Hercules (2014)

Directed by: Brett Rattner
Country: USA

Movie Review: “Hercules” was never substantial enough with its Greek mythological story. Filmmaker Brett Ratner (“Rush Hour”, “The Red Dragon”, “X-Men: The Last Stand”), whose action executions are commonly showy and made to impress the eye, forgot once again to create an intriguing mood, while the screenwriters should have added some smartness to increase the viewers’ interest. There’s nothing different here from the usual approach adopted for this kind of adventure. I’ve seen this so many times before that my indifference along the way increased substantially as the film approaches to its farcical end. Half human, half God, Hercules, son of Zeus, rushes to aid the king of Thrace and his daughter, in a battle against the forces of evil commanded by Rhesus. Reuniting his group of mercenaries, which includes among others, his storyteller nephew Iolaus, a childhood friend Autolycus who is an expert in knife-throwing, and the agile archer Atalanta, we are presented with interminable body combats, furious roars, and a sense of humor that feels more stupid than witty. Dwayne Johnson, despite the enviable muscles, seemed stuck in the disorganized, endless battles. With so much chaos and disorder and a plot that doesn’t help, “Hercules” ended up being an inefficient blockbuster, becoming one of this year’s most unexciting, staged, and inarticulate exercise on the genre. Maybe Ratner thinks his filmmaking style is much spectacular but the whole thing is just a huge fakeness, completely unable to cause positive reactions.

Read More

Pod Mocnym Aniolem (2014)

Directed by: Wojciech Smarzowski
Country: Poland

Movie Review: The films from Polish filmmaker Wojciech Smarzowski are always interesting to follow, no matter what theme he chooses – whether the dark crime thriller of “The Dark House”, the humorous drama of “The Wedding”, the coldness of war in “Rose”, or the severe accusations of corruption and power abuse made by Polish police in “Traffic Department” – each of them had something valuable to say in its harshness and objective rawness. “Pod Mocnym Aniolem” (translated “The Mighty Angel”) is another powerful drama focused on alcoholism and based on Jerzy Pilch’s successful fourth novel with the same title. The film follows Jerzy (Robert Wieckiewicz), an intelligent and talented writer who can’t keep off from the bottles of vodka, even doing frequent treatments in a rehabilitation house and attending group sessions. Evincing a corrosive sense of humor, his denial takes him to a cynicism and to a spiral of degradation that not even the woman of his life is capable to bear. He wanders and writes in a sort of limbo state where reality and imagination interweave. We are taken through the stories told by other alcoholics, but also to Jerzy’s memories of his drunken father. Horrible images haunt us, depicting embarrassing situations, deliriums, vomiting, and crazy hangovers. It’s a sad film, about suffering, about loss, about fate… Its finale is simply devastating, even cruel. I was touched in two ways – one given the last hope sought by Jerzy, and the other through the creepy loneliness that can ruin everything again. Although with a slow-burning start, “Pod Mocnym Aniolem” won me over.

Read More

The Calling (2014)

Directed by: Jason Stone
Country: USA

Movie Review: Debutant South African film director, Jason Stone, reunites an encouraging cast for its dark thriller, “The Calling”, based on Inger Ash Wolf’s novel of the same name, and adapted to the screen by Scott Abramovitch. Names as Susan Sarandon, Christopher Heyerdahl, Ellen Burstyn, Topher Grace, and Donald Sutherland, can be a valid motive to spike our curiosity for the film, which in the end delivered a mix of satisfaction and frustration. A mysterious serial killer (Heyerdahl) chooses the quiet Canadian town of Port Dundas to murder a devoted catholic woman. He based himself on a catholic prayer, believing that a man can be resurrected after sacrifice twelve people. The case will be handled, with authorization or not, by the detective Hazel Micallef (Sarandon), an addicted on alcohol and painkillers, who will have the help of a rookie cop (Grace) recently transferred from Toronto. Sarandon conveyed authenticity in her performance, sometimes very degrading but very human too. Her determination to unveil the mystery and solve the case worked almost like a cleansing for her stained past. Despite of the thrills created, I got the sensation that the film stepped into something already seen, while some of the characters should have been better explored and the relationships among them better defined. Notwithstanding, the grey atmosphere of the town and the mix of grief, religious connotations, and occasionally dark humor, provide a fair watching. The film is coming to New York theaters on August 29th.

Read More

Viola (2012)

Directed by: Matias Piñeiro
Country: Argentina / USA

Movie Review: Filmmaker Matias Piñeiro, considered one of the new voices of Argentinean cinema, brings us a philosophical drama about relationships that was a bit hard to digest. A group of young actresses from Buenos Aires discuss love and life, while rehearsing for William Shakespeare’s play “Twelfth Night”. In a parallel story (not without a point of intersection), a young woman pedals through the city, delivering her boyfriend’s original music in the form of CD. Despite its 63 minutes, I found very difficult to penetrate in the spirit of "Viola", and be attentive to the torrent of words thrown out by its characters. It was constructed with mild tones, cyclic speech lines, and quiet conversations, blending quite well real-life and theater without making me entirely connect with its insinuating plot. In this ode to art, Piñeiro often seeks intimacy using multiple close-ups and gracious camera movements, and in several occasions the film even gave some indications, whether through images or speeches, that it could change into something more palpable or efficient, but “Viola” keeps riding freely in its own web of encounters and dialogues that felt more hollow than conclusive. If you like challenging movies with intellectual pretensions, maybe you’ll be extremely happy with this one. I like them myself, but this one in particular was unable to keep me thinking about it. Let’s wait for the next move of the emerging director/screenwriter Matias Piñeiro who showed potential to do more and better.

