Criticultura em Portugal

  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 ...

The Ascension (aka The Ascent)  (1977) Directed by Larisa Efimovna Shepitko Starring Boris Plotnikov and Vladimir Gostyukhin The 1970’s have featured prominently in my film reviews. It was a golden era, tapping on responses to 1960’s turmoil to make films that explored human rebellion and the very role of mankind. And I have not yet even gotten to Deliverance, Taxi Driver, and The Godfather. Amidst the Cold War and all these great US films, I was totally unaware of a thriving film industry in the Soviet Union. Many of these films were shown only in the Eastern Bloc and at film festivals.  But they are now more available on the Criterion Channel and elsewhere. The titans of Soviet film remain the great innovators Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948, The Battleship Potemkin, Boris Gudunov ) and Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986, Solaris, Mirror ). Interestingly, while the Soviet dictators often repressed music, opera, and theater, they often left filmmakers alone, and a whole group of ...

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) Directed by Peter Weir Starring Rachel Roberts   Gallipoli (1981) Directed by Peter Weir Starring Mel Gibson and Mark Lee Prior to the mid-70s, Australian film was a real backwater, with few films ever seen outside the country, and what there was mostly limited to brainless comedies. But starting with the films of Peter Weir (b. 1944), things changed. First his films got acclaim at the Cannes festival, then the European art film market, then finally the US. This opened things up for stylish money-makers like Mad Max (1979). Weir later broke into the US market with Witness (1985), The Dead Poet’s Society (1989), then The Truman Show (1998). All these films combine an arty, unique style with popular filmmaking and big stars like Jim Carey, Robin Williams and Mel Gibson. Yet the film I like best is his second, Picnic at Hanging Rock , a gorgeous, haunting film not easily classified as either romance, mystery, or horror. It’s about a group...