Reviews

The Platform is a violent and very obvious parable about the capitalist system. However, the way it is presented is more frightening as we try to convince ourselves of human kindness. And even when we expect the worst, what comes next succeeds in overcoming what has already been seen, in rawness and despair.

The minimalist set design resembles a theater stage. Most of the scenes take place in a structure called The Hole, where cells for two people have a large central opening through which a platform with a table with food for the whole day descends daily.

At level zero, there is a kitchen where a banquet is prepared daily with sophisticated foods, delicacies, desserts and drinks. This feast goes down intact to level 1 and then successively, in brief stops, to the lower levels. If each pair consumes a small portion of what is served, it is possible that there will be food for everyone. Of course, that never happens.

Selfish, not only do the occupants of the upper cells eagerly devour more than they can handle digesting, but they smear the remains of food they cannot eat. Some justify their actions by remembering that, after a month, a shuffle occurs and they can be transferred to cells below.

The movie starts with Goreng (Ivan Massagué) waking up at level 48 alongside the old Trimagasi (Zorion Eguileor). He brings the only object to which everyone is entitled: the book Don Quixote e by Miguel de Cervantes. His cellmate has a knife that sharpens itself.

Goreng's odyssey literally has many ups and downs, until he meets Baharat (Emilio Buale), a black man who carries a rope with which he intends to reach level zero, without realizing that, for that, he will need the help of people from above.

Together, they intend to send a message to the Administration that, as said by a sage, "has no conscience" of what happens at the lower levels. Little by little, the two paladins will discover that practicing good, altruism and social justice is a far more difficult and inglorious task than they imagined.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire includes itself in that category of films that go beyond the script and acting and is consolidated as a work of art. Clair Mathon's exquisite cinematography anticipates scenes through sketches on paper and canvas textures.

Anyone who is in a hurry to draw conclusions about the plot should be attentive to the words of Marianne (Noémie Merlant) to her students in a portrait painting class: "Take time to look at me." A student brings to the ambiance a screen that was in stock: it is the story we are going to watch.

Sometime in the 18th century, Marianne crosses a bay in a boat driven by rowers towards the coast of Brittany. Her materials fall into the sea, the men do not move, and she jumps into the water to retrieve them. She arrives at her destination, wholly soaked and tired.

The artist's mission is, in one week, to paint a portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), the second daughter of a wealthy merchant. The painting must be sent to the appreciation of a suitor in Milan who may if he likes, marry the girl. Héloïse's older sister does not seem to have agreed to this fate and chose to kill herself.

The younger sister's strategy is different: she refuses to pose for the portrait. Therefore, Marianne should do the painting from memory, presenting herself as a chaperone, assisted by the maid Sophie (Luàna Bajrami).

The two young women start walking together and exchanging experiences. At the end of the week, Marianne reveals that she is a painter and shows the painting to Héloïse, who rejects for considering it lifeless. The painter feels extremely frustrated and ends up burning the painting and asking for another week to complete the work.

What follows is a love story. Marianne explores all the intimacy of Héloïse, and she surrenders with calm pleasure. There is no space for male conventions. Lovers know that they cannot change their destinies, but they discover that there is room for desire. And for art.

Carnal Knowledge is rightly considered Mike Nichols' best work. It can be said that it is a chronicle that sensitively reflects the patterns of sexuality, focusing on the feelings and desires that led to the so-called sexual revolution of the 60s.

At the beginning of the movie, two friends, Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) and Sandy (Art Garfunkel), argue in the dark to the Moonlight Serenade arrangements. They talk about loving and being loved and about the type of women they would like to have by their side: sexy without being a prostitute, intelligent, understanding, tall and with big tits.

The inseparable friends go to a college mixer, a closed party where boys and girls met at American campuses in the 1940s. There they discover what can be the "dream woman" of both: Susan (Candice Bergen), who is "given" by Jonathan to Sandy. The latter, however, fails to take the initiative with the girl.

Susan starts the conversation with Sandy, and they are soon dating. Although shy, the boy tries to advance in caresses and, when the girl agrees with some advances, he tells everything to his friend Jonathan, including that Susan finds him sexy. It's the password for him to make an appointment with his friend's girlfriend.

Susan meets Jonathan, the two soon get involved and have sex. As usual, Jonathan runs to tell his friend about his first time (of course, he doesn't reveal his partner's name). This fact makes Sandy obsessed with the idea of having sex, and Susan, reluctantly, gives in to the boy's wishes.

Now it's Jonathan, in love with Susan, who despairs because he wants Susan to reveal to Sandy that she was having an affair with him. She doesn't want to hurt her boyfriend's feelings, doesn't tell anything, and forbids Jonathan to do so. They break up, and Susan and Sandy end up getting married.

Jules Feiffer's screenplay is purposefully economical and polarized as if to characterize the childlike way in which the two friends treat women. After this prologue, the story follows the experiences of Jonathan and Sandy for about two decades, showing their disappointments, separations, and insecurities.

