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Reviews
MaXXXine (2024)
It wasn't a parody?
The premise and development of it, as basic or formulaic as it may seem, it kinda worked for me. The story evolves using the predictable artifacts of the genre and, with Mia embodying the object of the story, the images are filled with the necessary charm to win the viewer's attention.
But the last third of the film could be just defined as hilarious, and the problem is that it was not a comedy.
I don't know if Ti West considered that the previous films (which are roundly better) were worth certain licenses with the viewers; but there is a limit to the degree of naivety that I'm willing to grant to a story. With MaXXXine, it was simply too much. The entire last third was just too silly, like idiotically naive and good-willed. Even if we hypothesize a Lynchian finale where the last sequences only occur in Maxine's imagination, the events surrounding that moment are simply ridiculous.
So, yes. If you can put aside common sense and eat miraculous conveniences, you can have a good time watching the whole movie. If not, the first two-thirds make up for the bad taste of the last.
Dune: Part Two (2024)
Dazzling Audiovisual Spectacle
This is one of the cases that makes me regret having to put an 8 or a 9 and not something in between.
The film is a victory for cinema. That is first. For what cinema can do with the tools that the present offers. Dune: Part 2 is an attempt that, by far, hits more than it misses. But it misses. And where it suffers is in the story, in the structure of the narration.
It seems almost ridiculous to say that what a nearly three-hour film needed was more time. But it's the case. And the initial development of the plot (for pragmatic reasons I presume, every director has to cut things) has a somewhat hasty evolution. Everything at the beginning is presented and developed almost immediately: Paul is questioned by the Fremen, 15 minutes later accepted and shortly after adored. His training in this unforgiving desert is not far from an Instagram reel in terms of exposition. Fremen culture is portrayed almost superficially (the Sardaukar a meme). The great distances that this people had to cross are received almost as a comment; because from one scene to another they have already done it. And because of all this, the narration then loses a bit of emotional effect.
Still, it's a good adaptation of the story: from the hand of a cast that justifies their names with unquestionable performances, and from what the director did with what he had (the time at his disposal; the script had to be fitted), Dune: Part 2 manages to sustain itself narratively and portray the essence of what inhabits.
Now, where it shines. The cinematography. The sets, the costumes. The photography, the sound, the practical and digital effects taken to the limits of their capabilities by people with vision. If the film is narratively an 8, audiovisually it's a 10. After seeing it in IMAX I can say that the phrase that is already becoming a cliché ("Dune: Part 2 in IMAX is insane"); Yes, it's a cliché, but it's also true. The third act is a dazzling audiovisual spectacle. I was just mesmerized and enjoying it. And everyone can only hope this to be a precedent for the future of the blockbuster.
The Zone of Interest (2023)
The Horror
Rarely does a film make me feel genuine discomfort. And it's that the portrayal of The Zone of Interest is of an almost supernatural realism.
Everything lies in the artistic direction, on the lucidity to determine what is the natural form of what is going to be told. Jonathan Glazer opts for reality; for nothingness, the indifference, the triviality and everydayness of a horror that oozes you like a metastasis.
It seeks to faithfully delve into lives corrupted at the center of the soul, which have been stripped of their humanity; a zoo of beings that seem to come from another planet, that baffle and terrify with their indecipherable sentience. The Zone of Interest operates as a window to the past where monstrosity has taken over man.
In the final minutes, when Höss, going down the stairs, seems to fleetingly premonize the abysmal legacy of his name, it is as if his own life experiences a metaphysical repulsion of what he has become.
The Curse: Green Queen (2024)
Reason doesn't need you
I'm not sure what to write, I've been looking at the screen for two minutes waiting for the words I'm apparently looking for to appear, and although they don't seem to find me or me to find them, I'm still flooded under this sensation that now I know I won't be able to describe. The need in me to say something is all the justification I need.
I laughed, of course I laughed, like the whole series. I cringe, I felt uncomfortable, I cringe and felt uncomfortable while I laughed. But this last episode, these last minutes I felt it in my stomach, I felt them like this dark truth that is always a bit further away, that is not revealed to us, that will not be revealed. No matter how much metaphor or analogy orbit around this ending, all I feel that matters is this dense weight that brought with it. I hated Asher, and yet I felt all his frustration, all his rage, all his terror. I saw him unable to stop feeling these old cursed words. That life can be this nightmare in where you just keep waking up.
