Reviews

Once one sees who the actors are, the flawless photography, and the superb surroundings, it is implied that the film will be a superb jewel... but after 20 minutes, one notices that unfortunately, IT IS NOT.

The film has been excessively praised but in my hiumble opinion, it does not deserve it because of a diffuse and surreal script. The whole cast is splendid and I really liked the way Peadar is performed, as a supposed guardian of the law who happens to be an abusive guy who mistreats the ones he decides trusting that he is a policeman. Barry Keoghan is a noticeable addition that goes beyond the top as a clumsy guy.

The plot happens to be empty and absurd and the worst is that it lasts almost 2 hours. There is not a definite point to which the plot can arrive and validate what happens.

The film is a marvelous b/w.visual way to narrate a minimal story that works quite well in the beginning but becomes foreseaable in the end.

Also, the way ratio formats are handled work well when the picture starts but later, they become distracting and unfocuse the image rather than providing a better attention point. But photography in general encapsulates splendid images that are the main asset of the narration.

The performances are to be praised: even if apparently there is not much happening, the actresses give a committed manner of conveying feelings, helplessness, desperation, and trauma.

The end does not consolidate what as been seen or should have been handled in a different way to add some moral punch.

Nevertheless, the film is worth to be watched and i am now looking for more films of the director.

The film is going to derange regular spectators since it seems to be linking unlikely situations, but it moves forward... not in the best way since it is the director's first feature film. Obviously, more experience is needed to make his contribution more attractive and well-finished.

A sudden decision in Sydney of a young woman and man both trying to overcome a breakup, a tenure in the wild, a romance in the brink of being consolidated, a girl afflicted with curiousity, a meddling elder asking for the time, true and unwanted advice from a friend, small everyday catastrophes, random encounters, criticism of pretentiousness, cultured people dwelling in the abstraction to avoid reality... DEEP VOIDS IN LIFE.

The attitude of the female main character is quite similar to her homologous one in Eric Rohmer's LE RAYON VERT and the film shares the basis of such a narrative basis as the one of 4 AVENTURES DE REINETTE ET MIRABELLE. Burgoeisie chasing happiness but without a definite plan about that.

Static camera images are the main visual component of the film as well as dramatic ones such as grim, joy, doubt, humour, a bit of boredom, enigmsatic mystery, and existencial tragedy.

The director has shown his most important points and interests here. May he offer us a next film with a more dynamic content.

A good effort with a magnificent cast: the story of a rascal who has kept a low profile until he is discovered.

Forest Whitaker and Lily Rabe have a special chemistry as the FBI couple investigating the case. As usual, the experienced offical is the one who fills the gaps and the apprentice is a good help and support.

The idea of unconditional love and the simultaneous paralellism of the Watergate case and the way the amateur thieves adds flavour to the plot. It is seasoned by great jokes and the fun never ends.

The party happens to be especially agreeable since the main character is led to the wolf's den.

By the way, the idea of the heist seems to be purloined from RIFIFI (Dir.: Jules Dassin, 1956). It is also worth to be viewed.

A dark odyssey bout the traffic of people and even worse, children. An international network of a cancer affecting the world takes as prey a Polish girl and sends a policeman through a long trek of recovery all over the world.

Sometimes it reminds the topic of THE OFFENCE (Dir.: Sideny Lumet, 1974). Worth a view if you have the stomach for it.

The basic premis of the story is that of an abusive rich man that covets all the land around the town he controls.

The appearance of Misi, a disoriented bank clerk that has to deal with a new home in which he wants to live calm with his girlfriend crumbles when the.chieftain wants to get his land.

A topic narrated several times in Westerns, this one happens nowadays and implies moral values and resisting a powerful contender who does not fight in a clean way.

This film wants to follow the trend of "1917" and "Birdman" making appear thre narration as a continuous one, but the edition is not so pristine to achieve that.

There are several noticeable goofs revealing separate scenes clumsily united betraying faulty skills in the technicians doing this.

The story is excessive and exaggerated. It also reminded me of. Park Chan-wook's "Oldboy" when a single man fights an army of opponents.

As a gory spectacle, it works for the masses, but i guess films can offer a lot more than that.

Undoubtedly, the film is full of suspense that keeps the spectator to the edge of the seat, but the whole concept is ridiculous.

I do not conceive that there would be ONLY 2 enemy missile interceptor stations and that no extreme security measures would be guarding them.

Add to this that the attackers are supposedly carrying concentrated sulphuric acid, one that neither corrodes the cadaver of one of them nor the metal floor of the corridor. This makes lose credibility to the story.

