Displaying Review 6 - 10 of 11 in total

• The imminent end of a broken world — for Melancholia
  Written by marinaraujo on 08.08.2011

  (DK/SWE/FRA/GER - 2011)

  Directed by Lars Von Trier, with Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, John Hurt and Alexander Skarsgård. Lars Von Trier was nominated for the Palme d'Or and Kirsten Dunst won the Best Actress Award in 2011 Cannes Film Festival. I can predict many other nominations and awards for this film.

  So, what do we have here? A film about a planet called Melancholia, on the verge of colliding with Earth and destroying all the life as we know it. But Melancholia, the film, is far from having a cliché sci-fi plot with a shallow background story and far from being an apocalyptical film as what we're used to. It is a unique portrait of human feelings, expectations and frustrations, counting on great performances by the main actresses.

  The film is divided into two parts, which focus in one of the sisters Justine (Kirsten Dunst) or Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who have a troubled relation. Part 1 shows us Justine's wedding party, which started late due to a problem with Justine and Michael's (her husband, Alexander Skarsgård) limousine. The party seems to be going well until when Claire and Justine's father (John Hurt) decides to make a speech and is interrupted by their mom (Charlotte Rampling), who is totally against marriages. After this, the guests go dancing and we think everything's gonna be ok, but then Justine starts to act weirdly without any apparent reason, keeping everyone away and ruining her own party, for which she waited for a long, long time.

  I was really impacted by watching this whole part, Kirsten Dunst is awesome in her role and makes us feel uncomfortable for her behaviour and Charlotte is also very convincing as the older, caring sister, making us think of how we'd react if such a situation happened to someone close to us. There isn't a clear mention to Melancholia in this part yet. When Justine and Michael arrive for the party, Justine asks the wedding planner (Udo Kier) about a red star in the sky, and that's the only astrological-related dialogue we see here.

  In Part 2, Justine develops some sort of disease who makes her numb and unmotivated and comes to live with Claire, her husband John (Kiefer Sutherland) and son Leo (Cameron Spurr). In this part, we know more about Melancholia and see how four different people deal with the planet's imminent approach. Claire starts to feel scared and obsessed, John is confident that nothing bad is gonna happen, Leo is very excited about the "Passage". Justine seems to be unnaturally calm, attracted to the phenomenon and to know more about it than the others. She claims to know "things", such as the number of beans in a bottle on the night of the party. According to her, in one of the most outstanding lines of the film, "the Earth is evil, we don't need to grieve for it". It's interesting how, here, there's a switch of roles: Justine isn't the inconsequent person we saw in Part 1 and Claire also isn't as rational as we might have thought she was. There's a point in the film where I wasn't sure of what was really going to happen, and that catched my attention until the very ending.

  Melancholia has an amazing photography and a breathtaking instrumental soundtrack. The first minutes are mindblowing and visually gorgeous. The final scene hit me like a train. Many sequences reminded me of 2001, and I believe that obviously isn't a coincidence. The director is a sensitive Lars Von Trier, who didn't fail in capturing the fear, the resignation and the hopes of a broken family shaken by an event of enourmous proportions. In this family, we can identify the humankind as a whole.

  To answer my own question: what we have here is a must-see film, a gripping masterpiece.

• Education through fear — for Kynodontas
  Written by marinaraujo on 08.01.2012

  (GRE - 2009)

  Starring Christos Stergioglou, Michele Valley, Aggeliki Papoulia, Mary Tsoni, Hristos Passalis and Anna Kalaitzidou, Kynodontas was nominated to the Oscar of Best Foreign Film of the Year and the director Giogos Lanthimos won Cannes' Un Certain Regard Award, as well as many other prizes and nominations.

  When I got to watch this film, I didn't know at all what it was about. I had heard positive comments about it, but never read a synopsis or heard anything about its plot. It was interesting to discover, moment by moment, the purpose of the film and its method. A pleasant surprise, actually.

  The action develops slowly at the start, letting you get used to the most common scenery - the house of a family with three grown up "children" (even though the youngest of all seems to be at least 20 years old, they're all treaten as if they were 7, and I don't think there's a better way to call them), their father and their mother. There are no names - we can see one referring to another only as "mom", "dad", "the older", "the younger". It's a house with generous windows, many rooms and a big garden, but the feeling of emptyness and enclosuring is always present. Huge walls separate the family from the outside world, to which only the father has access. The biggest enclosuring factor, though, isn't the physical one, but the psychologic.

