Reviews

This series is absolutely flawless. It is really rare to see a movie or a TV show which is excellent in every aspect of it. Well, this is the case of Ethos. Acting is superb. Characters are extremely well crafted, so as the screenplay. Scenes that seem irrelevant end up making sense few episodes later. Every character is contradictory and captivating in its own way. Cinematography is superb. And above all, the attempt to show the clash between relgion vs. secularism, tradition vs. modernity etc. is so well made that you don't really have an answer about what's the best path for a person or a country. Both ways are complicated (as we all are as human beings). And despite it deals with very heavy and deep issues, it wraps it all with a layer of humour in a way that makes you feel more simpathy for the humanity

This is one of the most enjoyable movies I have seen in the last years. I watched it in a session in cultural center Brasilia, but it's really hard for me to understand why it hasn't reached commercial movie theaters in Brazil and, I suppose, in other countries either.

Awesome script, very good directing and pretty decent acting that remind Woody Allen at his best, with an Uruguayan flavor. And that is why I this movie probably didn't larger audiences, I suspect. If it had been an Argentinian movie - instead of Uruguayan - I believe they would have more conditions to go beyond smaller public.

This is a good movie. But it's the kind of movie you feel pity for, because it could have been a little masterpecie if it had a better direction and a better acting. Sbaraglia does a great job, but Carolina Dieckmann doesn't bring the complexity of her character and Chino Darín's role looks a bit stereotypical. Actually, the Uruguayan actress Mirella Paschoal, even in a much smaller role, has a much better performance than Dieckmann's.

Despite its flaws, The silence of the sky is a rather enjoyable film and keeps you connected to the story from beginning to the end.

For me it's really hard to understand why this movie has such a high socre at IMDB.

I'm a huge fan of Argentinian movies, but it was very hard to laugh watching this one. Maybe China Zorrilla's character is the only one who's made me laugh a little, but overall I found this movie a waste of time.

I understand that when it was release, 35 years ago, it could be a nice form of comedy, but watching it today sounds more like going to a museum than watching a comedy movie.

My wife I found this movie by chance on Netflix and after we checked it had a good score at IMDB, we decided to give it a chance.

Although the movie is slow paced, the cleaver dynamics between the two main characters and the very good photography makes it a very enjoyable experience. It's at the same time unpretentious and witty.

I truly recommend this movie!

Considering that Budapest was, in my opinion, one of those novels which look very hard to be adapted to a movie, it was with a lot of curiosity that i went to the movies to watch Walter Carvalho's homonymic adaptation. For my delight, Budapest not only thrives to depict the essence of the novel - with a well-deserved reverence towards Buarque's work - but even takes it into a greater extent. Leonardo Medeiro's acting is superb as it is the cinematography - which is not surprising if you consider that Carvalho is the cinematographer of movies such as 'Behind the Sun' and 'Mango Yellow'. It's funny to think that Chico Buarque, who had never been to Budapest before writing the novel, appears in a cameo role in the Budapest airport.

Walter Salles and his longtime partner Daniela Thomas come at their best with 'Linha de Passe'. After shooting Dark Water (which I haven't seen but only heard bad things about it) and the predictable Motorcycle Diaries, Salles focused on his best ability: showing the real Brazil to the world and - even more important - to Brazilians themselves. The acting is so accurate that sometimes the movie looks like a documentary about people who strive to have a decent life despite living in a poor suburb in São Paulo. Not only Sandra Corleoni - who won the Palme d'Or - is brilliant, but nearly everyone, even the characters who are not so much in evidence. I would say that this the movie captures the contradictions of the urban Brazil in such a profound way that it leaves you with little else to talk about the subject. Although each character kind of represents a particular stereotype of Brazilian people, there's so much subtlety in each of them (because of the screenplay and the acting) that the plot sounds completely natural, which doesn't happen with 'Crash', the awarded American movie that 'Linha de Passe' reminds me of. In my opinion, Salles' masterpiece is still 'Behind the Sun' (Abril Despedaçado), but if a foreigner asked me to explain what's to be Brazilian, i would suggest him to watch this movie.

This is a kind of movie that could be much better if it was more carefully made. OK, the plot isn't wonderful, but there were some good dialogues which, if better developed, could save the film. The main actor does a good job, but in fact nearly everyone seems to be playing people like themselves... The big problem was that there were too many pointless scenes which made me feel that the director had a plot to make a short movie but tried to make a long one... But the worst part of the movie is certainly the end. I don't know how's the story in the book which movie was taken from, but it's one of the most ridiculous endings I ever saw, and I think probably everyone who watched it will agree with me.