Babel is not about the separation of peoples due to language diferences, as shown in the biblical account. Director Alejandro Iñárritu builds a plot that crosses stories of people visiting foreign lands and interfering, with banal acts, in the culture of the people.

It is not a matter of not understanding different languages, since, in one way or another, everyone ends up understanding each other. What you see, in the stories that intersect, are not problems in speech, but in listening. Some misunderstandings follow. Sometimes with tragic consequences.

Without spoilers, the stories in the movie are as follows: a Japanese businessman (Kôji Yakusho) goes hunting in Morocco and gives his guide a rifle as a gift. This man sells the gun to a friend, who needs to kill some jackals that threaten his goats.

The two Moroccan boys, who graze the goats, decide to test the rifle and shoot a bus hitting an American tourist (Cate Blanchett). The world media claims it was a terrorist act. The tourist's husband (Brad Pitt) calls home and asks that his children's nanny (Adriana Barraza) stay with the children and not go to a wedding in Mexico. But she will.

In Japan, a police officer seeks information from the businessman who donated the gun but ended up getting involved with his teenage daughter (Rinko Kikuchi). She is deaf and dumb, has gone through the tragic loss of her mother and is having difficulties in dealing with her sexuality.

The four stories, well-marked by the precise cinematography of Rodrigo Prieto, should not have any connection between them. They all act in good faith, with great intentions, but by small mistakes, none of them criminals, everything goes wrong.

The end of the movie takes place in a Tokyo skyscraper and is representative of the communication problems that characterize Babel. The Chieko girl experiences the pain that led her mother to kill herself. The father arrives and seems to understand that the daughter's pain is not being unable to hear, but the pain of not being heard.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is considered to be a masterpiece of German Expressionism. Filmed in 1920, the action takes place in several bizarre scenarios that are two-dimensional projections of surrealistic sketches, with crooked walls, pointed doors, and endless stairs. The set designer Hermann Warm does not appear in the credits.

At the beginning of the movie, the protagonist Francis (Frederich Feher) tells frightening reminiscences to an older man who says ghosts torment him. The story is shown through flashbacks that took place in the German city of Holstenwall, also recreated in sharp and irregular scenarios.

A variety fair is being held at that location and, among the various attractions, a man named Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) announces the presentation of the somnambulist. This young man has been sleeping since his birth, 23 years ago. Lying in a coffin, Cesare (Conrad Veidt) will wake up and answer any question from the audience.

Provocatively, Alan (Hans Heinz von Twardowski), a friend of Francis' asks when he will die. Cesare's answer ("At first dawn!") is terrifying and prophetic because the boy dies. Suspicious, Francis watches over the somnambulist's coffin. However, his fiancee Jane (Li Dagover) is kidnapped the next morning.

Some people see Cesare carrying the unconscious girl in their arms and pursue him. Francis denounces Caligari to the police, but he runs away, followed by the boy until he hides in a mental hospital, where he is none other than the director.

Aided by the team of doctors and the police, Francis discovers an ancient manuscript and the director's diary, in which he describes his long wait for a sleepwalker to be able to put him under his command and commit a series of murders.

When Francis finished telling his interlocutor about the arrest of the mad doctor, we realized that the ambiguity shown by director Robert Wiene was not restricted to the scenario. Still, the plot itself suffers some final distortions that make the movie even more terrifying.

Pain and Glory is one of the most tender and delicate movies by director Pedro Almodóvar. Autobiographical, and with Antonio Banderas as his alter ego, the story deals with the glory of the past and the pains of the present. Film director Salvador Mallo (Banderas) becomes an elderly man and turns away from the profession, facing illness, depression and declining success.

The movie begins with Salvador plunged, in the present, in a swimming pool. In silence and without breathing, it cannot be precisely said whether he is dead or alive. The fluidity of the water mixes with that of another water, that from the past, where the director, as a boy, accompanies his mother and her washerwomen colleagues in their work and in their songs.

The movie's first narrative is between a Spanish director and an actor who became a star when he starred in his film Sabor (Flavor). The story, which could be Almodóvar's relationship with Banderas, is now relived with Banderas in the role of the diretor. A great Asier Etxeandia plays Alberto Crespo, the actor that Mallo hadn't talked to in 30 years because he thought the drug had hurt his performance.

The relationship is remade, but the affections are tense, sharp, culminating in Crespo using the dragon (heroine) and Salvador asking to try the drug. What follows is a trip to the past where the director's mother (Penélope Cruz) is with him as a boy at a railway station where they will travel to meet her father in another city.

Back in the present, a metalanguage exercise turns The Addiction into a confessional text from Salvador that is given for a theatrical presentation in the form of a monologue, by Alberto. During the performance, a man cries. In the dressing room, he reveals himself as Federico (Leonardo Sbaraglia), the great love of Salvador's life, in a moving interpretation.

