Reviews

If you have ever been in a multi-venue kind of indie festival, this one hits home very well. The weirdness of the attitudes around, the punchable new indie enfant terrible of cinema that everyone knows are pure grifters, the incisive take on the eternally narcissistic romcoms, the dumbest newest take on what punk is... Both Carrie and Fred know a lot about that world and boy they do have their revenge on certain characters they have faced in their lives.

A few cameos here and there makes thing even more entertaining. But anyway, among with the Strong Bad "Baddest of the Bands", the most accurate portrait of that world of bs.

A common denominator in most of the Shudder movies is that the colours are always amazing, that there is good directing and good casting and that they barely have anything to tell. La Llorona is much better than the Blumhouse one, of course, and its tale where the real horrors intersect with the mythical ones is cool. And the set design is incredible. And the casting does a wonderful job.

But there is barely any character work or any narrative that deserved more than 45 minutes here. I am ok with long shots, but if they appear in the context of some more standard narrative, or if they are used for something else than fill up time. So, a beautiful package, but not that much inside and way less deep it pretends to be.

The setup for the plot is fantastic, actors are good, the locations are also incredible, and Mario Camus is really gifted at framing shots but his way of telling a noir story is through many scenes of two characters sitting and talking in overexpository sentences. There is a point, around half an hour in, that most of those dialogues are redundant to what it is being told visually, while other characters would have benefited from more screen time.

It's like Camus was afraid of doing what the story logically asks for: suspense and violence. I really like him as a director but sometimes he was lost in his "directing as if I am writing a book" ways.

The main Spanish tv channel/conglomerate used to invest in literary adaptations of Spanish classics and "La Forja de un Rebelde" was one going around to be adapted for ages, though many of who attempted banged their heads trying to see what to cut from that three book epic. Mario Camus was lucky, then: a fan of the book, he got the biggest budget the channel could give (it was even controversial if I remember correctly) and all the time of the world, so he adapted this in 6 chapters of what actually proper movies.

And without having read the books, it seems the series follows them pretty much to the letter. You can feel the budget and the love for what is being told as the reconstruction of different times is so overwhelmingly realistic: the places, the way people dress across the years, the incredible work in miniatures and mattés... It is one of the most impressive I have seen to be honest. The issue here is the literary adaptation itself, as a genre, with a narrator voice that most of the times adds absolutely nothing, with a very squared narrative that almost feels like you are seeing "Chapter x" every few minutes and that weird mixing that happened in European cinema until fairly recently, where half of the actors are overdubbed, with the dubbing speaking in a very theatrical way. To compensate for that artificiality Camus and the involved amp the sentimental moments to eleven, making this very soap opera.

Oh but when it works. You can see Mario Camus at his best in some moments where he places the camera to reflect exactly what the characters are feeling, and those moments are magical. And you can see he really loved the book... which is another problem on itself because, as much as it is a very important canonical piece on the Spanish literature, it presents itself as a veridic and realistic telling of the history and the movies do not even leave a hint of that this could be a fairly unreliable narrator - and he is narrating not only his story but the Spanish early XX century history, which is very very messy. It cannot avoid the tropes of so many Spanish movies and series about the Republic and Civil War, with MEN angrily talking about revenge and politics, intellectual wholesome important men, and that sense of self importance is what irks me a bit (politically I am very much on the "you go girl, smash those fascists" faction, in case it needs to be clarified). Probably this forced non ambiguous narrative comes from the fact that those series were seen as a didactic effort, and a kind of substitute for being culturally enriched by reading those books (same as religious movies could kind of work as going to Church).

But I liked it anyway. Kind of a common theme with my relationship with Mario Camus: many things in his movies are ew but in the end I think they are important pieces of Spanish culture. And pop.

This is a weird one, because it ends up being an epitome of that subgenre known as "Madrid urban comedy" which was short lived, always leaded by Antonio Resines, and absolutely unknown outside of Spain and, to be honest, outside of the 80s. What was a Madrid comedy? Basically comedies that adapted the New York romcom or screwball to the Spanish capital. With more or less success.

Is this one good? I cannot say that it is, I cannot say that you will like it. There is a wild mood swing from the sophisticated comedy with camera movements and the crass one and the chilldish one. As said in the other review (which reads familiar - maybe it was me some decades ago) there are many jokes about drug use - the whole movie is about getting in a spiral of parties, after parties, work and back to the parties, which makes reality become blurry. It is surprisingly well structured and with scenes that are pure cinematic bliss, mixed with others that are the lowest of the lowbrow humour. A casting full of gifted comedians (some of which you will recognise from Almodovar movies), references to many clubs in Madrid that have been closed long ago and activities you cannot longer do (as ending up in a flamenco bar as an after party) and in general to a scene of not much sleep and a lot of drug use that has kind of disappeared.

