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Catch Me If You Can (2002)
A must-see
I liked almost everything of this movie. Acting is superb (Tom Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Christopher Walken: do I need to say more?), Spielberg's direction is flawless, music is interesting and adds the right amount of tension.
The story tells of (real-world) con artist Frank Abagnale, of his complicate family and the reasons pushing him into a criminal life while still very young. The movie is brilliant, at times entertaining in showing how our reality is partly made of paperwork and false perceptions. At other times, I found it intense and emotional in representing the struggle of Frank's father to emerge from his low social condition out into the "little club" of those "who have everything". Overall the movie is very balanced and I would not have minded watching some 30 minutes more of it.
My advice: absolutely watch it, even multiple times to spot some more visual details.
Arance & martello (2014)
Boring and flat
Simply put, in order to understand what this movie is about (and to try to somewhat enjoy the irony that it wants to convey), you need to meet all the following requirements:
- You must know something about Italian politics in the last 10-20 years. - You must know what Partito Democratico (or PD in brief) is: it is a political party born out of the transformation of the Italian communist party (PCI) in the 1990s, it is now one of the main political parties in Italy, and it is a left-wing party. - Many former voters of the PCI were unhappy at the time with the transformation of their party into PD as they felt it moved too much toward conservative policymaking. While the party changed, ideology did not as much, and still many people nowadays declare to be Communists or follow ideas that closely resemble the kind of Socialism debated in the 1960s and 1970s. - Italy's economy is suffering from structural deficiencies, corruption, and backwardness. Consequently, people today feel poorer and many struggle to keep up with economic change and rising costs.
Now, assuming that you as a viewer have these points clear in mind, the movie tries to represent the contrast between people from the streets, and the PD party. People from the streets are unhappy, poor, and they would like to be represented by a political party that fights for far-left policies. For some reason not explained in the movie, these same people do not vote for a different, more leftist party but instead continue to recognize the PD as the one-and-only party representing (that MUST represent) their political views. The solution to this impasse is represented in the movie by a sort of revolution where "the people from the streets" overrun the local site of the PD.
The movie is boring, no memorable gag or funny situation is ever seen, save perhaps for the representation of a bit over-the-line characters who someone might find mildly entertaining. The satirical content is unsatisfactory and requires the viewer a good dose of leftist ideology himself to enter into resonance with the situations. Acting and direction are bad. Music sometimes seems to be unrelated to the video and is anyway itself uninteresting. The director chose to use saturated colors: at the beginning this looks like a smart idea to represent the suffucating heat of Summer (which maybe hints, metaphorically, to social heat rising among the people), but after 20 minutes or so it becomes just annoying.
In summary, try to avoid this movie, there are many better things to do in life. People suffering from that disease called ideology are probably unfit to make jokes about themselves, and this observation fully applies to the director and author of Arance e martello.
Whiplash (2014)
Where's the swing?
Two things make this movie worth watching: the great acting by J.K. Simmons, and the nice visuals and editing. These, not surprisingly, received Oscar awards.
But I believe the movie fails entirely at its core: music. The story mixes Full Metal Jacket with Shine to represent a bullying music teacher mistreating young students in some supposedly reputable jazz music academy. The whole focus is on the brilliant leading character who becomes obsessed with perfection, and on his lunatic teacher pushing him harder and harder.
The big problem for me is the total lack of credibility. Music, as it is represented in this movie, works like gymnastics where there exists some ideal perfect execution to be obtained by exercising more and more. I think, on the contrary, that (good) music is more like dance, where there is no "perfect execution" but rather it involves taste, sensibility, and different points of view.
An example of this is the song Caravan that is played multiple times throughout the movie. As a fan of good ol' jazz, I have to say I never listened to a worse execution! If you do not know what I am talking about please just search "Duke Ellington Caravan" on Youtube and then compare with this movie: Caravan is NOT about super-speed and perfect timing, it is about mood, swing and atmosphere, all things that seem totally unknown to whoever run the music department for Whiplash.
If you are looking for a good movie about obsession for music I would definitely suggest Shine. If you look for a movie about music as a way to obtain freedom and elevation of spirit (and also some good laugh) there's The Concert. Or try Kieslowski's Trois couleurs Bleu, Mo' Better Blues, or maybe the TV series Mozart in the Jungle. Whiplash does not add anything interesting to the long list of films about music.