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MagdalenaFigueroaSaavedra
Reviews
The Gray Man (2022)
Excruciating
Think about it this way: Life is short, you can save yourself 2 hours of your precious time on earth. You will get nothing out of this. Even the soundtrack lacks imagination. Even the ''villain'' has a moustache, that's how far the cliché goes. It is easier to make the antagonist look less attractive with a preposterous 70's look and bad make up than to write good dialogues, no banter here either. This is as sexy as a putrified piece of cheese floating in the Yucatan peninsula.
365 Days: This Day (2022)
My Lord...
I won't say anything, except that I imagine the ''actors'' bursting into laughter while ''performing'' their ''dialogues'' reading their ''lines'' to give life to this ''interesting plot.''
See for Me (2021)
The inability of the writers to create a LIKABLE CHARACTER
What strikes me the most lately in fiction, is the blatant inability of the writers to create a likable lead character, even when they are the victims. In this case this is an unbearable annoying irritating woman that despite the fact that you could empathize with what happened to her that left her blind and now she is in danger, it is impossible to feel empathy because of her feisty attitude, I know that it is suppose to portrait a lot of anger and pain because she had that accident and her whole life was upside down and then she doesn't want anyone to feel sorry for her and she wants to be independent like before, etc, but it just creates an opposite feeling. She is extremely annoying with that constant defiant attitude.
The movie is completely mediocre, there is nothing new or interesting to the ''plot.''
La migliore offerta (2013)
The Great Pretender
The great pretender (spoilers)
The great pretender has been deceived. This film is about delving for something real in a world of lies and counterfeits. Elegant well crafted story about how love and friendship can indeed be faked and yet at the same time hold something real at the very core. Of course, the big irony of the story is how the main character was unable to realize he was being deceived when his work was to know how to tell an original from a forgery in the exclusive world of art and antiques. Virgil Oldman is an arrogant and vain man who treats everyone with disdain, even his only 'friend', indifferent to the fact that he may hurt his feelings. Despite all this, Virgil Oldman didn't deserve what happened to him.
Make no mistake, everything we see in this story has been carefully calculated to entrap the main character. The automaton, the agoraphobia disorder, the friendly engineer, the servile caretaker, the jealous girlfriend, the loyal friend. The real Claire, the very owner of the villa gives us an idea about how long was the swindle in the making, she says the engineer (Robert) rented the villa for the last two years.
During the film we hear all the characters constantly stating phrases like: 'You have my word', 'To be honest', 'To tell you the truth', 'I promise', 'Thank you for your trust', 'I trust you blindly' when actually none of these phrases where truthful, because none of them were actually telling the truth, not even Virgil, who's reputation would be shattered if anyone would find out about his paintings and how he acquired them. His collection of women in the paintings is supposed to make us feel sorry for his loneliness, to see him as a fragile man who has a lot to offer but never knew how to find a woman to share his life with, a sad lonely man who has to hear a woman's voice on the telephone looking at portraits of women in order to fulfill his fantasy, so we assume he built a strong cocoon to hide his vulnerability, although I wouldn't make excuses for his unbearable superiority smug attitude, but we can see that even when his relationship with Claire was already stablished he didn't tell the truth about the Vaucanson automaton, he lies right to her face by telling that he wouldn't be able to say what the remaining parts of the automaton are when he sees them in the showcase. Not even at that moment he was able to tell the truth and be honest.
I laughed out loud during two scenes, when Virgil tossed first the contract and then the flowers after an insignificant comic argument with Claire through the closed door.
