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(500) Days of Summer (2009)
The way the story is told is outstandingly original. A must-watch.
(500) Days of Summer is one of those movies that stands out in the genre of romantic comedies. It is unabashedly honest from the start and doesn't fall into the often creativity-deprived complacency found in the like.
The story is a simple one of boy meets girl, etc., but the execution is anything but simple. The way it takes from other sources and combines different ways to tell a story is interesting and competently done. From scenes that look like shorts from other eras to Disney musicals where people suddenly start dancing with the protagonist, and so on.
The movie is entertaining from beginning to end, the performances are great, and the way the story is told is outstandingly original. A must-watch.
La mesita del comedor (2022)
Wastes a chance to be truly disturbing
This psychological horror movie follows the events of a day in the life of Jesús and María after they buy a coffee table that will lead to unforeseen consequences.
The premise is interesting, and the performances are good, especially David Pareja who channels what is happening to his character in a convincing way through his body language. With a runtime of 90 minutes, the movie has the adequate duration without being overlong. Its aesthetics, however, don't add anything to the story nor to the feeling of uneasiness that could've been enhanced without relying on so many takes of the lead character or the anxiety shared by the audience.
La mesita del comedor, while entertaining, ultimately doesn't go for it when it comes to gruesomeness and wastes a chance to be truly disturbing. The same story in the hands of a French director or someone like Eli Roth or Tom Six, with their unabashed use of graphic imagery, could've been the definition of what disturbing really is.
Stopmotion (2023)
The puppets are disturbing
The film has that aura of uneasiness from the beginning. The stop-motion sequences are incredible. The puppets are disturbing, and that's an achievement in its own right. Everything is there save the writing, since it suffers from unambitious character development. Besides a strained relationship with her mother, there are only glimpses of who the protagonist is. This results in a main character not so interesting when she's not working and doing stop motion. The scenes where she's partying, dining with her boyfriend, etc. Are ultimately boring and add nothing of importance to the story. This is a tragedy considering the time spent in those scenes could've been used to explore ideas that were, sadly, barely examined but memorable.
The concept is interesting, the performances are good, the craft is great, and the gore is effective, but it ultimately fails due to its bad foundation.
Romeo & Juliet (2021)
Exudes Romance & Beauty
The National Theatre's Romeo & Juliet is a film version of the play shot in a closed theater in lockdown that manages to bring freshness to the classic Shakespeare's love story.
Set in modern-day Italy, the movie draws you in from the start with the settings' minimalism efficiently adding a sense of charm surrounding the cast. There's a scene where the loved ones are surrounded by candlelight in bokeh that exudes romance and beauty. The cast is great. Josh O'Connor and Jessie Buckley bring forward the complete palette of emotions their characters experience. Their chemistry is strong, making it difficult not to be immersed in the story, even if it's already known.
The same story has been told numerous times, but not in this way, and that is why it's worth watching.
The Garfield Movie (2024)
An entertaining, emotive, and fun new adventure of the lasagna-fan cat
What's interesting at first sight in this new Garfield movie is that we get to know more about his background as a cute little kitten and how he met Jon. The movie follows the orange tabby cat on an adventure to pull off a milk heist after an unexpected reunion with Vic, his estranged father.
It delivers humor from beginning to end with its slapstick, looney-tunes-like comedy, and Garfield's wittiness. There are moments where it breaks the fourth wall and moments where it makes fun of our everyday modern habits (food delivery, Netflix, etc.). As it progresses, it explores more profound domains since it uncovers more information about the past between Garfield and his father. Chris Pratt and Samuel L. Jackson do a good job conveying all this through their voices that capture how far someone can go for a loved one.
The Garfield Movie is an entertaining, emotive, and fun new adventure of the lasagna-fan cat that will allow new demographics to enjoy this loved cat. Guaranteed entertainment for the whole family.
Cash Out (2024)
There were times when the movie scored high on unintentional comedy
A team of criminals led by Mason (John Travolta) attempts their biggest heist.
Cash Out relies heavily on genre tropes to deliver a story devoid of surprises as well as good writing. The action is forgettable. There's a lack of character development. John Travolta's charismatic and laid-back attitude, while entertaining, doesn't come across as a realistic depiction of a professional robber. There were times when the movie scored high on unintentional comedy.
Behind those continuous hyperactive shots that look like the work of a kid who got a drone for Christmas, unnecessarily shaky POV takes, cheap VFX, cheesy dialogue, and Travolta's spectre of expressions being narrower than these criminals' knowledge of how to rob a bank, there might be something positive. For instance.