El conde (2023)
A Too Temperamental Satire
I write somewhat reticent cause I really wanted to like El Conde. Which I kinda did, thus the film has the merits for it. The photography is very powerful and the premise of the story, even its presentation in the first third, is more than effective and engaging. The performances in general are good, and Vadell's is outstanding. But the director makes the mistake of making his voice too strong at times, constantly establishing judgments, as if he doubted the viewer's criterion; bordering on a relentless condescension. The satire became rigorous and aggressive intermittently, but from beginning to end.
This excessiveness, which when used properly can perfectly be a virtue, broke the cohesion of the (amplified) reality that it postulated and ended up disfavoring the effect of the narration. The irreverence of the satire was infected with a somewhat naive denunciatory impetus, and the film ended up saying more than necessary; at times the nature of the portrait was too explicit: it is not necessary to constantly tell us how perfidious these characters are, the story is already doing it.
And it's not that it's a problem to spit the name of a dictator back and forth, cause who cares if an illiterate and delinquent old bum is denigrated. But the narrative tone and the dialogues, influenced by these somewhat emotional accusatory urges, seemed to belong to more than one film. At times to comedy, at times to cinema, at times to a documentary denunciation, at times to a political lecture on morality and ethics: it would have been good if the director had let us infer all this from the story alone; The interactions, the universe, the images that inhabited this unscrupulous and decadent family already managed to synthesize that.
Apart from this, my assessment is kinda positive. The photography is compelling, the storyline is interesting enough, the atmosphere manages to converge with the images, and the dialogues, when they are not so emphatically voluntary and instead seek to favor the narrative above all, made me laugh a few times.
Talk to Me (2022)
good Talk to Me; just think a little more
This will be more of a comment than a review, cause I mostly write under a feeling of justification. And it is that the film, in general, prevails with its positive aspects.
On a technical level it is a well-executed production. Even though it is the first step in the seventh art of these brothers (which some will know from their content on YouTube), the result does not suffer from its debutant quality. Audiovisually they manage to match the narrative tone, and the psychological aspect is capable of benefiting from and the budget's features. The story is dark, and it feels dark; It manages to drag you into those moments of tense uncertainty.
It is ultimately a horror film that manages to be more than commercial, without impeding its commercial possibility.
The only real problem I had with the entire film is that the protagonist, and many others no less relevant to the story, have an excessive capacity to make stupid decisions. And of course this is something that is usually allowed in this genre; we must ignore a certain degree of implausibility in favor of believing what we are told; there is no problem with that. But, with the protagonist, this requirement was somewhat excessive; the character's stupidity made it difficult to try to believe her decisions, making her a bit obnoxious.
Apart from this, "Talk to me" is a success. I would have given it an 8/10 if Mia had tried to use her brain a few more times.
One Piece (2023)
They weren't unfounded hopes
It's already been a couple of years since I saw the first stretch of this anime (which for an attempt that exceeds a thousand episodes, still constitutes a significant amount of story); around like one hundred and something chapters, of a series that I left then interrupted by an excess of personal tasks, of all that one calls life.
That is to say: I'm not a purist of this title, but I keep pristinely in my memory the foundations of its narrative, a quality that usually belongs to exceptional stories.
For some time, I've been searching or waiting for those tales that absorb you, that transport you to a tangible but improbable universe, to these sorts of enchanted realities, to these worlds that tend to inhabit the anime genre so well.
Under the regrettable precedent of Netflix adaptations, I was naturally faced with zero expectations for this release; and, perhaps for the first time, after an endless stream of disappointments, I ended up surprised: it is indeed a good adaptation.
The series is absorbing, immersive, entertaining, the series earns your attention and your desire to know its future. The graduation between fidelity to the original work and molding to the mainstream serialization format (length and pace) is hardly debatable; and although certain aspects of the production level and execution could be criticized (this characteristic sensation of artificiality in netflix productions, of immaculateness; basically of set and props. And the stereotypical approach of performances and writing (which from anime to real life is complicated to calibrate)), in general they made a good work with what they had. The series, ultimately, manages to prevail in its essentials: enchanting with its universe and characters, winning us over with its story.
So even if it's hard to believe it: yes, it's real. After what seemed like an unstoppable torrent of blunders, of degradation of the anime culture, these bozos from Netflix finally made a decent adaptation. One Piece live action is mostly good.
