048. Le Moine / The Monk (France - 2011)

Dominik Moll recreates one of the most famous Gothic tales on film. And what a surprisingly pleasant rendition Le Moine was, from the spectacular acting of Cassel and Mouchet to the use of framing and clever editing in order to create an atmosphere of clerical dissolution. Ambrosio is an icon of religious genius being the gateway to ultimate sin and rupture with the Christian institution. A film well constructed in terms of setting and authenticity, it tells the story of a Spanish context in French, a genuinely Gothic modus operandi (Gothic fiction usually tells stories set in foreign lands, in different territories and mentalities). The story of incest and imminent doom gives way to beautiful photography and sound, and odd montage construction in scenes that depict dreamy situations. Great rendition of Matthew Lewis' text.

Director: Dominik Moll.

Score
Cinematography: 8.5
Acting: 8.5
Editing: 8.0
Sound: 8.0
Text: 7.5
Concept: 7.5
Premise Execution: 8.0

Average Score: 8.0

044. Gravity (United States - 2013)

What the human mind did here was thinking of a sadistic, breathtaking narrative and filling it with so many minor problems that it became a huge, problematic work of art. Gravity deals with themes such as suffocation, solitude and despair, cosmic fear (something by which I'm fascinated), extreme survival, desperate love, etc. The concept had everything to turn into a perfect film. But it didn't. The film is full of problems, beginning with the little annoying details of acting: the repetitiveness of Bullock's reactions to her predicaments, something which is almost always followed by gasps and sobs but without any facial reconcilement. She's just too expressionless to delve into the character's drama, the unspeakable horror of being left alone in the space, stranded in the endlessness and blackness of the universe outside our tiny planet. What a superb idea, I think to myself every time I remember it. The film feels like it's supposed to be watched on a 3D version, and I've heard many people claiming that; but then, the film is not really reliable in quality if it depends on such a specific mode of reproduction to be considered actually immersive as it was supposed to be naturally. The negative Deus Ex Machinae of the film were always facepalm generators in my mind, as I saw flying debris from the Russian accident passing through at a convenient time of the story. Anyway, the film's plotline is very annoying and artificial, the acting is mediocre at best, horribly simplistic script, and the sound effects are completely predictable in their attempt to raise suspense. One of the best ideas for a story ever made in cinema, nice POV shots, and great photography, but poor overall construction. An overrated film that is full of little problems. A shame, really, considering that it could've well being one of the best films of all time.

Director: Alfonso Cuarón.

Score
Cinematography: 8.5

Acting: 6.0

Editing: 7.5
Sound: 8.0
Text: 6.0
Concept: 10.0
Premise Execution: 7.5

Average Score: 7.6

043. Dallas Buyers Club (United States - 2013)

Struggle and indignation are the two words that prevail in this film. The struggle of a man who finds out about a gruesome fact of having contracted AIDS. Ron Woodroof is portrayed as being extremely homophobic and having to cope with the disease that was then viewed as a homosexual issue. Woodroof starts to search for a better way to live with the virus without having to use the highly toxic AZT, a primary drug tested back then to fight the disease. He finds alternative, more useful drugs in his search, but all of them are prohibited for selling by the American Food and Drugs Administration. It exposes the bigotry of the pharmaceutical in its essence. Ron finds his way round it though. He founds the Dallas Buyers Club to enrol members that wish to get these new drugs to help them fight their sad condition. A touching film, that while staying away from the conventional mode of execution tied to needless melodramatic sequences, typical of films about terminal diseases, keeps the despair of the characters well visible, especially through the amazing performances of both Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey, which earned them Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor, respectively. A no-nonsense drama of an abyssal reality for many people.

Director: Jean-Marc Vallée.

Score
Cinematography: 8.0

Acting: 9.5
Editing: 8.5
Sound: 8.0
Text: 9.0
Concept: 8.0
Premise Execution: 9.5

Average Score: 8.6

042. Philomena (United Kingdom - 2013)

Simple film. A bit too simple. A biographical piece about a mother who's in a search for her son, taken from her 50 years before, when she was in a convent. She now asks a man (Martin Sixsmith, played by Steve Coogan, the beloved Alan Partridge) to write a book on her life, and what was just sessions of storytelling becomes a hunt for a long-lost son. Full of emotional clichés, the film didn't quite convince me, although it's well polished and with good enough performances from the actors. Very average film, about a theme that could also be considered average. Another one nominated for Best Film last Sunday, which I don't quite know why was there, if I'm being honest.

