just a bit, it is as fresh and delightful as it was 25 years ago; the world has changed quite a lot since then, the humour/drama of the film has not. Thelma & Louise has something to it that makes it a classic, it now belongs to cinema history, and it will become (if this has not happened yet) a cult film reflecting an epoch. There has never been another Thelma & Louise, and there will never be, it seems nobody has even tried to do it, maybe the daring story it tells and the wonderfully crafted way it is told are too challenging to attempt something similar nowadays, and we should be glad for it.

Hail, Caesar! (2016)

A great film!... and misunderstood by quite a few around here it seems.

[9/10 · 1 May 2016]

In Barton Fink, maybe the best Coen's movie so far, the introspective story of a screenplay writer in Hollywood's 30's is told. Coming from a totally different world, John Turturro's personage is engulfed by the pitiless machinery of the Hollywood industry.

We move some 15 years ahead and we are there again, same place, and pretty much the same story, but told in an totally different way, with comedy prevailing over drama (many of the commentators here seem actually to have entirely missed this last part, I'm sorry for them), and several story threads going their own way or intermingling with each other instead of a straight symbolic story with just 2-3 personages like in Barton.

The film is as much a homage to Hollywood as it is a sharp criticism. The number of references to classical Hollywood (films, actors, stories...) is uncountable, and only those who are true film lovers and have some background in cinema history, and actually history in general, will be able to fully enjoy it (might this be the reason why so many seem to be disappointed and delivering bad, and totally foolish, criticism...)

The screenplay is one of the most intelligent in films about filmmaking. The comedy parts are great, but that's just an aspect of the film, which has a lot more to dig into, although often disguised as a comedy, which may have mislead many fellow commentators around here.

Ave Cesar shows how filmmaking actually is, or was in retrospective back in the 50's; showing for instance the hard work behind a wonderfully crafted scene when we see it on the screen (someone here complained about the scared expression of Scarlett Johansson when role-playing an Esther Williams' alter ego!!!, is it possible he didn't realize that that expression was meant exactly to be like that???). This is just an example, but go see the film, and you will find lots like this. Then add a general tone of comedy, some crazy story threads like the one of the communist group kidnapping poor "Messala" (McCarthy was right in the end!!!), and you get Hail Caesar!, for sure one of the best films this year. But do not expect a plain comedy or you may end up disappointed.

A last hint, pay attention to two scenes: the encounter of the Roman centurion with Jesus Christ, look at the color of Christ's hair... then the final speech of this centurion at the foot of the cross and the effect it has on the audience there (the technical staff working in the film)... there is a lot to dig into in those two simple and, apparently, just comedic scenes, as there is throughout the film, but you will have to be a bit insightful to fully enjoy it.

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)

Just a remake... and a bad one

[4/10 · 19 December 2015]

I considered the three prequels (episodes I through III) to be a step below the three original films. Well, now I consider episode VII to be several steps below both trilogies. It really made good even episode I, the weaker of the whole series... so far, because episode VII owns this well-earned right now.

C'mon guys! are Hollywood's brains so exhausted as to not being able to make anything else than an almost clonal, scene by scene, remake of episode IV without no new ideas whatsoever!!???

Many scenes are plainly embarrassing copies of the original film ones!. The plot is nearly identical, apart from the several holes with regard to the whole series history.

Regarding visual effects, nothing new or particularly outstanding here. It seems the producers intended to get back on the atmosphere of episode IV-A New Hope, and they got it, but on doing this they made a 2015 film look as if it had been filmed in 1977. The trilogy I-III is far above episode VII in this regard.

And finally, the main roles... sad, sad... sad. The film might even be considered an unintended nostalgic remembrance showing the devastating effects of the passing of time, even Chewbacca looks out of shape!!!. Princess Leia... she would have very much benefited from a 90% cut of her time on screen. And weren't we told that Lupita Nyong'o was going to be on the film???... maybe it was just a publicity scam??... oh wait... yeah, she does appear in a couple of scenes... for about ten seconds!!?? OMG!!! shaming!