You: Good Man, Cruel World (2023)
Downhill to Nonsense
It's bewildering that they spend a quarter of the time preaching about narrative standards, and then proceed to expose some of the most stupid sequences of events without the slightest degree of awareness.
That the purpose of the series is playful rather than introspective has always been explicit; there's nothing to be blamed there: the series seeks to entertain and that's what has confessed to us from the beginning. But the quality gap that separates the first season to what it offers now, it's hard to ignore.
Yes, it's a light Netflix thriller-drama, not a Charlie Kaufman film. But they should at least have the lucidity to refrain from giving "narrative lectures" through their characters if they themselves inhabit a universe that is flooding in idiotic nonsense.
I still like its first season; as an intent of a writer, I suppose it's only natural to be a sort of a guilty pleasure, but now it's starting to make me look at it with a bit of embarrassment.
PS: And just wait for the "You can't call the police... He always gets away with it". Sorry... WHAT????? That crap was hilarious.
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
The Dilemma of Time
This movie is f amazing. It's hard to be fun and deep separately, but The Banshees of Inisherin manages to be both at the same time under a rhythm that flows like the cleanest river, and that isn't afraid to slow down when's necessary to penetrate sufficiently into certain ideas.
I believe that the uncertainty about the correct use of time is a problem that concerns all of humanity; there is no individual who escapes this elemental doubt. Wanting to make sense of our actions and trying to leave something behind; that our name has meant even a small amount, not even progress, but a simple contribution to the species, is something that directly contrasts with the simple fact of living. There are individuals more predisposed to the present, as well as others with more abstract inclinations who set their eyes on the future: Pádraic, unintentionally, interferes with Colm's "intellectual" activity, and that dichotomy creates a gap in the friendship at least unilaterally.
More than one will be able to recognize and see themselves denounced in this film: I separate certain people for the sake of a greater search, for an end that matters... or maybe I'm just being a petulant f assh*l*. The answer? That's the dilemma.
PS: The performances are just outstanding; everyone, from its protagonists to the people with two seconds at the bar. The ridiculously good actor that Colin Farrell is, here continues to shows itself. And the photography of the film is just beautiful, but, I mean, it's Ireland.
Amsterdam (2022)
A 5/10 film: a waste of an unreal cast
This is the perfect definition of what a 5/10 movie is.
Without delving into the strange flow of the editing area (many scenes felt abruptly interrupted or strangely extended, creating awkward temporary spaces with a sense of unjustification), and acknowledging the good level of performance (which with a cast like the one in this film, it's not a surprise: Bale and Riseborough were particularly good), the film seems to be failing in its fundamentals: telling a self-sufficient story in a way that connects with the viewer and, above all, reveals its substance and significance. But the result is a kind of Hollywood-commissioned pamphlet collage that, while it strives to be original and "artsy" and meaningful, it doesn't get to cross the boundaries of the naive, almost offensively condescending (it's sometimes too much, but too much evident) and trivial.
Aesthetically it's fine, but the fundamental, the story, seems to be prey of this era.
Westworld: Que Será, Será (2022)
Cringeworld
S1: Great.
S2: Whatever.
S3: Laughable.
S4: Cringeworld.
The narrative deterioration that Westworld suffers from is not something we discover now; this condition began at some point in the second season when one of the two writers and creators of the show, Jonathan Nolan, stepped aside from his task and restricted himself mostly to the production area, leaving the future of the story in charge of Lisa Joy (his wife) and a team of writers who have been drawn through the conventional methods that the industry has for this.
Since then, the show has simply been unable to reach the philosophical and existential layers that it managed to traverse (helped by extraordinary performances like Hopkins') and has fallen into pathetic gimmicky attempts to involve the viewer: gratuitous emotionality, bombastic phrases taken from some recipe book narrative, plot twist of tutorials and many, many digitized special effects, which make the show look like the tackiest sci fi developed by Hollywood, turning the result into a kind of futuristic caricature.
I would love to say that the artificiality of the images, of the environment, of the world around them feels implausible in a deliberate way; that everything feels plastic and false because it is a false world and they sought to manifest that; but the reality is that the inauthenticity is due to the fact that you are unmistakably seeing an in-depth recording set with little or no detail. The pruduction team seems to have, like the characters, zero touch with reality, and they are unable to understand even the most basic: if a device or car is years old, has been used and moved multiple times, if something has received blows in the past, it is normal that it has imperfections, and not that it shines pristinely in the sun.