  Afraid of letting their children be contaminated by "bad" influences, the parents aprision them inside the house, giving them a distorted education (exchanging the meaning of some "strong" words for some others which have nothing to do with reality, for example) and a sense of resignation, applying harsh punishments and lying at many times, making them believe their life is wonderful and there's nothing important outside the walls. To pass the time, the father gives them little tasks or games they must play in order to get stickers and the possibility of deciding what will be the night's entreteinment. As time goes by, children start to create themselves games (as shown in the first scene of the film).

  This environment doesn't allow any kind of sexual malice be developed in the children's minds, and the father keeps to himself the right to control the only male brother's activities when it comes to sex - and for that, the calls a "babysitter" (Christina, the only character who has an actual name) from time to time. There's no other relationship between them but a mechanic one, until when Christina decides to blackmail the older sister for sexual favours.

  In one of his final lessons, the father asks what is the proper time to leave home - and that's when we get to know the reason of the film's title. I won't tell it for now (as I consider it to be a huge spoiler), but the fact is that the older sister is decided to leave the house and will get to the extremes if necessary - and we all know it will be.

  With a perhaps simple cinematography (but not so simple deals with morality and family values), Kynodontas certainly achieves its goals. There are shocking scenes, violence and plenty of nudity, but what is more important is the way it focuses on the influence of the environment and home education in our way of seeing and dealing with life. A good film, which follows its purpose until the very ending - it's almost impossible to feel disappointed by it.

• A gripping masterpiece — for Byôsoku 5 senchimêtoru
  Written by marinaraujo on 10.01.2012

  (JAP - 2007)

  Directed by Makoto Shinkai, with the voices of Kenji Mizuhashi, Yoshimi Kondou, Ayaka Onoue and Satomi Hanamura as the main characters, Byôsoku 5 Senchimêtoru - A Chain of Short Stories About their Distance, usually shortened to Byôsoku 5cm, is an anime divided into three parts and tells the story of three fellows: Takaki Tōno, Akari Shinohara and Sumida Kanae. As the subtitle already makes clear, it's a film about distance, about missing people, about friendship and, specially, about the opportunities we lose in life.

  There's one important metaphor used in the film which is summed up in the title itself: "5 centimeters per second", the speed at which cherry blossoms fall, is said to be as well the speed at which two people can get separated from each other as life passes by.

  "Cherry Blossom Story" is the title of the first sequence, when we get to know Takaki and Akari in childhood, contemplating the beauty of cherry trees and the spectacule of the blossoms falling and covering the whole ground of soft pink. In this sequence, older Akari moves to a different city and starts to exchange letters with Takaki. There's already a feeling of distance, they miss each other and sometimes they can't deny their relationship has changed. They set an appointment and try to meet in a train station - Takaki should take the train and Akari would wait for him - but Winter has came and the snow results in a more than 3 hour delay. "Has Takaki gave up on me?", "Is she still gonna be waiting for me when I get there?" are some of the most remarkable lines.

  The second segment, called "Cosmonaut", is my favourite. The focus now is on a girl Takaki meets in high school, called Sumida. "He's so kind with me", she says, and as time goes by, she starts to develop a crush on him. But she also sadly notices Takaki has his mind in somewhere else, and even when he's looking at her he's thinking about another girl - Akari. There are some visually astonishing, breathtaking sequences in this part, where Takaki and Akari meet "in his dreams", in a scenery which is the materialization of the title of the segment. Takaki starts to feel the weight of the absence on his shoulders, as he slowly loses touch with Akari. Sumida, on the other hand, has to decide whether she's going to tell Takaki about her feelings or trying to forget everything. I never seem to be able to stop my tears no matter how many times I watch Sumida's decision scene.

  The last segment - "5 centimeters per second" - portraits a grown up Takaki living a boring life in a big city. He goes out with some girls now and then, trying to finally forget Akari, but keeps mentally waiting for her signs. He discovers something about her which breakes his heart and, after that, they even have the opportunity to meet, but how will they react after so many years without seeing each other? It's Spring again and the cherry blossoms are falling, will that be enough to reunite two hearts which were separated by destiny? Or is it just the sign the distance between them is no longer trespassable?
  
  The music played during ending credits (as it's usual for Makoto Shinkai's works) relates to the story and has a little videoclip showing some of the best sequences. It's not a song I listen to very often (I find a bit too cheesy), but it fits very well to the atmosphere of the film and completes its experience.

  I think it's very difficult not to feel touched by this film, specially if you ever had to move to a different city or a very close friend or relative did so. The soundtrack, the visuals and the way it is built makes Byôsoku 5cm unique. It is short (63 minutes long), but the impressions it leaves might last for weeks or even months.