With health increasingly poor, the director undergoes a definitive medical examination. Will there be salvation for Salvador ("savior" in Spanish)? The scene of the train station with the boy and his mother is repeated, no longer as a reminiscence, but another story.

Phantom Thread is a delicate and crude film at the same time, as it deals with the execution of art, from the artisan weft to the final result, which, in the case of the film, are dream dresses that go beyond materiality, bringing secret messages and auguries literally filled in.

His character Reynolds Woodcock is woven asymmetrically between an absurdly cordial and delicate perfectionist and an explosive, self-centered, and authoritarian personality.

Between one affair and another, where the choice seems to focus less on passion and more on the aesthetics of the woman who accompanies him as a model, the couturier is assisted by his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville, high performance). She protects him from any external distractions, fixes his mistakes, dismisses his occasional companions, and keeps him protected in his predictable world.

During one of his trips to the countryside, Reynolds allows Alma (Vicky Krieps) to enter his life. Alma, the Latin word for soul, is a waitress who animates that being so controlling and so controlled quickly becomes her muse, model, and, surprisingly, the great love of his life.

When asked why he never married, Reynolds replies to Alma, "I make dresses," and recognizes himself as an incurable bachelor.

When she goes to live in the house where the sewing studio also works, the girl soon realizes the symbiotic relationship between the brothers, and the romance seems doomed to the failure that has always characterized Reynolds' relations.

When she is harassed by him, in a loving situation engendered by her, Alma knows that if she remains submissive, she must leave the house.

To change the situation, she tries a solution that reveals a dark face that we will later discover is common to both. Or a metaphor to all conjugal relationships?

Director Paul Anderson Thomas, who also does cinematography, seems to want to scan the characters' intimacy through close-ups that always show a peace that does not exist.

Set in the "near future," James Gray's Ad Astra can tell a consistent and ambitious story that, despite the slowness of the narrative, holds attention to the end, and provides beautiful and surprising moments.

However, the aridest image may be the close-up face of astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt), famous for being the son of legendary space explorer H. Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones) and perfect psychological balance. , never reaching a heart rate per minute higher than 80, not even when falling from a super antenna reaching the stratosphere.

This perfectionism makes this official proud to accept all missions assigned to him without question and without allowing the wishes of her wife Eve (Liv Tyler) to interfere with her professional life, making only logical decisions.

After recovering from the antenna crash, Roy discovers that the cause of the tower's unstable operation was a series of power surges caused by an antimatter device parked near the planet Neptune. According to the scientists, this lightning source could be the ship of the historic Project Lima that, 30 years ago, led a team of researchers to that location to investigate the existence of extraterrestrial life in the universe, captained precisely by McBride senior.

The new mission of the ever-balanced military is to travel to planet Mars to convey a message to trace the whereabouts of his father, whom he thought had been dead for many years. On the way to the red planet, some setbacks happen (such as attacking space pirates on the moon) that seem introduced to attract fans of galactic battles or only to break the monotony of the movie, although exceptionally well done.

When Roy finds himself in a position of being used as a bait to attract the attention of his father, who is supposed to be involved in an attack on Earth, his emotional and psychological balance is put to the test. However, his determination leads him to the presence of (his) creator.

Man With a Movie Camera is one of the most revolutionary visual experiences ever made in the form of film. Director Dziga Vertov sought to challenge various models fashionable in 1929.

One of these parameters is the average shot length (ASL), which measures the total duration of a movie divided by the number of shots. The silent films of that time had an ASL of 11.2 seconds, and the director's wife, Yelizaveta Svilova, achieved the feat of editing Man With a Movie Camera in 2.3 seconds, a mark similar to modern films.

Vertof also changes the theatrical form with which the movies were produced and bet on an alternative language, making a point of stating, at the opening of the film, that he had no scenery, no intertitles, and no actors. Just a succession of images and a fast-paced soundtrack.

The purpose of the film is to portray the 24 hours of a single day in a Russian city. That single day was shot in four years and showed images of three cities: Moscow, Kiev, and Odessa. The work resulted in about 1775 different shots recorded by the cinematography of Mikhail Kaufman, director's brother, and perhaps the only character.

At the beginning of the exhibition, an image division presents the illusion of a giant movie camera with the cinematographer and his camera with a tripod on top. The scene changes to a movie theater where the seats, until then raised, begin to automatically swivel down to the entrance of the audience that will watch the movie, this one.

What follows is a beautiful metalanguage exercise. Images on various subjects are shown, and the cinematographer is showed himself filming, sometimes on top of a truck, sometimes in the depths of a coal mine and even being almost squeezed by two trams that cross.

The ending is a crescendo where the stages of editing the film are shown along with new images in cuts that "jump," the movement accelerates, the music becomes frantic until the shutter closes together with a human eye.