The level of absurdity and pathos in which the story had been falling since the third season was of immense proportions, and although it sought to improve itself and experienced slight recessions during this last season, it finally fell prey to its disease: nonsense and stupidity.
There are no real constructions in the plot: there are ideas embedded and aided by fights, shots and explosions, offering the viewer plots without real depth, which seek to move you without a base that makes a connection possible.
It is difficult to hit the eternal dilemma of when it is necessary to continue and when it is appropriate to stop, but here Westworld at least makes an undeniable contribution as an example: after the first season, the best thing would have been to simply end.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)
What even is this indescribable nonsense
What even is this indescribable nonsense. Half of the things happen for the primary reason that its occurrence will be an audiovisual spectacle or that it will infuse a certain "dynamic" in its eventual realization, and the other half of the things happen because it's what somehow managed to be concatenated in a script written by a group of incapable and untalented writers, who believe that the elements they learned from those useless courses in various institutions, or have gotten there through nepotism, will infuse some kind of meaning to the unjustifiable dumbness they have created.
The film does achieve certain things: it has the unmistakable and absurdly incredible merit of looking and feeling less real than fantasy films recorded 2 decades ago (including those from the same Harry Potter universe). It can be understood that the amount of pyrotechnic visual vomit required a greater presence of visual effects, but the main reason why everything feels so artificial and sectorized, reduced, is because 90% of the film is shot on sets, in studios wrapped in green and not in real locations expanded with the help of green screens.
The pandemic, yes, AND PLEASE DON'T COME TO ME WITH THE PANDEMIC AS AN EXCUSE. "Succession" had less than half the Budget of this movie (and had to divide it into nine chapters) and they recorded it touring the damn world. I mean... just watch Dune. A film that required special effects (and in which a hybrid use of them was made with practical effects: real locations and structures, aided by technology), had 35 million dollars less than this audiovisual homunculus, and feels more alive and believable from the first frame. If this thing, which is hard to call a whatever, was crudely recorded in studios, it's because it's easier.
Summary: If you don't want your IQ to drop exponentially as the minutes go by, avoid this movie.
PS: The fact that everyone had a pristine silence and time to go upstairs, come in and say and do their thing at the close of this movie, in the middle of a world eventuality, walk in and refute and say their kind truths without the slightest resistance, in front of the highest authorities of the magical world, seemed spectacular to me, worthy of applause: it is the biggest imbecility I have seen in years! A true ode to the absurd. Simply brave.
42 Días en la Oscuridad (2022)
Inciertamente certera
No sé si esta valoración personal responde más a todos los elementos meritorios que veo habitar en la serie, o al hecho de que la serie que habitan (en algo que es, al menos para producciones de este nivel, excepcional) es de mi propio país: Chile.
Desde el primer capítulo (omitiendo quizá ciertos reparos con interpretaciones secundarias en la escena que inicia el drama) se instala un tono implacablemente contingente, sutilmente anticlimático, como emulando a través de esa cotidianidad heterogénea de las personas la indiferencia de la realidad, la cruda inevitabilidad de la incertidumbre.
Para generar este relente de verosimilitud envolviendo al drama, además de evidentemente tener que contar con un material (una adaptación de los hechos) que esté escrito en un tono que evada las condescendencias habituales con el espectador de las producciones chilenas, que busque no retratar un sesgo en torno a un acontecimiento, sino el espectro que compone su realidad, es incontrovertiblemente necesario ofrecer interpretaciones que sean capaces de catalizar esto, actores que logren emular y ofrecer una realidad orgánica con su actuación. Esto, en mayor medida (pues muchos de los roles secundarios no lo logran del todo, aunque otros varios sí: es casi como si a medida en que se desciende en la trascendencia de un rol también se hace en la capacidad interpretativa del asignado) se logra.
Si bien estos roles secundarios y no tan secundarios afectan la textura del flujo narrativo al no calibrar con el tono interpretativo, o quizá sencillamente no estar a la altura de los estándares de los demás actores, de quienes me llevo una muy genuina buena impresión, la serie parece buscar operar ante todo como una ventana a la vida de esta tragedia, de quienes se vieron acechados por este acontecimiento devastador ofreciendo e integrando objetivamente los elementos que lo componen. Aunque el conjunto argumentativo pueda inclinarse en cierta dirección, no omite o acentúa deliberadamente hechos concluyentes, sino que emplea el espectro complejo de lo que se conoce al respecto, la pluralidad de hechos y evidencias e inconsistencias e interrogantes, la tangibilidad del estado de quienes habitan esta historia, y así inevitablemente su convivencia irrechazable con el plano de incertidumbre.
