ACCION: Reviews (78)
Oz, the Great and Powerful, the best 3D since Avatar. Good family entertainment.
Much better than Tim Burton´s Alice in Wonderland, more fun, with James Franco gives a good atmosphere around the picaresque story with a tone in one of his best works, Oz the Great and Powerful account with one of the best starts in history we've seen this year, visually imaginative, interesting narrative, worked very well as bait to trap us in a plot that takes the best advantage of the three-dimensional images and honors both the novels and the movie The Wizard of Oz fantastic proposal updating them for today's audience.
One of the strengths of the script is to maintain that the protagonist sarcastically, ultimately faced a tangle of three sisters, the witches of history, whose family dispute over the power fails completely involve you in this crusade. Is that what makes this character buy Wizard of Oz in key reluctant hero and anti-hero at times even recalcitrant. The skin of this character is the same as the Rhett Butler of Gone with the Wind and Star Wars Han Solo, which is quite a find to keep us hooked on a story with his sumptuous and brilliant visual display. The real magic is in your images. In Oz, a fantasy world also live three films, and two of them will win the game in a positive turn negative. The visual display and sarcastic approach the central character, the sense of humor of his fellow adventurers (monkey with wings and porcelain doll), you win the game in a positive to the weakest part of the proposal, which is this power struggle very topical and predictable, with characters somewhat stereotypical of the three sisters, who are the least interesting part of the film.
That's why the entire first half, approximately one hour and twenty film, I think the best we've seen this year in a key theater fantastic story, but as it approaches the end, after the visit of the Witch deformed and broom kingdom of Glinda the Good and path of confrontation between the two main factions, the issue becomes much more predictable. However, even at that stage more predictable and repetitive final battle, army against army, this movie wins by a landslide to the proposal that Tim Burton did with Alice in Wonderland.
But even that last part contains some elements more predictable and curious moments and also in the same the most stereotypical of the three witches are well defended by the actresses responsible for giving life to these characters less flexible than the Wizard of Oz and its auxiliary (monkey, doll). So I really do not lose all interest in the film, they get to stay within it. And that's an achievement considering that this is a footage that exceeds two hours ten minutes in no time decay of the story really pace thanks to the accumulation of new characters almost continuously.
Add to what I liked about the film to the flying monkeys, fearsome creatures that get a touch of terror to impose interesting in this whole story that convinces me 80 percent of your footage and only at the end, in his third act, decays, without totally losing my attention, in order to bring closure in my opinion should have been something less conformist and predictable, less attached to the closure of more conventional formula of history. To have a third act as visually imaginative and provocative narrative as his starter could have been easily to a five-star film, given that, as I said, from the technical point of view, visual imagination and in the use of 3D I think this movie is one of the best proposals.
I'll say it clearer: even with his relative weakness in the outcome, which confirms what I said when Sam Raimi directed Spiderman: after Darkman has a worrying tendency to not be as punk as it was in the Evil Dead saga, and tends to get carried away by the romantic outburst-wimp, Oz, convinced me and I had a good time watching it.
Miguel Juan Payán
COMENTA CON TU CUENTA DE FACEBOOK
Tweets por @AccionCine
Hitchcock. Drama with a touch of comedy on the set of Psycho. Hopkins and Mirren outstanding. Interesting biopic.
Honor the master of suspense while humanize him. That might seem to be the main objective of Hitchcock, but below it inhabits much more subtle: a lesson on film, specifically films of Alfred Hitchcock. The film recovers numerous details understand how storytelling for film master. Even dares even to weave a portrait of the protagonist initially twilight was a key moment in his career when his classic cinema began to stagnate in the same keys and he wanted out of that kind of jam on the same formulas to retrieve the freedom to experiment with the language of film that did not allow the Hollywood studios for working. That was how he came to Psycho, and so as would plant face young talents of the new terror that emerged in the late sixties and early seventies, the George A. Romero Night of the Living Dead, Roman Polanski in Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby, Wes Craven Last House on the Left,... by showing that it could be as scary as they simply playing with the concept or not disclose crimes Frenzy. Always working astutely the importance of managing information that is provided to the viewer.
Addressing this stage of twilight apparent that as mandated Alfred Hitchcock film history turns on its outcome to become inevitable reunion fable of success with the release of Psycho (no spoiler it no surprise, since everyone mildly interested the film is fully aware of the tremendous echo that was the premiere of the film), the director Hitchcock also offers us clues about how he conceived and developed their projects. We find in this comedy drama with a touch of an attempt to bring the biopic to use a little beyond. So your questions are addressed as the creator, so well expressed in this compulsive need to attack the fridge while feeling concerned about their weight. His need to be in some way part of the story, which appeared in Hitchcock visually expressed their cameos in movies and director Hitchcock cleverly solves playing in reverse, that is, making it the serial murderer Ed Gein, inspiration for Norman Bates in Psycho, who makes a cameo dream clearly cutting and the application of psychoanalysis to reflect both cost Alfred Hitchcock in Spellbound, despite having decorations created by the painter Salvador Dalí. And in that way of direct involvement in the stories he told, to somehow become part of the same, it also offers us the detonator of these compulsions shameful that moved the Alfred Hitchcock film, these guilt complexes and those scapegoats , that feeling that paranoia and persecution of its protagonists, showing how much the fear of alleged infidelity of his wife, Alma Reville, his compulsive obsession associated with almost adolescent female stars he worked with (another way of being part their stories), elegantly expressed voyeur watching these scenes photos and peering at hole in the wardrobe of the stars, were also part of his understanding of cinema: as a show of evasion that somehow kept him in youth. The case is interesting because just look slightly to the stories of Alfred Hitchcock's the wrong man and relate stories of Fritz Lang guilt to conclude that the former addresses this issue from a teen point of view and evasion, while for the second guilt and redemption are themes worthy of an approach from maturity.
