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Reviews
Mal día para pescar (2009)
Best Spanish-speaking movie I've ever seen (okay, with some English)
If you like Hemmingway or Mark Twain, you'll love this movie. This is the story of a washed-out champ (with Hemmingway it is usually a bullfighter, here it is a wrestler) who's way past his prime and just doesn't know when to quit. But he is not so over the hill that he can't be used by someone -- in this case a con man calling himself Prince Orsini. Orsini takes the pathetic (think washing in public fountains and wailing loudly in churches) ex-athlete on a tour of South America. They go from town to town where Orsini offers a $1,000 reward to anyone who could last 3 minutes in the ring with the champ. Then he normally bribes the local strongman to accept the challenge and throw the fight (and of course charges everyone in town for admittance).
But in the town of Santa Maria, the duo lucks out: the local strongman turns out to be not only very strong, but also very honest: he won't accept a bribe. Orsini, afraid of losing both the reward money and his champ to boot, leaves no stone unturned in an attempt to get out of the fight. I won't give away the ending, but it very well done -- one of the best, most satisfying endings in any movie I've ever seen. In all, this is a masterpiece with many comedy moments and an excellent character development. You don't have to be a wrestling fan to enjoy (I'm not), and you won't be able to help reflecting on the fact that all of us will one day be past our prime.
Upstairs Downstairs (2010)
Surely you can't be serious
I 'm a huge fan of the original Upstairs Downstairs, and have watched it, in its entirety, three times. From this new series I've only watch one episode, and it is the last I'm ever going to watch. To start with, there's the loud musical score that's tiresomely woven throughout the entire run-time. It aims to give you a comic prelude before a comic moment, a dramatic overtone before something somber happens, and in general the impression that you wouldn't understand if people are happy or sad without some kind of a musical instrument to tell you. I bet the musical director's experience came from watching Leave IT To Beaver and Bugs Bunny.
The choice between who would play the masters and who the servants was probably made with a toss of a coin: there seems to be no difference in acting style or class between the two groups. And when I say "acting style" I use the term loosely, because I'm yet to see any acting taking place. But who could blame the actors when they are made up like wax figures, and when the producers think that name-dropping (Wallis Simpson, the King) is a good substitute for a plot? There is also no realism in the series. The chauffeur tells the master's sister-in-law that he would address her as a lady when she behaves like one (her crime was to enter the front seat of the car instead of the back seat). Can you imagine any of the servants in the previous series say that? Masters and servants seem to be palsy-walsy in this series, which makes them even harder to tell apart.
Jean Marsh should have known better than to appear in this pale melodrama and give it her stamp of approval. But then, as she is asking the audience to accept that Rose Buck aged 40 years between 1930 and 1936, I wouldn't put too much stock in her judgment to begin with.
Match Point (2005)
Serves me right for trusting Woody Allen
A Woody Allen movie without a shred of humor in it. I could forgive this had the first hour and a half of the movie not been so mind-numbingly boring that I could actually feel my brain dripping down my spinal column. You will be treated to many shallow, two-dimensional characters, clichés aplenty, lack of sympathy for any of the characters – not even the victims. I think you can create a Sims version of this movie and no one would be able to tell the difference. I'm actually a Woody Allen fan (early movies, up to Radio Days), which is why I gave him a chance. Bad move on my part. The ending was good, but not good enough to endure this pedestrian work for two hours straight. Stay away.
Moll Flanders (1996)
Talk about taking liberties with the story
The main problem with this film is that it calls itself "Moll Flanders." It has very little to do with the Defoe novel. Moll Flanders, who in the novel appears as a resourceful, intelligent, fun-loving and talented woman is transformed here into a helpless fallen angel who has little control over her own fate. There is no mention in this film of her many husbands (as well as the clever ways she obtained them), her thieving career, her other children, her mother and brother, and generally everything else in the novel that was entertaining and meaningful. Robin Wright Penn is boring and anemic in a role that demands the opposite. Sentimental Hollywood has never before ruined a good story with such skill. If you want to get the full flavor of this great novel, do yourself a favor and watch instead the British adaptation with Alex Kingston, also from 1996.
Les triplettes de Belleville (2003)
Triumph of the Retro
If you love the style of the old Chuck Jones cartoons, or the Pink Panther, you'll definitely love this movie. If not, you may love it all the same. The animated characters are entertainingly and artistically grotesque, with understated emotions. They say it all with a barely noticeable shift of the eye or by fixing their glasses, or just by staring ahead. And yet understatement is the characters' chief strength, and for once we have an animated film that doesn't insult the viewer's intelligence. Call it retro if you like, but it is very effective.
Machines and houses can be just as grotesque as people in this movie: ships that look like they should rightly sink into the water like a knife, houses arched back subserviently under pressure from elevated railways, and a fat Statue of Liberty (just a hint as to how Americans are treated in this movie but it is done without any malice). Nothing makes sense when viewed individually, and yet together it meshes into a true masterpiece of form and content.
The storyline is very simple: a French bicycle racer is being kidnapped by the French Mafia to be used for illegal gambling, leaving his grandmother to try and rescue him. Along the way she teams up with the aging Triplets of Belleville, who, no longer at the heights of their power, still have a trick or two up their sleeve.
But if all you're after in a movie is a strong story, you might be disappointed. The accent here is on superb animation and soundtrack, which creates a feast for the eye and ear (speaking of ears, it will be a while before you'd be able to get that tune out of your head). This makes the movie watchable more than once you will only enjoy it more on subsequent viewings.