Hay muchos peros que podría señalar y que distinguí en el transcurso de estos seis capítulos: algunos, como parcialemente los interpretativos (mayormente secundarios), ya los mencioné; otros, como ciertas malas elecciones de diálogos, quizá como resabios de la narrativa audiovisual chilena; o la mediocridad de parte de la banda sonora (los temas monótonos y casi indistinguibles cantados por una (o unas) joven al cerrar la mayoría de los primeros capítulos); o la redundancia de estas rememoraciones con Verónica (lo que es perfectamente entendible, pero que fallaban al no ofrecer realmente nada más que una contextualizacion en el avance de capítulos, justificándose básicamente por el tiempo que llevaba corriendo la serie y no porque aportaran algo nuevo), los señalo ahora como una estricta constatación, pues no siento pertinente ahondar en los aspectos negativos cuando los que resaltan y prosperan en la serie son en definitiva los positivos.
El nivel narrativo es bueno, el material es bueno (la adaptación de los hechos), la interpretaciones a grandes rasgos son buenas, el tono es correcto y sutilmente logrado, y la elección de este es correcta, es necesaria y lograda.
Creo que algo que muchas grandes obras tienen en común de hacer es aceptar el estado de incertidumbre que está supeditado al ser humano, y abrazarlo, aceptarlo y ofrecer y construir a través de él: ya viendo los últimos minutos de esta serie me fue inevitable pensar en estas obras, en estas películas, series, libros anticlimáticos, que angustian un poco con su implacable e incompasible verdad, con la verdad que no poseemos, y que ellos tampoco, la verdad de que la duda nos habitará hasta el día de nuestra muerte, hasta el último momento de nuestra existencia; la verdad de que en esta vida tendremos más preguntas que respuestas, y que la certeza parece pertenecerle a la ficción.
Me alegra enormente ver que una producción chilena grande (para un medio mainstream: Netflix) haya decidido utilizar esa dirección artística, se haya atrevido a cursar la senda de series como The Night Of, y le ofrezca e invite quizá a espectadores acostumbrados a otra cosa, con este retrato fiel de la vida que es insípida, impertérrita, indiferente, preguntas que les sean más útiles que pseudo respuestas.
Severance: Defiant Jazz (2022)
Glad that the exceptional is still alive
So, for quite some time I thought that from reading so much, watching series so much and films so much, writing my own ideas so much, I had ended up becoming a spectator unable to be amazed or admired by anything, that even works objectively and genuinely valuable, perhaps they no longer generated any of that in me due to artistic exhaustion, due to a bad habituation to the exceptional: and as a necessary response, precisely as a switch that awakens that part that was off in me again, Severance appears.
It is strange to even have to highlight elements such as photography in a setting that is emphatically monotonous, sunk in the insensitivity of the corporate machinery, of the labor torrent that annuls identities (here explicitly), but together with a precisely subtle and forceful narrative tone, to a narrative charged with philosophy, with life, with significant dialogues, with admirable performances, with an attempt charged with substance based on a vision that is indisputably artistic, it somehow ends up being natural to praise aspects that are both posterior and frontal in this show.
Since Succession I haven't felt the need to explicitly praise the work of an audiovisual narrative, and honestly I was already getting used to not having to. Perhaps because I'm in my late twenties and in less than a decade I have choked on masterpieces in every narrative plane (literature, cinema, television...) I created as a result a distorted notion of the narrative cultural field, because for almost a decade I was able to wallow in a large number of exceptional books, huge movies, brilliant series, a set of exclusive quality that had been formed over a whole damn century, and two millennia if we count literature. But if we reduce it exclusively to audiovisual narrative: in less than ten years I consumed the best that was created in the course of more than a century; I mean, now that I no longer have a The Wire, a Breaking Bad, a The Sopranos, a The Leftovers to see for the first time, I have to wait for these new masterpieces: AND THAT TAKES TIME.
As I was able to verify with Succession, it wasn't that I had finally lost the ability to be dazzled by a new show, but that I got used to admiring myself with the exceptional, and the exceptional shows appear precisely in that way, exceptionally. And after Succession, fortuitously to remind me of this, the exceptional Severance has appeared.