In an exercise in consistency with the subtle and elegant discourse not only about the making of Psycho, but above all the movies of Alfred Hitchcock, the film offers us the same casual tone, evasion, almost adolescent in its superficiality, to address this story jealousy, love, misunderstanding and that star reunion of two of the brilliantly most gifted actors of our time. Even if you do not like the movie of Alfred Hitchcock and have never seen Psycho, deserves also worth going to see the movie just to see that pulse dramatic and interpretive maintaining and Helen Mirren Anthony Hopkins, in which, by its weight in the history and development of his character, I think I finally narrowly wins her points, but where he develops an exercise in interpretation and weighting considerably more complex, rather than supported, by a makeup trying, unsuccessfully, give an impossible hithcockian air to your appearance.
I've heard quite pilgrim reviews claiming that the film fails because make-up fails to create an image of Alfred Hitchcock physically perfect. These comments are an example of the limitations of mind and lightness of opinion that is generating an abuse of computer generated visual effects. More and more often I hear comments about the visual effects in movies about where you should be commenting on the construction of the story, the actors' work, planning and camera choreography, really really interesting cinematic language in effects which take the place of a secondary tool for counting. Such obsession because Hopkins is Hitchcock nailed it unnerving because I think an example of any opinion or diverted to the superficial and unimportant.
So no, notice and that makeup that looks Hopkins in this movie does not turn into a perfect clon of Alfred Hitchcock. No need, because the creation of Hitchcock is in the great work of the actor, which captures the spirit of the character to the point of being able to do both comedy and drama under the skin that gives alien makeup, whose function is simply provide a slightly rough appearance to the famous director but at no time intended to turn him into a perfect physical copy of it. The Hopkins Hitchcock lives in his work as an actor, not your makeup, lives on his way to emulate the original speech, in the way he moved, but especially in his understanding of life.
So they are not superficial when judging a great job of Hopkins as an actor and not fall into the trap of famous trees do not lose the forest.
Hopkins and Mirren do a great job backed by an excellent cast among the most side of the frame, and the pace of the story deserves shop around and look out the film this amazing display of biopic that tells you much more than the filming of Psycho.
Miguel Juan Payán
Follow @MiguelJuanPayan
COMENTA CON TU CUENTA DE FACEBOOK
Tweets por @AccionCine
The last stand. Arnold Schwarzengger returns to action with a powerful key proposal in modern western The first thing that came to mind when I started watching The last stand was the western movies that starred John Wayne in the last stage of his career, titles like The Undefeated, Chisum, Cahill U.S. Marshall or The Train Robbers, in which the veteran action movie star exploited his image as an icon of the genre in arguably very simple story, but with a clear jurisdiction to entertain. The ultimate challenge of copy that formula films of last season with John Wayne Rio Bravo scheme but the spirit of this remake, El Dorado.
Schwarzenegger holds here, relatively speaking, the location of epicenter of the plot to occupy those Wayne, holding his character by his mere presence, giving the veteran has career behind him, able to ensure that some of her scenes work simply because he is who he is, and probably would not work in the hands of another actor.
It is also part of this formula we saw in the last movie star John Wayne surround the iconic that a competent cast of actors that support the secondary characters and even tucking involving the actor. In this function we find another veteran like Forrest Whitaker, who brings his talents to the simple scheme giving stronger argument from the standpoint of interpretative work with ethnic villain whom the Spanish Eduardo Noriega gets carried beyond the topical nature which it was initially conceived. Some might watching this film from the surface, with prejudice because it is the return of Schwarzgenegger to starring roles in films rush into conclusions and not valued as it should the remarkable work of construction of secondary characters. Along with the above so far are in supporting roles to Jamie Alexander, actress whose career should go on the rise and we expect to have greater role in the second installment of Thor, Peter Stormare in a typical villain who lends nuances that only possible agents of their experience, Luis Guzman, Rodrido Santoro, Johnny Knoxville, Zach Gilford and Genesis Rodriguez live with a very special personality their contributions to the story, to make it something more than just Schwarzenegger reunited with his audience unconditional pulling the trigger on a return to its point of nostalgia for the movies of the eighties, although at times it may seem that we are seeing a Commando sequel in which the protagonist has got recycled as sheriff of a small American town.
The other element to consider is the personality of the director in this return of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Kim Jee-Won is an excellent choice to acquire the ultimate challenge in its own right as action film beyond its nature as a project designed for the showcasing of its protagonist. The first news we had of this Korean director in the Spanish billboard was his curious approach to the genre of a key ghosts haunting intrigue in Two sisters, but then gave us one of the most fun and carefree original samples recycling and tribute spaghetti western in The Good, the Bad and the Weird and another trip to the sinister and disturbing with I saw the devil. These three films are a guarantee that the director knows how to deal with arguments widely used formulas and imaginatively. Without detracting from the dress codes as to exploit the image of Arnold Schwarzenegger manages to incorporate elements of the film away what could have been a monologue more predictable and less dynamic.