I'm sorry guys but, after having been a Star Wars fan for decades, I think this was my last time, I will gladly skip what's in episodes VIII and IX, you guys can just tell what happens in them and this will be more than enough!

The Wicker Man (1973)

Hippies, paganism, police investigation, a bit of horror and a lot of humor

[8/10 · 17 April 2015]

I was very surprised by this film, in a positive way. I expected some kind of cannibal holocaust, wild cruel rites in some dark and remote African, Amazonian or New Guinea settlement. Far from it, we are in a Scottish offshore island, and about to meet a community of neopagans who live happily a rather free and morally relaxed style of life following old pagan rites mixed with Scottish traditions, and spiced with traditional folk music; hippies of the 60's-70's would have loved to live there!

Technically the film has its flaws, but the last scene offers something very original which we have hardly ever watched in cinema. Forget about its classification as a "horror film", it is not, actually there are many more moments for laugh than frightening ones, yet an atmosphere of mystery is present throughout the film.

The plot is essentially a mystery about the disappearance of a girl from the community, the investigation of a just arrived policeman, and the lack of cooperation from the dwellers. There is a very interesting final twist, just before the remarkable last scene.

But there is more it. The film contains several layers actually, and below the surface there is a very interesting clash of religious beliefs, and a reflection on the role religion and believing in the supernatural plays in the society (be it the promise of an afterlife made by someone who died in a cross or the belief in reincarnation on the grounds of the natural cycle of life and the gods that govern it all). It was my impression that neither of both are given much credit in the film, so maybe it does contain some kind of subtle atheistic message.

In summary, a highly recommended film. The fact that there has been two recent remakes of it (both failed attending to the opinions of IMDb's reviewers) is indicative of the interest and influence The Wicker Man still conserves three decades later.

Moebius (2013)

Gore cinema to tell a Buddhist tale

[9/10 · 7 April 2015]

Have you ever watched a film that brings your endurance to explicit (even sick!) blood and sex violence to its very limit while at the same time makes you laugh and depicts with smart (yet explicit!) cleverness one of the basic essentials of Buddhism?... No, I'm not trying to bring opposite worlds together, but Kim Ki-Duk did, in his film Moebius.

A truly masterpiece of cinema in its pure essence, compelling and with an stunning economy of resources: few settings, few actors, even the two female roles are played by the same actress (Eun-woo Lee) in an outstanding performance. Moebius tells a story with deep metaphysical symbolism using just images (there is no dialogs) and focusing exclusively and with dazzling clarity on the points important for the story and its meaning, namely the search for physical pleasure concomitant to the nature of every human being, and the main protagonist of this: a part of the male anatomy known as "penis".

Only after the last scene, when the young protagonist bows before Buddha, one can understand the whole meaning of the film, every piece fits then perfectly in the puzzle (emotional puzzle, we are not talking about crime and mystery here). Then we understand that pleasure (the main, maybe the only important one: sexual pleasure) comes always at a price in this world; pleasure involves pain one way or another. Not once in the film pleasure brings any kind of satisfaction or happiness, instead it causes distress, sorrow, guilt, pain, immediate or in the long term; many of the scenes in the film show the attainment of pleasure directly through pain, and with more pain as a consequence.

CAVEAT - SPOILER IN THIS LAST PARAGRAPH

But then, in the end, the young protagonist frees himself from this tie, through the most direct way: castration (well, there are actually several of these throughout the film, so WARNING for sensitive viewers!), and later, bowing before Buddha, he does something he had not done even once during the film: he SMILES, as Buddha did. He is released now from human passions, no longer slave of his desires, no longer subject to the inescapable search for pleasure of the physical body. He is now FREE

Timbuktu (2014)

Islamofascism exposed

[8/10 · 28 March 2015]

Everybody should watch this film, specially maybe those left wing Europeans who still have doubts about the real menace that is developing not far from our frontiers, and whose major victims are actually the inhabitants of those same countries the Islamic fascists move in. The blindness and naive tolerance/justification they show towards this threat is not very different from the tolerance/justification many leftish "intellectuals" used in the past to approve of other blatant attacks against freedom and human dignity, as sadly happened for instance with the so-called "cultural" revolution of Mao.