Bo Burnham: Make Happy (2016)
Something with value
It's not really my type of humor, but the guy is genuinely talented and passionate about delivering something with substance, and that should be valued.
The Leftovers (2014)
An anecdote told by God, by anyone, a dream of the universe
I think that what precisely grabs you is what, ultimately, is the essence of the series: uncertainty. Today man is almost drunk in a pandemic of certainties, in a state of absolute responses that are believed as guaranteed from the pragmatic mechanics that dominates the world. This, as it naturally manifests itself in the concrete and practical areas of life, it also ends up doing in the abstract ones, unleashing a narrative torrent inheriting its foundations: narrative at the service of the market and consensus convictions, resulting in a reduction of the scope and forms of the works.
The Leftovers advances by taking a step back, by taking his head out of this bucket full of illusory convictions, of pseudo-absolute, to put it again in the face of the endless unknown, the inevitable state of uncertainty that will always accompany the nature of man: nothing It's guaranteed, and it's time to remember.
We are an animal devoid of answers that must question and search, inexhaustibly to grow and perhaps one day...
Pacto de Fuga (2020)
A correct Hollywood Product
It is true that at the production level, in contrast to the Chilean standard, this film offers and goes much further, that it really feels like a production for theaters, and that is valued. But let's not get too high either, since at the level of the script and performances (and dialogues, which are suitably regrettable very often), it is quite modest, tending to insufficiency. It is rightly a Hollywood product made in Chile; entertains and offers good audiovisual experience: yes; but as a cinema, the film is not much (I mean, for those amazed who are asking for it at the Oscar; although considering the deplorable course of the Oscars in recent years, it actually wouldn't be that weird).
I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
An inner farewell
For me (starting with these types of premises it feels a bit idiotic, but well), and especially considering Kaufman's precedent ("Synecdoche, New York", which constitutes his total search with the cinema), the present film it's the condensation of the imaginary of Jake (Jesse Plemons) in his old age facing the end of a life he has already lived and hasn't lived at the same time. It is a kind of mental review where memories live together with everything that he would also want to be a memory but it is no longer than an inconcretable desire: to share a life with a woman he once saw somewhere, a woman with whom then he spoke, with whom he connected, with whom he began a relationship, a woman who is ostensibly intelligent, is beautiful, is an physicist, is an artist, is a critic, is everything that he would have chosen as a couple and that it was no longer, that now it's just that fantasy mixed with memories as he goes through the last days of his insipid and routine life from his floor alone, from his van in the snow to the school as a janitor. He probably "is thinking on ending things", he comes consistently thinking about it, in the end (hence we see at the end, between the credits, his truck covered in snow); that is, Lucy and her many other names, her family , every person in the room applauds him, while he gives that honorary speech that he once heard in a movie called A Beautiful Mind and that he would no doubt have liked to give, that somewhat pathetic consent of protagonist of his own story in which everyone inevitably and shamefully we have ever incurred, it is his inner farewell, the last stretch of his thoughts in front of existence.
I'm going to dispense with the details that are putting this together because the review would be quite long and also part of the charm of Kaufman's attempt is that the viewer detects those signals, that inconsistency in Lucy's identity and fear at the discovery of it as a fantasy (when she sees all the paintings that she presumably had shown her father-in-law, in Jesse's attic, at the place of his memories); the tacit and reproachful complicity between Jesse (young) and this elderly janitor, whom he knows perfectly inside; Jesse's narrative control in the plot in front of a Lucy who confronts it in a complete plane of uncertainty; the recurrence and presence of "Oklahoma!" that Jesse likes so much; the real story that she tells to an old Jesse, about a boyfriend who wasn't even her boyfriend and was nothing more than a rare that in a bar a long time ago didn't take his eyes of her, and who did not see again.
It is positive to approach cinema incisively and impartially, with an aesthetic and intellectual approach but without determining judgments, and that is why I ask who (although I doubt that there really is anyone) to read what I wrote, not to take it for granted or give it a truly restrictive quality, but take it as a simple hand to a reading that Kaufman proposed for his attempt.
Rate: 9+/10.