The thread of a Wedding Story seems to be divorce, but what director Noah Baumbach reveals is a glimpse of real-life in a relationship between two people. That thing you never talk about, regarding opposite and undesirable affections that arise, and what you see are two people who genuinely love each other by taking unthinkable and disloyal attitudes to each other.

At the beginning of the movie, it's possible to know the strengths of the two protagonists. They write a description that each made about the other at the request of a mediator. We found out that Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) is a loving mother, great listener, concerned about her mother and sister, and never closes the cabinet. Charlie (Adam Driver), on the other hand, is a talented and creative theater director, extraordinarily competitive and devours his meals.

Entering the intimacy of the couple, who has gone through previous crises, makes life difficult for the viewer accustomed to taking sides. Logically, some dirt on the couple is dug up. Charlie has already cheated on Nicole once and rarely takes her personal needs into account. Nicole goes to LA to film the pilot of a TV series and kind of kidnaps the couple's son to live there permanently, the fact that Charlie only learns of when he is surprised by the divorce papers.

The performances reinforce this documentary idea: both Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson are convincing in their performances. Each receives a monologue from the director: Charlie at the bar and Nicole with the horrible Nora Fanshaw (Laura Dern, fantastic!). Also, there is a dialogue, or rather, an unthinkable argument, that famous final round in which one says what is not to be told and what is frightened is heard.

Rarely does the film sounds conventional or excessive, as in musical numbers, which perhaps worked better in the theater. But in general, it is a beautiful movie, a work of fiction that manages to scratch real life and makes us feel that the couple should be together, even though we know it would not work. Or it rather would.

Joker is not a movie about comics, like the ones we get used to in the Marvel Universe. Although released to tell the story of the origin of the arch-enemy of Batman, what you see here is a big, dark, and dramatic story about mental illness.

At the beginning of the movie, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) laughs at his visit to the social worker (where he gets his medication). Arthur's laugh most resembles a painful and uncontrollable bout of crying. Going out into the street, he finds a filthy backdrop of a Gotham City paralyzed by a garbagemen strike. Some recognize a resemblance to Scorcese's Taxi Driver's New York.

Not coincidentally, another essential character is the humorist and host Murray Franklin, lived by Robert de Niro. He is the opposite of that character he lived in another Scorcese movie - The King of Comedy. In Joker, De Niro is the boisterous host who is admired and imitated by Arthur, who spends the nights in the company of his ailing mother, Penny (Frances Conroy), watching the show and fantasizing about participation.

Arthur works as a professional clown, animating birthday parties, and singing to sick children in hospitals. From reserved habits and oblivious to social contacts, he ends up being a victim of bullies, beaten on the street, ignored in his performances, and ridiculed by Murray in a video of a stand-up performance.

A co-worker gives Arthur a weapon for self-protection, and access to this artifact seems to be the way through which a tormented and divided mind could find a way to express itself. He twists his bony torso in front of the TV with his .38 in hands. By then he is no longer Fleck: an evil entity inhabits him, in an almost imperceptible transition.

When things start to get out of hand, Arthur is invited to the Murray show and asks to be called the Joker, name of the card with a jester. That's an appropriate archetype for a victim of society and influential politicians, like Thomas Wayne (future Batman's father), who calls activists "clowns."

The Searchers is one of John Ford's most epic and beautiful movies. Winton C. Hooch's magnificent cinematography is already present in the opening scene of the movie when, from inside Aaron Edwards (Walter Coy) ranch, we see his wife Martha (Dorothy Jordan) open the door to the sunny Texas landscape of the year 1868.

Down the dusty road, we noticed, as if we were part of the scene, the arrival of Aaron's brother Ethan (John Wayne), a Confederate soldier who boasts of never being defeated and who for three years became a wanderer, raising suspicions about their activities.

Analyzing the movie today requires a reflection on the culture of that time, which saw the Indians as savages to be exterminated. Ethan's stance is racist, even discriminating against young Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), whom he rescued from an Indian attack, but who, having an "eighth Comanche blood," is not worth living with family, according to the war veteran. However, this stance will be reviewed by a few occurrences of the plot that will follow.

The big issue in the movie is a relentless search for Ethan's niece Debbie (adolescent Natalie Wood), kidnapped by the Comanche Indians, after murdering the entire family and burning the ranch. Five years later, only two men remain in search, but for different reasons: Ethan intends to kill the girl, who would have become the prey of a Comanche buck. At the same time, his unwanted traveling companion, young Pawley, wants to rescue his foster sister at all costs.

Moreover, the coexistence of the two men of such different personalities serves to diminish the differences between them, and to add to the old cowboy some humanity, as well as to soften some aspects of his troubled mind.

When the expected confrontation with Chief Scar's (Henry Brandon) tribe finally occurs, Debbie runs into the despair of Uncle Ethan, whose path is barred by Pawley. The ending, surprising by the standards of the time, heralded a new era for western films.

Werner Herzog's Wrath of God remains after almost 50 years, one of the scariest movies ever made. But terror comes from the condition of the plot itself, not from some outside element.

