012. Vozvrashcheniye/The Return (Russia - 2003)

A film about family disintegration is intense enough. The Return has a superb framing - and photography in general -, and an appeal for many audiences, I suppose. What the director realised is that he could utilise this complex nucleus of three characters (the father and the 2 sons) and make it into a bubble about to burst; three opposite personalities and often collide and expose common dilemmas of family life. Ivan never abandons his pride and infantile anger, whereas Andrei carries a submissive and less conflictive demeanour, and the father tries to rule over them both, ultimately regretting being a careful father figure. Too late, as cruel films often portray. Good film, if one does not quite consider the bizarre actings in the climatic scenes.

Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev.

Score:
Cinematography: 9.5

Acting: 7.5
Editing: 8.5
Sound: 7.5
Text: 8.5

Average score: 8.3

011. Eu Não Quero Voltar Sozinho/I don't Want to Come Back Alone (Brazil - 2010)

Short, simple film with an interesting and creative premise. A blind boy always goes back home from school with the help from a close female friend. Then he gradually discovers that he's falling in love for another boy, a new student named Gabriel. A nice thematic construction, that sometimes lacks acting that is up to the same level (the young actors still carry that bland acting style that converges with Brazilian TV, so hard to detach from since it's a solid dimension of the country's artistic repertoire). Other than that, nice presentation progression and great production level.

Director: Daniel Ribeiro.

Score:
Cinematography: 7.0
Acting: 6.0
Editing: 8.0
Sound: 7.5
Text: 6.0

Average score: 6.9

010. Precious (United States - 2009)

"In New York City's Harlem circa 1987, an overweight, abused, illiterate teen who is pregnant with her second child is invited to enroll in an alternative school in hopes that her life can head in a new direction." I found this summary on IMDb, and there's no better way to sum up what Precious is in a few words. A stunning dramatic experience, the struggles of a bottom-of-the-social-beauty-patterns girl (played by Gabourey Sibide) who also lives with the disgrace of a neglectful and selfish mother and the burden of early-age pregnancy caused by being raped by her own father. It's hard to present a worse urban background than that. The film surprises in that it does not seek to show a happy ending, but to affect the viewer's notion of comfort and adversity. I was deeply sunk into a sea of a sincere portray of an extremely indigent and violent family nucleus in the worst-case scenario of living in Harlem, NYC. Precious can shock for good.

Director: Lee Daniels.

Score:
Cinematography: 8.5
Acting: 9.0
Editing: 8.0
Sound: 7.5
Text: 8.5

Average score: 8.3

009. I'm not there (United States - 2007)

On Saturday, while at my cousin Fellype's house, I watched I'm not there. Now, that's a unique experience in itself, a film that disembowels the most abstract aspects of Bob Dylan's career, sorting out all his memorable moments in life in six different personas throughout the film (played by Ben Whishaw, Marcus Carl Franklin, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Cate Blanchett and Richard Gere, in order of appearance). I never expected to watch a biographical film like that. However, I'm not sure I grabbed every meaningful instance the film had to offer, so I finished it quite confused. I was certain that it had been a great cinematographically sensorial experience, but had little to comment on for my knowledge on Dylan's life is very short. Only the temporal and graphical continuation can be deceiving sometimes, and to me, that was a big con for I'm not there. Besides, the long length of it can wear one out, but just if you're not delved into the magnificent photography and the emblematic dialogues. Great film.

Director: Todd Haynes.

Score
Cinematography: 9.0
Acting: 9.0
Editing: 6.5
Sound: 8.5
Text (amazing one, but considering the viewer has got a previous - and wide - knowledge on Dylan's life) : 8.0

Average score: 8.4

008. Kutoja/The Last Knit (Finland - 2005)

A short-length animation telling the story of a woman who can never stop knitting. She knits until her scarf starts hanging from a cliff, becoming heavier and heavier and dragging her down with it; even then, she doesn't stop. Simple enough concept, but quite nicely put in the animation. It's all about obsession, how some people can't stop pursuing something even if something vital to them is in jeopardy. The setting around her is uninteresting and bland, to say the least, following the simplicity of the film to the letter (perhaps due to a possible low budget the team had to make the animation). All in all, nice piece of story.

Director: Laura Neuvonen.

