Criticultura em Portugal

Little Children (2006) Directed by Todd Field Starring Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson   US director Todd Field (b. 1964) is an enigma. In the early part of this century he made two outstanding films that dissected and probed into the American consciousness, In the Bedroom (2001) and Little Children . Both have vividly written characters that have depth and resonance that lasts well after you have seen the movie. Like the great European directors, he writes his own screenplays, as a true auteur in the mode of Bergman or Lars von Trier. There is a unity of execution in these two movies that portended a brilliant film career, perhaps one to reach the levels of the greats. But then something happened. Field has vanished, with some proposed collaborations with major authors like Cormac McCarthy and Joan Didion never coming to fruition. Very strange, and quite sad, because these two films are superb, perhaps the strongest debut by any US director since Mike Nichols made Who’s Afrai

Stranger Things (2016-19) Written and directed by The Duffer Brothers Starring Wynona Ryder When I reviewed the compelling Donny Darko a few weeks ago, I read some articles saying how it had influenced many sci-fi and fantasy filmmakers over the start of this century, and particularly Spielberg-retro tributes like Stranger Things , a Netflix series that has now completed three seasons. Interested, I have binge watched it over the past couple weeks. It’s not something I would normally review, as it is wrenchingly popular entertainment. But I found it so staggeringly in-your-face imitative that I could not resist. So what is the boundary between a work of art paying homage or tribute to an earlier classic work, and simply ripping it off? This is probably a meaningless question. Composers and artists have copied themselves for years, especially after a big hit: in classical music Massenet’s Manon begat Le Portrait de Manon , Bach’s Mass in B minor reuses many earlier pieces fr

Donny Darko (2001) Written and Directed by Richard Kelly Starring Jake Gyllenhaal Graffiti (2015) Directed by Lluíz Quílez  Starring Oriol Pla Donny Darko , a wildly innovative sci fi-teen-apocalypse film, had the bad luck in premiering a couple months after the September 11 2001 attack on the World Trade center. The film had the very unfortunate plot element of having an airplane engine drop into a suburban home as its key driver, and apparently that was just a bit close to home for the movie-going public. Plus, the film did not offer standard escapist fare that was to dominate Hollywood for the next year or so. It bombed at the box office, but has subsequently become a cult hit, with massive video sales in the following years, and websites devoted to explaining it. The film also pretty much launched Jake Gyllenhaal’s career.  The film is based on a (now) fairly familiar wormhole/time loop/alternate universe plot, well -trodden in the Star Trek series. Alternate timelines were also

The Best Man (1964) Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner Starring Henry Fonda and Cliff Robertson The 1960’s were a good time for cynicism about US elections. You might say “duh”, since Watergate and Trump have put the kibosh on any idealism we might have once had. But in 1964 we were still the era of Kennedy, so movies like last week’s T he Manchurian Candidate and The Best Man strikes me a radically outside the then-accepted narrative of American Goodness. The Best Man is even more dark than The Manchurian Candidate . At least in the latter, it was a foreign government trying to bring us down. The Best Man critiques the U.S. political process itself, ironically using big heroic stars like Henry Fonda to do so. The movie tells the story of William Russell (Fonda), a candidate for president in an unusual year when there is no clear favorite going into the convention. Fonda plays him as a flawed, cynical guy whose marital infidelities (post-Kennedy, pre-Clinton) and sham marriage are

The Manchurian Candidate (1962) Directed by John Frankenheimer Starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, and Angela Lansbury The Manchurian Candidate (2004) Directed by Jonathan Demme Starring Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber, and Meryl Streep The 1962 classic film The Manchurian Candidate points out that no matter how anxious we feel about the present era, it’s better than living in 1962, when nuclear missiles were being installed nearby and the world seemed on the brink of destruction. This edgy, tense film ably reflects its era, and projects a nervous forward motion that few films succeed at. And that includes the 2004 remake, quite nicely done with a director skilled in action and suspense movies (e.g. The Silence of the Lambs ), and an all-star cast including Denzel and Meryl. But it just cannot quite make us as nervous as that earlier version did. The plots of both versions are very similar. A soldier is kidnapped in battle, and is released as a hero, winning the Medal of