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Reviews
Gone Baby Gone (2007)
Moral dilemmas and a great cast
A very nice tale about moral dilemma. Discusses whether doing the right thing is really doing the best thing. Also shows the weight that the system can have in conforming it's players, and the unpredictable consequences of bending the rules. Cops, private investigators, criminals and victims clash, as a girl's kidnapping investigation unfolds, making the spectator confused about who is actually good and bad.
The great nuanced acting of a top class cast and a very indie-style directing by Affleck create just the right amount of doubt and surprise of the plot. Kudos to some of the framings, of ordinary suburb and ghetto people going about their hipnotic lives, giving us a sense of emptiness and impotence in the face of life as it is, not as we wished it to be.
Quando o Sol se Põe (2020)
A spiritual family movie
This is clearly a film aimed to attract the young christian audience, full of songs praising God and characters that pray, have good behaviors and no vices. The teen couples never kiss, just hug. The disfunctional families soon find their peace thru forgiveness and open hearts.
It's refreshing, though, that unlike other "feel good movies" with religious backbones, the script didn't fall in the trap of being presumptuous showing perfect characters with higher morals. Instead, their representation is of modern and cool youngsters and diligent parents. Their behaviors flow naturally, including some very flawed attitudes such as using slangs, being infatuated with their colleagues mothers, chasing girls at school, staying out overnight or Meeting friends at the local hypster bar.
Anyway, the storyline is a cliché: a group of friends creating a band to compete in a music festival, finding their first love and relying on the Almighty to endure life's adversities.
O Homem Perfeito (2018)
For sunday lazy afternoons
If you're looking for a breezy entertainment on a lazy afternoon, this film is ideal. The cast reunites some very famous Brazilian comedians, who embody exaggerated characters, on a light and funny storyline that has no strings attached to real life. From a cartoonist man-child who refuses to grow, to his college sweetheart who became a successful ghost writer and a fake bad boy rock star.
It builds part of the action on critiquing how social media can serve egotrips and fake profiles (i.e. the instant celebrities that are having their biographies invented by the film's protagonist). Therefore the title of the "perfect man" that can be created and exist only online - which should serve as a warning that you must doubt anyone who's seems too good to be true. It probably isn't!
But the naïve dancer who becomes a marriage wrecker is the perfect victim for the creative vengeful wife, and a generational representation of the digital natives' fragile relationship with social media.
Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Total waste of talents
How such a good cast - including the Oscar winner Eddie Redmaine - could embark on such a B film like that is beyond myself. The plot is unimaginative, the supporting characters very charicaturesque, ranging from a giant talking lizard to an anime doll bounty hunter. A splash of videogame special effects here and there, and that's pretty much it. A ridiculous sci-fi movie that wastes good actors, insults the genre's fans and probably cost millions that could be of better use.
4 latas (2019)
A sensitive journey inwards
A very charming film with a multicultural cast, each adding his own talent to a sensitive and sometimes comic story. Light and well written, it takes us on a transaarinen journey, that offers a visually interesting glimpse of deep Africa (from Tangiers/Morocco to Timbuktu/Mali) on board of a french iconic car: the Renault 4L, best known in France as "catrelle". Also a self-discovery journey, as the relationship among the characters and with the challenges of the desert unfold.
Another Life (2019)
Sci-fi madhouse
What a flop! Can you imagine a do-or-die mission to save Earth handled by a bunch of youngsters with no military training, irresponsible behaviors such as bringing alien materials on board of the spacecraft with minimum safety measures, both pilots sniffing alien hallucinogenic poppies, a crew member adding them to the crew's salad, and all sort of unprofessional conducts? Gimme a break. It's too much wrapped in an idiotic script.
So weak and unbelievable, over the top and a waste of everybody's time.
Huge in France (2019)
The fun rests in a good script
Very dynamic, with good actors that are naturally funny, because the script is good and they don't try too had to make you laugh through physicality. A bit of nonsense, a plot that is not obvious, with sprinkles here and there of special guests making uncredited appearances, all of which make this sitcom charming and current.
Coisa Mais Linda (2019)
Gaps and poetic licenses
Although I must admit the story is charming, and pure nostalgia for a carioca like me, there are odd things in this series. For example, the main characters are 50/50 partners in their jazzclub. But whilst the white rich girl who had no financial help from her wealthy father is capable soon enough to move to a beachfront apartment (one of the most expensive addresses in Rio), her black partner keeps living in the favela with her sister, who by the way works at the club. No explanation is hinted on this discrepancy.
Also, many crowded beach scenes meant as Ipanema Beach actually show far away beaches that were practically deserted and very hard to reach in the 60's (one can easily tell by the islands in the horizon and the much shorter sand stretch). Same goes to the club's neighborhood, with a colonial architecture typical of old downtown Rio, that passes as very close to the beach, another poetic license of the series.
Roma (2018)
Documentary or film?
Absolutely boring movie, that goes nowhere while showing the uninteresting life of a native-mexican maid working at a white family household. She is to become a single mom, the family is in crisis because of the boss's frequent absence and the stereotypical relationship colonizer-colonized and/or social class gap is portrayed at a very slow pace. You cannot see where the story is going because it is just that: a documentary on the assymetry of social conditions in Mexico. Shallow characters, long pointless shots, little tension, a flat line of facts. Yeah, the direction may be good, for the framing, the photography and the black & white usual expressiveness. But that's pretty much it.