Score:
Cinematography: 4.5

Acting (there is almost none, apart from the protagonist's little reactions): 4.0

Editing: 7.0
Sound: 6.5
Text (there is none, so it does not enter this evaluation)

Average Score: 5.5

007. Fargo (United States - 1996)

"A homespun murder story." Nice little film. It portrays a bizarre plot of a fictional series of murders that the Coen brothers pulled out of different real-life incidents in 1987 in North Dakota and Minnesota. A husband that is greedy enough to plan a fake kidnapping of his wife by hiring two bandits who ultimately destroy his life by killing his wealthy father-in-law, a policeman, two citizens and his wife (sorry for the spoiler, lads and lasses). The drama is full of Midwest hillbilly-themed humour and odd elements of detective narrative (the actress Frances McDormand plays a light-spirited police officer who's in charge of the investigation, and yanked an Oscar for Best Actress out of it). Good one for the Coen bros. I liked it quite a lot.

Director: Joel Coen.

Score

Cinematography: 8.0

Acting: 8.5

Editing: 8.0

Sound: 7.5

Text: 8.5

Average Score: 8.1

006. Black Swan (United States - 2011)

A succession of dramas in the life of a compulsively perfectionist ballerina. Nina lives the dream of being the Swan Queen of the famous Tchaikovskiy's ballet piece, and the road to it is hurtful, full of identity and sexual conflicts. Aronofsky directs a beautiful filmic fiction on the White Swan/Black Swan duality of the piece, and proposes the artist's perspective on the theme (in this case, the ballerina's). The sensorial doubt between reality and Nina's deliria is sometimes bothersome, but I found it to be part of the film's cathartic process. Black Swan, with the geniuses of acting such as Portman and Cassel, and a compelling narrative, is a wonderful film.

Director: Darren Aronofsky.

Score
Cinematography: 8.5
Acting: 9.0
Editing: 8.5
Sound: 8.5
Text: 9.0

Average score: 8.7

005. Welcome to the Dollhouse (United States - 1995)

Now this is an odd one. The protagonist, with whom we sympathise and whom we hate at the same time, suffers from bullying at school and bullies at home, as a way of externalising her frustrations and at once feel like a real person after the humiliations from her classmates. A film of American monsters from the 90s, and satirising the teenage film culture of the 80s/90s, Welcome to the Dollhouse surprised me with its concept, despite its all too trivial dialogue, generally bad acting, and sometimes confusing graphical shot relation.

Director: Todd Solondz.

Score

Cinematography: 7.0

Acting: 6.0

Editing: 5.5

Sound: 5.5

Text: 6.0

Average score: 6.0

004. Carnage (International co-production - 2011)

Poor acting. Poor acting. Poor motives. Poor acting. Poor linearity. That's all I can think now.

Right after Mammuth, we started watching Carnage, which is a 2011 adaptation of the 2006 Yasmina Reza's praised play God of Carnage. I've never watched another rendition of the story, but this one is already silly in itself. It just doesn't convince me. And if there is something I have got to be when I'm watching a film, is convinced. Polanski failed on this one.
I do believe such trivial narrative can be interesting, and one setting only is a great idea (Sunset Limited is one of my all-time favourites), it reverberates the theatre aura. But the choice of actors, of editing, and of the use of the house... tsc, just not right there. It might be something personal, I don't know... I hate Foster's way of acting, and I quite disliked Winslet's amateurish overreactions here. Reilly is not shining either, and I miss the touch and bright of Waltz.
The rhythmic crescendo is poor, the reasons for the such a crescendo are just not convincing. Sorry, folks, just not convincing.
Pros? The dialogue, I'll give it to them.

Director: Roman Polanski.

Score
Cinematography: 7.0
Acting: 5.5
Editing: 6.0
Sound: 7.0
Text: 8.0

Average Score: 6.7

003. Mary and Max (Australia - 2009)

On the 12h, me and Jéssica watched this beautiful animation. Mary and Max is a stop-motion film with clay figures that tells the story of a young and lonely girl from Australia and her 41 year-old pen friend from New York as they start writing about the former's doubts about life. It's a film that depicts the innonence of a young girl who is bullied in school and grows to like her only friend, a socially bothered man that suffers from Asperger and eating compulsion from the other side of the world. They support each other in their sociological and psychological conundrums. The writing is beautiful, an honest way of communicating to the viewer that is unusual for relatively big-budget animations such as this one. But so are its tragic happenings throughout the story.