Some people can consider Paradise Now as propaganda, however, in my humble opinion, this movie is much more than a story about the situation in Palestine. It's a movie that shows how human beings can do horrible things when they are oppressed and how this behavior even seem to make sense when you're taught from the childhood that doing such things is the only way to get freedom.

It's obvious that suicide bombers are murderers, but it's also obvious that they are victims from Hamas, Hezbollah, Israel, USA and everyone that gets profits with the violence in the Middle East, so this movie wasn't special to me for showing some kind of sympathy for terrorism if it does. The role of this movie for me was to show a humanized version of a group of people that I usually only take acknowledge by the TV as people whose only objective is to kill the highest possible amount of people.

Here in Brazil we don't have ethnic or religious wars. Here, Palestinians and Jews live sometimes in the same neighborhood and there's never been a terrorist attack. On the other hand, we've got extremely serious problems with violence caused by the oppression that poor people suffer from the Police, that seems only to exist to protect the rich. In May, a criminal organization called PCC (Capital's First Command) attacked more than a hundred of places (most Police stations) in São Paulo, killing approximately one hundred people.

Are these criminals originally bad or their acts are just the consequence of an extremely unequal society? Well, on the TV we only see the criminals and the terrorists, but thank God we have movies like City of God, Carandiru and Paradise Now to show us the human beings.

I think that more than half of all the Argentinian movies I have seen were starred by Ricardo Darín. I don't know if it's lack of good actors, but, anyway, all I can say is that he had great performances in every his movie movie I have seen and in this one it isn't different.

About the movie, people who watched Nueve Reinas could say that it's a bit slow and, in fact, it is at the beginning, but once you start to get involved with the plot and with Darín's character this slow pace turns to be something that bring us the feelings that the main character might be feeling.

If there's one thing that could be better explored, in my humble opinion, was photography, mainly in the scenes at the bush and the desert.

Anyway, if you became a Bielinsky fan because of Nueve Reinas, be prepared to find a completely different movie. Whereas in Nueve... you realize what's the movie about since its beginning, in this one you have to be a bit more patient. However, the plot is still clever and in the end you'll hardly be disappointed.

Highly recommended.

I'm a bit suspect to talk about this movie because it was shot in the city where I live (André, the main character, appears working in the same supermarket in which i usually go and I've already been in the stationery where he also worked) and the editor was my teacher at the University (I study journalism). The best thing about this movie, I guess, is that it has a lot of references and even though it's completely original. It's also hard to say if it's a romance, a thriller, a drama, a comedy, actually it has a bit of everything! The acting is quite good and considering that none of the main actors are from the South, their "gaucho" accent is pretty good. The characters are common people, but, when exposed to extreme situations, they become special, just like everyone. Besides the plot, this movie was extremely well directed and edited (I know I'm suspect, but I had to say it). Anyway, I've never heard about someone who didn't like this movie. I bought the DVD and took it to Australia and all my friends there liked it, so I think it's appealing to everyone, no matter where you are from, so, if you're not Brazilian, look for the DVD, coz it's really worth-seeing.

I took the DVD by chance to home and had a wonderful surprise. Well, there were some good reviews made by critics from important Brazilian papers and that was the only reason why I decided to watch it. But, anyway, it didn't look very attractive to me at first sight.

After the first 20 minutes, I thought "Damn, it's just another movie about teenagers snorting coke and stuff like that". However, in the end of the movie, I was just like: "Jesus! How could this man make such a great film with so little money?!" It's obvious that a film with practically no resources (13,000 Brazilian Reais, what, in 2002, was about 4,000 US dollars) has its defects. The photography lacks quality and some dialogues are unnecessary. But these "problems" only contribute to bring us the "Audacity" that Alexandre Stockler looks for. The Brazilian director created a manifesto called TRAUMA (in English, Trying to Realize Anything Urgent with a Minimum of Audacity). In Cat's Cradle there's certainly much more than a "Minimum of Audacity". Using black humor and social criticism, Stockler alerts us about how sadly nihilistic and hedonistic our society became. Although the movie may sound pessimistic, its realization shows the director's belief that it's still time to think what we want from our lives. Let's wait for Alphavella, Stockler's next project.

*If you have the DVD at home, take a look on the extras where you'll find an interview with the director and the complete interviews with young people which appear during the beginning and the end of the movie.