Le Vourdalak (2023)
A fantasy tale that successfully blends horror and comedy
Based on Tolstoy's La Famille du Vourdalak, where a vampire from Slavic folklore returns to feed off his own family, Adrien Beau's feature film debut Le Vourdalak follows the Marquis d'Urfé, an emissary of the King of France, finding haven in the house of a peculiar family where he expects to receive a horse to continue his journey.
Visually, it evokes the feeling of being in a fairytale due to its aesthetics resembling those of the past. There's charm and a sense of magic in them. The house and the woods add a haunting yet beautiful aura to the story that enhances its fantasy qualities. Due to the choices it makes when it comes to VFX, opting for practical effects with props instead of CGI, it achieves a slapstick humor that can also be scary at times (puppets, for instance).
It's not everyday that a film succeeds in combining genres so different as horror and comedy, but Le Vourdalak does it from beginning to end, making it worth watching.
The Greatest Hits (2024)
It struggles to find its own voice and explore its concept
Music can be used to forget and to remember. The emotions it can give shape our reality. Our lives are experienced by what time has committed to memory, creating our personal brand of a time machine. This time travel became a reality to Harriet, who, after the loss of her boyfriend, every time she hears a song, it takes her back to the first time she and Max heard it.
The idea is an interesting one. The cast and performances are good, and while it is entertaining and has good music, The Greatest Hits struggles to find its own voice and explore its concept. Despite a good start, it runs out of ideas and collides into a creativity-deprived abyss. The unnecessary crowd-pleasing and unambitious writing undermines any search for interesting developments by avoiding the vulnerability that comes with originality.
The Watchers (2024)
Suspense-and-horror-free zone
Ishana Shyamalan's first movie is a supernatural tale that follows a group of people trapped in a shelter in the middle of a forest, trying to survive strange creatures. In true Shyamalan fashion, The Watchers is reminiscent of her father's usual difficulties.
Its beginning is slow and boring, achieving something difficult in making the woods neither interesting nor scary. After risking losing the audience in what felt a lost battle against sleep, it redeems itself a little, but in no way erases the spectacle bordering parody that came before. Hidden somewhere beneath this suspense-and-horror-free zone, there's a seed of a good movie in The Watchers that the filmmaker never found.
The only mystery here is how Dakota Fanning agreed to be in this movie. She deserves so much more.
Smile (2022)
The most disturbing smiles ever seen
The concept is interesting on the surface, and the movie competently delivers a good build-up. There are similarities to other modern horror classics, such as The Ring (2002). These have to be the most disturbing smiles ever seen. The uneasiness and eeriness they exude is an achievement in its own right.
What began as an interesting concept quickly becomes a generic exercise in clichés with unnecessary jump scares that leave no room for inventiveness. The course you think the story will follow is exactly the one it'll take, and no matter how sympathetic the characters might be, there's a lack of depth when it comes to them since they're never developed beyond archetypes.
Smile is equally entertaining and scary, but it is predictable in every way, offering nothing new to the genre.
In a Violent Nature (2024)
Instead of running for our lives, we are hunting
Its attractiveness lies in the form where a challenge to genre conventions is found in the inversion of the point of view. What the movie has to offer as new is contrasted by the clichés in trivial dialogues and storywise in its similarities to Friday the 13th.
It's unclear if this challenge is in the movie's best interest. Its innovation is a liability in terms of scares since the surprise factor is missing. Instead of running for our lives, we're hunting. What it lacks in scares it compensates in repulsion, as it spares no violence in its graphic nature. When the movie breaks its own rules, horror is more present than ever, with the woods being as oppressive as the killer and uneasiness looming over as a direct result of uncertainty.
Chris Nash's In a Violent Nature has its merits for bringing something new, making it a standout in the slasher genre.
Palm Springs (2020)
Dinosaurs and Goats with C-4
Palm Springs suffers from symbiotic lacks, tries to be funny and sci-fi and succeeds in neither. It aims for a deeper meaning but fails completely, feeling like something coming from someone who just finished a Philosophy 101 course. The concept is interesting, but the movie falls back on the genre's clichés where the goofy humor borders on bad taste and the romance seems rushed. As a result, the emotions it wants to convey aren't competently transmitted. The quota of predictability that comes with rom-coms is fulfilled, undermining the sci-fi intrigue completely and making the story not interesting at all.
The best moment has to be Andy Samberg dancing at the party right in the very first minutes. It's always nice to see non-choreographed dancing scenes by regular people. There's charm in them, and this scene captures it.
