Reviews

Like I've seen written in so many reviews already, this movie is a declaration of love to the movies and, in particular, the silent movie era. It shows an incredible dedication to this lost art that is still part of the imaginary of so many film lovers.

The actors perfectly mimic the acting of the era, the music is extraordinary and the storyline is moving and funny enough to keep you interested and entertained for the whole one and a half hour. It never makes in feel bored and it can, at times, even make want to cry of joy.

I haven't seen many silent movies in my life but I am very interested in that period of time and, after watching this movie, I felt a huge urge to start watching all those classics from the past and get to know more about the art of silent movies.

It definitely deserves all the credit it's been receiving.

Le Scaphandre et le Papillon is one of the most beautifully filmed movies I have ever had the pleasure to watch. It's mainly filmed in the perspective of Jean-Do, the main character, which not only makes the movie more heart-touching and original, but also creates a special empathy between the characters and the spectator. Sometimes, it looks as if the characters are actually talking to us.

Julian Schnabbel is a well known artist and his sensitivity as a painter seems to have played a very important part in this cinematic accomplishment. Never before had I felt so close to a landscape as in this movie.

Beautifully directed and with subtly interpreted, Le Scaphandre et le Papillon is powerful and emotive movie without ever being exaggeratedly sentimental.

For obvious reasons, I was a bit skeptical about the hype on Heath Ledger's performance, but after watching The Dark Knight I was totally convinced that it is probably the best performance in a comics adaptation ever and, so far, the best performance of the year.

Heath Ledger's Joker steals all the scenes he is in. He's funny, psychopathic, twisted and incredibly intense.

But it is not fair to only talk about the Joker when The Dark Knight can very well be the best comics adaptation ever, as well. The movie is very well constructed, flowing until the climax. Restless like the hero it portrays, the film never tires you and, although this is the most psychologically complex superhero of comics, it is never too hard to follow nor too simplistic.

Dark and complex, it is an homage to the world of the most enigmatic of all superheros. Long live the Batman.

For someone who only knows Piaf's most famous songs and very little about here life, La Môme is a wonderful discovery that makes you want to learn more about this extraordinary character with an amazing voice and a disgraced life.

Marrion Cotillard delivers an impossible interpretation of this character, especially when depicting the older Piaff. The emotional and physical pain is all there for the viewer to see and feel. This was probably one of the most deserved Oscars in the last ten years.

The only negative point I can find in this movie is the editing style of Olivier Dahan, who constantly moves backwards and forwards in Edith Piaff's life, making it difficult to understand who are some of the characters who appear in Piaff's life at different stages in her life.

Planet Terror is one of the cheesiest movies I've seen recently, but the fact that it is made that way on purpose makes it funny and actually very enjoyable at times.

The dialogues are phony and way out, the characters are ridiculously exaggerated and nothing makes sense in the movie. But if you're willing to let yourself go and have a good time watching a movie that doesn't take itself seriously at all, you may actually find it funny and entertaining.

It's also a plus to have great actors like Bruce Willis and Josh Brolin making fun of themselves in a movie where nothing is as disgusting and bad as it could be because it's so fake.

I was a bit skeptical about this movie. Somehow, I could't figure what was so special about a rat wanting to be a cook. But, as it usually happens with Pixar, I was positively surprised with the outcome. In fact, I was more than surprised. I was amazed with the quality of the animation.

Many times during the movie I wondered whether it was really animation I was watching. The scenery is so beautifully depicted, that you almost have to believe you're watching real actors interacting with a real city.

But we're all used to the enormous technical quality of Pixar's movies. What's impressive about this one is the quality of the script (It's no surprise it's nominated for an Oscar) and the density of the characters, which combined with the best animation ever, makes this one of the best movies I've seen this year.

It's funny, intense, emotional and beautiful.

The Final Cut has one of the best premises of the last years. The idea of having some kind of chip recording all our memories so that others could remember us through them is not only morally controversial, but it also raises important questions about our place in the world and how we perceive it.

However, despite all the very relevant issues this premise could raise, The Final Cut goes in a totally diffente path, losing itself in conspiracy theories and thriller-like subplots that make this movie totally irrelevant and not at all worth remembering.

It makes me sad to think that this script could have been a completely different film in the hands of a director like Michel Gondry or even Richard Kelly.

Never having read the book, my opinion can only be based on the attributes of the film, not on its reproduction of the book. And the greatest attribute I see in this film is the depiction of the historical moment in France, with all the decadence and poverty characteristic of the period and of the literature of the time.

The characters are a bit plain and one dimensional, but it ends up not being a great problem to the plot, since the most important thing here, the main character actually, is fate, a literary obsession of French literature of the 19th century and well transposed to the film. Although the final message is optimistic, the idea of fate and the inability to run from one's past is recurrent in the whole film.

I'm sure it doesn't do justice to the book, but it can be a good incentive to someone still willing to read the book.

Firstly, I'd like to say how glad I am to finally see another of James Elroy's books adapted. It's been a while, actually since LA Confidential, since I saw a good movie about this particular era, which interests me a lot. Therefore, I was anxious to see The Black Dahlia, but I have to say I was disappointed with the result. Like LA Confidential, the Black Dahlia has the ambiance and the mystery but unlike LA Confidential, it lacks a good script to hold the story together. The spectator gets lost trying to figure out all the subplots and ends up losing focus of the main story.