The story narrated in Timbuktu is simple, but reflects and involves a complex puzzle of tradition, religion, Western cultural influence on remote areas, the struggling for life in a harsh land with methods of centuries ago while at the same time using modern technological devices... All of it brought suddenly down under the foot of religious fundamentalism upon invasion of jihadist groups from neighboring Libia.

Freedom is as hard to conquer as easy to lose. If you want freedom probably you will have to fight for it, not consider it is just granted, because it is not. We all should be aware of this.

American Sniper (2014)

It's all about shooting

[4/10 · 27 February 2015]

Basically, Texan cowboy decides to join the navy after watching two American embassies blown up in terrorist attacks. As a child he had learned from his father that humanity consisted of sheeps, wolves and sheepdogs (deep philosophy here, you might think you were about to watch a piece of artsy cinema!) and that he was expected to become one of the latter.

After hard training he becomes a SEAL. Then he meets cute-faced girl with a character at a bar (she states she despises marines, but attends regularly a bar always crowded with SEALS, marines and the like...). They marry, and after the S-11 attacks he is sent to Iraq as a sniper.

We then see him directly in action, American troops patrol the streets of a devastated city searching for... well, we never really get to know what they are looking for... which is not surprising since we were in this same situation for 10 years... (well, if you watch "Green Zone", an interesting and pretty good film, you might get a clue about it)

He proves to be an effective sharpshooter, and becomes appreciated by his comrades as they feel safer when he is around, but eventually he gets bored of being the whole day lying on his stomach and aiming with his gun, and decides to join the guys who patrol the streets and break into more or less every house in the neighborhood, it's good to go out and stretch one's legs from time to time.

Eventually, a counterpart turns up in the enemy lines, kinda modern Saladin or Baybars, cool-looking Middle Eastern guy with a damn good shot and leadership abilities!. Then we expect the film might become a sort of re-edition of Jude Law vs. Ed Harris duel "Enemy at the gates"-style... far from it... Nothing particularly interesting happens for a long stretch.

Our SEAL guy goes back home and then to Iraq again several times, meanwhile his child is born and cute-faced wife gets angrier and angrier at him since she considers he is neglecting his family and becoming obsessed with war (C'mon! take it easy, don't women who attend military men-crowded bars always dream of becoming the spouse of a hero??). When our hero finally shoots down his turban wearing enemy he decides to go home definitively.

Once on homeland he passes through the usual period of difficulty to adapt to boring please-dear-take-out-the-dog-now-dinner-will-be-ready-soon lifestyle... only that we have seen this before lots of times and, nearly without exception, much better depicted (The Deer Hunter or Born on the Fourth of July look so far away in time now...)

In order to overcome this situation he joins a group of ex- combatants, many of them crippled, to try to help them. The therapy consists of meetings to talk and share experiences, and an additional activity. What activity?... maybe a reader's club where they comment on books? No; maybe occupational therapy workshops on some kind of craft-work, music? Nope; maybe excursions and trips to the countryside for fishing, bird watching and so on? No either. What they do as a therapy consists of... SHOOTING!!!! (yeah, I'm serious!, watch the film if you don't believe me). I wonder what life must be like when you look at it permanently through the telescopic sight of a weapon...

At the end, one of these shooters shoot the shooter, and he dies. The film did not receive the Oscar to Best Film (much to Donald Trump dismay) but it won the one to Sound Editing... well, the shots echo sounded great! and since more or less everything was about shooting... It seems for some people there is little more to life than... shooting!!!

Dogtooth (2009)

Mind can be trained... for whatever!

[9/10 · 17 November 2014]

After having read quite a few reviews for this film here at IMDb it surprises me nobody has made a connection between "The Village" and "Dogtooth". Both films deal exactly with the same topic, although at different scale, yet the two films are extremely different. In both films we can see something that probably psychologists know well, that a brain can be "trained" to believe... absolutely anything!... and religions are probably the best proof of it!

