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 A...

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 ...

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...

Election (1999) Directed by Alexander Payne Starring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick Leading up to the presidential election, I will focus on several election-oriented films of different styles. The first, Election , is a comedy I admired when it came out, but enjoyed even more now, as it seemed to foresee things like millenial-generation overachievement, the Bush-Gore hanging chad controversy, and even our own president’s campaign style. The director Alexander Payne (b. 1961) is known for his dark humor in films like Sideways (2004), and this one is certainly in that genre. This film stars the 23-year-old Reese Witherspoon near the start of her career, when she was just getting bigger roles. This one led to numerous awards. She plays Tracy Flick, an intense high school student determined to bulldoze her way to success, starting with winning the high school student council president election. Her opponents are a football hero Paul (Chris Klein) known for his terminal niceness...

La Camarista (The Chambermaid) (2018) Directed by Lila Avilés Starring Gabriela Cartol Roma (2018) Directed by Alfonso Cuarón Starring Yalitza Aparicio These two 2018 films from Mexico seem superficially similar, at least regarding plot. Both deal with the travails of a maid, and starkly contrast the differences between the classes. These are not just differences in creature comforts, education, and priorities, but contrasts in opportunity and the ability to survive setbacks. Both star Mexican actresses whose physical short stature and indigina appearance contrast with the more light-skinned and taller people they serve. And both lead actresses give ultra-realistic, natural, unforced performances that make us pull for them. However, the two movies could not be more different in approach, appearance, and emotion. When I reviewed Roma in 2018, I marveled at the complexity of construction, including sound design, visual metaphors, and virtuosic camera work that captured the Mexico of ...

The Apu Trilogy Directed by Satyajit Ray Pather Panchali (1955) Aparajito (1956) The World of Apu (1959) Satyajit Ray (1921-1992) was a pioneering and great Indian director, the first to win international awards, and one revered by other great directors such as Akira Kurosawa and Martin Scorcese. Prior to his work, Indian film was mostly dominated by fluffy musicals, such as the Bollywood films that are still popular. But with the premiere of Pather Panchali in 1955, both India and the world saw a lens turned on the complexities and beauty of their country, especially the qualities of rural India. The art of his films is to show the difficulties (death, disease, poverty) while maintaining an upbeat confidence in how people, with all of their flaws, still can still live fulfilling lives. Ray was from an intellectual but poor family (a theme of these films). This was a common dyad in India then, since education was valued but not always rewarded with financial success. His mother pushed...

The Golddiggers of 1933 (1933) Directed by Mervyn LeRoy Starring Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, and Dick Powell I have a fatal weakness for 1930’s musicals, made in the first years of sound in films. It’s fascinating to watch their evolution from filmed stage shows to multiple-camera angle extravaganzas. The at pushed the technique of filmmaking forward rapidly. In the first few years of the 1930’s, cameras were still evolving, so that when directors zoom into the face, or other features, of a nubile chorus girls, the shot does not stay in focus consistently. By 1935 this was fixed, but such flaws give a charming innocence to these early talkies. While Fred Astaire was developing how to film dancing stars close-up, Warner Brothers’ specialty was in cast-of-thousands diversions, many choreographed by the brilliant Busby Berkeley, who I have raved about before. He popularized the ceiling shot showing girls forming intricate geometric forms on the stage or in the pool. This use of massed st...

Amour (2012) Directed by Michael Haneke Starring Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva 45 Years (2015) Directed by Andrew Haigh Starring Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay These two films are remarkable depictions of old age. What they have in common is a wonderful stillness and calm. Each features a long-married couple that is utterly attuned to each other’s strengths, weaknesses, habits, and foibles, so their behaviors seem almost reflexive. There is none of the impetuousness and drama that mark romantic movies about young people finding their way. It is a testament to the Austrian director Michael Haneke (b. 1942) and English director Andrew Haigh (b. 1975) that these uber-familiar couples are not boring or tedious, but instead warm, familiar and reassuring. Of course, outstanding acting helps here too. I think we all would aspire to the marriage quality shown at the start of both of these movies. Of course change comes to older people as well as to the young, and each of t...

Alice in the Cities (1974) Directed by Wim Wenders Starring Rüdiger Vogler and Yella Rottländer The Wrong Move (1975) Directed by Wim Wenders Starring Rüdiger Vogler and Hanna Schygulla Kings of the Road (1976) Directed by Wim Wenders Starring Rüdiger Vogler and Hanns Zischler German director Wim Wenders (b. 1945) is best known in the US for his films Paris, Texas (1984) and Wings of Desire (1987), the latter memorably featuring Berlin guardian angels tending to the depressed inhabitants. But he first got attention a decade earlier with three “road films” that established some of the characteristics of his wry, subdued style. Each of the three features a journey by seemingly mismatched people. Each provides a view of everyday life in diverse locales like New York City and rural Germany. Each is made using extensive unscripted improvisation by the actors. And each features the talents of a decidedly non-diva actor Rüdiger Vogler, who consistently acts as an introverted foil to ...

Bonnie and Clyde (1967) Directed by Arthur Penn Starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty Natural Born Killers (1994) Directed by Oliver Stone Starring Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis Portraying sociopaths on film is an interesting business. It is hard for us to truly come to terms with a person absolutely lacking in empathy or morality or “superego”, the people who fill our prisons. Seeing them up close (e.g. Charles Manson, Adolf Eichman, O.J. Simpson on trial) makes you see how they can fit into society, partly because we choose not to believe that such people exist. Movies have no such compunctions, and some of the great films like Taxi Driver (1978) take us inside their world, if we can stand it. The two films under consideration today are hardly Taxi Driver , which treats its sociopath very seriously, even sympathetically. These two films instead range from flippant to comical to surreal, essentially putting even up more of a barrier to our “understanding” the sociopath, which...

  Bloody Sunday (2002) Directed by Paul Greenglass ’71 (2014) Directed by Yann Demange, starring  Jack O’Connell The Northern Irish “troubles” of the 1970-80s, once seemed to rival the middle east when it came to intractable conflicts. The ceaseless bloodshed between Catholics, Protestants, and the British “peacekeepers” was a steady news item of my youth. Given the Irish propensity to fine drama and stark tragedy in literature, it is not surprising that good films would emerge telling the chronicle of that sad era. Bloody Sunday was an early film of Paul Greenglass (b. 1955), an English director who would go on to make compelling docu-drama films like United 93 (still the best 9/11 movie) and Captain Phillips , the Tom Hanks drama about a tanker hijacked by Somali pirates. Bloody Sunday tells the story of the infamous massacre in Derry in 1971 where overeager and jittery British troops shot 26 civilians, killing 13, on a day that was intended for a peaceful protest ...