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akuschevatzky
Reviews
Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003)
COOL, SLICK, AIRHEAD FUN
Forget about rationals: CAFT is a love letter to classic movies. McG directs with a lot of nice touches and references to Hollywood film legends, like "Cape Fear", "Singing in The Rain", "Rebel Without a Cause" and much more. Nevertless, you also find the usual summer trappings ( big explosions, tanned bodies, mindless violence), but the twist here is on the way Hollywood sees itself - CAFT never takes itself so seriously as other summer estravaganzas. Two fun hours at your multiplex, with a marvelous technicolor feeling. And, oh!, Demi Moore still kicks some serious ass.
Cuando besa mi marido (1950)
One great pix from Argentina´s own Preston Sturges.
Screwball comedy as a genre started in New York´s journalist circle in the early 30´s, thanks to writers Charlie McArthur and Ben Hecht, who created the smash stage hit "The Front Page". The trick? Overlapping dialogue, battles of the sexes, war between classes (usually workers vs. bosses) and -last but not least- a wicked sense of humor. By the mid-40´s Screwball was a film milestone, with directors creating successful variations of the same "guy-against-girl-against-world" outline. Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks, George Cukor, Mitchell Leisen, Garson Kanin, Charles Lederer, the Ephrons, Preston Sturges and the master of them all, Ernst Lusbich, directed and wrote thousand of amazing screwballs. In Argentina one guy, a forgotten man, carried the torch. His name was Carlos Schliepper and he directed some of the funniest movies ever made outside the USA. The renegade son of a wealthy family, Schliepper loved american films and had a deep understanding of the Screwball dinamics. In 1950 he was in top form, and his third movie that year, "Cuando Besa Mi Marido" ("When my Husband Kisses"), turns to be a hidden gem. The film develops itself from a very simple premise: a shy guy is believed to be a lust devil. Of course, reality is very different than perception, truth than fiction and, at the end, this shy guy (Angel Magaña) becomes a ladies man while his unfaithful friend (Juan Carlos Thorry) starts a new -and kind of square- marital life. Witty, self referential and full of sexual innuendo, "Cuando Besa Mi Marido" should be regarded as a minor masterpiece of Argentina´s own screwball film school. The movie climax seems to be lifted from Frank Capra´s "It Happened One Night", but Schliepper chose to analize class relations between the uprising peronist middle class and it´s servants. Sometimes broad, sometimes subtle as hell, nobody escaped his sharp and ironic eye. Simply irresistible.
Mi novia el... (1975)
A great comedy of sexes about argentina´s male chauvinism, sexism and airhead macho pride.
Alberto Olmedo was a unique performer. He started his acting career by accident, without thinking twice. An amazing improv player, Olmedo was a perfect 10 while acting on TV. At the same time he made an average of two movies a year. Sadly, his acting skills were lost in the big screen. Anyway, he made a couple of amazing pictures ("Una Jaula no Tiene Secretos", "La Aventuras del Capitán Piluso", "Los Caballeros de la Cama Redonda"), before becoming a raising star. By 1970 his name was widely recognized and way above the title. Three years later one production company, "Producciones Cinematograficas Aries", partnered him with another rising comediant, Jorge Porcel. They made more than 20 pictures together, but "Aries" tried very hard to make hits with each guy working solo. "Mi Novia el..." ("My girlfriend, him...") was a nice and very humorous screenplay by playwright and TV writer Oscar Viale. Written in a very italian comedy style, the screenplay was about a blue collar guy falling in love with a girl disguised as a tranvestite. If you have seen the peninsular comedy of screenwriters Age and Scarpelli, well, "Mi Novia el..." was written in the same tune. Olmedo is great as the guy, as well argentina´s own Marilyn Monroe, Susana Gimenez, who plays the girl. The movie ran with censorship problems because of it´s title and subject matter, until "Aries" decided to change the selling angle.
The film was directed by veteran hack Enrique Cahen Salaberry, an undistingished filmmaker who helmed more than 50 awful movies until 1985. But, surprisingly, the film was a brilliant piece, and a hit - with the almost the same plot as "Victor, Victoria" made six years later.
A comedy of sexes about argentina´s male chauvinism, sexism and airhead macho pride. An obscure gem about to be discovered. Believe it or not.
Los caballeros de la cama redonda (1973)
Four shoes salesmen in search of extramarital affaires - an argentine illicit son of Billy Wilder´s "The Apartament".
Well, this is the movie that started it all. In the early 70´s the argentine film business made just two kind of movies: european art house films and sex romps in the "Carry On" tradition. Those who dared to film stuff like the sex comedies were labeled as "smut peddlers" (like the national Russ Meyer, Armando Bó). But then you had a very creative subgenre, the "motel comedies", set in -well...- motels. In 1973 two tv writers, Hugo and Gerardo Sofovich decided to change the formula a little bit and made this one. "Los Caballeros de la Cama Redonda" ("The Knights of the Round Bed") was hardly an original screenplay. Roughly based on Billy Wilder´s "The Apartment" (1960), the movie follows four shoes salesmen in their search for an empty flat. ¿Their goal? To get an apartment in order to get laid. Things get worse every day - the "macho" is a dominated male, the fat guy only wants to have dinner...
"Los Caballeros..." is a so-so pic if you want to analize it from a film standpoint. But it´s masive success changed everthing around - the film industry went in that sex farce direction, and the movie partnered argentina´s two most beloved comedians (Alberto Olmedo and Jorge Porcel) for first time. They remained together as a film couple for 13 years, until Olmedo´s ultimately and tragic death. And if you enjoy polyester suits, bad jokes and the classical argentinian sense of disrespect for the authority, church, state and marriage, this movie is for you. All others, go home. Now.
Death Game (1996)
Scream for your life! Avoid it if you want to survive!
Utter piece of trash. Not even funny or amusing. An unwatchable pic from the hollow side of the Roger Corman factory. Dark, murky, straight-to-cable filler with no script at all. With the following items: migraine inducing visuals, second grade acting, boring stunts, and idiotic sub-"Escape From New York" storyline. KA-Boom!
El hijo de la novia (2001)
"El Hijo de la Novia" - a great pic is waiting for ya.
"El Hijo de la Novia" is a brave return to the storytelling form that is regarded today as the "classic Hollywood style", the kind of narrative form where giants like Howard Hawks, Vincente Minelli, King Vidor, Billy Wilder and (specially) Frank Capra developed personal issues. The movie allows director and co-writer Juan Jose Campanella to show a deep sensibility and an amazing tender touch - with a skill where performers like the great Eduardo Blanco can develop an amazing range. At times a melodrama, at times a fast-kind-of-screwball-comedy, "El Hijo..." is an emotional rollercoaster where the audience cry and laughs at the same time (and on cue!). If Francoise Truffaut re-created Hollywood storytelling as a very personal experience, the same can be said of this movie - thanks to a brilliant script, a new collaboration between Campanella and his usual partner, Fernando Castets. In a nutshell: great storytelling in a movie destined to be a classic. And there is no way to beat this, pal.