Director: Stephen Frears.

Score
Cinematography: 8.0
Acting: 8.5
Editing: 8.0
Sound: 7.5
Text: 7.5
Concept: 7.0
Premise Execution: 7.5


Average Score: 7.7

041. 12 Years a Slave (United Kingdom - 2013)

I was sobbing, I was speechless after we were done. This must be the most moving and socially relevant film made in the mainstream scene in the last five years or so. The conscience of human suffering that it awakens is remarkable. A truly moving experience, and a fine piece of art.

The beginning is just textbook editing all the way. We're showed the former situation of Solomon Northup's life before the film moves on to how he was kidnapped and sold to slavers. A black free man returned to his wretched past. The carnage of slavery in the mid-nineteenth century was still strong, unabating, and going southward. Lupita Nyong'o does an amazing job as Patsy (which earned her an Academy Award for Supporting Actress), and both Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Fassbender do a superb job in the protagonist-antagonist layer of the film. The storytelling is pristine, and no plot holes at all are left behind. The calm, thought provoking cinematography is also perfect.

12 Years a Slave is a film that doesn't come about too often. It's a story not only to be moved by, but also to reflect upon. The historical suffering of people can always be revisited by art; in fact, it must. Cinema serves well as a reminder of how society can be misled by dangerous conveniences and wrong perspectives. This film is an aesthetic portrait of that. 

Director: Steve McQueen

Score 
Cinematography: 9.5
Acting: 9.5
Editing: 9.0
Sound: 8.5
Text: 8.5
Concept: 8.5
Premise Execution: 9.5

Average Score: 9.0

040. Her (United States - 2013)

Okay, with the commotion of the 86th Academy Awards gone, we can look at some of the films that were part of the celebration. Just moments before the event, me and Jéssica could watch two fine motion pictures: Her and 12 Years a Slave. Let's look at them, one at a time.

Her is a truly innovative concept for a film. A very nice experience, all in all. It received an Oscar for Best Writing - Original Screenplay. No wonder. A unique story with little touches of other romantic concepts, but proposing something post-modern and akin to our reality. Spike Jonze proposes a future world in which the protagonist Theodore (played by the talented Joaquin Phoenix), a letter composer - job unique to the film -, finds himself trapped in the mourning of a previous relationship that didn't quite work out. After buying his copy of a brand new OS that has its own Artificial Intelligence like none before seen, he starts interacting with it; well, with her. The OS's name is Samantha, and after some icebreaker conversations, both of them get more and more connected, until Theodore finds himself in love with the AI of his system. The intricacies of love, possession, companionship, issues of body, identity and representations of human personalities are excellent and like no other that I've seen. The character construction in the film is very realistic, each one with highly believable love dilemmas and conflicts. The ending is not so impressive, but it's always goo to acknowledge a well-written piece of screenplay. Well done.

Director: Spike Jonze.

Score
Cinematography: 8.5

Acting: 8.5
Editing: 9.0
Sound: 8.0
Text: 9.0
Concept: 9.5
Premise Execution: 8.5

Average Score: 8.7

037. Christopher and his Kind (United Kingdom - 2011)

This is a BBC television film. And there's not much to expect, especially while watching through the first sequences. It's a story with an interesting concept and background: the story of men who went to Berlin in the interbellum period to seek pleasure with other men, and all the turmoil that befalls them with the rise of the Nazists. Promising for a dramatic story in film. The problem is the poor cast, and poor direction of acting. When I say poor, I mean plainly mediocre. Nothing special, and it lowers the level of the storytelling. The protagonist, Christopher Isherwood is played by a forcefully posh-accented Englishman (the famous Eleventh Doctor from Doctor Who, Matt Smith), is uninteresting and completely passive in the role of being a protagonist, merely watching the story go by him, and not in the good, narrative-friendly sense. No, it'd be perfect that way. It's in the poor, "important character that doesn't develop and drags the whole cast and story down with him" fashion. An average film with great themes at hand and a strange way of executing them.
Just to balance things out a little more: the soundtrack is excellent.

Director: Geoffrey Sax.

