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A Vida Invisível (2019)
Tragically beautiful, or beautifully sad
My biggest turndown with Invisible Life's biggest competition inside Brazil this year ('Bacurau') was the excess of metaphors to make it a smart work -- some of which have absolutely no contibution to the story. Still, it was able to provoke a lot of emotional reactions, it's specially smart and meaningful to watch from a Brazilian perspective. Invisible Life is something different, it's universal, delicate and rough at the same time, and it's story has no need to explaining -- we all know what it is about. Still, they explain (the only reason why it's not a 100% for me).
Carol Duarte and Julia Stockler are incredible. Also need to mention the short appearance from Brazil's greatest actress of all time, Academy Award nominee Fernanda Montenegro, not only for the name but mostly because, after 120 minutes of the movie, her performance was still able to reach out to the emotions you built for the characters in the past 2 hours.
Overall, absolutely beautiful. The film is a visual spectacle, but also a beautiful and touching story.
Tropa de Elite (2007)
Wonder what right-wing propaganda should look like?
Straight to the point, the movie's speech is as deep and profound as that from the white teenagers in the movie -- they also have in common the fact that both come from the medium and high classes in Brazil. Wagner Moura is brilliant here.
It took a while for Brazil to figure out what this movie meant. Thankfully, international media saw it right away. That's comforting somehow, but tells a lot about LatAm dictatorships' legacy.
Nevertheless, this is exactly the type of entertainment Brazilian extreme-right should be aiming at. Thankfully, it's going to be hard to find professionals good enough who would do this consciently -- clearly not the case in Elite Troup.
O Dragão da Maldade contra o Santo Guerreiro (1969)
A psychedelic travel
Antonio das Mortes is a great example to understand Brazilian 'Cinema Novo', but also, to understand the complexity of social relations in the country, specifically in the northeastern region -- Brazil's poorest desertic region.
Three groups of people are presented to the viewer. The 'Coronel' is the one who owns the land and controls the local authorities. The medium classes are represented by the 'Doctor', the 'Teacher' and the Catholic church -- all of them responsible for mantaining the structures of power that allow unequality to perpetuate. Lastly, the miserable people, who are led by the 'Cangaceiro' and the 'Santa' and are represented mostly by women of color, who lean on faith and popular culture to unite against poverty and starvation.
The language, as in most of 'Cinema Novo' films, is overly artistic, caricatured and very little realistic at times. Theatrical acting and visual poetry are resources to tell the narrative of the film, and they do well, but sometimes the scenes are very disconnected from human logicality -- at times, the characters are simply unreasonable. Nonetheless, that is exactly how it is supposed to be. This movie is art by art, with a social narrative that fits perfectly in the times where unequality grew the most in Brazilian history. At the end of the day, the killers and the martyrs were all the same -- people.
Gisaengchung (2019)
South Korean cinema taken to the highest level.
Parasite is everything you didn't expected it to be. Any advice? Don't take any spoilers and allow yourself to be surprised, and you will be every minute. Bong Jun Ho's film is humoured, ironic, fun, scary and effortlessly touching.
The social side of the movie might seem very subtle, but it's everywhere. There aren't many metaphors to make it seem bigger, everything is neat and effective. This is the kind of movie you didn't expect to come from South Korea, but maybe it's this great because it is from South Korea.
Let It Snow (2019)
An okay revival of christmas-inspired movies for the teenage public
This movie is not terribly awful, nor it is great. There's something about christmas movies that makes you forget that they're a complete cliché as you get into the spirit. But this is not the case.
This looks like a mix of every teenage cliché -- the best friend in love, the girl who doesn't like a superstar and then hooks up with him, and even a new kind of cliché that is an LGBT romance of an outkast with a popular in-the-closet person, I will make an excuse for the last one since we don't get to see many lesbian christmas movies.
The stories don't necessarily fit together, they could have been shown in a minisseries and it would flow better. If the idea is to reproduce the early 2010's romantic comedies with multiple mature couples in Christmas and New Year's Eve (like the 2011 film), then it works.
It's not emotional. It's not the kind of movie you would watch every christmas to get into the mood. But it's still a fun time waste.
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
One of the greatest pieces of acting in cinema history.
Hepburn and Stewart undoubtely shine here. Alongside the plot, which is actually very funny, ironic and well put together, The Philadelphia Story may look very simple, but is also extremely smart and fascinating.
The only reason why I didn't 10 star-ed this is because for 100 minutes it does not look at all like some classic romantic novel (like what you would expect from an Audrey Hepburn movie), but then... it does.
The ending was disappointing. It looks very sudden, and sudden is different from unexpected. Yes, it was totally previsible -- and most of all, a turn-off, it kind of ruined the memory of the movie for me.
Could have been my favorite movie of all time, but that would need some hypnosis sessios to make me forget the last 5 minutes.