At the end of the film we see that Virgil realized that yes, Claire, Robert and his purported 'girlfriend' obviously conned him and took his unlawful lifetime paintings collection, but is only after he turns over the portrait of the dancer (which he didn't recognized at any previous moment as Billy's work) and he sees the final message from his alleged 'friend', that he painfully realizes that it was all his 'friend' making, Billy, the one who plotted against him by using his main vulnerabilities, i.e., the mystery of the automaton pieces, knowing that he did his thesis on Jacques de Vaucanson when he was a student, and the irresistible bait of the damsel in distress, luring Virgil into a web of lies and deception. In one of the final scenes he is in his garden trying to call someone, Claire, Billy, Robert, it doesn't matter. He discovers the paintings are gone, sees the automaton with Roberts final voice message, finds out about the real Claire and the villa, turns over the painting and sees Billy's final message all with the same clothes he had when he came back. So we can assume that the scene trying to call someone was made only after these painful discoveries.
Virgil did keep one promise by not burning the painting of the dancer, the one Billy sent to 'remind him what a great artist he could have been if only he would have believed in him' and taking it with him to Prague. There was certainly some resentment in Billy's plot to swindle Virgil, if he only wanted the paintings he could have found another way to steal them, instead he decided to humiliate him, to hurt him. At the same time if it wasn't for this swindle Virgil would most likely never felt or experienced love, since he was unable to open himself to overcome his fear towards women. So maybe, Billy wanted to give Virgil the chance to fall in love, as a strange act of mercy within a plan to despoil him from his most cherished possessions.
Geoffrey Rush plays Virgil Oldman perfectly.
I must say I didn't like the main actress at all, she seems to be very unapproachable, distant and unexpressive, a very unpleasant woman. I wish they would have chosen another actress to play the role of Claire Ibbetson. I didn't enjoy a single scene with her in it. She always looked bitter, what a sulky face!
The faces Jim Sturgess who plays Robert makes in certain moments seem to reveal he was mocking Virgil.
Donald Sutherland was fine playing the longtime friend Billy, the 'accomplice' the 'trusted procurer of women'. He reveals some traces of his resentment to Virgil in his voice, the choosing of his words and his demeanor.
I had my doubts if Lambert was also in on it, because he emphasizes that Virgil must take the first call on his birthday, despite the fact that it's tradition, and he also insisted Virgil should take her call after she 'missed' their first appointment and because he says Claire wants to meet Virgil at the villa, and he says: 'Where else?' when I have no indication Lambert could have known by then what was Claire's alleged condition if he knew anything at all.
Fred the caretaker was as much as a complete fabrication as the rest of the characters, everything he said or did was a lie, 'If you give me your keys I put them in your car' (about the automaton pieces) to place the GPS. In my opinion I enjoyed much more the scenes with Fred the caretaker, Lambert and the superficial interactions Virgil had in the bar opposite the villa with the bartender, the real Claire and his endless display of money spending than the scenes with Robert and Claire.
The scene where we see Claire in the bathtub under the water is supposed to simulate a portrait, like a painting. That was well done.
We get all the time that with this movie there was more than meets the eyes. 'I'd like to rewrite the last chapter, a more upbeat ending' was one of the most direct clues that this was the case.
Maybe we cannot be sure about the sequence of events at the end of the film, I don't know if he went first to Prague or he end up later in the institution unable to take care of himself due to the great distress he had encounter. Perhaps it was in the same order the scenes are presented. First he had the shock and was institutionalized and then he 'recovered' and decided to move to Prague, to wait eternally for his 'long lost love', someone that didn't exist and spoke on the phone to a 'director', most likely Billy moving the threads of one of his puppets.
'There is always something authentic concealed in every forgery', Billy did feel affection and gratitude for Virgil, Robert was most likely going to miss Virgil's 'friendship' and Claire maybe really loved the way he talked, as well as holding some true fondness for him.
Virgil took a long time to answer to the waiter that he approved the wine at the restaurant and also in the last scene when hi is asked if he he is alone or waiting for someone. Very snooty.
There are way too many busts in this movie, I must say, they are everywhere, even at the institution. Virgil's house didn't seem elegant but tacky with so many busts.
Ennio Morricone's music is simply sublime, a master piece within the master piece this movie really is.
Virgil Oldman is presented with the idea of an illusion, an endless parade of lies, yet an opportunity to break free from his cocoon and experience love in an idillic mysterious story that was sadly, nothing more than a mirage.