Criticultura em Portugal

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 ...