The topic and its development reminded me of a lot of other films dealing with the same topic and the basic plot. The updated novelty here is the sexual harrassment of the main character.

She denounces this but her award is to be despised by her male workmates that expected to follow the "tradition", making it noticeable that they support and take advantage of it.

If a woman rejects such a behaviour, she becomes an outcast and is sent to the most disagreeable position for her. We can consider this as light social criticism.

The main actor does not act a lot, she is more concerned about physical feats... and let us not forget that she is the spouse of the executive director.

The characters of the villains Alexander.and especially Beaver are well developed and performed. I would say that this is the main asset of the film.

The film follows the trend imposed by John Cassavettes' GLORIA, which was followed by its remake featurin Sharon Stone and later, Luc Besson's LEON, LE PROFESSIONEL.

Not much to add: a simple film plagiarizing a previous plot.

Cinematographic creativity and ingenuity are flying low nowadays.

This is just only the non-polished reworking of Kathryn Bigelow's STRANGE DAYS after 21 years.

The plot remains the same with minor changes.to cover appearances. This new disguised version is a waste of talent and time.

American films tend to sing glories to the achievements of their citizens and in this case, an Englishman is involved in the ultimate success of an adventure to beat the top representative of speed and quality in car races.

Undoubtedly Matt Damon and Christian Bale give their best -as usual- in their performance, but Josh Lucas as Leo Beebee happens to steal the show from them as the corrosive, hypocrite, and false villain of the narration. He becomes THE MAN ONE LOVES TO HATE and in top form, indeed.

The whole atmosphere of a gripping script is enhanced with his presence and the way he shows how he can plan underground strategies to try to sink Ken Miles, but in the end -and even if he humiliates Miles- the spectator ends with a bitter flavour remembering his presence.

KUDOS for such a superb piece of acting, Mr. Lucas.

THE WITCH showed the director's penchant for a noticeable lack of special effects -because a small budget- but artificiality using noisy music as a predictable resource to cover the visual weakness of the story.

The same element appears here: this is not but a free version of Samuel Taylor Coleridge' s THE RHYME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER in which a curse is unbound when the main character kills an albatross while sailing.

As the best valuable asset, the photography and the format are immaculate and they consolidate the atmosphere that is wanted to be created, but the plot does not happen to be coherent and Willem Dafoe's character is quite forced as well as false, because he tends to be a poet of destruction, something far from believable for such kind of workers. This is another gross failure in the story, because his exaggerated behaviour gradually destroys a better way tp face Pattinson's role. I need to accept that the latter's performance is quite measured and balances the bombastic acting of Dafoe.

I believe that the weakness of the character development and the directors instructions lessened the well-known acting efficiency of the actor.

Ulises is a man living in a slum and Elvira is settled in a better off neighbor. It would be unlikely for them to meet, but the miracle happens and they share their losses and try to reconstruct their lives as individuals and together.

One of the best recent attempts to reflect Mexican everyday life that deserves a better fate than the one it has had. The film is SUPERB and the b/w photography is marvelous, adding to the ambiance that the director proposes and successfully achieves. Add to this the experience of the veteran thespians Arcelia Ramirez and Gustavo Sánchez Parra -who did not charge for their performances- and you have a magical piece of cinematographic reality.

It is a stereotype and a common place in Mexican cinema that proletarian life must be portrayed in a somber and sinister manner, but that does not happen here. Indeed, there is some elegiac poetry in what we see, that is the raw existence for most of us Mexicans.

The film moves the audience in just 75 minutes and shows us one of the less fortunate boroughs of the city as well as the landfill called Bordo del Xochiaca, which becomes another character in the end of the film.

Not to be missed, indeed. Another face far away from the "folklorical" approach given to Mexico overseas.

Seeming to be a static story, a lot of inner tension and mysticism are to be seen in this film. The opening scene is the summary of the whole work, showing a rock and a river whose water begins to be invaded by a strange color.

Rituals happen to be amazing, like the torches being lit up without physical contact, showing us that there is something else in the world that we call "strange and inexplicable". Three brothers have gone their own way and the sister has remained with the father as keeper of the sacred waters, and by now she begins to feel love, something disturbing that may change her future.

The parable of the fish and the changing seasons add up to this marvelous story, which has a lot in common with Andrei Tarkovski's visual and narrative style, in which daily events become extraordinary experiences. A masterpiece.

I was lucky enough to watch this film on TV and the digitally mastered and renewed version on DVD produced by the UNAM (Mexico's Autonomous National University) finishes when Tiburcio is left after he shot Becerrillo because he suffered from measles. Villa fears Tiburcio because he believes he has measles, too, and tells him to wait there, but Tiburcio walks along the railroad.