Director: Adam Eliot.

Score
Cinematography: 8.5
Voice acting: 9.0
Editing: 8.0
Sound: 7.5
Text: 9.0

Average Score: 8.4

002. Mammuth (France - 2010)

Not sure what I felt when I watched Mammuth. It was also on the 11th, right after Summer Wars. From a relatively flamboyant filmic experience (typical of animes) to an apathetic, dull session of this French drama. Don't get me wrong, this is not necessarily bad. I quite like apathetic, dull narratives. Serge Pilardosse is a misanthrope that will win one's heart either by his honesty or his stupidity as he sets out on a French motorcycle quest in search for documents needed for him to be entitled to a retirement pension.
How can't one love Depardieu's acting? It's great here too, as usual.
However, the film has got plenty of cons, beginning with the confusing camera movement and cuts. Editing here is an enigma, floating from sequence to sequence without so much as a random blink. Dialogues are not special, but the general idea of the narrative is quite pleasing and dramatic. A subtle schizophrenia, dream-like existence, and the suffocating reality of Serge. I liked it.

Directors: Benoît Delépine & Gustave de Kervern.

Score (all the categories are score out of 10)
Cinematography: 8.0
Acting: 8.5
Editing: 5.5
Sound: 5.5
Text: 7.5

Average Score: 7.0

001. Summer Wars (Japan - 2009)

Same director as Digimon. I've come a long way. Not exactly into animes or anime-style motion pictures (their melodrama and thematic stalling gets on my nerves), but Jéssica convinced me that this one was good. She wasn't wrong. Summer Wars carries a fairly creative idea for a theme - the world of the social networks and their symbiosis with life itself -, and with a careless although cunning drop of naiveté, the film presents us with chaotic climax enhanced by conflictive and selfish characters. 

Nice art, flat dialogues, bad ending.

Director: Mamoru Hosoda (細田 守).

Score (all the categories are score out of 10)
Cinematography: 7.5
Acting (in this case, voice acting): 6.0 
Editing: 8.0
Sound: 7.5
Text: 6.5

Average Score: 7.1


P.S.: Watched on the 11th, just now reviewing. Oh, well...

01/11 to 01/11 - Prelude

The name is George. Born 1987. Brazilian. Love for film.

My story with cinema is no different from the man on the street. Grew up watching them in a linear proportion that always accompanied my age and maturity, to a certain extent. Cartoons and Disney classics as a child, action films and blockbusters as a teenager, and all sorts of films as an early adult to this day.

Favourite genre for films? Heh, the ones that have got no genre. Those are the ones that transcend the taste discussion more often than not.

Finished undergraduation (in English languange and literature) in 2010, finished MA in Literary and Film Studies last year, starting my Doctorate in the same area in 2014. Can't say that I'm not passionate for the thing for no reason.

However, something here needs a reason. The begetting of this blog. Talking to my girlfriend two nights ago while watching some films, I realised that watching the same number of films as the days of a year would be a great idea to get my - our - knowledge catalog vaster. She agreed, and we got all the hype that always comes out of a fresh idea for creative writing, thinking, whatnot. It was only a sketch of an idea, really. As we woke up, during a beautiful brunch she had made us, I had the idea of setting up yet another blog for myself. Soup, sandwiches, orange juice and Earl Grey can make one get insights, after all.

Starting another blog... that's a tough endeavour, considering the handful of them I've left behind thus far. I like to believe this one is for good.

So, watching 365 films in the timespan of 11 Jan 2014 to 11 Jan 2015. That's my goal. And criticise them in a brief paragraph. And give them marks regarding basic aspects of filmmaking/organisation.
I'll finally pay my respects to my repertoire of films watched to this day and start a casual blog-style catalog of my thoughts on some of them. I can't wait.

This shall also shorten my "Bloody hell, I've never watched that film that everybody's watched, even though I'm a film student, in theory!" list.

Well, I believe that's all there is to it for now. I'll start writing critiques up later today. It's 04:27 AM and I've gotta have some respect for my own sleep before I can have respect for the film medium.

Good night, and good luck (to me and Jéssica).


P.S.: The title of the blog (more specifically, the word Jēran) comes from the Old Germanic root for the word Year. No, not original, not neat, I know. I was simply looking for an adequate name for the project. :-)