On a more anecdotal are the criticisms against the film can reach the exhibition and even quasi promotional possession and use of firearms, including some of his scenes, and more specifically an joke with well-armed granny, the Mrs. Salazar "doing justice." These sequences have to be put in the context of the true nature of the film, which is essentially a western chronologically misplaced, contemporary. Is action film with all the consequences, among which that kind of worship by force as part of the genre since the early days of silent movies. But that may not be enough to keep the movie arouse any negative comments from the ranks of political correctness that is prey to some kind of controversy at a time when regulating guns is hot topic in American society.
Miguel Juan Payán
Follow @MiguelJuanPayan
COMENTA CON TU CUENTA DE FACEBOOK
Tweets por @AccionCine
Django Unchained, three hours of the best of Quentin Tarantino mixing the blaxploitation and mediterranean western.
More than Django Unchained, we must talk about Tarantino Unchained. Clearly superior in its results to Inglourious Basterds, the revision of Django, mythical character in the history of european western, allows the director of Reservoir Dogs look full panoply of narrative devices, playing better than ever with this formula film recycling so well that he has paid for his entire career.
In Django Unchained that game with what already exists in the form of pre-wink, never blatant plagiarism, but as always the gall and hooliganism is part of the Tarantino formula, start with original music composed by Luis Bacalov for the original movie directed by Sergio Corbucci in 1966. From there, Tarantino builds various elements and features of the original stories of the mediterranean western, in situations such as characters, dialogue, landscapes and even artistic expression (close-ups or zoom in those key moments, the presentation of the villain incarnate by Di Caprio ...). Even shows that understands the mediterranean western as its essential key european western variant of the classic American story incorporating their mix of characters and landscapes of the Far and Wild West with european classical mythology. If the mediterranean western incorporating universal characters and storylines from Greek and Roman mythology, Tarantino does the same but adding the story a Norse legend, that of Brunhilda, daughter of Odin, monitoring rescued from a dragon by the hero. The scene of justification of revenge in flashback or the beating and mistreatment at the hands of the hero of the villains as a prelude to his return redemption by way of revenge, a kind of resurrection ceremony linked to the universal argument returning messiah impose the death for justice, are also two classic elements of mediterranean western Tarantino skillfully incorporates his Django Unchained.
Naturally the director is not only the job of emulation or replica of the key mediterranean western, but that becomes essential raw material for its own tale, adding their own notes and style to the story (such as long sequences of dialogue, the verbiage of his characters, especially the character of recycled dentist bounty hunter played by Waltz, and the counterpoint of those dialogue sequences with bursts of brutal violence copiously irrigated with blood).
In Django Unchained Tarantino is a better balance in the hybridization of the mediterranean western characteristics taken as constant inspiration and their own style as a director-author presenting Inglourious Basterds. In fact, more skillfully exploits and solvency in the direction of Christoph Waltz, who was the great strength of Inglourious Basterds but we can excel further enhancing this facet of rogue chatterbox who becomes the hero's guide or teacher. The relationship and chemistry between Waltz and Jamie Foxx (Django) is much more interesting than the episodic dialogue sequences with different characters that kept the Jewish Nazi hunter in Inglourious Basterds. Waltz also shines much more in his duel with the great villain interpretive composing Leonardo Di Caprio than he could shine in front of Brad Pitt. Another common feature of Tarantino films, the sly humor that appears unexpectedly in fragments less predictable and playing with political incorrectness as who gets into a minefield voluntarily is also in Django Unchained. We found for example in his satire on the Ku Klux Klan, a perfect comic timing. As it usually does, then Tarantino comedy built on a mundane item, the bags with the murderers of the lynch mob cover their heads, turning what in everyday and terrifying monsters in both morons. It is a wise way to introduce a dramatic element from humor and overcome fear through laughter. It is regrettable that so clever a maneuver has been misinterpreted like racism. Quite the contrary: Django Unchained not only not racist, but from his treatment of the matter from the point of view of genre and escapist cinema, draw a landscape of racism much more frightening, disturbing and less makeup than we sell , for instance, Steven Spielberg in his Lincoln. The reason is clear: Tarantino descends into hell of racism at the time as Spielberg did with genocide in Schindler's List, and although it does from a perspective of escapist cinema, the film contains moments so descriptive about slavery and the situation of blacks in America as slaves rope first, introducing flashbacks in the story of the protagonist's memories, chained black scenes with nooses on the neck, the lashes, the attack dogs, the sequence of the fighters (which organizes the director cleverly playing the most usual counter to such scenes, opting for a fight in a room, instead of riding a great display style street fighting sequences of the first film directed Sherlock Holmes by Guy Ritchie). And along with these elements, a character, played by Samuel L. Jackson, which perfectly reflects the idea of Uncle Tom, the black participant of racism, active figure of the attack against the people of his own race, that both the director and the actor playing the part responsible for getting the most disturbing summarize racism, even with some tasteless jokes (Negrules).
That tone prevailing decadent mansion in Candyland racist accompanies the second part of the film, which is a real trip to a nightmare world. Think that's trivializing racism is a serious mistake.
Miguel Juan Payán
Follow @MiguelJuanPayan
COMENTA CON TU CUENTA DE FACEBOOK
Tweets por @AccionCine
Jack Reacher, Tom Cruise is in top form in this intriguing quality with spectacular action sequences.