The Wire: Soft Eyes (2006)
This is The Wire
I have no close memory -and certainly not from this year (2019)- of experiencing a constant feeling of admiration as the minutes go by on a screen, of knowing that you are facing a work that simply corresponds to another order of quality. The narrative level that The Wire executes is exceptional; It has an epic volume, it is a forest of realities converging in the total circumstance: life in Baltimore, the life of all. Striving to be substantially tangible, The Wire develops with dazzling caution, not afraid to grow too big and push everything too high, but instead makes it its attempt. Life on this trivial planet is necessarily complex and diverse to make us unaware of it; the realities are so many that whoever is not pushed by his own circumstance will be in an inevitable ignorance of the real human struggle. The Wire features everyday cards in an apparently random episode to play the hand and synthesize the plot two seasons later; The Wire shows you a man constantly wanting to redeem himself and failing, taking minute steps in the passage of the days, weeks, months, stumbling and turning four steps back, suffering from being unable to be more, and returning not much beyond where he ever managed to get in Four seasons, to teach you that this is how also redemption looks, that this is a story of a man who seeks to grow: that this is Bubbles. His arc is simply moving, admirable; it is the fight of man.
How a daily eventuality causes the concretion of a whole political plot; how a negligent former detective and a former drug addict cross their redemption in a school, now as a teacher and a tutor; how a letter waits patiently for stations to enter the game, how the background of an old and forgotten friend McNulty feels so organic and plausible, how death and crime and drug trafficking and corruption and kindness and empathy and indifference and love are still truly present, making everything significant to the extent that those who live want to be. It's like this, life is like that, not big closing acts, not dramatic twists, not total answers; life is all the big and small Baltimore stories, life is everyone's constant trivial battle: life is The Wire. That is the premise that at this point I can not deny myself to confirm, that since the end of season three I began to suspect as indisputable: The Wire is the best television series ever made. The Wire is the cuspid of audiovisual narrative, yesterday and today.
Rate: 10/10.
Mozart in the Jungle (2014)
Turn up
There are insurmountable and consistently bad jobs, there are unquestionably and consistently good jobs, there are jobs that constantly find and lose (mediocre) ... But the tonic of recent years has been notably marked by catastrophic falls, by TV shows that propose an extraordinary start and end in narrative misery: that comes from this to the head "Game of Thrones" has already become a norm. However, to get a little closer to the genre here in question it would be fairer to name Arrested Development, a landslide from the top of the Everest.
With Arrested Development reassuring we could say that it is a series that presents an remarkable first three seasons to gradually fall into a disaster in the following, and this would be the exact example of the opposite of Mozart in the jungle.
When I saw the first chapter I remember bringing my hand to my forehead a couple of times in the very first minutes, which were proceeded by an already expected factory cliché of this type of comedies. I thought about abandoning it to the second chapter, but for some reason, maybe the pillar that music represents in my life or maybe the suspicion or intuition that the show could eventually grow, I decided to continue watching it, to witness quality promotion rarely experienced. Mozart in the jungle is a series that, as it progresses chronologically, does so in all aspects, in the intellectual, aesthetic, narrative, theoretical, scenic; It is a series that grows to the end (just note the performances of the "musicians", those who no longer shouted to look the other way to a musician viewer). Although it saddens me to learn that there will not be a fifth season, because the market sends something else and that is the world we have today, I am delighted to find something that goes back to the norm of the current light television comedies, which dares to grow and beats an unbearably cheesy and simple start.
Rate: 8/10
PD:By the way, I think it is inevitable to end up being a fan of Gael García Bernal after seeing Mozart in the jungle. What a way to laugh with Rodrigo.
Succession: This Is Not for Tears (2019)
And among all the garbage, a succession for the greatest works of television narrative
In an era irrechazably drowned in noise, grease and stupidity, in which the reduced attempts predominate, of less intellectual scope and gross quantitative reach, masterfully culminates with the head upwards a series that is of an overwhelming ambition and, what is better, it does it just for now. When the most vehement and unconditional followers asked to the most reasonable, in relation to the disastrous final of Game of Thrones the first half of the present year, "and what would be a good dramatic arc?"; the answer should be, "Kendall Roy; Succession".
Here we have the unbeatable example of what a good narrative really is; one that is patient, cautious, vertiginous but controlled, one that is able to distribute and ration its events in an organic and credible way, which evolves true to what it is, without casualties pretensions or convictions with an audience with which it is not interested.