Sometimes I Think About Dying (2023)
Its subtlety speaks volumes without extra words
The movie draws careful lines between imagination and reality, achieving harmonious contrast and enhancing the medium's possibilities. A character study that portraits life in a real and relatable fashion in its somber yet humorous exploration of the human condition, where the mundane is often contrasted with Dabney Morris' score that captures the essence of the settings and the characters and adds an ethereal aura to the story. A story that follows Fran, a socially awkward office worker who thinks about dying, meeting and having dates with her new colleague at work.
Daisy Ridley's subtle performance gives Fran the required embodiment of loneliness and the ordinary. Her muted affection combines introversion and anxiety, making her character an uncommon protagonist.
Sometimes I Think About Dying is a chamber piece whose minimalism speaks volumes without extra words.
La chimera (2023)
Il dono di trovare le cose nascoste: The ethereal beauty of La chimera
The enchanting allure of La chimera smoothly treads between myth and romance, where fantasy is no longer unimaginable but a transformative possibility found where the lines between dream and memory are often blurred by formal unpredictability.
Its inheritance of Italian Neorealism and Felliniesque carries within a history of emotion and style. The aesthetics aren't just a choice. They're a statement of timeless beauty. A beauty magnified by the story of Arthur, a looter involved in the black market of historical artifacts with a gift to sense where they are, that channels the grace of an irretrievable past. Josh O'Connor's contrast with the rest of the cast not only enhances the film's fascination with the dreamy yet earthy sublime but also adds elements of mystery and melancholy through the protagonist's barely hinted past.
Alice Rohrwacher's La chimera eventually develops a recognizable shape, but it doesn't sacrifice its artistry, and that's the beauty of it.
A Family Affair (2024)
Joey King makes this average romcom watchable
Zara (Joey King) has to deal with the consequences of the unexpected romance between her boss, a famous actor (Zac Efron), and her mother (Nicole Kidman)
There aren't many surprises in this romantic comedy. The plot evolves in a predictable and expected way. The acting and humor are nothing extraordinary, just okay. The chemistry, or lack thereof, between Kidman and Efron is only found on the surface, whose form underwent more changes than the script of the movie Efron's character is in. The humor is mostly achieved by Joey King, the main reason why this movie is watchable, and her scenes with Zac Efron, where some of the dialogues are funny due to their on-screen chemistry.
A Family Affair is the average romcom that might be entertaining and sometimes funny, but nothing more than that.
Trigger Warning (2024)
WARNING: the following movie is not good
If John Wick is the epitome of action revenge, then Trigger Warning is at the opposite end. The movie makes mediocrity its language of preference in a story full of cliches, stereotyped characters, and everything but quality.
Parker is a special forces officer who goes back to her hometown to find out more about her father's death and finds herself at odds with a local gang. This derivative exercise in unrealisticness has some of the worst choreographies ever seen. The villains are often quietly standing, waiting to be beaten. It'd be funny if it wasn't for the film's lack of any achievement. The writing, VFX, and cast are terrible. Jessica Alba's bad acting makes her performance another possible contender for a Razzie.
Trigger Warning is a disaster so ineffective that instead of adrenaline, it produces somnolence and a burgeoning desire for it to end.
Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant (2023)
Ethical Vampire
Ariane Louis-Seize's first feature film is interested in death as well as life, two of the all-time biggest philosophical questions. The way it explores them is in a contemporary fashion that takes from modern classics such as Twilight (2008), where "vegetarian vampires" like the Cullens "only drink animal blood" and so on, and Låt den rätte komma (2008), where Oskar finds in Eli not only protectiveness but also the possibility of revenge towards his bullies, and adds touches of dark comedy.
Sara Montpetit and Félix-Antoine Bénard are great. They add the deadpan and socially awkward hilarity in this movie that follows Sasha, a sixty-eight years young vampire girl who finds in a boy with suicidal tendencies a possible answer to her refusal to kill and satiate her thirst for blood.
Its genre-bending, good acting, and effective comedy make Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant a worth watch.
Am I OK? (2022)
It's Nice To Have A Friend
Not only there's beauty in the honesty in which the film explores themes of self discovery in the life of Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a 32-year-old woman who comes to a realization of an inner part of herself that was dormant, but also in the depiction of friendship. Dakota Johnson and Sonoya Mizuno have the on-screen chemistry to successfully show the ups and downs of two best friends.
Dakota Johnson's wittiness is hilarious. Since those interviews with Jimmy Fallon some years ago, we know humor is something that comes effortlessly to her, and in this movie she proves once again she's really funny. The dynamics of the characters and how they tread unknown territory in their lives give the story an interesting take on social matters that isn't shown on-screen every day. This decision defies the complacency often found in comedies, making "Am I OK?" worth watching.