The Usual Suspects writer gets behind the camera to film a character who meets all topics of vigilante action film mixed with the creatures of the type thrillers bestseller, Jack Reacher. The result is an entertaining suspense film directed with great credit as a breakout product quality in respecting the essential keys to genre but adding an elegant finish them even in their most thrilling action scenes.
In other words: Jack Reacher is not a film of the bunch of intrigue that usually offers us every season American cinema, but has elements that put it in league breakout product quality. Well conceived. I remember that film police intrigue and conspiracies of the seventies you were going to do to get away but also respected you as a spectator and got hooked by its perfect finish. I'm thinking right now in movies like Bullit, Three Days of the Condor, The Parallax View, The Outfit, The Thomas Crown Affair ... In short, a kind of film which provided entertainment without evasion and vigilant with regard to quality. In other words, Jack Reacher film reminds me of intrigue before time when the genre was finally lost in the way of visual spectacle and preferred to forget creating interesting characters and situations. That film seventies precisely defined to contain few action scenes, but very worked and forceful. Thus unfolds its Jack Reacher action sequences, including a car chase sequence can dramatically remind us of Steve McQueen in Bullitt, but making the pursuer is pursued simultaneously, so that they engage in the sequence three moving parts, the more difficult. Furthermore sequences melee are perfectly, no quick cuts or impossible stunts in this succession of street fighting. Only strokes among participants, with a very special style of fighting developed in Spain that applies with particular forcefulness Cruise.
Another feature of this great intrigue and action films of the seventies, was the creation of consistent villains, capable of earning their role in history with very little time on screen presence. That is also true in Jack Reacher, where the German director Werner Herzog becomes a pleasant surprise as an actor after being a teacher for years behind the scenes in films like Aguirre the Wrath of God, Nosferatu and Fitzcarraldo. Herzog's work playing the big bad of this intriguing narrative is exemplary and his character has some points in common with that remains one of the great creations of film director, Ralph McQuarrie, as a writer, the mysterious and sinister Kaiser Soze in The Usual Suspects. Herzog That character also serves as an excellent example of the good results that can be obtained in a more conventional plot apparently when working on creating interesting characters from the beginning in the scriptwriting stage. The same applies to the protagonist himself, a character that seemed impossible to get the topic but this film gives a personality that goes beyond the clichés of the most common narrative in the field of the bestseller.
Possibly the most interesting feature of Jack Reacher is the work they do both the director and screenwriter, McQuarrie, as the protagonist and producer, Cruise, to take what they want most of the character of the original novels and turn it into something else. The film versions should always develop your own personality and visual narrative against the original sources of the stories that start. It is not a right but an obligation of the film even compared to literature or other sources of inspiration. In this plot, I think the work of Jack Reacher adaptation surpasses the original in that it is based without denying its essential elements. That's the key: it respects the spirit, but the main character has enriched themselves with references made by those responsible for the film version. Reacher has been built so far to Cruise, who with this work in my opinion confirms the recovery of his career as a star that began in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. But well is adorned with characteristics of western mythology: a nomad, and in the film version is much closer to the wandering gunman recreations of western. That makes it much more interesting cross between character and plot than in the novel could be more conventional.
And accompanying all these elements and a well constructed script, Jack Reacher opens with a sniper sequence where the director throws the rest with regard to creating visual suspense own intense intrigue of Alfred Hitchcock. It was feared that after starting the movie so powerful could not maintain the tone, but McQuarrie is smart enough to tell his story to the tone not only not falling, but you gain even progresses even greater interest in building their intrigue, alternating physical action and chase with other moments of intense intrigue and disturbing, as the interview of lawyer played by Rosamund Pike with the father of one of the victims, the attack suffered by the protagonist in the home of a suspect or adjustment account of the villain with one of his servants.
Miguel Juan Payán
COMENTA CON TU CUENTA DE FACEBOOK
Tweets por @AccionCine
Zero Dark Thirty, another great work of Kathryn Bigelow. Excellent movie to start the year.
The director of The Hurt Locker proves again that speaks perfect keys known film mixed with intrigue and action movies much better than some of their male colleagues allegedly experts. Zero Dark Thirty Bigelow takes over from the TV series Homeland impressive following its own rules of style and their own way of understanding cinema suspense. The result is the best proposal suspense film that will have the opportunity to see in 2013. Throughout the projection of the Zero Dark Thirty I could not stop thinking about that Bigelow was doing with the hunt for Bin Laden as well as at the time did Alan J. Pakula with Watergate in All the President's Men (1976): an autopsy of the matter lies in the area of the films he directed Oliver Stone in his prime as forensic American empire in films like Salvador, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK ... In fact, after seeing Zero Dark Thirty and while recalling The Hurt Locker think Bigelow Stone has stripped the post of coroner.
