Reviews

In 1978 the trentenne Carpenter, director with behind two films that had been noted more from the workers who from the big public, and above all from the independent productions for the very low budgets used, realizes his third feature film Hallowenn, which will consecrate director of Worship for the horrorific thriller genre, which until then had been a prerogative of the unreachable Hitchcock. And to the latter, the director is linked, in particular with Psyco, although the history and environmental context is different, for the definition of the character psychopathy and the choice of the protagonist, a very young Jamie Lee Curtis, daughter of Janet Leigh , the protagonist Hitchcockiana Marion Crane who will be massacred in the famous scene of the shower. Another reference to the film is also the crime weapon: a huge cooking knit it that characterizes the "slasher" horror subgenere where you use sharp blades.

• The screenplay of the film was written together with Debra Hill, which among other things was responsible for choosing Misconuted Lee Curtis, convincing Carpenter for the curiosity that the public would have had in seeing Leigh's daughter. You also have an important role for the definition of female characters, co-protagonists of Curtis, in the use of post-adolescent language and attitudes that characterized the 70s where history takes place.

• Interesting was also the use by the director of an innovative MDP mobile that anticipating the invention of Steadycam, used by little Li by Kubrick for Shining, allowed the numerous resumptions in subjective, the sequence plans and the trolleys.

• The soundtrack based on the 5/4 joke, the usual composed by the same director, was more than ever important for the success of the film.

• a 'last curiosity (although the importance of the film, whose subject was replicated by other directors numerous times, would deserve further and more in-depth observations) is the tribute that the director does to Howad Hawks with the small protagonists of his film , in the scene where they see the 1951 TV The Thing. Among other things, the director will make a remake in 1982.

• At the exit of the film the success that the public gave him immediate and exponential, to the point that in front of the usual one of a very low budget of just $ 300,000, the receipts arrived at $ 45 million!

Leave the ironic and spatial elucubrises of the first film, Carpenter confects its second feature film with elements that characterize the future production. The film starts with "apparent tranquility" which is the omen of the following "violent chaos", in what a metropolitan western is defined. The bad guys are very bad and can be deduced from the senseless sold! The claustrophobic space in which the besieged are forced, accentuates the "living dead" attacks by Romerian memory. They are not lacking in the script, written by the same director, despite the drama of action, ironic jokes and a play of subtle eroticism between the Napoleon criminal and Leiigh police assistant.

Last notation concerns the compound music, as in many of him's films, by the director, often using, from precursor to the soundtracks, electronic minimalism.

The obvious parodies at Kubrik's films: the stranger bomb and the philosophical-existential considerations of Odyssey, were not very appreciated by the critics of the time, nor tolerated by a publishing audience the Kubrikiane works. But to see the debut to the feature film of Carpenter, it remains a fine example of how to convey "ideas" (among all: the alienation of repetitive and meaningless work; the loss of control over sophisticated technologies), with very few production vehicles Bother Which means, overturning, that very expensive works can also convey the "nothing"!

Samsara, or "Reincarnation" in Tibetan language, is work before the Indian Pan Nalin director. The realization of the film was very troubled, due to logistic and political problems, in fact the Ladakh, where the troupe has moved, is a remote area of Tibet and has always been claimed by Kashmir. Nevertheless the determination and enthusiasm of the director, who as a documentary he knew the territory well, has totally involved the small troupe, just 15 people of different nationalities. Visually splendid the environmental background, the right frame to the vicissitudes of an aspiring Tibetan monk, Tashi, a flirtating between spirituality and erotic attraction. The film leads to a reflection on the continuous conflict between the desire to rise spiritually and physical inevitability. All religions have always had difficulty making spiritual vision coincide with the most important instinct at the base of procreation, that organic evolution has made pleasantly orgasmic! Few exceptions we find them in tantric introductory (mentioned in the film) and in the tribalism of Polynesian peoples and pre-Columbian Americas. This has led to a widespread sex-function that becomes "authoritative" in the monotheist religions of Jewish origin, in chronological order, Judaism, Christianity, Islamism who have always competed in assuming, over the centuries, the primacy of the most bieco obscurantism! Today the primacy is, equal to Jihadists, to some Jewish fringes and Christian fundamentalists of North America! Good vision!

