Change Your Image
Josep Parareda
Reviews
Right of Way (1983)
What about forgotten men?
Ruda is a single daughter near to reach forty that truly love her old parents. She has her own business making clay pots, as she did as a hobby when she was a child. Their parents asked her to visit them to make her know their determination to end their lives together because of an illness from the mother. Her father told that she has a blood disease whose strange name he feels unable to remember. The mother said she is allergic to her own blood. Ruda send people to their house to try to convince their parents reconsider their decision. Mr. Dwyer (Jimmy Stewart) has an original desk and his wife (Bette Davis) create lovely dolls. They feed lots of cats whose preferred ones are named Robert DeNiro, Paul Newman and Jimmy Cann... Sometimes some of the cats does an incursion into the next house neighbor woman whose children seem countless. One day a man must deliver them a package and ask Mr. Dwyer if he is Mister or Mistress Dwyer! The film has plenty of comical and tender moments. Once, Mr. Dwyer ask a man in the street about what means the sentence: "Que pasa con los hombres olvidados?" from Pablo Neruda, for who he feels a strong admiration.
I'm delighted to see working together two of the greatest stars ever in one of their last performances.
The Rabbit Trap (1959)
Family and Morals versus work and promotion
A family that just has started their vacation, must return home because the father (Ernest Borgnine) is required by his boss. When they arrive, realize that they forgotten a harmless rabbit trap ready. Because of the insistence of his son, he try to convince his boss to let him go to the vacation spot to check whether any rabbit has been caught, and so release him from a slow death agony. He must choose between his job, or give a good example of compassion and love to all creatures to his son. The Ernest Borgnine acting is at his best. I love this film.
Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em (1973)
The most amusing English/world-wide TV series of all time!
I knew for the first time about Michael Crawford and this TV series in 1985, when it was broadcasted in TV-3 -the Catalan channel-. I ever before had been laughing with so pleasure!. All situations are so funny and Michael´s acting is so superb!. I remember him destroying million pounds machines, bedrooms, shops, bars, dozen of dishes of a restaurant, henhouses, showing his skills making cradles, henhouses, repairing the lid of the rubbish plastic container, dancing, teaching an abandoned dog that he adopted, learning about sexuality going to lessons together with women of odd hairdos, feeding his daughter, be caught on a glued chair with an old lady sitting on, saying 'Don´t touch me...I´m a married man!', talking always about his mother...
Situations are so hilarious that even Betty and the other great actors who participated in the series hardly can contain their laughs. I recommend also Michael´s refreshing film of the sixties 'The Knack'.
Night of the Ghouls (1959)
Ed Wood´s HOUSE II
The police goes to investigate to the house where Bela was living doing experiments on the film 'Bride of the monster', as a result of a report of an old couple. The sequence that shows what they told to the police is characteristic of Ed Wood´s way of work; we can see the old couple driving and taking a shortcut that lead them to pass in front the house. You can watch that sometimes some scenes show daylight -as a close shot of the house- while another shows the dark -when appear the ghost in black dress-. I laugh each time I watch the flying trumpet and the ghost of the whooping whistle. I like too the head grimacing and wearing I think, an explorer´s hat with the mark of pirates. It is astonishing also watch the tranquility of the persons presents at the medium session while they observe a policeman is shooting Lobo.
Le avventure di Pinocchio (1972)
Best Pinocchio ever made
First time I saw this series in the seventies I was fascinated by everything on it. I felt as if I was Pinocchio´s character and I felt the love of his golden heart father Geppetto (brilliant and sentimental performace by Nino Manfredi) and guided, protected and loved by the fairy (Gina Lollobrigida), in to me her most charming performace ever. Andrea Balestri (the human Pinocchio) performance was to me very nice; I remember the touching moments of him crying beside the fairy grave, and the happiness of him and Geppetto when they realized that Pinocchio would be human forever. Fiorenzo Carpi´s score is very nice, and I never forgot it.
Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969)
Moving school story
Peter O´Toole perform brilliantly the character of a lonely teacher whose ordinary life change when unexpectedly to him, meet a woman he fall in love with. This film and the magnificent series 'Brideshead Revisited' are the ones I think catch better the essence of the English schools. I like the songs that sing Peter 'Where did my childhood go?', 'What a lot of flowers!¡ and 'When I was younger'; and Petula songs 'And the sky smiled' and 'Apollo'.
Cul-de-sac (1966)
Max to the max
The quiet life of a couple living in a castle located in a peninsula whose road submerges when the tide is high, is disturbed when two gangsters reach there.
Richard -Lionel Stander (Max in Hart to Hart)- must face the waters, hens, a rotted stair, a transvestite, a diet of eggs, an annoying family, a flirting blond boy, an incompetent barber, a small boy gunman,...and even change into an unexpected butler with a new butler's suitable name, the melody of a record player, forced to play the bicycle joke...
I really enjoy all the actors, funny location, imaginative plot, odd situations, and the pace. Cul-de-sac (by the way a catalan origin word) is not for nervous people but for those who enjoy contemplation.
Voodoo Island (1957)
Another mysterious island
Boris Karloff is the support that stands this film that was made as Ed Wood junior used to do, with low budget but with dignity. I like the easy way the plot goes by, and the funny talks of the characters. There are some sequences that change the calmness of the events as for instance when after some wise words about the nature that surrounds them pronounced by Boris, an incautious woman decides to go for a swim in a pond she find during their trip to inspect the island. Later a member of the expedition will be the witness of a dramatic fact that will happen to an inhabitant of the island that was there playing. The film ends quietly with another wise words said by the head of the inhabitants of the island that put as a condition to let go the invaders that they never reveal to anyone what they had been seen there. The music, typical sound of the fifties science fiction movies, is very funny and warn you about an imminent danger.
Quella villa accanto al cimitero (1981)
Effective horror film
The main reason I bought this film is because I like Walter Rizzati´s main theme (start/end) and 'bambino' theme. This second theme is very beautiful and sensitive and hypnotise you when you watch the little boy´s intense blue eyes. I never saw this film before, except one time I hired it in a video-club, but the copy was so bad that I hardly could watch properly a sequence. I like the menacing atmosphere that Fulci created and the beautiful locations where the film was shot. I don´t dislike that the little boy be dubbed, I like the soft and clear voice of the person who dubbed him. Inside the Oak's Mansion (ex-Freudstein House) I don´t see any cosy corner and all around is dark and hostile. The most disturbing is the locked door in the kitchen and the odd sounds that produce 'Dr.'Freudstein and some children whimpering. It is very uneasy the living-room with its big windows that don´t much allow the light go in and see and be seen from outside. It´s terrifying to discover that there´s a grave under the carpet!. The music of the scene when they descend the stairs for the first time seems really come from the beyond. The scene I dislike is when the mother and his son try to escape from a sure dead if Freudstein would catch them, going to the stairs under the living-room´s grave instead of climb the ones that lead to the kitchen, mostly because the door was destroyed and Freudstein very slow.
Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986)
A good entertainment
I really enjoyed this movie from the beginning to the end. I think the song of 'Talking Heads' is very suitable and amusing. Nick Nolte performs again a character of a poor man, now more poor than before. I think any other actor could do a better acting for this kind of role of this film. It's very funny to me the sequence when Dreyfuss want contract Nolte for a job in a production line in his clothes-hunger factory, and Nolte answers him this is not in his line!. Jerry (Nolte´s character) don´t want to be tied to any place and want have a free way of living, but he is sentimentally tied to his companion (the dog). At the end he can´t resist the temptation of a good life with a family who loves him and a way of life with comfort.