As was the case with The Hurt Locker, erred in interpreting some as a simple war movie, opine that this film has some vengeful character from the American empire, something that may not have happened in a film directed by Oliver Stone. But it would be unserious reduce the film to a simplistic explanation. The fact that Bigelow spend the first few minutes of submitting your story go over the victims calls the day of the attacks of September 11, 2001 is both an elegant tribute in memory of the victims as the most logical starting building your story at the beginning, and not at all, as some might think, a justification or vindication of torture sequences that we will see later or the methods used to hunt down Bin Laden. This is amply explained by humanity that gives the director the tortured and no makeup because it saves the very brutality of the torture. Interestingly, neither morbidly recreates them, because they are just another part of the road they have to travel to reach its denouement characters. A road that tells Bigelow without using any melodrama or sensationalism. So in torture there times when we put both side of the torturers and tortured without need for entering the game's visual or narrative subjectivity. If anything defines the film is so inclined to get involved in the research plot of the protagonist, a remarkable Jessica Chastain, from an objective standpoint eminently. It is an exercise that even more remarkable because the objectivity necessary to perform a difficult balancing act carefully measuring the distances to and follow the events as if we were part of them at all times while avoiding tricks free easy to empathize with the characters and get caught in monstrous and miserable farce of political correctness. Thus Bigelow gets very difficult in this type of stories based on real events and conducive to all kinds of hurt feelings on both sides: it is the viewer who come to their own conclusions. Thus less manipulative than they have always been cinematic autopsies performed on the major issues of the recent history of the United States by Oliver Stone.
Proof that with the objectivity that Bigelow does not renounce the suspense gets totally hitting on her from the first minute film projection with these voice-overs of the victims of the attacks found in the tension applied to the last twenty or thirty minutes footage, the actual enforcement operation. They are the great shot for a movie that I think manages to overcome any other approach that has been shot so far in movies about the war on terrorism. I said that I only find an equivalent of the same quality on television, in the series Homeland.
Special mention in this work to fully immerse in the plot deserves the job with the sound that shines throughout the film, we jump to getting those sequences that are disrupted daily apparently brutally shot or explosion. In an exercise in consistency, and the film reveals its true soul, his real subject, which is the interruption of normal and everyday caused by the bombings. Bigelow is careful to draw the landscape of disruption of daily life in several scenes as dinner and interview a potential agent uptake in the leadership of Al Qaeda. His film is a perfect picture of chaos crashing and demolishing the everyday. Since 11-S, 2001 all live staring into the abyss of the unexpected. In my opinion, Zero Dark Thirty is the film that has best draw that global collective sense on a big screen, as well as Homeland has done on television.
Miguel Juan Payán
COMENTA CON TU CUENTA DE FACEBOOK
Tweets por @AccionCine
The Master. Great Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman. His pulse actors reminds There Will Be Blood.
Paul Thomas Anderson has done it again. The Master is a film that is out of the norm. A rare bird in the billboard. Possibly not everyone will remove the same juice, the same enjoyment. But as happened with There Will Be Blood, is good, very good. Another thing is that you do not receive the same to everyone. The way in which the director tells her story has all the aroma of good literature and in cinema is not difficult to find a wide range of echoes that covers all styles, from William Faulkner to William Burroughs, John Fante and Jack Kerouac, Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski ... But that should not mislead us. Not so their longer film cinema. As was the case with There Will Be Blood. In fact it is impossible not to think that another movie while we're watching it, because somehow I think the formula is enhanced There Will Be Blood to The Master. There Will Be Blood was a great monologue of Daniel Day Lewis, almost alone, with no other presence in the cast counterweight make him or give him the replica continuously throughout the story. From that standpoint, I think the composition of his character that makes Joaquin Phoenix is as remarkable as that of Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood, but he instead develop a monologue interpret a pulse with the character played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Thus, this is a battle between two very talented actors in which undoubtedly senses the inclination to treat literary characters and situations always have the films of Paul Thomas Anderson, but where history is also constructed on purely influences film.
For example on the issue of starting the film with the protagonist living in the last days of his participation in World War II, we find a succession of scenes that have much in common with The Thin Red Line Terrence Malick. It is the only trace of Malick film in The Master, which is also presented in this brief subplot, almost little more than a wink, a sort of cameo in Badlands argument that stains the relationship between the protagonist and his teenage girlfriend, Doris.
Along with those echoes of Malick film find references that refer to more traditional sources. If There Will Be Blood had traces of King Vidor film with echoes of The Wind of Victor Sjöström and Greed of Erich von Stroheim, in The Master is almost impossible not to think of the character of Charles Foster Kane Orson Welles and seeing characterization and interpretation of the Master Philip Seymour Hoffman. The presentation of his own character with features Renaissance man able to do several things at the same time, serving as writer, scientist, thinker ... fits perfectly with the megalomania that both marked and defined characters created and often played by Orson also Welles throughout his career. Master Lancaster Dodd could have been played by Welles, no doubt, and Paul Thomas Anderson introduces a sort of nod in a story that is also common Shakespearean resonances with film director of Citizen Kane. A Shakespearean resonances that essentially materialize in that kind of sectarian variant of Lady Macbeth who plays with remarkable talent at the height of the two male leads an equally great Amy Adams in the role of the wife of Lancaster Dodd. I think both Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman as strong candidates for the Oscar, and I think Adams can choose perfectly to a nomination as best supporting actress.
But alongside these key literature, most classical cinema, more exploration of characters and situations facing the abyss of madness and folly inhabit, which is the magic of The Master is not only a great job of directing actors or resulting remarkable what the composition of that deal, but the way they absolutely masterful moves and Paul Thomas Anderson fits their characters, their planning, visual work presiding ended almost flat each film, giving them a meaning of visual poetry unfolds the greatness and misery of his characters in a level of interest and depth that is not easy to see in the cinema.