• About the mysteries of life and death — for Twin Peaks
  Written by marinaraujo on 19.12.2012

  (USA - 1990~1991)

  *** This review may contain spoilers. ***

  Created by David Lynch and Mark Frost, Twin Peaks is an acclaimed TV series of the 90's. Starring Sheryl Lee as Laura Palmer, Kyle MacLachlan as FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, Ray Wise as Leland Palmer, Lynch himself as Gordon Cole, Dana Ashbrook as Bobby Briggs, Lara Flynn Boyle as Donna Hayward, Sherilyn Fenn as Audrey Horne, Mädchen Amick as Shelly Johnson, Eric DaRe as Leo Johnson, Frank Silva as BOB and Kenneth Welsh as Windom Earle, it had two seasons, the first with 7 episodes and the second with 22 episodes.

  The story starts with the brutal murder of Twin Peaks' favourite daughter, Laura Palmer, in unknown circumstances. She's found dead, wrapped in plastic, in the river which passes nearby the town. Then, a Special Agent of the FBI, Dale Cooper, is designed to investigate the case. But nothing is what it seems in Twin Peaks, that's what Cooper finds out, as he discovers many other mysteries connected to the death of the girl, mysteries which will take him to a place "both wonderful and strange".

  What is special about Cooper's investigation method is that it's all driven by images he's seen in a dream, where Laura tells him who killed her, though he can't remember the killer's name. He also finds out that the gum he likes is going to "come back into style", as what is said by a strange dwarf who wears a read suit, called The Man from Another Place (also referred as the Dream Man). This dream takes place in somewhere called the Black Lodge, the obsession of Cooper's early mate Windom Earle, a place where time runs in different scales and with inhabitants who sometimes visit the real world. Possessing the knowledge about the Lodge and how it works means controlling the path of whoever enters it.

  The series finale episode is one of the most intriguing scenes the television has ever shown, leaving to the audience more questions unsolved than answers. Nonetheless, it is a very good ending because it allows us to deduce what would happen afterwards. For me, particularly, it is awesome that the series didn't end in a convetional way (well, what could I expect from Lynch? Haha), it has no happy ending, but it fits well, considering that one important point of the series is to show life has mysteries no one can understand.

  The soundtrack of the series, created and conducted by Angelo Badalamenti, is also awesome. It helps creating a nostalgic, dreamy atmosphere. The opening song is a classic, but my favourite track is probably Dance of the Dream Man.

  If you haven't watched Twin Peaks and like policial/mystery shows, you definetely should. It's different from anything else you've seen. Lynch and Frost created an unique piece which has touched an entire generation and will, surely, touch you as well.

• An astonishing visual experience — for Hausu
  Written by marinaraujo on 30.05.2013

  (JAP - 1977)

  Hausu is a Japanese B horror film, directed by Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, starring Kimiko Ikegami, Miki Jinbo, Kumiko Ohba, Ai Matsubara, Mieko Satô, Eriko Tanaka and Masayo Miyako, which won the 1977 Blue Ribbon Award of Best Director.

  Before I start to talk about the plot itself, I must say it is pretty hard to label it under "good" or "bad" since, when we talk about B cinema, those concepts usually trade places. But Hausu is a very special case - even with the lousy computer effects, the tiny budget, the bad, shallow performances and a plot which isn't convincing, it has an amazing aesthetic concept and constitutes itself a colourful visual trip. And even apart from that it is -- what else can I say? So bad it is actually good.

  The story develops over a cliché horror plot: there is this girl, called Oshare (also referred as Gorgeous), her father and stepmother. She was supposed to spend Summer holidays with her dad, while all of her friends would travel together, but then he invites his new significant other to join them and Oshare doesn't like it at all. She decides she'll spend some time at her mom's sister's house. For some reason, the other girls can't travel and end up joining Oshare in this (not) very pleasant journey. Of course everything starts to go wrong as soon as they get there.

  Hausu's characters are all unilateral and superficial. Most of the time, their names are connected to a feature mark - for example, Mac, sorta chubby and always hungry, got that nickname as a short of "stomach". There's this girl called - literally - Kung Fu, and I think you can deduce what she does whenever there is trouble in sight. Merodî is strangely connected to music and a piano in the house - and I do believe it was Ôbayashi's intention to pick a name which is written and sounds like "melody". But surely one of the most important characters is Blanche, Oshare's aunt's cat which is the most iconic, recognizable and reproduced image from the film.

  I've recently developed this thing with B cinema, which makes it hard to actually recommend it to someone who is not used or has no interest in understanding the genre. But I would seriously give Hausu a chance - there are many features which will intrigue and entertain you, and even make you laugh.

  For all the visual experience, the special touch only Japanese authors can give (in songs, clothes and even some martial art coreographies) and some actual claustrophobic and frightening sequencies, Hausu is a pearl from this huge locker called B cinema. Understanding it's limitations and true purpose is the key to enjoy it - if you reach this level, it won't disappoint you at all.