Then, in the TV version I watched, after this Tiburcio returns home and goes back to his peasant life, but Villa finds him and tells him to join the army again. Tiburcio declines because he says he needs to take care of his family and that is the only thing worth in his life. Villa says nothing and enters another room where Tiburcio's wife and children are and he shoots them, believing that now Tiburcio will rejoin his ranks, but the peasant gets a gun and tries to kill Villa, but his escorts prevent that by shooting Tiburcio. After that, Villa says it is too bad that such a good warrior did not want to continue struggling and leaves that house.

The idea of someone going from a body to another is generally linked to diabolical possession, such as in "Fallen"(Dir.: Gregory Hoblit, 1998), but how the topic is handled in "Every Day" makes it a lot different, although I need to remark that this is far from new, since it was used previously in "Cet oscur objet du désir"(Dir.: Luis Buñuel, 1977), "Palindromes" (Dir.: Todd Solondz, 2004), amd "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" (Dir.: Terry Gilliam), "I'm Not There"(Dir.: Todd Haynes) as well as "Ne te retourne pas" (Dir.: Marina de Van, these 3 shot in 2009.

The contrast is in "Sunshine" (Dir.: István Szabó, 1999), in which Ralph Fiennes performs 3 characters of a Hungarian family during 3 different historical moments.

Besides, there is a thematical resemblance in the approach to "Before I Fall" (Dir.: Ry Russo-Young, 2016). David Levithan and Laren Oliver are spreading utopical ideas and ideals here.

But I guess that the real message here is about avoiding discrimination, A considers themselves as a man and/or a woman, Add to this some details in the cast and team: Ian Alexander is a transgender person and the director Michael Sucsy and Maria Bello are homosexuals. In a scene Rhiannon is kissed by A when inside another young woman and no one is surprised, beginning with Rhiannon herself.

In Part 1 it is mentioned that Ferdinand serves in France, but by then, that war theater was in crisis and the last thing the military would allow is that a soldier would leave his post. The same happens when Lena and her fiancé dance in the mansion: the first waltz to be heard is one of Tchaikowsky, a Russian composer, and that kind of cultural uttering was forbidden and quite punished.

Ozon is one of the most interesting French directors nowadays but also one having a bumpy career. Either he makes a brilliant film or something definitely mediocre.

This film happens to belong to the last category as well as his 2 previous ones, since here he repeats the style and plot of David Cronenberg's DEAD RINGERS.

I notice that he remains in a creative impasse. Here in Mexico the picture has been promoted by word-of-mouth regarding the sex scenes, but for me they are conventional and far from daring.

Push harder, Mr Ozon, because you need to offer better ideas as you previously did.

The Coen Brothers' trademark is SATIRE in most of their films, either written for other directors -CRIMEWAVE or THE NAKED MAN - or for their own -A SERIOUS MAN-. This picture continues with that trend, but I notice too much coincidences with their most awarded movie ever.

Here we get the opposite of WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET in the mild personality of the character of Matt Damon. A good performance on his side as well as those of Oscar Isaac in his brief appearance and the SUPREME one of the villains and murderers.

As an ironic element, what really is going on is discovered by the less skilled of the characters, and racism is the other subplot of the story, avoiding a sentimental and pamphletary approach.

As for the Belgian film MAN BITES DOG, too many people are considering this narration as something serious when it happens to be a crank. Loosen yourselves, my friends!

The Coen Brothers have always opted for parody and they have a penchant for subtle criticism. That is why they have achieved their well-earned success. I love their style from their very beginning with BLOOD SIMPLE, although there are other films following the same idea expressed in SUBURBICON. Life SEEMS to be paradise there, but there are a lot of -literally- skeletons in the closet, under the bed, and in the trunk of a car.

George Clooney also wants to go over the top in a clever way and that is why he chooses controversial screenplays.

When it comes to mention some themes, people become oversensitive. But I adore the way they present what they want to express. This is a black comedy and gallows humor. I also remember that SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD was a box-office bomb because it showed that life is far away from the syrupy it is conceived.

In my case, I have enjoyed the film thoroughly. Even if it shows tragedy, it is made in a very subtle and hilarious way, something that may offend a lot of people because of the way they were brought up. But I would advise to disconnect the brain and heart and prepare to have a great time seeing this picture, with the bonus of featuring marvelous filmmakers and actors. The plot starts with an ideal life and as the plot goes on, everything happens to be what it does not seem to.