Wednesday, December 21, 2011

The Inception, by C.Nolan.

The satisfaction of seeing this film will depend on the ability of the public to understand what is happening on the screen, as the narrative structure is based on levels where the action takes place simultaneously with speed mismatches while the time passes. I'm pretty sure "Inception" not going to be understood by all the effort involved to understand the plot.



Christopher Nolan took ten years to carry out this film which includes the ability of people to enter the world of dreams. No technological explanations such as "Star Trek" how does such a feat, so there is a script built as a maze where the goal of  Cob (Leonardo DiCaprio) is more valuable than money, but the ways to achieve this are as complex as the dreams of where the information is.
Nolan in his script plays a lot with visual concepts of the subconscious, is a kind of staging of the sleep process where you can be involved in the creation of a world limited by your own ability. It's amazing to have the ability of a God. The time must have gone on polishing this work deserves recognition!
The visual effects beyond the boundaries of fantasy, because they are a reflection of ideas built on reality. The last act where Cob and Ariadne (Marion Cotillard) walk through a city built from nothing, is a pleasure to be hold. I can not forget the direction of Nolan who also wrote the screenplay, which follows the Dark Knight style with large majestic shots filmed on location, always with enough light to keep details in truth there are no tricks and no money should be spared in this production , 200 million are reflected on the screen.



Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Nader and Simin, The separation.

The best compliment you can make to a movie, with apologies to those addicted to extravagant style is that it seems real life. Asghar Farhadi is of those few directors who knows how to be present without being noticed, which directs the service history. Nader and Simin, is a countless moods, pressing paradoxes, human fragilties to the surface, and makes the tragedy facing forward, without frills or beads but with a privileged domain of time and space.


The drama emerges tanned underground under the misfortune of their vulnerable inhabitants overboard Farhadi impossible balance between emotion steely splashing the story from beginning to end and the sobriety of a narrative strategy balancing clean, brightly polished that instrumentalized the silence and frustration to that intangible, define the humanity of the story hurtful.
Farhadi fled at full speed from the clichés inherent unfortunately true Iranian auteur, and the man-woman cliches that, from the coarseness of social realism in a country in which cinematically, it seems, there is no room for short stories, just for big with a message.
Nader and Simin,  cutting a small universal history (a rare virtude in the Middle Eastern film), in which the premises (the impact of religion mainly) qualify the story, not define it. The result is a movie that smells of truth to every dodge, an anecdote, a marital rift, which triggers a tragedy without fuss multidimensional dosed with an exquisite sensitivity.




Draw the tape also one of the parent-child portraits, thanks to a spectacular display of interpretations, most authentic and awe that has recently paraded a screen truncated loyalty, the need for a lie,  betrayed trust, the disappointment of a traumatic trip to the adult world ... undergroud little dramas that crawl under the skin of this great film, which carry off all the awards at the last Venice Film Festival.



Thursday, December 15, 2011

"The professional" Luc Besson

Love comes in strange circumstances, perhaps because it is only this: complicity, connection, to be on the same side of the pond, to feel recognized in the other. Who cares about something as silly as the age or circumstances. Something that many people could see unethical or unhealthy, maybe it's something as simple as affection, such as wanting to be next to eachother, sharing life. This love Mathilda (Natalie Portman) and Leon (Jean Reno) in one of the best Luc Besson's films "The Professional".




Everyone knows that Luc Besson likes soulful murderers, the murderers of murderers, with rules, discipline, and a sad story in the past. Cute and lonely people with particular habits, like Nikita, Zoe Saldana and recently in Colombia, who liked to dance and love after doing the dirty work. In The Professional, Leon drinks milk and has rules: no killing or women, or children, exercise, ordered his clothes, he likes music and especially loves his plant. He who is extremely quiet, does not socialize with anyone until he meets Mathilda, a Natalie Portman at least 11 years, which acted as well as in his latest film, with which he won an Oscar.




Friday, December 2, 2011

I am not an homophobic :) "Before Night Falls"


I saw this film some years ago and today I would like to share it with you, also it remind me of a great night in a gay club in Berlin, Berghain. I wanna dedicate this film to all my gay friends and to some of my friends who thought that night in Berlin that I was a homophobic just because I said: "Oh my God, I've never seen so many gays together" it was a great night :)
“Before Night Falls” is such a vivid experience that it holds you fully in each moment. Even if you’ve read the memoir of the Cuban novelist and poet Reinaldo Arenas on which the film is based, from scene to scene there’s no telling how painter-turned-director Julian Schnabel, or his wonderful star, Javier Bardem, will tackle what comes next. “Feverish” has been the word used to describe the movie in many of its reviews. But in confidence and sensuality “Before Night Falls” suggests the calm that can come with fever, that heightened and slowed state of awareness where each perception and sensation takes on a vibrant clarity.
The movie isn’t always a model of clarity. Schnabel immerses us in the atmosphere before giving us our bearings and he doesn’t always identify the characters or their relation to each other. But the occasional confusions are a small price to pay for a director who places enough trust in his audience’s intelligence to not spell everything out for them, to work allusively rather than declaratively to convey the meanings of Reinaldo Arenas’ life.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

A Prophet: No 19 best crime film of all time!!!

With a lot of memories, tenderness and love for a very good friend of mine, I recommend you this almost perfect creation, the person who once recommended it to me is a great camara man and knows a lot about film industry! Please take it in consideration :) For you Tom!