The best way to view and then evaluate a genre movie, is to know that this is a film adaptation of a graphic novel and that therefore all any exaggerations and any realistic inconsistencies, fall within the grammar of the genus. It then remains to be seen if the story described in Novel was respected and whether his cinematographic "packaging", by the director, is well done. In our case, the Swedish director Jonas Åkerlund has faithfully followed the history of the 2012 Graphic Novel, Polar: Volume One, of the cartoonist Victor Santos, making a few variations dictated by the cinematographic and "packaged" the film with a style that follows its Decennial production of video clips: millimeter assembly accompanied by coherent effects, color saturation, electronic music ... assisted by a good cast that finds in the Danish actor Mads Mikkelse, which is also one of the executive producers, a valid interpreter, as well as the Co-protagonist Female Vanessa Hudgens, unusually in a role as a chronic depression. Cameo of an unrecognizable Rchard Dreyfuss.

Thus in conclusion may not like the genre, but its realization respects its own styles with the aid of digital potential and with brushstrokes of humor noir.

Possible subtitle: history of a 'utopia; Subtitle of the subtitle: ended badly!

Films on an incredible real story proposed by the Emergent Director Salernitano Sydney Sibilia (Trilogy stopped when I want). It must not mislead the Italian comedy atmosphere that seems to be the style of the film from the initial jokes, the treated theme is instead extremely interesting: how long a state of law can endure the visionary of a project that undermines its conservative credibility . Sibilia does it lightly but not with superficiality, assisted by a fluid script and a team of actors that follows him in the packaging and a great work of historical-environmental reconstruction with the choice even iconic vintage music.

Roy Andersson was a little known Swedish director to the most, until in 2014, he was awarded with the golden lion at the Venice Festival, with what remains his most famous work: a pigeon sitting on a branch reflected on existence . But in reality this film concludes a trilogy that the director called: on being a human being, which includes songs of the second floor of 2000 and you, the living: therefore rejoice or living! Of 2007, these award-winning. In truth he had directed, thirty years before (!), Two other films, dedicating himself after photography and environmental documentary.

However, the most interesting work remains this trilogy, which is actually a filmic unicum divided into three parts and pushes to the overview. Compared to other serial works in cinema, this trilogy maintains the same atmospheres, scenographies and award sequences. It is not identified a story, but a series of paintings where the MDP remains fixed, with the actors that move like mannequins with very white faces, within non-colored spaces and depressing. But the anguish, which pervades everything, is in a sarcastic and grotesque key.

Although the approach is experimental, the scenes push deep reflections, which is then what the director wants to arouse in the viewer.

Film born from the collaboration of director Darren Aronofsky (he had noted himself in 1998 with his first feature film Delirium's theorem) with the writer Hubert Selby Jr., which in 1978 had written Requiem for a dream from which the script was treated. The toxicity that is told, is not only that of non-legal substances, but also that proposed by the media that propose an American dream that breaks into the real everyday life of life. This explains the title of the novel and the film.

The director in telling the story, divided into three seasons, metaphores of the mood as well as of the physical and moral decadence of the protagonists, uses techniques from video clips such as the time-lapse that speeds up the scenes. Even the music, as in the previous film, play a fundamental role in underlining the drama of events. Good all actors, but in particular Ellen Burstyn candidate for the role of her to the Oscars. Hard movie and disturbing traits, but it deserves a vision.

In 1974 the Italian-American director Brian de Palma, struck criticism and public (in truth the latter will appreciate the film over time making him become a cult) with this work that escaped a precise gender classification, and this according to the dictates of movement of film renewal of the period, named New Hollywood. It was not a strict sense a musical, nor a horror, but he undoubtedly elements belonging to the two kinds (the following year the other Cult The Rocky Horror Picture Show in Sharman would come out). Starting from the ghost of the work, the famous novel by Gaston Leroux, continuing with the Fausto Goethiano and the portrait of Dorian Gray of Wilde, the director takes advantage of it to stage the fierce and degraded show business of rock music that among other things At that time he was in drifting, well represented by the exhibition of the Beef singer.