Good luck on finding subtitles for this one though.

Manuel Gómez-Pereira was on a roll, with movies that were each one more polished than the previous one and each one of them having a really good reception from both audiences and critics (the Javier Bardem starred "Boca a boca", now almost forgotten, was talked about everywhere and seen as a contemporary Madrid screwball classic), so he had all the budget and almost everything he wanted for his next movie, this one, in which he decided to talk about love.

A story of a non romantically engaged couple destined to jump into each other at different points of time, with two young actors (Gabino Diego, Penélope Cruz) who looked nothing like the same character elder ones (Juanjo Puigcorbé, Ana Belén) but with some impressive set pieces that also tell the recent history of Spain. It attempts to be several things at the same time: didactic about history and circumstances, and absurd, tragic, and funny about the romcom, and succeeds mostly. This is a common thing in the Gómez-Pereira later works: he never hits all the spots that he is trying to hit, but I admire him for trying so much.

Costumes, cast. The Bernardo Bonezzi soundtrack, all the technical details are incredible. It feels a bit disjointed but it is also very poignant, and the dance scene is one of my favourite movie scenes ever.

It is very difficult to explain why there is such an obsession with "La Escopeta Nacional", the first Berlanga where he went all the way with the sexual humour as a way to reinforced the ugliness. It is not that difficult to explain Berlanga, though, as he had a mood similar to the busier Robert Altman movies, with characters talking over each other while the camera gets besides them, between them, behind them. There is barely a plot in this movie, and there are barely no real characters: they are all archetypes, a grotesque satire of very specific Spanish members of the power hierarchy. Some actors play similar characters they played on other Spanish movies (Agustín González used to play that shouty character, José Luis López Vázquez was used to middle aged sexually frustrated characters...) and they go all in with the exaggeration.

Many of the best actors that have ever existed in the Spanish cinema are here, with the on and off lead of José Sazatornil (funny as ever) and that makes half of the quality. The other half is, as grotesque as it is, how familiar for anyone that has been closed to certain Spanish circles is what the movie talks about. I can even smell the movie. I have been in those awful Autumn celebrations where everything is uncomfortable.

Immensely quotable, I also think it has never been available with subtitles. I tried to start doing it but I gave up because there are so many words everywhere.

At first, a standard erotic thriller fare from the 90s, but with a few detais that makes it worth a watch: the fetishism, the great cast doing a great job, the loopy Bernardo Bonezzi score (which makes this film so close to Soderbergh's "Underneath") and a good following of the noir tropes. Very similar to "Entre las piernas", but all in all the erotic noir was actually very popular in Spain around the 90s (and quite interesting, and sadly mostly forgotten except "Amantes").

I rarely write reviews in here, but this movie totally startled me. I think it was Roger Corman the one who was saying how many studios where putting a lot of budget for stories that were the same b movies he was doing, and here you find a high budget comedy with really good actors in a story that sounds like it should have been shot with a video camera, amateur actors and guerrilla filmmaking. This makes it a weird mix, like seeing a lot of professionals doing their best to give it a polished ending to a narrative that does not cut any corners in the absurdity, slapstick or leaps of internal logic. It does not work because the crew looks like they are way above the story (which, ok, they are) and that makes everything looks disconnected. Still, the effort is so weird that it does not stop being compelling.

You know, there are times when I think it does not matter if I consider an artistic piece "good" or "bad" because whatever it does, it went somewhere that no other piece went. "Schmigadoon" is very much like "Crazy Ex Girlfriend", a musical fable about how to grow up and understand love better, this time in an express way, but this time it is 100% a Broadway kids piece for Broadway lovers.

And look, I am very much like Barry Levinson admited on interviews, not a fan of classic musicals apart from my love to Singin In The Rain and set pieces in several others. I never clicked with Rodgers and Hammerstein, I cannot find any piece of joy in Oklahoma and prefer Hair the movie to Hair the stage (Milos Forman was really a musical man if you ask me) and most of the times I prefer the ballet rather than the musical numbers. But Schmigadoon hit me right on the spot, made me understand why you can keep on loving those musicals, and also showed a few undeniable brilliant musical numbers (most of them on the first episodes sadly: Corn Pudding, Lover's Spat and With All Of Your Heart).