Score
Cinematography: 7.5
Acting: 6.5
Editing: 7.0
Sound: 8.5
Text: 8.0
Concept: 8.0
Premise Execution: 6.0

Average Score: 7.3

034. The Broken Circle Breakdown (Belgium - 2013)

A highly anticipated film, which I only came to discover from a friend's girlfriend. We watched it together last weekend (me, Jéssica and the two of them). Oh, just pointing out: the film has been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in the 86th Academy Awards which will take place this Sunday evening, if there's anyone who cares about such a thing.
I don't know if I should feel guilty for saying this, but the film didn't stick out for me at all. Certainly not deserving of the attention it's received and the status it's achieved. The pointless use of a character's trait of loving American bluegrass music served the film absolutely NO purpose. I've gotta say it. That's what bothered me the most. They could've been playing blues, salsa, polka, rock... goodness, samba for all I care; it would've had the same direction of motivations for the upper themes of the film (marriage, differences, children, religion, life and death, terminal illness, family, etc...). It doesn't make a whole lot of difference in the film, yet it plays a big part in it and permeates a big chunk of its aesthetics; they play it at the beginning, all of a sudden in sections where it doesn't belong at all, Didier brags about how "the USA are perfect and the land of freedom", they play it at their daughter's funeral... bluegrass is bloody everywhere, and it's annoying, because apart from not addressing the atmosphere and overall sentiment that the film proposes, sometimes it doesn't even sound like authentic American folk music.
Besides that, another aspect of the film that bothered me a bit was dialogues. Some of them look absolutely disconnected, incohesive, out of place... their deepest angers seem to be triggered by the most trivial events, out of the blue. It made the film look silly to me, mediocre editing - especially the confusing and foolishly bold sequences of flashbacks and flashforwards - and motivations.

Anyway, I don't want to write too much about bad things, even because the film isn't bad per se; besides, the analysis is already too long for my original blog proposal, so...
The positives of the film would be the art direction in general: most of the cinematography is beautiful, acting serves the purpose of the film - albeit sometimes silly - very well, and the ending is extremely moving.

Oh, and Flemish sounds amazing to my ears!

Director: Felix Van Groeningen

Score
Cinematography: 9.5

Acting: 8.0
Editing: 6.0
Sound: 7.5
Text: 8.0
Concept: 8.5
Premise Execution: 5.5

Average Score: 7.5

023. La Vie d'Adèle / Blue is the Warmest Colour (France - 2013)

Adèle is a girl like any other, but who has always been in some bothersome conflicts concerning her love life. As the film goes, she finds people in whom she'd be interested, but her doubts about her sexuality start tormenting her. That's before she meets Emma, a plastic artist whose blue hair possesses the main mise-en-scene element in the whole film. Not in vain, since Kechiche chooses well when to use the colour blue and what transitions it can trigger in the mood of the story. The strong scenes of love and sex between Adèle and Emma are probably the forte of the film, atmosphere-wise. Both "protagonists'" performances are great, and the drama generated by their conflicts (also caused by the ever tormenting doubt Adèle has towards her sexuality) divides the film in two major sections: the peaceful and caring living between the two of them (still when Emma has her charming blue hair) and the quarrelsome dilemmas in Adèle's life, especially when seeing her sweetheart already re-married and well-off with her art (and whose hair no longer responds to the English-language title of the film).

And the ending is superbly unconventional.

Director:  Abdellatif Kechiche.

Score
Cinematography: 8.5
Acting: 9.0
Editing: 8.5
Sound: 8.0
Text: 8.0
Concept: 7.5
Premise execution: 8.5

Average Score: 8.2

014. Hesher (United States - 2011)

Another American film that me and Jéssica watched last week. Pretty decent one. Story of a father and kid who have to go through the pain and suffering of losing a mother/wife to a car accident, and still have to cope with the presence of a rather bizarre individual that emanates anger and indifference (excellently played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Hesher shows us an interesting way of constructing a peculiar character: Hesher is the façade that expresses T. J.'s hate for losing his mother, a mirror through which the little lad sees himself and which he uses to give vent to anger. A bothersome challenge that defies the senses of order and convention. No boundaries for Hesher, and for Gordon-Levitt's performance.
Only the occasional soundtrack by Metallica sounds a bit cheesy and out of place sometimes. That put me off during some moments of the film's experience.

Director: Spencer Susser.

ScoreCinematography: 7.5

Acting: 8.5
Editing: 7.0
Sound: 7.0
Text: 7.5

Average Score: 7.5

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

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

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

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