In the film the director puts in place some of the teachings of his hitchcock mentor: evolutions of the MDP around the actors, resumed from the bottom, cuts of millimetric lights ... and more: use of deformant lenses and the Spilt Screen (split of the screen in segments) , all in a paroxysmal crescendo that will lead to the tragic conclusion of history! Unforgettable the horror mask of the protagonist, which has become a film icon.

Cinema to rediscover species if contextualized in the historical period of production!

Episode films shot with the help of Francesco Rosi, in three different geographical areas, Italy, France and England, and as many languages, but with a common denominator: disturbing youth behavior up to the crime!

Of course not the whole young generation, represented in the film, released from the second world conflict, devoted himself to the overwhelming of one another, to affirm his personality, perhaps wounded by the incongruity of fathers who had allowed and immediately the horrors of the war. But the investigator eye of a young antonioni at his second feature film, focuses on chronicle facts that at that time followed with worrying frequency. Demonstrating the boredom and the cynicism of a bourgeois class which, according to the director, will result in the incommunicability between people who will be represented, as a stylistic figure, in his subsequent films, at least until the movie pop of the movie blow-up which for certain verses, echoes Posthum the English episode, the third, of the film in question.

To see to recognize the evolution of one of the great Italian cinema, hoping that the Cineteca di Bologna or the Criterion can restore the original and integral copy, given the aversion that was made by the censorship of the time!

"Fly" Alto Anghelopoulos with this painfully twilight and intimist film, collaborated by the coarse of the War Tonino poet. A mature mastroianni always convincing and a very young but equally good Nadia Mourouzi who plays the erotic liveliness that fails to affect, if not marginally, the existential indifference of the Melissokomos ". Short but intense appearance of Serge Reggiani. Metaphorical interpreters are also bees, protagonist's life comrades, but inexorable justices in the memorable final scene. Film to be rediscovered!

Tony Scott, one of the most snubbed directors from critics. They have never forgiven the massive use of video-clips techniques, which the director would have used for many of him. Actually to see, Scott attends studies of visual arts that will lead him to have a very refined aesthetic sense he will carry in his films. Among other things he was driven to film art from his brother Ridley, he wanted to do the painter. The debut of him aroused however interest: Miriam wakes up at midnight, literary inspiration film (The Hunger of Whitley Strieber) that deals with vampires. But the director's approach differs from that kind for the setting, history and epilogue. He clearly he will package the film using the aesthetic language he had refined in advertising and music videos. The result is an original product that still makes you look and appreciate leaving certain academic criticism!

Of Verhoeven we know above all the films that the director has turned after his transfer to the USA, and on all of course Basic Instinct. But the authentic soul of the director, perhaps, we find him in the films previously filmed in the Netherlands. Among these: the fourth man. Film from the novel of the same name from Gererd Reve (which will also be the bisexual writer masterfully interpreted by the Dutch actor Jeroen Karabbé). The titles of the head as well as those of the tail, frame a spider that captures its victims, with a spider web tense in the arms of a crucifix, essential elements that we will find in the development of history. The black widow is the Dark Lady seduces men causing death (here the choice of the director has fallen on the Dutch actress Renée Soutendijk, who has fallen perfectly in the part), while Christian religiosity embodies in the female figure that the protagonist It personifies in the Madonna, which somehow with premonitions tries to warn him of the incumbent danger. Visionary, irreverent, iconoclast. Movie worth being rediscovered!

The fanta-film rediscovered by criticism in recent times (while the public has always ignored it since its release), it is enveloped by a halo of mystery concerning the actual director: the Italian Ubaldo Ragona or the US Sidney Salkow? And although turned with a reduced budget, the work presents interesting features: a splendid photograph in B / W of the Master Franco Delli Colli, appropriate external in the neighborhood of the EUR in Rome, the presence of the charismatic Vincent Price, but above all consistency At the Richard Matheson novel "I am Legend" from which the script is dealt with and the fact of being the anticipator of the subsequent Zombian epopean of Romero. All elements that can intrigue and push to a vision not distracted.