On Christmas Day 1560, a Spanish expedition led by Gonzalo Pizarro (Alejandro Repullés), descending the steep mountains of the Peruvian Andes like small ants among clouds, arrives in the rainforest in search of the legendary city of El Dorado.

Dressed like a military parade, soldiers carry heavy cannons along the muddy trails, and enslaved natives carry litters with noble ladies. At the same time, a song composes the scene with sounds that travel between the sacred and the rusticity of the Indians. It's the band Popol Vuh (name of the Mayan holy book) led by Florian Fricke.

If the music is sinister, the presence of Klaus Kinski in the role of Don Lope de Aguirre sets the harrowing tone of the action. When the expedition splits into two groups, Aguirre rebels treacherously and cowardly against the leadership of Dom Pedro de Ursua (Ruy Guerra). Leaving this nobleman injured, he appoints the unimpressive nobleman Don Fernando de Guzman (Peter Berling) to command the expedition.

In a meeting with an Indian couple who cannot hear the word of God in a bible, the arrogance of the Spanish conquerors is expressed.

In contrast to jungle adventure movies, where it is known that someone will survive in the end, this film offers few alternatives to the hostile environment of the equatorial forest, the rushing river, and the arrows of the Indians.

There are no spectacular scenes, nor many dialogues. Faith in Aguirre's delusional thinking, which speaks of being emperor of a kingdom full of riches, or the fear of this delirium, causes everyone to follow him.

In the end, what you see is a limping Aguirre and what remains of his expedition drifting on the Amazon River on a raft. The hallucinated commander's speech becomes increasingly ambitious about the future, while little monkeys insist on occupying the float.

Fargo begins with a white canvas, and as the initial credits start to appear, the icy North Dakota landscape arises, with the strange flight of a bird through the snow. There is a warning that the story tells a real fact that happened in Minnesota in 1987, but that the real names were changed in "respect to the dead."

The locations took place made in the two neighboring states and in the cities where the tragedy occurred. It looks like a home-made movie, as the directors, the Cohen brothers, Ethan, and director Joel grew up in Minneapolis.

Every expectation falls apart as the story progresses, to the point of not knowing for sure whether we are witnessing a tragedy, as promised, or a satire, comedy, thriller, or thriller. It's a unique, unrivaled movie where transitions occur smoothly, and even violence seems "natural."

The story revolves around a failed car salesman, Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy), who desperately needs money for a deal that can save him from bankruptcy and also the domination of his wealthy father-in-law (Harve Presnell), who, by chance, owns the car agency where Jerry works.

To make his investment viable, Jerry hires two scumbag lowlifes called Showalter and Grimsrud (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife Jean (Kristin Rudrud) and share the $ 80,000 ransom paid by father-in-law Wade. Simple like that simple. Said no one ever, because everything goes wrong and all expectations turn into nightmares in the most amazing ways possible.

In the middle of the movie, some corpses begin to appear, frozen. Called to investigate possible murders, Brainerd's border town police chief Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) also has an unexpected profile: pregnant, she needs to have her vehicle pushed to get the engine started, and before going to the police station, goes to the market to buy worms for her husband Norm (John Carrol Lynch) to fish.

The Barbarian Invasions is a 2003 movie that deals in its dialogues with the question of the interpenetration of divergent worlds, failure of ideologies, and the fall of empires and points of view. It is no coincidence that it occurs shortly after the Twin Towers tragedy in the United States.

Rémy (Rémy Girard) is a college professor who has a terminal illness and is on the verge of death in a chaotic Canadian hospital assisted only by his ex-wife Louise (Dorothée Berryman). Pressured by the precarious conditions of the public hospital and the severity of Rémy's illness, Louise calls their son Sébastien (Stéphane Rousseau), a dominant trader in a London financial conglomerate. They do not get along. The son does not forgive his father, who left his family for a bohemian life. The father does not support his son's lifestyle, opposite to his beliefs.

However, it is the son's money that will give Rémy some dignity in her last moments. Sébastien bribes hospital staff and union members to have his father set up on an unoccupied floor, hires a few students to visit him, contacts some of his best friends, and employs a morphine addict to share the drug's effects with his father.

Rémy does not accept the idea that soon he will no longer be in the world, but in one of his "trips" provided by Nathalie (Marie-Josée Croze), she makes him understand that his attachment is not to the present but his past.

Realizing his father's affection for his old lakeside home, Sébastien organizes a gathering of all around his father to talk, drink and eat. Conversations, it turns out, are the film's strong point and revolve around the deconstruction of youth illusions, outdated ideologies, and ridiculous loves.

Everything goes by, and indeed the desire to live forever or die a good death are no more than delusions on this nostalgic night. Everyone lived, perhaps not as long as Rémy, illusory lives and passions. For him, death comes the way he finally wished.