Bruno the dog also deserves a special mention: though grotesquely fat, it is probably the most true-to-life and well-developed depiction of a dog in any movie, filmed or animated. No cutesy stuff here, just real "dogginess." His dreams are especially interesting and add a surrealistic dimension to an already part-surrealistic production.
This movie should be a household name. Pity we're not more open to foreign films: most of us keep missing out on masterpieces like this.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
There's no shortage of pirates, that's for sure
Let me start by saying that I really loved the first "Pirates", and watched it 3 times. I was looking forward to this sequel. It proved to be an adequate sequel in that it connected the first movie to a (yet unreleased) third, but that is about all. Don't get me wrong: I liked many things about this movie: the special effects were great, the diversity of the pirates was enhanced (I particularly liked the hammerhead guy), and the line between good and evil was blurred, which is a good thing in a pirate movie.
The main shortcoming of this movie is that it has only two talented actors: Johnny Depp and Bill Nighy (Davey Jones). The rest give a bland, forgettable performance that does not even rise to the level of a caricature. Bloom and Knightley seem to have the chemistry of Bill and Hillary Clinton: during the fighting scene she doesn't seem to care her fiancé is in danger and doesn't come to his aid. It's each one for himself in this movie, be they engaged to be married, good friends or longtime shipmates. There is no camaraderie, there is no love, and there is no loyalty.
The fighting scenes are good at times, silly at others (the watermill wheel sequence is a good example), and the plot line is very thin indeed. I got to hand it to the director, though: no one has ever had more pirates featured in a pirate movie: with the exception of a few British soldiers and some cannibals, every one in this movie is a pirate. Even those who didn't start out as pirates become so before the end credits role. Oddly enough none of them are ever seen robbing merchant ships or innocent civilians, but occupy all of their time pursuing hidden treasure chests and Jamaican-accented witches who know how to find them.
But overall, I can't say I felt like asking for my money back. It was good entertainment for $9, and I will give the third installment a try. Who knows? They might introduce non-pirate characters and have Jack Sparrow and the Kraken live happily ever after (there must be SOME chemistry, Verbinski!).
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
US, UK, you'll enjoy it just the same
I'm not from the UK (live in NJ), and not a fan of horror movies, but I enjoyed Shaun of the Dead thoroughly. I first saw it on DVD, and watched it twice plus all the additional material, which is rare for me. I'm sure that a few jokes were missed on me (for example, I only found out about the original, Dawn of the Dead, a few weeks after I've watched it), but the greatness of the movie lies not in any one-liners or comedic material. Movies that rely on this are rarely enjoyable when viewed more than once. No, this movie belong to the same category as Spinal Tap: its appeal is in the off-the-wall characters and situations, and in the absurdity of it.
And this, in a nut-shell, is what this movie is: a theater of the absurd. You have people who desperately try to maintain a normal life-style while all around them is chaos; who try to patch up relationships while being attacked by flesh-eating zombies. In one of the best scenes, the main character, Shaun, has his first heart-to-heart talk with his stepfather of 20 years just as the old man turns into a Zombie. In another, Shaun tries to prevent his best friend Ed from throwing an AC/DC record at a zombie in self defense because it is a first edition. And not to mention the laid-back Ed himself, who decides to take a call on his cellphone just when it is imperative that he pretends to be a zombie to avoid being attacked by their kind.
But the movie isn't just a mindless comedy. There's good directing and acting, and the timing and pace are excellent throughout most of it. The plot is very strong and even the TV broadcasts which are intertwined with the movie are entertaining. One word of advice, though: don't show this to small kids. While less terrifying than your average horror movie, there are still some gory scenes.
Flightplan (2005)
Single minded and frustrating
The premise is not bad, but unfortunately the movie does not deliver. Jodie Foster, good actress though she might be, seems to have insisted on hogging all footage: there are only 3 scenes in the entire movie in which she does not appear. After an hour of this, it becomes very tedious, and you wish there was a diversion, a comic relief, of a sub-plot. The latter is the most sorely missed: a movie without any sub-plots makes for a single-minded experience. This may have been done to increase the intensity of the movie, but it creates the wrong kind of intensity: one that's tiresome instead of intriguing. I kept looking at my watch hoping for this to end. Also, while this movie is designed to have the audience sympathize with Foster's character, the only emotion it evoked in me was annoyance with her. She is too obsessive and selfish, frightening the other passengers and committing acts of sabotage while in flight in her attempts to find her daughter. I found myself wishing the crew would sedate her.
The following is NOT a spoiler but you may still want to avoid reading this until after you've watched the movie: once the mystery is revealed, it is extremely unsatisfying because it is too far fetched and the purpose for which the girl disappears could have been achieved in many other, less convoluted ways. The ending is melodramatic in the extreme, and makes Foster's character even less sympathetic.
On the plus side: Good acting by Sean Bean and Peter Sarsgaard
Montenegro (1981)
Cold, wooden
Were it not for the wooden dialogs this could have been a better movie. It is a little hard for the characters to come off as authentic when they sound as if they give dictation. The humor was not bad, especially in scenes such as the group-photographs with the man with the knife sticking out of his forehead, but such scenes are few and far between in this movie. The ending (no spoilers here) is too abrupt, as if the director wanted to end the film in the quickest way possible. I could not identify with, or bring myself to like any of the characters, and that alone makes this a bad movie. The one thing I would say for this endeavor is that the sex scenes are refreshingly original.