The Master is not an easy film. It might even dare to call it "freak", not for the job of visual storytelling that is the strong point of the film. In his remarkable work as director Paul Thomas Anderson actors known for her care of every gesture and movement. But in his way of composing each shot of the film the director of The Master is even more demanding, owner of a talent as an observer of human nature that makes him one of the best visual storytellers of our time.
An example of this is the final sequence in which Freddie Quill, the character played by Joaquin Phoenix, the woman repeats has been linked in the bar flicker test was applied to the Lancaster Dodd. That moment speaks volumes emulation very easily not only on Freddie own character, but also about his relationship with Dodd and why this is resolved in the way that the director shows us emotionally intense scene after that we which totally disarms Master sings to Freddie in a last attempt to seduce and keep him by his side. Simply put, Paul Thomas Anderson tells us much about the sects and the way you work and seduce their leaders, and incidentally explains clearly the best way to escape its influence.
So, The Master is explained as an intense visual ride by a single concept that is repeated throughout the film: the freedom, and of course we all understand that concept in the same way and even chose deceive on it. That is precisely the scene of the bike in the desert and how different it is developed to Lancaster Dodd and Freddie Quill.
In this perspective, Freddie finally Quill is presented as Lancaster Dodd himself points out in one of his dialogues, as a hero, perhaps the greatest hero we've seen this year on the big screen.
So no, The Master certainly not an easy film, but it's certainly one of the best films this writer has seen this year, of those who are able to open new doors and windows to our cinephilia, as always manages to make the films of Paul Thomas Anderson even in its strangest moments.
Miguel Juan Payán
COMENTA CON TU CUENTA DE FACEBOOK
Tweets por @AccionCine
Lincoln. One of the best and hardest work of Steven Spielberg. Brilliant cast.
The first thing I want to clarify to readers that this film is not the life of Abraham Lincoln. The second is that the issue is not the Civil War between the Union and the Confederacy, despite starting with a moment of particularly brutal battle. Lincoln is not a war movie but a political film. It is far from the classic John Huston's Red Badge of Courage (1951) and Days of Glory (Edward Zwick, 1989). Do not expect to see a version of Saving Private Ryan in the American Civil War, mainly because that conflict is not pleasant in the memory manager and epic as any fratricidal confrontation is tinged with tragedy. Still containing epic by both parties, it lacks the tone of "necessary war" which itself has been given to the Second World War. That instinctive revulsion director by the dye fratricidal civil war is washed by Spielberg said conflict giving a leading role in the fight against slavery, which ultimately is the actual epicenter of a biographical sketch of Lincoln last year. That's what makes the movie instead of graduating Lincoln might well have been titled The 13th Amendment, which is what the president's title to the film tries to pass by all means before the end of the war, and even doing effort to prolong it, in order to use the conflict as leverage against the Democrats and conservative Republicans opposed to voting on the amendment granting equal protection to black people which wants to become the United States of America. In that story, eminently political, we find one of the best works of Steven Spielberg direction in which his brilliance as a visual planner acquires a consistency with the objective set arguably quite remarkable.
The problem is that too many elements to fight against to claim that Lincoln is one of the highest grossing films, but for this writer is certainly one of his best movies, exercise impeccable and dare I say mature implacable as director .
The director of Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ET, Raiders of the Lost Ark ... takes time walking towards that maturity, which I believe started with The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun, went to Schindler's List and embroidered in one of his best films, Munich. In this second group of creations, less commercial and far from exercises mythomania movie fan who comes on titles such as Always (winking at Frank Capra film), Hook (winking at Disney), Amistad (winking at Robert Mulligan, To Kill a Mockingbird in a cocktail supplemented with some of the film's visual epic time of his admired David Lean), A. I. Artificial intelligence (winking Kubrick), The Terminal (Capra again), or War Horse (meaning bright tribute to the cinema "Irish" John Ford and more specifically to The Quiet Man, with plans we remembered the outcome She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and got a different view of the cavalry). So do not look at Lincoln Private Ryan or wait tripped Indiana Jones or a dinosaur. The warning may seem very obvious, but I consider it necessary because I think it is at the epicenter of the clash with the followers of the "brand" that they risk Spielberg at the box office address some of these later works, the best that have come the talent of this director. What happens is that Spielberg is not everything, neither can nor should be Indiana Jones on the hunt for a new treasure, a shark murderer, a trio of raptors sharpening teeth or giving Tom Cruise walks in the future in science fiction. Spielberg, who is an icon in the box office and more commercial escapist cinema, does not hesitate to dive into pools and movie plot riskier projects less easy for the public as Lincoln. But should pay attention, because the talent that has characterized as a visual storyteller, and I have never discussed, although its Capra-Disney side bothers me a lot, sometimes significantly shines in their projects less obvious and predictable.
In Lincoln Spielberg faced such expectations may lead some viewers to expect a broader biography and centered character played brilliantly by President Daniel Day Lewis, but not the case. Others expect a fresh civil war epic, which is not present in the film. His tone reminded me more of All the President's Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976) with some intrigue of Seven Days in May (John Frankenheimer, 1964) and a point of The Last Hurrah (John Ford, 1958) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra, 1939) that does not bother me as much as other rides by director universes "caprianos".
Clearly therefore Lincoln, even as a political film, not follow the fast pace of that sort of bible of the genre that is the series The West Wing, or nests Spielberg also the most critical aspect of the empire forensic American usually demonstrates that political cinema of Oliver Stone.