The absolute protagonist of the film is certainly not the mythical sword but rather the music. Pure electronics that counterpoints the whole story revisited by the director in a pop key (for the more distracted, she remembers her frequentation with pop-star Madonna as her spouse, even if currently ex). The frenzied editing recalls video clip techniques, but not in a derogatory sense but rather for a decidedly current narrative choice, proposing a modernization of the King Arthur epic. The right choice of actors does the rest (among others a Jude Law in an unusually bad role). A decidedly successful operation that makes the director say: "The basic idea was to present a story closer to today's young people, their ideals and their way of seeing things."

A light comedy (so what are the heavy ones? Probably the ones that end badly!) That works, well one might say because it's French. In fact, as Italians, it is impossible not to think how an Italian director, perhaps of the new generation, perhaps of the age of Moreau (evocative surname), born in 1976, would be treated as such. Long premise to say that romantic-sentimental comedy goes well with the French cinematographic tradition, a little less with the Italian one, with few exceptions, more aimed at comedy. However, the film holds up, in the staging, in the acting, in the musical commentary ... and, perhaps in a pandering way, in the finale. And in the end it puts you in a good mood, which is no small feat!

Black comedy, cleverly funny. The film designed for home video (the short-sightedness of producers and distributors is blatant!), Was then distributed in cinemas around the world, when there was considerable public favor in the few American theaters where it was on view. Same favor found at the Toronto Film Festival where the film was awarded. The director Martin McDonagh, born in 1970, a successful British playwright, in his second feature film, brilliantly packs a narrative architecture of pure metacinema. The result is really interesting thanks to an impeccable screenplay written by the director himself and the choice of actors in a state of grace: Walken / Hans whose intimacy excites; Rockwell / Billy believable in his friendly madness; Farrell / Marty, screenwriter with autobiographical connotations, in search of a normal and impossible serenity; Harrelson / Charlie always perfect "Natural Born Killer"; Waits / Zachariah already psycho of him! Film not to be missed!

This film falls into the category of films based on novels from which in turn graphic novels are taken. In the case specified, the author who also participated in the writing of the screenplay is Joël Houssin who achieved notoriety in France for the series of detective novels called Doberman. In addition, the film characterization is developed by young directors who have trained in the production of video clips. All this premise is necessary to understand the packaging of the film: fast and millimetric editing; saturated colors; relevant music ... What then the content is pulp-pulp that I miss Tarantino ... As well as indigestible, it depends on the evaluation criteria of each single spectator, as well as considering it a by-product of youth culture! A more recent example of this film category is Polar (2019) by Swedish director Jonas Åkerlund, also from the world of visuals!

Like a good panettone, but not a cine-panettone, is this unfortunate film by Marco Risi: The Last New Year. To be seen or reviewed for several interesting reasons: it is a tragicomic comedy with grotesque implications, a genre in which few Italic directors have ventured; it differs greatly from the film proposals of the period; it was an experiment by the director, who had distinguished himself, in his previous works, for the inconvenience of little treated social themes, which he wrote together with the pulp-writer Ammaniti from whose novel it was based; the production far exceeded the initial budget also for the use of effective special and digital effects that were little used until that moment; the state of acting grace of all the protagonists, including Bellucci who shows, in addition to her beauty, that she knows how to act when she wants and the presence of the singer Adriano Pappalardo (Mastiff of God) is also curious. The film had an unfortunate process, as it was said, because for a bad promotion the film failed at the box office, inducing the director to retire him.