We all are brought up in a particular "setting", composed of the family, the society, the geographical location, and the rules, values and beliefs that, mainly the family (but also others), want us to follow, respect and believe in. Take a newborn out from his birthplace and bring him to another place with another family with different values and beliefs... and after a few years you will have an individual who is absolutely different form what he/she would have been should have remained in his/her original birthplace. Well... of course genetics and epigenetics play a role too, and not minor, but that's another story...

Dogtooth is a haunting, even scaring film. Some will hate it for this, it is not a film for everybody. You must take some distance from the events depicted and try to watch it with an objective attitude, and then maybe you will discover how extremely well constructed the film is, and how cleverly Yorgos Lanthimos delivers the message of the film. Great interpretations from all the actors help give the film its dense sense of realism. Might something like this happen in real life?? one may wonder, and the answer (disturbing answer) is that, sure it can... and happens continually actually... and most of times unnoticed by anybody.

Elena (2011)

Nearing perfection; a masterful depiction of a universal trait

[10/10 · 17 November 2014]

This is one of the most perfect, "round", films I have seen in many years. Nothing is out of place, every scene has a deep meaning in the plot. And the overall result is nearly perfect, with a clear-cut conclusion.

Many have understood this film as a criticism/description of current Russian society. And they are not mistaken at all, it is true. But there is more to it, much more: a universal trait, one that I have never seen depicted previously on film with such precision and cleverness. The central topic of the film can be enunciated by the saying "Blood is thicker than water". Some previous reviewers have aptly pointed out this too.

The plot is entirely constructed to come to this final conclusion. In the meantime we are also shown aspects of current Russian society, such as violence and lack of values in adolescents, strained family relations between the old and new Russian generations (with marked differences in life values), the lavish but often solitary life of old men who have amassed large amounts of money...

But the central point is the relation of Elena with, on the one hand, her aged affluent husband, who provides her with a very comfortable life that most women her age would be delighted and satisfied with, and on the other hand with her son (and son's family) from a previous marriage, her "real" family in terms of blood ties. Her son is an absolute opposite to her husband: mediocrity vs. intelligence, weak character vs. determination and strength, idleness vs. diligence, failure vs. success, poverty vs. richness. One can easily come to the conclusion that her son fully deserves the misery he and his family live in. Elena helps her son and daughter-in-law on her husband's resources, but when he says "enough!"... conflict ensues, and here is when blood imposes its biological determining force.

The final scene of the film, with the little grandson of Elena lying carelessly and comfortably on her husband's bed is at once tender and haunting! one of the best ends I've ever seen in cinema. Now join the opening scene with the final one, and you close the circle, the whole film is contained there.

Don't miss it, this is a film you will not forget. It will become a classic, for me it is one of them already. The best Zvyagintsev's film so far, The Return and Leviathan being both highly recommended too.

Leviathan (2014)

Corruption in current Russia, but also lots more in this insightful film

[9/10 · 17 November 2014]

Hmm! the high number of negative votes that most of the good reviews for this film are gathering makes me suspect that Putin's guys are prowling around here...

Andrey Zvyagintsev has become one of my favorite active film directors. While I consider Elena (Yelena) his best film so far, Leviathan did not disappoint me, quite the contrary!. Beautifully shot in wide screen, with the glimmer light of the northernmost part of Russia, in a small coastal town, we are shown a series of events triggered by the ambition of the corrupt local mayor. Political and economic interests intermingle with the best and worst aspects of the human condition, involving loyalty, friendship, love, passion, human weakness in general, which will play a critical role in the development of the story.

The starting point is the abusive compulsory purchase of the house of an earthy man whose family lived there for generations, now married to a woman and with a son of a previous marriage. The mayor of the town lusts after his piece of land to construct his own luxury house, and force a compulsory purchase, authorized by the local law authorities acting under his net of corruption. The proprietor then seeks advice and help from an old friend now working as a lawyer in Moscow.