Is it consistently funny? No. Does it go further than recreating the tropes? Not really. But everyone here is enjoying every minute of it, and you get that joy and this is the main part about musicals that work and the part that I love the most. Ariana DeBose shows to be a musical tornado in case you did not know her for now, the main leads have a lot of chemistry, all the dancers and actors are sparkling and shining. It really does not matter if it is better than or worse than or if could have been better or worse, because to me it was a pleasure that I am rewatching over and over again.

I don't know if it happens to anyone else, but I have a number of movies which are not among my favourites, which I notice the flaws quite a lot, and which I am obsessed with because still they get to places a few others do (if you want to ask, Winterschläfer is another good example, but the thing with these movies is that they rotate during some weeks in my head and then they step back to reappear after some years - later I add some other weird noirs).

This one is the second adaptation of a Don Tracy book which is a very solid example of pulpy noir at its peak, a twisty moral tale about people in the margins that I enjoyed a lot, and after a really good adaptation of Robert Siodmak that took some welcome liberties from the book.

What is fascinating about this one is how it follows the book but focusing first on the drama that set up the story for the book. It takes its time through sporadic flashbacks to tell you why the main character is where he is, and it takes its time to get through the more typical noir elements. Does it need that slow pace? Dunno. Does it need those crazy Tony Scott colour filters? Maybe not. But Soderbergh goes hard with the style, really hard, playing at the same time with the depressing realistic drama of people that cannot get out of their social status and the super stylised neo noir (or how it is called nowadays, "neon noir"). It is very much the same beast as some 70s and 80s oddballs like "Stormy Monday" or "Trouble in Mind", takes on the noir narrative that are too much their own thing and do not want to chose between looks, characters or story, sometimes just leaving the characters and letting them do what they were supposed to do in the story. It creates places, real places, and makes you look into the darkness of the main character, and then plants some twists. Cliff Martinez delivers a loopy soundtrack with some nods to Basic Instinct, Peter Ghallager is at the top of his hotness, but it is Soderbergh the one commanding this.

It is weird that when growing up some of your tastes change, and some of your favourite books, albums or movies suddenly look or feel ridiculous. With "Todo es mentira" a different thing happened: I saw the movie changed. What at the time I saw as a typical Madrid urban comedy (yes, it was a subgenre at the time) now I see it as a very sad, dark drama that shows the many flaws of the generation X, which (we) were much more narcissistic than we let people see. It is not only the Alfie story about romances (which is a great point btw) but characters here feel themselves condemned to adapt to love because they are not able to see with their partner's eyes. There are very few redeemable qualities about the Coque Malla main character or his friends, now I see that the Penelope Cruz character is right on most of not all of her arguments and so many of the people featured in this movie are the kind of people I have learned to avoid in my adult life.

But there is a lot of charm too. It brings back to what Madrid life was about during the 90s (the jazz cafés are seriously missed), the acting is on point (including Fernando Colomo who otherwise popularised the Madrid urban comedy) and it is poignant. And it made us all think that we need to go to Cuenca, so close to Madrid, so great, and yet not so much visited.

One of the most loved of the Garci's movies, and probably the best that he made with González-Sinde, it has a fantastic Alfredo Landa as a middle aged man trapped on what he is supposed to do, supposed to enjoy and suppose to have as a man of his age, something that he really cannot enjoy and hurts him and everyone around him.

Describing the movie like this it seems like a drama, but it is a very funny situational comedy which also reflects perfectly how Spain was adapting to a consumerist world after so many years of dictatorship. It makes a fascinating double feature with the psychodrama "Vida Conyugal Sana".

The first films of Garci cowritten with Gonzalez Sinde have a common theme of the analysis of the Spanish equivalent of the baby boomer generation, once the dictatorship is gone. José Sacristán plays a character he played so often in the 70s, the conservative liberal, but the film is about the night, about being lonely, and how we can end up mixing up being independent, upright, incorruptible and being an ... a not nice human being. Or better, how can one justify being mean and keep being alone as a self fulfilled prophecy.

This one really changed me, in a moment I needed it. And I thank Garci (Who I will ever love despite his missteps) so much.

One of those episodes that I have to see again and again for the pure pleasure it is, it's wonderful at so many levels that makes me think that when The Good Wife is good, it's my favorite show. Many stories go at the same time: there is a wonderful dialog about racial bias with the Peter subplot, but the heart of the episode is at Elsbeth Tascioni, one of the better recurring characters of the show, which makes the whole firm move to defend her case as she is that brilliant lawyer.