On the other hand, and in part because of this, the characters seem to be very superficial and detached, preventing the viewer from feeling any kind of emotional feelings for them.

This could have been a great film but it seems Brian De Palma was more worried about the technical details and the style of the film than with the story and its characters. Even so, it's a movie worth watching even if just to remember one of the greatest movies from the 90's and the time it portrays, since De Palma doesn't try to detach himself from Curtis Hanson's movie, on the contrary, you kind of see LA Confidential on every scene of The Black Dahlia.

Wonderland is usually advertised as a movie about one of the most famous porn stars ever. But the truth is that the fact that John Holmes was a porn star is not relevant at all for the events portrayed in the movie.

Wonderland deals with the post-porn era in Holmes' life, a time in which he got involved in the Woderland Murders. Val Kilmer does what he does best playing this detached, lost character in the descending phase of his career and life. This kind of character comes naturally to Val Kilmer, and no one plays it better than him. His credibility and talent makes the whole movie worth watching.

The script may be a bit feeble, especially in what concerns the supporting characters, but, on the whole, Wonderland is a good movie to understand the philosophy of an entire era.

Portuguese cinema has a problem connecting with its public and this movie is no exception. Most times, the movie is made for the director's own ego rather than the public. That's OK with me as long as they don't ask from people the admiration and the support they don't deserve.

In Nós we have a couple who almost doesn't speak through the whole movie and we're supposed to interpret their feelings by their blank faces and connect to the story of this unemotional characters. Talking about sex in a detached way doesn't necessarily make for a good film, and in my opinion, here it simply doesn't work.

The only thing worth seeing, or rather listening to, is the soundtrack, not very appropriate for the movie, but still a very good selection of tracks.

Having been a great fan of Tim Burton's work for years, I found this movie relatively late, but I don't believe that has influenced at all my opinion on the movie.

No matter whether we're in 1993 or in 2005, Tim Burton's genius is as brilliant in this movie as he is in Corpse Bride or in most of his films. Like no one else, he captures beauty in the most horrible places and the most terrible looking creatures, and he warms our hearts with that beauty.

In The Nightmare Before Christmas again he transforms a nightmarish world into something cheerful and insanely merry, where there is always a place for love. It's this inversion of probable scenarios and the complexity of the main characters, in opposition to the supporting ones who are usually type characters, that makes the world of Tim Burton's creations so appetizingly interesting for children as well as for adults.

And don't forget the delicious songs by Danny Elfman, for me the best and most subversive musical creator in Hollywood. I can't imagine anyone else making soundtracks for Burton's movies.

Training Day is an entertaining movie about good and bad cops. Nothing that hasn't been made before in Hollywood. Actually, there's nothing spectacular about the plot or the theme. It's full of clichés, situations that you've seen over and over again in movies just like this one.

However, Training Day has something other movies don't have: a wonderful performance by one of the greatest actors of his generation. Denzel Washington's character is just despicable; there's nothing likable about it. And yet you can't help but admire all the work and the energy Washington puts into it, making it one of the most hateful movie characters ever.

A word for Ethan Hawke whose work, however strong, is completely overshadowed by Denzel Washington's performance.

Although I love The Royal Tenembaums and the Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, I only found out about this movie a while ago. Rushmore is probably not as good as the other two, but it makes obvious Wes Anderson's talent, which he has been improving from film to film.

The humor is very sarcastic and nonsense,and again very characteristic of Anderson's work. It helps that the main roles are performed by two of the best actors, in my opinion, of this kind of comedy, Bill Murray, a constant presence in Anderson's movies, and Jason Shwartzmann, who is also brilliant in I Heart Huckabees.

It's definitely worth seeing, especially if you're already a fan of any of Wes Anderson's movies. But if you have seen any of his other movies and you didn't like it, don't even bother seeing this one.

What can we expect from a movie that lives off its super celebrity actors? Mr. & Mrs. Smith has no problems in assuming Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are the most important about the whole movie.

Without taking itself seriously, the movie combines high doses of action with large amounts of comedy in a manner that fully entertains the spectator.

Angelina and Brad are excellent together, which is great for those who only bought the ticket to see the chemistry between the two sexiest actors in Hollywood at the moment. Doug Liman, which had already successfully directed the action film The Bourne Identity, proves himself to be a very good action movie director.

Mr. & Mrs Smith is not even close to be a great movie. However, it is successful in the task to which it proposed itself: to create a plausible plot to support the cast.

This bittersweet comedy about love is in line with great recent French movies such as Amelie or L'Auberge Espagnole, But Jeux d'Enfants is not trying to copy any of the previous. In fact, it is one of the most original movies I've seen lately.

Directed in a superb way by the inventive Yann Samuell, this film can make you laugh out loud in a minute and shed some tears on the next due to the extreme complexity of the feelings the director and the actors share with you. Nothing in this film seems exaggerated; it's a fairy tale of our time with a great dose of realism.

The chemistry between Guillaume Canet and Marion Cotillard is simply perfect.

Whether you like it or not, it's difficult to be indifferent to this movie and this is one of the best compliments a director can receive.