The Beat That My Heart Skipped, Audiard's brilliant 2005 film, was the study of a Parisian delinquent whose past is prised open to reveal a delicate, artistic sensibility at odds with his criminal lifestyle. In this, Audiard's 2009 follow-up, Malik (the young protagonist, played by Tahar Rahim) is neither a hardened criminal (though he is imprisoned at the start), nor does he seem to harbour any secrets in his past, artistic or otherwise. When he is committed to brutal French prison, he is a blank slate waiting to be filled.






Malik is not without talents: in fact, he turns out to be supremely capable. His advantage is the fact that he is a middle-man in every respect, belonging neither to the gang of Corsican hoods who adopt him as a gofer, nor the Muslim brotherhood who, given his north-African origins, expect his allegiance. What ensues is both thrilling and – in its cold indictment of the French prison system – terrifying. The plot is intricate and tightly wound, and Audiard exerts formidable control over every frame so that two and a half hours flash by in an instant. The nightmarish assassination scene will make you wince every time you roll your tongue.



Monday, November 28, 2011

"Sleeping Beauty" and sexual nightmares


"Your vagina will not be penetrated. Your vagina is a temple." With these words, Sleeping Beauty establishes the ground rules and sets the scene for a bizarre sexual nightmare. The film is set in Australia but conceived in a high, contemporary European style: it is perpetually a surprise to realise the dialogue is in English and not French or Austrian-accented German.


It is technically elegant, with vehemence and control, though often preposterous, with the imagined classiness of high-end prostitution and art-porn cliches of secret sexiness in grand chateaux: shades of Eyes Wide Shut.
Author-turned-director Julia Leigh has certainly made an assured debut, which evidently owes nothing to Jane Campion who has "presented" this movie in some kind of Executive Mentor capacity. Instead, Leigh aims for the occult ritual of Buñuel and the formal exactitude of Haneke: rigorously framed and composed shots.
Emily Browning gives a fierce and powerful performance, which should put her in the running for the festival's best actress prize; she is Lucy, a student who takes part-time jobs to pay her tuition. These include medical experimentation – an almost unwatchable, and crucially penetrative process in which a tube is inserted into her gullet – and occasional prostitution. From here, Lucy is inducted into a niche sex industry: elderly gentlemen in tuxedos hold dinner parties and pay beautiful young women to wait on them, almost naked. Her success leads to a lucrative "sleeping beauty" gig. She is drugged and these ageing, sagging sensualists can do whatever they wish to her naked body, except penetration. But Lucy becomes obsessed with knowing what is being done to her.
The movie's emotional seriousness consists in Lucy's unhappy backstory: it is not merely a need for cash that has led her to this, but a kind of trauma and self-hate. She evidently had a painful and complex relationship with an agoraphobic drug addict called Birdmann (Ewen Leslie); he was and is clearly in love with her and, on her many visits, her affectionate friendship is complicated by unexpressed guilt at not feeling the same way or wanting to sleep with him.
All of this Browning suggests in her sulky pouts, her suppressed tears, her angry blankness: especially when talking to her alcoholic mother on the phone. It all leads to the grotesque situation of lying in a drugged stupor for men who wish to indulge in a necrophile-rape fantasy. The sleeping beauty of the original fable fainted on pricking her finger on a spinning wheel, an image of a moment's daring combined with one of women's work and torpid docility. Lucy is certainly doing women's work: but what is she doing? Will she wake up to what is happening?
The stomach-turning "sex" scenes themselves brutally show how unlovely is the ageing male body: and the penises here are pitifully unable even to attempt penetration. To some, the situation may call to mind Almodovar's Talk to Her or perhaps the denouement of Dennis Potter's Brimstone and Treacle. But there is force and originality in Leigh's work. Sleeping Beauty is an impressive technical display, though no more than the sum of its parts.

"The Debt" Mossad Agents






The Debt is an unusually smart spy film, telling a good story without losing credibility. The Mossad protagonists aren't the super-efficient (if troubled) heroes of Munich, but inept amateurs whose convoluted plan goes awry. The richly drawn characters help a lot: the love triangle that develops is tastefully handled, and Vogel is given a human side to balance out his evil nature. The second half of the film, with the protagonists perpetuating a face-saving lie that echoes down through the decades, provides some disquieting food for thought. How much of any country's national myth is built on convenient, self-aggrandizing falsehoods?

The 1960s scenes are brilliant: well-acted, cleverly plotted and gripping, the flashbacks make for engrossing viewing. The modern day scenes are servicable but suffer in comparison: the trio's future relationships are hinted at, but we don't learn enough about the intervening thirty years to make their older incarnations compelling. Then there's the contrived ending, which tries too hard to mix an intellectual message with a crowd-pleasing climax.



John Madden's direction is assured without being flashy, his crisp staging of key scenes (especially a railyard shootout) and Ben Davis's photography the perfect air of tension. The film is carefully crafted, with the flashbacks and modern scenes complementing each other perfectly.

Jessica Chastain is having a breakout year, with roles in this film, Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life and The Help. She's just about perfect here, a wonderful mixture of vulnerability, toughness and doubt. Sam Worthington (Avatar) scores with a quietly intense performance and Marton Csokas (Lord of the Rings) is perfect. Jesper Christiensen (Quantum of Solace) gives a wonderfully complex performance, making Vogel a very human monster. Helen Mirren makes the most of her limited role, but Tom Wilkinson (Valkyrie) and Ciaran Hinds (Munich) are wasted.

The Debt is a solid spy thriller. Despite its flawed conclusion, it remains a smart, thought-provoking film.