Maybe you could criticize "Je ne sais what" for being too safe for the characters: they almost have no danger and they do not face any of the usual contradictions; in fact, the only character that actually suffers is Will, gloriously out of his field in a sport tribunal. The rest is the usual "two simultaneous trials" format that this show has taken in the last weeks, but the difference is in the craft: screwball rhythm, memorable punchlines, and great characters as the European tribunal that speak in french. Also great editing, lighting and composition, and the usual great dressing, but above it all, the sense that all the characters are alive, doing what they do best, and taking care of each other. The last minutes of the show were wonderful, with Tascioni running and being brilliantly manipulative with the tribunal. She's so charismatic, so funny, so lovable that she deserves a spin off. 10/10

I started to watch Eureka after watching all the similar shows, shows that have taken more than one or two elements from this series: Haven, Warehouse 13, Alphas... and I like it, but sometimes I have the feeling that the actors are way above the lines they have to say, and the story they have to act. In the case of "Maneater" the flaws are so obvious that it hurts.

The idea of Carter being the sexual fantasy of all the town is a good one, as it allows for a lot of comical scenes and wisely discards any sexual tension with Lupo. One of the problems is that this was done in a Buffy episode, where Xander did some kind of magic and caused that all the girls in town became crazy in love with him. That episode was funny but also consistent with the characters, and that is something this episode lacks. First: heterosexuality, only? Really? Is there any kind of laziness there or just suggesting that there may be homosexual relations or attractions in Eureka is too risky? Second: the intermittent daughter, who appears in some episodes to make the family drama subplots - mostly very weak - and who does not appear in episodes like this one and no one talks about her ever, like she didn't even exist. Third: the episode is absolutely on rails, twists are predicable and presented with such grandiloquence that it is very ridiculous. At the end everything is carried out without any fun, any wit, anything, so, why bother doing a sexual centered episode if you are so mild? The only interesting thing is the obvious tension between the story's possibilities and the script writing. But the script is clumsy enough to be unable to suggest anything.

This, and other annoying things in the series, like the unbelievable beauty - and comfortable beauty, understand me, as their body language contradicted their focus at work - of all the town inhabitants - excluding the asexual bartender - Carter being said to not exercise when the visual evidence shows the opposite, Carter's daughter dating the supposedly nerdiest of the class when he's obviously the hottest and most intelligent of them all... It's like the series is taking us as dumbs, or if it tries to touch a lot of topics being unable to do so. Let's see how it evolves.

One of the series I've been hooked most in the last years, "Hay alguien ahí" (who goes there) tells the story of a family who moves into a, of course, haunted house. The fun part is that it isn't about terror, but about characters: though the first chapters focus on Ouijas, ghosts, and mild shocks (though thankfully most supernatural things happen during the daylight), the series soon follows what it is most interesting about it: the not-perfect families that live comfortably in the rich suburbs. And there you don't only find an amusing array of personalities (leaded by the wonderful Marina Salas, who makes Silvia a very complex, dangerous, selfish but immature and vulnerable girl), but also a nice social commentary: children are never listened, and fractured families really don't listen to each other, like their own problems are the biggest of all. The first season ends in a wonderful cliffhanger, and then the second season meanders a bit. But anyway, it took a lot to make a good fantasy in Spain, the special and makeup effects just work, and there is a lot of effort trying to make each of these chapters, er, professional.

And that is something that was rarely achieved in this country productions for a lot of time.

You know, throwing out a psycho thriller in 2009 with fragmentary cuts, somber tone and final twist, and doing it as if it were the most profitable years of the genre (namely, a bit after the release of se7en) is risky to say the least. But the worse part of Horsemen is how badly does nearly every thing, from lazy actors, a script so inconsistent on what it is telling that I cannot understand how anyone approved this (characters coming out of nothing at half of the movie, others disappearing, blatant incongruence in the investigation...), and a direction that does very little to hide the weakness of the story. The fascination with hooks and skin was better and more gruesome (and interesting) in the Hellraiser movies or in The Cell, the kind of millennium murders are something too old for its own good, and this movie just repeats the same clichés all over again without any inspiration, any intention of being original in anything. OK, there's a smart subtext of young nihilism readable in some of the lines, but that subtext is destroyed by horrendous dialog and laughable melodramatic scenes. So a failure in every sense, but most of all a failure of Michael Bay, who I see as the responsible for having this project go ahead.

One of the better films of Edgar Neville, and one that should be more well-known, "La vida en un hilo" tells the now classic story of a woman that, in a certain time of her life, takes a decision that defines the rest of her fate completely, and at the same time we see the what-ifs of the other decision. What makes this movie different from Sliding Doors is that the what-if is told by a fortune-teller that our main star meets in a train.