Lincoln also has the added difficulty that Steven Spielberg comes a triple somersault exercise, trying to address in the same movie on one side and possibly the totemic figure of Abraham Lincoln incomprehensible by the subject that really interests you and is the epicenter of his film, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution on equality of blacks, and finally the cool end of the epic American Civil War. There are three fronts where you have to fight at the same time and it comes off better in some areas than in others. For example the attempt to show a human side to the iconic Lincoln includes some interesting scenes among which that character of the eldest son of President played by Joseph Gordon Levitt, with some footage that leaves a mark on the film through the sequence of pit members and confrontation with the father who becomes a repeat of the sequence of the girl in the red coat in Schindler's List. The same applies to the fragment of Lincoln arguing with his wife, Sally Field, son enlisting in the army, at the reception, in the theater or the drive where she reflects on how history will see. I think those moments, however brief and episodic side in the main plot, work quite well as light touches of the intimate life of Lincoln, but the film fails on that front in the most obvious and topical relationship with his youngest son Tad.
It referred to the third front, the period epic, abounds more indoors than outdoors, and has a tendency to historic postcard like plane shows that Lincoln met with his cabinet showing in the foreground and the face profile statue the president and his advisers behind him perspective.
The best part of the film is found in its political front, where there is intrigue, include conspiracy to get votes, there is the dilemma of prolonging the war to gain the support needed to pass the amendment, and a character emerges and an actor capable of challenging the role of Lincoln himself Daniel Day Lewis: Congressman Thaddeus Stevens played by Tommy Lee Jones. From this character, Spielberg makes us think that it could have simplified the proposal regardless of the portrait of President Lincoln and leaving in the background to focus only on the Amendment number 13 and tell the story from the point of view of Stevens, who further grants in the most intensely dramatic story when the match against the "Madam President" at the reception, where you have to give in Congress to their true objectives of full equality for blacks and outcome with that great explanation Character from the intimate and the everyday through the bed scene is a perfect example of the simplicity and superiority of the visual over the textual complexity and cinematic storytelling.
It is in the political side of the story where it multiplies the appearance of small beads of interpretation in the hands of actors making cameo but almost necessary to bring that familiarity pave the spectator's identification with the wide range of characters involved in this stage of history , people like James Spader David Strathairn, Robert Latham, Jared Harris, Walton Goggins, Hal Holbrook, Jackie Earle Haley, Michael Stuhlbarg ...
In conclusion: a good job of Spielberg from maturity in a difficult film that comes to worshiping with less passion Lincoln pulpit from which I feared.>
Miguel Juan Payán
COMENTA CON TU CUENTA DE FACEBOOK
Tweets por @AccionCine
Les Misérables musical personality fits the film and visual display. Anne Hathaway Oscar fixed.
First I should note that I do not like the movie musical. Nor musicals. In any of its forms or styles. And I'm not consumer operas. All this makes Les Miserables has for me more credit than have for any fan of opera, music and musical theater. The reason is that I was hooked almost its entire length despite my little sympathy for this genre. I do not remember this year more intense and devastating interpretation that only Anne Hathaway as Fantine, the end of his descent into hell, in about ten minutes of footage can build an interpretation of Oscar. In my opinion, and with all due respect to the other possible nominees for these awards, the Academy Awards will be very unfair if it does not give the Oscar for letting us emotionally skinned actress with one of the most heartbreaking moments that I remember seeing in film. To remember a cinematic moment that has caused me the same impression and has left me so I have to go back knocked Robert De Niro as Jake La Motta hitting the walls of a cell and shouting: "I am not an animal, I am not an animal Why ... they treat me like this? I'm not that bad. " And I should not be the only one, because at the end of the press screening spontaneous applause broke out among the public, which is not usual in this type of session inhabited by critics and journalists.
Alongside the work of Anne Hathaway, another strong point of the film is Hugh Jackman. The player gets to take control of your character and the entire film in record time, from his first appearance, preceded by the visual display of the start of the film epic.
That commitment epic film from the first moment is the third strength of Les Miserables. Tom Hooper took the decision to impose the interpretation of the songs on the set, which is a spectacle in itself so you have to play the unique moment of acting and musical interpretation of the actors replicates the same circumstance that occurs in stages and that feature is one of the most discussed and applauded by the press. But I believe we should also pay attention to the director's visual approach with his musical version of Les Miserables, which rescues and respects the spirit of great evocative visual that was Victor Hugo, author of the novel that inspired the musical.
Hooper does not resign at any time to impose eminently cinematic visual approach to your movie. Two simple examples, as well as the image of the boat pulled by prisoners with which the film opens. The first is the association of each moment of "death" and "rebirth" of the protagonist, each sequence shows Jean Valjean reinventing himself with images of crosses and cemeteries. Cemetery representing physical death. Crosses representing the character's idea of transcendence beyond the material that you mark it in your daily sacrifice for others to take it to the end of his life and redemption. This idea of redemption through sacrifice, focus of Les Miserables, is explained visually perfectly with these cutting planes poetic and intimate at the same time spectacular resolution that applies to the path Hooper deaths and resurrections of Jean Valjean .
The second example is the way in which you use the foreground, a tool purely cinematic, non-theatrical, to make the most of the interpretation of Anne Hathaway in Fantine's solo. Working with light, with the foreground and the actual direction of the actors in this fragment is demolishing simple and beautiful, its beauty lies in the simplicity that results in true. And also claim eminently perfect film of Les Misérables.