Loïe Fuller (real name Mary-Louise), dancer-non-dancer actually choreographer, set designer and creator of theatrical machines based on the innovative use of electric light, fundamentally creative visionary, this last definition suits her in a literary way: all Today's vjs and video-performers should pay tribute to her by recognizing her pioneering in the visual arts as on the other hand, at the beginning of the 20th century, the Lumiere brothers did by immortalizing her in one of their films. The biopic-film by debut director Stéphanie Di Giusto, inspired by the biographical essay by Giovanni Lista, starts from the state of geographical as well as psychological isolation, in a remote county of Illinois dedicated to cattle breeding, where our heroine lives . Very harsh living conditions among rude cowboys who see Mary-Louise as a "strange" girl who prefers self-acting plays and poems rather than looking after animals. This will lead her to escape and start that wonderful artistic adventure, not without disappointments, with merits that will be recognized already in her life, especially in Europe, in Paris, home of all the avant-gardes of the nascent twentieth century. Her relationship with Isadora Duncan of which she produced the first appearances on stage is interesting, recognizing her role as a true dancer which she was not, but above all that innovative creativity that she knew well but which will also determine the beginning of her end.

Discover a fantastic 1996 film by Sergio Cabrera: Ilona arrives in the rain. An erotic mélo that takes you back to the cinema of Fassbinder and Almodovar. Perfect in construction, reinterpreting Alvaro Mutis' novel through images. Beautifully played by Margarita Rosa de Francisco, Imanol Arias, Pastora Vega and Humberto Dorado.

Excellent thriller based on the first novel by the Basque writer Dolores Redondo who subsequently wrote two more novels in what is called the "Baztán Trilogy" from the river of the Basque region where the stories take place. The film was produced by the German Peter Nadermann who had already brought the "Millennium Trilogy" to the screen. The film entrusted to director Fernando González Molina is well followed in the unfolding of the facts, involving the viewer in the complex and often obscure lives of the actors who are well supported. The almost always rainy setting gives the right "dark" touch to the narration. A nice surprise that gives a European breath, as Millennium did, to a genre traditionally branded stars and stripes.

The film has its own originality, given that it is a Basque production (debut work by director Paul Urkijo Ajilo), therefore a rare example of an almost unknown cinematography. This would be enough to see it and then there is the character Sartael, a disgraced demon, who is one of the nicest appearances in a fictional horror! However, the setting is good, an isolated village in the Pyrenees, Avala, where the reminiscence of ancient Basque legends is strong and the photography is accurate. And finally, the excellent cast helps to make the packaging more than enjoyable.

Minimalist Sci-Fi in the package: very small cast, only one environment; but very current in content: can a humanoid robot become aware of its existence? Garland Alex in his first directing for a feature film chose a subject that is increasingly "science" and less "fiction" (nominated for the 2016 Oscar for Best Original Screenplay). The current scientific research on bio-robots (reproducing robots capable of imitating increasingly complex biological organisms), makes us understand that it is only a matter of time. Before long we will have increasingly sophisticated humanoid robots with brains built with neuronal networks similar to natural ones: quantum computers on organic matrices! At this point the initial question that is in the plot of the film seems to find a positive answer, with unimaginable ethical implications: the synthetic neuronal complexity thus obtained can become aware of its existence... with all due respect to metaphysicians !!!

Pure metacinema. Lars gets involved in the first person by also involving his co-writer. Since his first film, Lars has tried in a provocative way to distinguish himself from his purist colleagues who have often denigrated him. As well as part of the audience. But he has always mocked himself, producing ever-changing films where he experimented with decidedly personal languages (not to mention the invention of unacceptable movements such as Dogma 95, where he seems to mock those who do not follow the rules!). In short, either you love it or hate it, no half measures, as it is in the character's strings. This second feature film whose title begins with E as the first (The Element of Crime) and the third (Europe) which gives its name to the trilogy (Europe: not a geographical place but rather a state of mind), is the one where, together to the first, he experimented more both technically, deliberately present grain using both the 16mm and 35mm format (which we will also find in the television The Kindom), and for contents, such as the exasperation in the use of metacinema that will end up in the hysterical cries of hypnotized and contaminated woman (the hypnotist is also found in the first film of the trilogy). Certain solutions that may appear bizarre, are instead the result of a deep knowledge of the history of cinema (with peace of the detractors). Above all his ideal mentor Dreyer!