Sunrise is an extraordinary movie. Considered by many to be the best silent film ever, it was the first work of German director F.W. Murnau in Hollywood. Released in 1927, at the dawn of sound films, it was not a commercial success, but it was almost a century ago an unforgettable experience.

The truth is that after the soundtrack came about, precisely that same year 1927, with The Jazz Singer, much of the cinematic experience lies in the dialogues. In Sunrise, the strength is in the images and emotional expression of the actors.

Also, the movie is not completely silent. It uses a piece of equipment called "Movietone," which was an audio track recorded on a vinyl record that was played back in the speakers as the movie was being projected. This method allowed for a complete sound experience with instrumental music and various sound effects such as traffic noise, thunder, and the like. There are no dialogues, and even intertitles are rare and of little content.

The story is simple and universal "of no place and every place." The characters are not named: they are just The Man (George O'Brien), "The Woman" (Janet Gaynor), and "The City Woman" (Margaret Livingston). The Man, a married farmer, has an affair with The City Woman, who suggests, on a date, that he kill The Woman, sell the farm, and come live with her in the city.

Man is reluctant at first, but they come up with a plot: he will invite his wife for sailing and drown her on the way. Everything works perfectly well, until, inside the boat, the man goes to the woman, but cannot commit the crime. However, the woman realizes that something is wrong and runs away from him as soon as they reach the shore.

When they finally reconcile, they decide to have fun in the city together, where fun episodes happen with dances, comedic scenes, and moments of tenderness. At night, tired and happy, the couple return to the farm, but a storm strikes them halfway back.

Parasite is such a fantastic movie that even its comparison with other amazing works can be dangerous. Korean director Bong Joon-ho has such control over the narrative and the camera that we often feel in a Hitchcock or Tarantino movie or even Italian neorealism. And it all flows smoothly.

The film begins as a custom comedy. Kim Ki-woo's family (Choi Woo-sik) lives so far below the poverty line in Korean society, that resides in a basement. They're always trying to capture wifi signals from surface neighbors, or leaving the windows open to benefit from the plagues fumigation made by the city hall on the streets.

The boy's life experiences a turnaround when a friend who is taking a trip abroad indicates him as a tutor to a girl he is teaching English. The friend is in love with the girl and trusts Kim, who knows why, to keep her safe.

Changing his name to Kevin, the boy begins his classes at the magnificent home of the fancy family, and, as expected, the girl Park Da-hye (Jung Ziso) soon falls in love with him. But your dream is much more ambitious: getting a job for your whole family in the house.

First, he convinces the girl's mother Yeon-kyo (Jo Yeo-jeong in great acting) to hire an art psychologist named Jessica, actually her sister Ki-jung (Park So-dam) for the hyperactive younger son. Using tricks, the Kim family's father and mother are soon admitted to the house. And on a Parks trip, they celebrate at their "new" residence.

After that apparent happy ending, everything changes in the movie. Former housekeeper Moon-gwang (Jeong-eun Lee) returns home and brings with her a great secret hidden until then. The outbreak of this surprise causes scenes worthy of a thriller, which only ends with the unexpected return of the Parks. What follows are comical scenes and amenities, until the terrible birthday of little boy Da-son (Hyun-jun Jung).

From there, chaos, destruction, and despair. And an ending. Or would it be two?

When it received the "Palme d'Or", the grand prize of the 2001 Venice Film Festival, The Son's Room was criticized by many for exactly some of its best qualities. Seen as sentimental, simplistic and common, the film empathizes with the audience that allows a calm and slow cry during many scenes.

This complicity happens because, although compartmentalized by doors, such as the one that divides the Sermonti family house and the father's office, the subjects interpenetrate and intersect to the point of influencing the fate of the characters.

Nanni Moretti, the director, acts as Giovanni, a psychoanalyst who listens to various patients with apparent distrust in the process of remembering, repeating, and reworking. Thus, it accomplishes the task mechanically, even going rambling.

After the attendance, Giovanni goes through the door that shares the office with the house and plunges into domestic issues. He and his wife Paola (Laura Morante) are worried about their son Andrea (Giuseppe Sanfelice), who was accused of stealing a fossil from the school's science lab. He denies it. Daughter Irene (Jasmine Trinca) studies Latin with her weird boyfriend.

When the fatal accident with Andrea occurs, the family kind of breaks down. The scene is striking when, during a basketball attack, Irene is surprised by the presence of her father (who was to give the tragic news), and at first smiles, then completely paralyzes.

The question that arises is: how to continue leading life in the same way? How can a professional who welcomes others' pain continue to pursue the profession despite his own tragedy? Giovanni tries to be oblivious, has a crying attack during the session with an obsessive-compulsive, and ends up blaming the cancer patient for his son's death.

One day out of nowhere comes a letter from Arianna (Sofia Vigliar) who had a connection with Andrea. The entry of this character, hitherto unknown to all, will give serenity and a new perspective to mourning.