Without neglecting the level of production, photography and camera work of this particular episode, it would be an unforgivable mistake not to mention that the high point of this closing of the season was the writing and interpretations. There is a kind of incomplete catharsis that achieves an even better taste for it. The circumstance has brought everyone to be who they really are, to show themselves for what they are; each one takes his correspond place and is determined to take it, or finally accept it. Sarah Snook, Matthew Macfadyen and Kieran Culkin solidly portray what for all of them, in their particular situations, is the irrevocable confrontation of reality, and the undeniable personal truth. But it is with the contact of father and son, of the portentous actors Jeremy Strong and Brian Cox where the chapter shines and transcends. This hour and ten minutes is something that needs to be seen and valued, recognized, because when talking about The Sopranos or The Wire, Breaking Bad or True Detective (S1), it is what is usually said, and it is the place to which it belongs the ascending Succession.
Total Score: 10/10.
Anthony Jeselnik: Fire in the Maternity Ward (2019)
Disappointingly repetitive and predictable
Basically, the same reduced mechanics for a little over an hour. Personally, I expect a little more from a comedian; I wish the problem was to have found it offensive for free (which it is not, by the way), but unfortunately it is only that it is repetitively predictable to the boredom. That is, and having received the same as in previous disappointing impressions, he is definitely a minor comedian, not from the league of those who can really elaborate irony and disruption (not from the Chappelle, C.K., Bur or Gervais league).
Fleabag (2016)
An enjoyable surprise
I must confess that I came to this show with a definite skepticism, with a feeling and prejudice that it was possibly a good series, but that in large part it took wholesale prizes to be a work born and raised by a lively young woman; and then I must accept that I was absolutely wrong.
I think that for quite some time I did not laugh consciously that it was not a free, empty and superficial laugh, but that it responded to an approach that dizzyingly, frantically managed to really speak and transmit something, an undeniable substance, surprisingly, without any tedium. It's fun, it's friendly deep, it's captivating. Its creator and protagonist, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, refreshes and enchants with her accelerated and intelligent rhythm, she is an uncontrollably talented artist, as is all the recognition that has been taken: an incontrovertibly good series from the hand of an actress and writer incontrovertibly remarkable.
Something very valuable and that is necessary to mention, is that, as few good things, it has a constant rise in quality; his second season does nothing but continue climbing, with an incorporation to the plot that is perfectly organic and dazzling, a character that seems to have been hanging around his moment since the first chapter of the series. And finally, although I would love to see a third season, I must say that I absolutely agree with its creator and protagonist: this final is the perfect ending.
Total score: 8.5/10
Undone: The Crash (2019)
23 minutes of total condensation
There is a mixture of narrative, cinematographic, scenic elements, so in theoretical and aesthetic versatility, that is indisputably recognizable in the proposal that they deliver from the hand of this protagonist with existential problems and vertiginously disinterested act. Rosa Salazar is undeniably a pleasure to see interpreting on the screen; there is a genuineness and talent that is always deeply grateful for whoever sees it: two adjectives to which few actresses one could apply in the more BIG group of names in the industry, of which she is already starting to be a part. The particular technical and artistic end fit the script in an complete organic way, so that Hulsing and Bob-Waksberg do nothing but continue their good walk in a meeting that is a definite success. The show wants to talk and ask the viewer important things, but without this involving a tedium; that is, doing it simply, effectively. And it succeeds. In 23 minutes it is able to condense everything that the attempt is in itself; true and captivating, closing with the final push that leaves the viewer in the pool of this "search" entitled "Undone".
Unbelievable (2019)
A correct portrait
Under a fundamentally conventional structure, aided and orchestrated of the narrative tools of the current manual of the audiovisual fiction scene, and especially of the criminal, it portrays in a simple and effective way the distances between the judicial system and true justice.
Although at times they abuse or make certain narrative clichés very evident, the main purpose is achieved: to bring and transport the viewer to the experience of a young victim who is sexually abused and, at the expense of an exhausted system and structures, ends up being beaten twice.
The show itself does not propose too much at the level of cinematography or screenplay, and even if it's necessary to highlight that this is based on a work that portrays real events (and being timely, it would be unfair not to point out that), it does not expose enough merits that make it more than the massage, the denunciation, that justify eight redundantly calm chapters; that is to say, that the series, properly as audiovisual narrative work, cannot be more than its circumstance. What would not be entirely bad at any rate, since towards the end it really manages to genuinely transmit the catharsis of the police duo and, above all, a young woman who is finally heard and led by them to a little of light in her life.
Total score: 7.6/10