From here events develop intricately; unexpected turns keep the spectator always in suspense. The somewhat light tone of the first part of the film, pinpointed with some humor, gradually turns into more drama and a darker atmosphere.

The film works at various different levels, not focusing exclusively on one single aspect. Men and women are part of a family, of a society, with different love, friendship, hierarchical and legal ties. They have passions and weaknesses, and also strengths and virtues. A single act can dramatically change the course of a story. Decisions are not always made out of just reasoning; emotions play also a critical role, for good or for bad.

The skeleton of a beached whale appears in one of the most impressing and beautiful shots of the film. A leviathan from the sea, silent witness of the human affairs occurring at short distance from it. The story we are told takes place in a remote part of the world, yet it is universal. An straight interpretation of the title of the film may be leviathan = evil, present everywhere, in the most common places and acts of our lives, in the intrinsic randomness of life, and embodied in this particular case in the city mayor, whose brutal acts have as a final consequence the utter destroying of a family, although not in a linear way, but triggering a series of unpredictable events of fatal consequences. Or maybe the inert Leviathan represents the viciousness and corruption that has "survived" essentially unchanged, fossilized, from the soviet era into present day Russia.

There are also many references to religion; the complicity between religious authorities with political power in post-communist Russia, the apparent absence of God when justice does not prevail and fate imposes his often bleak reality, but also religion as provider of a frame for individual moral and life.

In summary, a highly recommended film, along with all the other Zvyagintsev's.

Solaris (1972)

Symmetriads

[10/10 · 23 January 2014]

Are we ready to accept that our vision of cosmos and life may be just an illusion of our minds and that other forms of consciousness may take forms absolutely alien and incomprehensible to us?. Stanislaw Lem posed this question several times throughout his many works, reaching with Solaris the pinnacle of his career. Tarkovski adapts Lem's novel focusing the attention mainly in intimate aspects of the personages more than in the technical SciFi stuff. The story line follows the relationship of the protagonist, Kelvin, with his former wife, Harey (who is dead after having committed suicide some time ago)... or more precisely the being that planet Solaris physically recreates extracting from Kelvin's brain the physical and personality features of Harey. The film does not pay much attention to the scientific and philosophic aspects that permeates the whole Lem's novel. This might seem a setback for the film, nevertheless it contains enough values itself to be considered a masterpiece of science fiction, and of cinema in general. Lem's and Tarkovski's visions complement each other extraordinarily, even though Lem did not like and disapproved of Tarkovski's adaptation of his work.

But the film absolutely succeeds in creating a dense, haunting atmosphere that traps us from the beginning to the very end. The decaying aspect and environment of the space station orbiting the planet, along with the psychological wearing out of the scientists working there, perfectly represents the despair and powerlessness of humans to understand, let alone communicate with, the vast mass of apparently conscious matter that is the planet ocean, which seems to be able to read even the deepest corners of our very minds, revealing aspects we were unaware of, yet doing it in a sort of unconscious, or naive way... Is it (the planet) just playing? sometimes it seems as if it were learning to imitate others, the way human children do...

Excellent performances by Donatas Banionys (Kelvin), and specially Nathalie Bondarchouk (Harey), in a very dramatic role, yet with subtle, delightful points of humor. The film and the novel complement each other, and, unlike so many other cases, both are equally worth to be read and watched.

The final scene (and here the film truly overcomes the novel) is among the best ends in cinema history. The ocean recreates a whole scene, not just a personage, in which the protagonist is wholly absorbed, but again, it does it with some carelessness, on earth rain occurs outside houses, not inside them... is it just another stage in the planet apprenticeship process?, or maybe Solaris is also trying to communicate with humans in its own way? we might never know.

Konets Sankt-Peterburga (1927)

Propaganda, and little more

[3/10 · 25 October 2013]

Does anybody know of some film from the first decades of the soviet era which is not plain political propaganda?. Cinema was one of the best media for communicating the "greatness" and "goodness" of the socialist revolution and how evil everything that had happened in Russia before October 1917 was, and directors like Eisenstein and Pudovkin did a very good job at spreading the word.