Silver Linings Playbook is a milestone in cinema about people with mental health problems. Usually seen as dangerous (as in Hitchcock's Psycho) or funny (Levinson's Rain Man), people with mental disorders end up losing control of their bodies and are treated apart, trapped or overprotected as it happens in real life.

David O. Russell's movie attempts, and succeeds in a different way, to turn the dramas of two "troublesome" people into a romantic comedy.

Handsome, athletic, and confident, Pat (Bradley Cooper) manages to be released from a mentally ill hospital where he remained for eight months after beating his wife's lover and still has a restraining order from her. Diagnosed as bipolar, he returns to his parents' home under the responsibility of his mother Dolores (Jacki Weaver).

The boy's father, Pat Sr., masterfully portrayed by Robert De Niro, also cannot be considered completely sane: stuck in a restaurant project, but unemployed, lives on bookmaking mainly football games, having an irrational passion for Philadelphia Eagles team, which is why he was banned from the stadium for fighting. Standing in front of the TV, he is convinced that a series of superstitious rituals can alter the outcome of the games.

The entry of Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence, fantastic), a young widow who lives in the neighborhood, represents a balance in the plot not because she is understanding and welcoming Pat, but precisely because she seems to be as crazy as he is. During a discussion, they pass in front of a restaurant and, seeing the sign Dines, he invites the girl:

• Do you want to have dinner with me? - and she, with a face of hate, responds:
• Pick me up at seven-thirty.

Together, they comment on the effects of the various anti-anxiety and antipsychotics meds, and indulge in a ballroom dance project, which will be the movie's great climax: they will try to win a good position and still defend Pat Miller's ultimate bet.

Filmes Fodásticos motto, taken from a phrase by Roger Ebert, states that films are windows in the space / time boxes in which we live. Therefore, when looking through these windows, we will be out of the box for a few moments.

Jean-Luc Godard's My life to live is a classic example of out of the box movie. Released in 1962, at the height of the nouvelle vague of French cinema, the work can be considered a kinematic experience rather than a cinematic one. The big thrill comes from Raoul Cultard's nervous camera that throws the viewer into the scene.

Based on a trite screenplay that would be considered extremely prejudiced these days, the film tells the story of Nana, played by Godard's then-wife, model Anna Karina. It is her face that opens the film as if posing for portraits, in profile and front, to the sound of Michel Legrand's music that, according to the director's wish, simply stops, and reappears in the next scene.

There are twelve chapters, with long titles that reveal in advance what will happen. It's said that they were filmed in single takes, which means that takes were transformed directly into shots without any editing.

Nana is a young Parisian girl who has just split from Paul with whom she left the couple's son, from whom she asks for photos, in a scene filmed at a coffee shop counter behind the characters. That is, we only see their napes and a blurry reflection in the mirror.

Although nothing is known about his motivations, the narrative focuses on Nana. She plays pinball and works in a record store, but has financial problems that force her to try to steal the key from her apartment, held by the concierge possibly for lack of payment.

Passing a street where prostitutes work, Nana accepts a man's invitation and begins to prostitute herself. At first she refuses to kiss the client, but then we follow her progress, narrated as if it were a documentary about prostitution in Paris.

When enchanted by a young student, the woman decides to leave "life" (the name given to prostitution in France), but her pimp certainly does not agree with that, and takes drastic measures to regain his marchandise.

Woody Allen's Manhattan features black and white cinematography - by Gordon Willis - with a beauty rarely seen in the cinema.

The movie is light, grand and balanced. Seen at first as a romantic comedy depicting the relationship between a middle-aged man and a teenager, the plot takes on complexities that only passionate people will be able to recognize. Isaac's and Tracy's romance does not thrive because of sheer immaturity ... of him.

Although the romantic mood is always present, what you see most during the development of the plot are people who can't stand experiencing happiness and are always looking for justification to break up with their partners: Isaac persuades Tracy to leave it; Mary, who is having an affair with Yale, also asks him to leave her because he has no nerve to leave his wife; Yale himself encourages a relationship between Mary and Isaac to later regret.

It seems that romances are a pretext for the director to celebrate his private love for Manhattan, a place he loves. From the opening of the movie, with dawn in Central Park to George Gershwin's Blue Rhapsody, to the iconic scene of the couple Mary-Isaac on a bench on Sutton Square overlooking the Queensboro Bridge, what follows is a sequence of New York rituals of that time: going to the Guggenheim Museum, art films, lake boats, concerts, Chinese food and a string of romantic songs performed mainly by the New York Philharmonic, under the baton of historic conductor Zubin Mehta.

At the end of the movie, after meetings and mismatches, it seems that, along with Isaac, we all fell in love with Tracy aka Mariel Hemingway. Her acting is so natural and devoid of glamor that she seems to be the only person balanced within a multitude of beings utterly unable to get along serenely. When everyone introduces themselves, they speak not what they are but what they do, it is Tracy's most entertaining speech. After people say they are from TV, from the publisher, from literary criticism, she says:

• I'm from high school.