The movie itself has another quality that sets it apart from many Spanish movies: the well known fascination of Edgar Neville with Hollywood classic film-making. He treats this story in a screwball fashion, very similar in tone to Mitchell Leisen or (and) Preston Sturges, laughing with all the characters but not being very cruel with them, and leaving them talk with intelligent dialogs. Gags are funny, the editing is sharp, the cast is wonderful, and it is still the best of the films with this premise. Very recommended, though, as usual with sought-after Spanish films of that era, it is preserved in a pitiful state.

There are few animation shows that stand the test of time and the test of, let's say, "maturity". Maple Town, known in Spain as "La aldea del arce" is one of them, not only for the gorgeous Emilio Aragon tune (a wonderful blend of African music and pop very similar to what Paul Simon did in Graceland) but for its vision of a small town and its specific characters and conflicts. No character is purely negative - even the bad guy, the wolf, is more a poor mean guy than a bad one -, and all of them have their flaws, and all the flaws are very similar to the ones that appear in the more realistic and real-life serials. And though the drawings are simpler than usual, the storytelling and direction take advantage of every resource in a very ingenious way, meaning that you can have a clear image of the town design after the very first episode. Most important, there's a lot of humor, not only in the directly goofy moments, but in its portrait of a burguese (and a bit selfish) community. Very recommended.

It's funny to see that Heidi, coming from the now very praised genius of Ghibli (Isao Takahata and, everyone guesses, some touches of Miyazaki) was so extremely successful in Europe and it is relatively unknown to American audiences, the ones most fascinated with Miyazaki. The story of an orphan girl who must live with her grandfather in the mountains, and how she is able to make a new life with a nearly unbeatable optimism, is told by Takahata in a style that could be Ozu on drawings. The same kind of character observation, the same kind of very long pauses between facts, and something that really surprises me, a very observatory storytelling, something that is very rare in animated series. It's extremely emotional too, but not being excessively emphatic on that. It's just an admirable animated series, very unique, and very classic, something that amazes me that had such success in Spain, Italy and Germany.

Gonzalo Suárez is one of the most unique directors we have in Spain, capable of rare and fascinating pieces of work like "Rowing in the wind" (Remando al viento) or "The detective and the death" (El detective en la muerte), but this, his last work, is something that cannot be saved. The actors are great trying to catch some humanity of their characters (above them all, Jorge Sanz) but this is a weird and failed mix of literate dialogues and screwball comedy with no wit and no rhythm. It's like Suárez tries to justify this failure disguising it as a high comedy full of literate references, but this doesn't work, again, at all, though it didn't in other of his works.

What annoys me is how critics in Spain are behaving with this movie. Its premiere was at the Valladolid film festival (a grade-B festival which mostly brings the most awarded films from others, but which is quite comfortable and takes place in a beautiful city), and there only a few applauded (i got out of the movie past 30 minutes, this is something the people I went with told me). But, as it happened years ago with the terrible "Las razones de mis amigos", all the press lauded the movie in an unbelievable manner, and that is what is happening now. And this is, frankly, a fraud.

Watch the movie if you want to. But always keep your criteria to talk about it.

Everyone has mentioned this: the problem with "The Tango Lesson" is that it has Sally Potter all around. And Sally Potter doesn't dance badly, but her character, her persona, feels thin for a main character (surely because she tamed it down a lot, "forgetting" many of her "ugly" bits, so she feels like an unfinished creation), and can't carry the movie. It's interesting when the films feels sincere (loneliness, creation, and so on), but the thing that redeems this 100 minutes are the dance pieces, the musical parts, which for once they feel like a natural and optimistic part of the story that do not break the narration but feel part of it (like in the old MGM musicals and so on), and Pablo Verón. She has strengths; it's a pity that she didn't realize of her weaknesses.

After reading the book - an excellent book which only lasts two days in your hands - and re-watching the movie, I've realized how extremely good it is. It not only takes all the atmosphere of the novel: it adds some pieces, some characters, moves phrases from one character to another to add more layers, and fills the story gaps with simple details. This way the Crofts seem even most adorable than in the book, Mary is even softened - Persuasion is, without a doubt, the Jane Austen story where she's more bitter about the society, manners and such - and Anne becomes a lively character, one woman you really care about and you learn to fall in love with. Persuasion is not just another chick movie about love and people with flamboyant words and clothes: it's a multi-character story, one piece of cinema that takes care of every fictional people that wanders in every shot, one film that makes you feel happy or makes you cry without using easy tricks, one film that manages to be aesthetically beautiful without being cheesy, and one script that takes everything from the book and manages to make the story richer with wise additions. It's incredible, and not only, I insist, a BBC adaptation of a classic book: it's the best piece of cinema Roger Mitchell has ever made, a delight of passions pitifully hidden and wonderfully shown. Masterpiece.