Basically this film is a companion to Eisenstein's October, this one showing the main actors of the October revolution, while Pudovkin's focuses in the facts from the common people point of view. This might have resulted in an interesting study of the soul of the Russian people, on how peasants and citizens lived, what they believed in, what was their position with regard to the political events that were developing in their country. Unfortunately there is nothing of this anywhere in the film, propaganda takes over, and the film is a succession of topics such as how evil the stock market-bidding capitalists are, how desperate the living of the peasants and proletarians was, the betrayal of the coalition governments to the people on forming and alliance with the financial power... There is no individual character development (well, individuals as such mattered little for the soviets, we know), each personage represents something, it is not him/herself but just a part of the social class he/she belongs to, and thus performance from all the actors is as plain and superficial as the lecture of a political manifesto in the supreme soviet.

Nothing particularly interesting either regarding cinematography: the trite scenes of masses in movement, poorly executed in general (a very long way from Griffith, for instance), close-ups which pretended to impress the audience I suppose (they made me giggle instead), and a poor montage, full of symbolisms (like the equestrian statue of some past Tzar) repeated again and again tiresomely.

One only scene was of some appeal to me, the very last one, when the wife of the worker's communist leader enters the Catherine's palace and is dazzled by its magnificence and beauty, a scene with a highly symbolic meaning: the old palaces of the nobility were now freely accessible for the common people, everybody was now "equal". We know now that this would be for a very short time however...

So, this was my last attempt with old soviet cinematography. Creativity was so curtailed that I know I can't expect anything new from what I have already seen. One star for the final scene, plus another one for its mastery in propaganda, plus the basic one = 3 stars.

Fight Club (1999)

A dark, intriguing and haunting film about.... NOTHING!!!

[2/10 · 27 September 2013]

So, there was once a loser, a guy who is so depressed and alienated by society and his job that he has to join different self-help groups, even though he does not suffer from the conditions of the attendants, just to find some human warmth. Suddenly an unfortunate incident leaves him homeless, and he turns to a recently met friend for help. This means a dramatic change in his life, his friend is handsome, strong, full of self-confidence, charismatic, bold, audacious, that is, just the opposite from him, and the one he would maybe like to become. And his friend opens for him a sort of liberation path, through fight!, the most basic and primitive of human instincts; first between them, then starting a club of fighters who meet every week to release their life frustrations through violence and direct hand-to-hand combat. The other most primitive human instinct, sex, appears abruptly too, but it's not him, but his friend whom becomes the sex partner of the girl he likes. Most of the film time is spent in the development of the fight club, which gets bigger, with some of its members going to live to the friend house (much to the displeasure of the protagonist), and then finally turning into a sort of protest/sabotage/terrorist group.

And suddenly his friend disappears, and in his search for him the protagonist discovers that his friend founded many other fight clubs in other cities.

And here the "great" moment of the film comes!... the protagonist discovers that his friend is actually... himself!!, it is a fictional personage created by his own mind, the person he would like to be, the embodiment of his ambitions, of everything he admires... and hates all at once, the fictional being through whom he takes revenge on the senseless world he lives in. And thus we are forced to completely change our perspective and interpret the whole story under a totally new point of view, and it is just then when we realize the story we have been told is about.... NOTHING AT ALL!!!.... liberation through violence and sex?? oh yeah! we might believe that if the end of the film showed us something different from a guy meekly pleading his lady to come back with him, something different form a guy horrified at the tragical consequences the acts of violence he has promoted have had. Regret from having departed so much from the established social order?? it just does not make sense.

Then we start to think of the internal coherence of the story, and we find so many plot holes and so much inconsistency that the whole film literally deflates into nothing but a bunch of senseless violent scenes and a ridiculously pretentious and void criticism-against-the-system message.

Probably one of the most overrated films at IMDb, a perfect example of a film which should have never been made.