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)
The Seductive Beauty of Gothic Horror
The alluring yet frightening nature of Amirpour's first feature is seen in every frame and heard in every sound. The aesthetic stylish visuals have a strong presence, like the main character; their sleek black and white and the constant dance of shadows and lights not only add visual interest but are also beautiful in their composition of predatory nature and melancholy. Reflections of bygone eras in their search of the sublime.
An homage to gothic horror that is not mainly interested in reproducing its tropes as much as it is in emulating them and creating something new and fresh; a fantasy western gothic horror story in a fictional city where the residents are stalked by a mysterious vampire girl whose loneliness leads her to connect with a man. This is not just a movie about vampires, it's an ode to cinematic beauty.
I Saw the TV Glow (2024)
Life as a masquerade
Emancipation from inherited beliefs can be found in the consumption of entertainment. Life as a masquerade through media. Like in their previous film, We're All Going to the World's Fair, this relationship and how it shapes identity is something Schoenbrun is interested in examining again. The Pink Opaque provides the key to this freedom for Owen and Maddy, two estranged teens who find solace and meaning in a TV show they bond over.
The story and message of a work of art might already be told and seen, but the way it's conveyed might not, and something unique is born out of that. Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow is an authentic and profound exploration of gender identity that successfully depicts the predicament someone can have living as an impostor. A coming of age that captures true horror in the unsettling desolation found in the realization that life could have been so much better.
Monos (2019)
Could've been better
It seems the movie has a political message, but it suffers from a lack of background, and therefore said message is not efficiently delivered. There's no prologue whatsoever. We're thrown into the group of these kids with guns and military training living in the middle of the jungle in Colombia. There is enough to keep the audience invested because things start to happen very quickly with the cow they received, and so on.
The setting is good, although nothing extraordinary, the same can be said about the acting. What the movie is interested in is showing how much war can affect people, not just kids, and all the ramifications that come with it, but I think there are better movies that say this more effectively.
Vermines (2023)
Infested with boredom
A guy buys a spider to add to his collection of insects only to find it's poisonous, and its deadly bite and fast-reproducing ability soon endanger the residents of the building he lives in.
The premise, while simple, is scary enough, especially if you find in spiders a fear-inducing animal that gives you chills, let alone if you have arachnophobia. There are some scary moments here and there, the jump scare type, though. However, the movie suffers from its simplicity because it runs out of ideas very soon. It quickly becomes generic and inevitably goes nowhere. 106 minutes of people running from one place to another in the same building trying to survive deadly spiders feel overlong and therefore boring, to say the least. There's also a problem with the characters; there's no profundity or development whatsoever, and therefore it's difficult to empathize with people you don't know or care about.
Love Lies Bleeding (2024)
Don't ever fall in love, ok?
Its mixture of love story, noir, and Cronenberg-esque body horror makes Glass' second feature an interesting take on love at best. A love on steroids that finds expression in a layered exploration of addiction, violence, trauma, and toxic relationships.
The film's grime aesthetics mirror Lou and Jackie relationship where a blooming desire still carries the weight of unhealed wounds that need to be cleaned to avoid further infection.
Kristen Stewart and Katy O'Brian performances are the movie's greatest asset. The chemistry is seen in every frame. However, the story defies plausibility in the second act where it leaves every logic and sense behind. Love Lies Bleeding is a collage where the more you look at it, the less sense it makes, yet its bizarre nature still manages to captivate you.
The Stranger (2022)
Compelling psychological drama
Based on the real case of Daniel Morcombe's kidnapping, Thomas M. Wright's The Stranger follows Mark Frame (Joel Edgerton), an undercover policeman, in an operation to try to capture the suspect of a kidnapping.
The movie achieves uneasiness from the start. That special feeling that something is wrong without knowing exactly where it's coming from. Sean Harris is excellent as the suspect, Henry Teague. Through his character, he embodies the physicality of aloofness and darkness at the same time.
While the story might be nothing out of the ordinary at first sight, the way it's told is, and this is its greatest asset. The surreal and nightmarish world of The Stranger will compel you to keep watching.
Gojira -1.0 (2023)
Entertaining but breaks no new ground
The reason I was drawn to see this movie was because of the Oscar winning some months ago. I've watched the American ones, including the last one with King Kong in it.
Godzilla minus one is set right after WW2. The action doesn't take too much time to show up since right from the very first minutes we see the giant monster encounter the protagonist, Koichi Shikishima, who later makes it his own personal mission to protect Japan from it.
The movie has very good special effects, and Godzilla has a big and strong presence on screen every time it appears. The story is more profound and realistic than the American versions. There is an underlying drama in the main character's story, as guilt, born out of disobedience, leads him as a main motivator. There are a lot of drama interspersed with action scenes.
Godzilla minus one is entertaining, although it doesn't have anything new to say.