Read More

A Most Wanted Man (2014)

Directed by: Anton Corbijn
Country: USA / others

Movie Review: Based on John Le Carré’s bestselling novel, the post-9/11 espionage thriller, “A Most Wanted Man”, didn’t have the same good effect on me as “Control” or “The American”, the two previous successful features from the Dutch filmmaker Anton Corbijn. We have to give it some credit, since tension moments were created without any action, but the real motive to see this film is Philip Seymour Hoffman, a hugely talented actor who says here his definitive goodbye. He plays Gunther Bachmann, a German spy operating in Hamburg, whose mission is to reach terrorism suspects using credible Islamic information sources. When the tortured Issa Karpov, a half-Chechen half-Russian man, arrives illegally in Hamburg to claim an inheritance, he sees him not as a threat but as a way to lay hands on Dr. Faisal Abdullah, an old suspect of financing terrorist groups. The task, carried by Bachmann’s team with the help of CIA, is difficult and will need patience since Karpov’s lawyer, the soft and sensitive Annabel Richter, along with the banker Tommy Brue, have to be convinced to cooperate in the operation. In spite of never losing balance or direction, the outcome was not entirely surprising, probably due to premature insinuations of some crucial characters’ posture. The absence of action and thrills might be a disillusion for the ones looking for agitation, while dramatically the story never pushed us into something stable. “A Most Wanted Man” will mostly appeal to enthusiasts of political movies characterized by strategy and accentuated verbal communication.

Read More

The Signal (2014)

Directed by: William Eubank
Country: USA

Movie Review: “The Signal” is the sophomore feature film from the cinematographer-turned-director, William Eubank, grounded on sci-fi genre, just as his first film from three years ago, “Love”. This time, adopting more thrilling tones, the story focuses on three MIT students, Nick (Brenton Thwaites), Jonah (Beau Knapp) and Haley (Olivia Cooke) who went on a trip to California, deciding to tracking down a hacker known by the name of ‘Nomad’. At night, while entering in a secluded house in Nevada, the two boys pass out after hearing the screams of Haley who was dragged in the air by a strange unknown force. The three of them wake up in a super equipped facility where Dr. William Davon (Laurence Fishburn), protected by his Hazmat suit, is running tests on them, believing they were contaminated by an EBE – extraterrestrial biological entity. Indeed, Eubanks surely knew what he wanted in visual terms and the cinematographer, David Lanzenberg, corresponded in the best way. There are scenes that are memorable but in its will to impress through minimal and predominantly whitish sets, words, and sounds, the mystery itself never enraptured me, even with the surprises reserved by the plot. Its ambiance alternates between static scenes frequently adorned by the mechanical voice of Laurence Fishburn, or the delirious, almost uncontrollable energy of Nick. This human integration with alien technology was a decent one but didn’t gain me as a follower of its far-fetched incursions. Just for sci-fi enthusiasts.

Read More

Fading Gigolo (2013)

Directed by: John Turturro
Country: USA

Movie Review: “Fading Gigolo” could be a Woody Allen’s romantic comedy but it’s not. It was written and directed by John Turturro, adopting the same Allen’s posture – a nice jazzy score, some effective jokes about Jews, and a romantic story involving a middle-aged gigolo, which became the most uninteresting aspect. The film opens with Murray (Woody Allen), a broke bookshop owner, telling his friend Fioravante (Turturro) that Dr. Parker (Sharon Stone), a rich dermatologist, asked him if he knew a man interested in a ménage a trois. With Fioravante in mind, he said yes but added that the price would be a thousand dollars. Reluctant at first, Fioravante finally accepts the challenge, becoming a gigolo and paying the appropriate commission to Murray, assumedly his new pimp. The scheme falls out of the routine when Murray convinces a young Jewish widow and mother of six kids, Avigal (Vanessa Paradis), to get out of her loneliness and find human contact. The best situations, some of them hilarious, are those that had nothing to do with the central story. I’m remembering when Murray arranges a baseball game for the kids in Brooklyn – African-American (the children of the woman he lives with) against the Jews (Avigal’s kids), or when he is forced to go to a Jewish court. With a competent direction and the lightness commonly associated to the genre, “Fading Gigolo” had its really funny moments but was incapable to show any chemistry with its ‘fading’ love story. Moreover, Turturro should find his own voice since the mood adopted, together with Woody Allen’s presence, bring to our mind the films of the latter.

Read More