Other highlights are also pure cinema, as the presentation of the character of Gavroche, which is also that of Paris, or both Javert solos with the city below. But alongside these, is even more interesting how Hooper decides to pay his debt to the original musical film in the last third of the film, dealing with the rebellion voluntarily theatrical scenery. At the climax, the final knot converging stories all the characters that have been alternating in the role of the story, Tom Hooper paid tribute to his musical recreating a decorated screen theater that involves cutting the protagonists as if to protect them. It's a risky decision but of remarkable talent and value. Certainly could have persisted in the epic tone and make a purely cinematic display, but choose to work in that key more theatrical set design for the characters that give them privacy in the moment of supreme sacrifice. A brilliant choice.
True, there are other times when, in my opinion, the film becomes more predictable, less interesting, and are related to the love triangle of youth, more topical and predictable because its content is clearly less interesting than the subject of redemption of Jean Valjean and Javert pulse that keeps with, but fortunately even more maudlin moments are a balancing factor and interest in deploying real bright vaudeville worth presenting the history of marriage Thenardier, the other villains of the plot , authentic figures of farce, a parenthesis of Grand Guignol that allows the showcasing of Sacha Baron Coen and Helena Bonham Carter in absurd picaresque key. Miguel Juan Payán
COMENTA CON TU CUENTA DE FACEBOOK
Tweets por @AccionCine
The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey, I liked it better than Lord of the Rings. Peter Jackson has caught the trick to Tolkien. The bittersweet feeling that I felt when I went to see the first installment of The Lord of the Rings has not happened this afternoon when I went to see The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey. Quite the contrary. In the first film of the Rings only noticed the familiar tone epic, legendary and fantastic novels of Tolkien in the Mines of Moria and step out of the boat by the gigantic statues of the Argonath. The rest I conveyed the breath of the original epic and legendary.
However, in this first film of The Hobbit has happened to me just the opposite. I would say that each of their sequences is a remarkably faithful reflection of Tolkien's novel, and has no rhythm swings in the trilogy of The Lord of the Rings presents. The whole film has the pace and the burden of visual spectacle of the sequences in the mines of Moria from The Fellowship of the Ring. There is a logical explanation for this I liked more than the previous trilogy adaptation of Jackson. First is pure action and adventure. Second has an advantage over the Rings, because the plot of the novel approach The Hobbit is much simpler: it is ultimately the story of a meeting of professionals at what they have to accomplish is a dangerous mission. There are no twists and complexities imposed by Tolkien's trilogy The Lord of the Rings. What we have here is the classic version of Middle-earth hero's journey story that would expose Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero masks: Psychoanalysis of myth. Or if you prefer, the Middle Earth version of the classic story of mythical jewels of cinema as The Dirty Dozen, The Guns of Navarone or The Magnificent Seven. Except that here the protagonists are not commands WWII or gunmen of wild west (although there are many key western, both visual and plot, scattered throughout this first installment of the trilogy of The Hobbit), but a company dwarf warriors led by the wizard Gandalf the Grey.
Another advantage this time the emulator Joseph Campbell's hero Bilbo Baggins, Frodo not. Bilbo incorporates some key humor where Frodo was seized with a tragic sense of life. Bilbo goes running an adventure. He is a hero where Frodo was a victim of destiny or fate. Jokes Bilbo and Frodo makes us smile which made us feel sorry. At least in this first installment. These characteristics of the character plays into the film and incidentally make the actor's responsible for giving life to this medium, Martin Freeman, can display their talents with more nuances and richness of freedom to create empathy with the public which had Elijah Wood in The Lord of the Rings. As a result of the above, we sympathize more with Bilbo to Frodo. And as an example just think of the encounter with Gollum, which is here more sinister than the Rings and also more fun and even makes you laugh at some point. Incidentally, the lighter note, more adventurous, less dense and tragic than the previous visit of Peter Jackson to Middle-earth, a game also allows richer and more nuanced interpretation of Andy Serkis as Gollum.
The plot structure of the novel The Hobbit, as I say the plot allows more focus on the idea of travel and mission of the whole group of dwarves, provides yet another essential difference: the materialization or customization of the enemy group in this plot chase figure Azog, the Pale Orc, riding his fearsome albino Wargo, and which has a clearer antagonist and more footage and prominence of the more dispersed and volatile have in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Sauron himself.
Add to all the above battles with trolls in a spectacular scene that emulates the caves and in my opinion than the confrontation in the Mines of Moria in the first installment of The Lord of the Rings, and the prologue to the attack of Smaug the fortresss of the dwarves, the fight of the giants of rock in the mountains, the persecution of the trolls in the prairies, the arrival of the giant eagles ...
I think Peter Jackson on The Hobbit applies everything he learned and discovered filming the trilogy The Lord of the Rings, and has greatly improved the final proposal. An example: their air planes, both bothered me because me out of the film in the Rings trilogy, here even find a practical use and a purpose and makes the most of them in the chase sequence of the Orcs and the Wargs after the company of dwarves.
The result of all this is pure visual feast, a Christmas movie in every way, the return of fantasy to the big screen in all its glory.
I would say it is among the three best films of this year.
Miguel Juan Payán
COMENTA CON TU CUENTA DE FACEBOOK
Tweets por @AccionCine