In a Victorian-style house, secluded in a valley surrounded by forest defined as "paradise", lives a couple in intentional isolation. Since the movie does not name its characters, we can say that "mother" is "his" young wife, a poet who tries to rewrite a work that leads him to previous successes. She is in the midst of the restoration work of the old house, practically destroyed by a fire that only left a small gemstone, which the poet keeps on his desk as a relic.

Like traditional housewives, Mom! goes up and downstairs, often barefoot, doing everything from cleaning the house to paste the walls. We connect our perception with hers, because, except for two scenes, it is through her that the whole narrative of the movie occurs.

A doctor comes to the house, followed by his wife and, a little later, by his stranger children. Mom never gets an explanation about who those people are or why they are there in her home, breaking all the rules and the integrity of the house.

At first, we thought it was a farce, by the heat of the discussions and the nihilistic acting of man and woman, lived brilliantly by Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer. When the first violent death happens, and the kitchen sink comes down, we know that something inexplicable will happen in the movie than a simple psychological drama.

After a brief lull in which, for the first time, the husband fulfills a mother's desire and get her pregnant, everything seems to flow smoothly, and the poet completes his other creation, an overwhelming poem.

The end of the movie is packed with action that even the wildest spectator could not foresee: crowds invade and destroy the interior of the house, rival groups clash, armed struggle, anthropophagy, and chaos. There are disconnected apocalyptic symbols everywhere.

This is no longer an account: they are just sensations, lived with horror, bewilderment, and agony. But realizing that there is no more salvation amid the unruly mob, the mother goes to the basement of the house and completes (or begins) a life cycle.

One of the best films ever produced, The Rules of the Game, 1939, begins with a reception for pilot Andre Jurieu who arrives from a trans-Atlantic solo flight just ten years after the crossing of the famous Charles Lindbergh. Although welcomed by a crowd and authorities, the then-national hero whines in his radio interview because his beloved has not come to greet him at the airport.

The beloved, for him but not his, is Christine, wife of Marquis Robert de Las Chesnaye, a millionaire who loves small mechanical toys. As she and Jurieu spent many moments together, the pilot believes that the right thing to do, by the rules of the game, is to communicate to the husband that they are together. The Marquis, in turn, is parting ways with his long-time lover, Genevieve, because he also wants to follow the rules of the game with his wife.

From Paris, the action is transferred to Robert's hunting station at La Colinière, where everyone is staying: husbands, wives, lovers, suitors and even a poacher, Marceau, who is hired by the marquis and soon becomes intimate with the marquise's chambermaid, Lisette, wife of another character who is also a follower of the rules, the gamekeeper Schumacher who looks more like a German military commander.

With so much affection in full blossom, it would be inevitable that farce scenes would occur. In any movie, the director puts on a character that causes encounters and mismatches. In this movie, the director himself is the character who transits between all novels and dialogues: he is jolly and plump Octave, a friend of the pilot, wife, marquess, chambermaid, lover, and finally also in love with Christine.

When a murder (or accident?) happens at the end of the movie, the audience is hardly scared, as in an earlier scene they witnessed an impressive massacre. All the guests walk happily through the forest, each armed with hunting rifles, and kill dozens of rabbits and pheasants. However, as much as the death of a human being causes is a warning that all guests return to the castle so as not to contract any illness.

In Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Martin McDonagh strikes limit situations within an emotional universe that intends to be predictable. The truth is that controlled or socially correct behaviors exist only in the imagination or scripts of movies before the 1970s.

The attachment, however, remains and it is common if we become surprised by the hatred within the protagonist Mildred Hayes, a mother from a small town emotionally torn by the brutal death of her daughter Angela, raped while dying.

Frances McDormand gives a human, all too human, tone to a woman who decides to throw all the pain she feels internally into the external environment: she rents out three billboards to charge Sheriff Willoughby for the murder investigation, which she deems "cold" seven months later.

The sheriff, played by Woody Harrelson in a way we are not used to seeing him, is a compassionate person, experiencing the cancer drama himself, an illness that will soon kill him. Thus, the antithesis of Mrs. Hayes is represented by police officer Dixon, drunk, violent, able to throw people out the window and still be considered slack by his biased mother.

Within this scenario of pain and violence, there are rare moments of tenderness, as when, arguing with Mildred, Willoughby coughs up blood and is called by her "babe". In another scene, Mildred receives an unexpected visit from a deer fawn and jokes that it is an attempt to simulate a reincarnation she knows doesn't exist. But cry.

The sheriff decides to take his own life, which piques the spirits of the small Ebbing community where, as in most inland cities, hate and pain seem to be bad words.

At the end of the movie, what seemed impossible happens and antagonists Dixon and Mildred join forces to eliminate a possible, but unlikely, suspect. From the uncertainty itself, but especially from the certainty of a violation of the law that Hayes assumed unknown, comes Mildred's first smile.