Paul Verhoeven directing a period piece (sort of) romantic (melo)drama with all the expected level of crass, raw, provocative and vile look at the flaunt luxury around the superficial ostentatious few of the elite, nearing a well-hid pageantry of putrid moral rot spreaded by all sides of societal hierarchy.

A acidily unlaughable dark tragic-comedy played through a class struggle story about how no one gets to the top without spilling a few drops of (other people's) blood; either from violental oppression, virginal abuse, or even drinking it for "heal"... survival as a natural social 'savoir-faire'. Seeing a loss of childlike innocence journey of a young woman learning through all the wrong unflinchingly cruel ways that heading upwards the social ladder is also heading down a rabbit hole of exploit and abuse, not just from the corrupt wealth but even from her own kin!

Almost a first draft rehearsal for Showgirls just as also working as the whole plateau of themes that Verhoeven would often revisit in the future, but already covered in all his bleak fondness for debauchery and irreverent demeanor so fully charged to such an ambitious reach in its biting political spectrum about to pop out – having as its stage a country on the eve of proletarian revolution, where a young boy says he doesn't want a flag, he wants to eat; but barely ever dealt further beyound its character-centric angle. Making the film being cut too short or had the plug pulled way too early.

From the downtrodden gutter onto the idylic comfort of opulence, exchanging body and soul like the expensive stablished currency to get merealy a fraction, either through a loaf of bread, an exquisite dress, a easily tearable well-dressed lie. The genre-setting could've promissed a very Fassbinder material in its quietly mornful solemn drama of working class and female condition embracing its subjugation to despair, but Verhoeven is way angrier to fit in those theatrical parameters. Packing all the tragic sorrow but ending up taking all the pain like a normal inevitability.

Monique van de Ven is splendid and is unexplicable to me how she didn't got launched into a full out international stardom following this and Turkish Delight as Rutger Hauer, whom is also here and scene-stealery as usual even in a minor but scummy avaratious role perfectly fitted into the themes at play. In which Verhoeven stages with formal elegance that none of his American audience would ever expect he was capable off, while still shocking you in all the right ways!

Kind of a black sheep within the different contexts in which they fit this movie in. Be it the probably proven rumors that Preminger tormented the poor young newcomer Jean Seberg with a living-hell headache of demands; being a slowly deceased subgenre of period piece medieval-epic with little less than appeal given its subdued dramatic structuring nearing 60s TV framework – nevermind sort of being (sort of not) a saint martyrdom type drama; and no less a infamous Joan of Arc depiction. Though this latter point is a bit of a weird one to buy into the criticism cause both: A, is a (pretty faithful) adaptation of a George Bernard Shaw stage play; and B, the same play / movie actually stays true to a lot of the historically based facts surrounding Joan, even amidst its histrionic theatricality execution.

Undeniably tonally unbalanced – starting as gallant medieval adventure to then midway through set itself as a chamber play as it dives in the protagonist's laments for men's lack of belief and finally her trial; while it demands a little patience about where the narrative involving ghosts of buffons, tyrants and saints really wants to confront: faith, politics, everyone and an inconsistently messy nothing?! Well, then maybe Jean Seberg own later fame might dictate, as well as premonitorially mirror, what's at stake here: a young woman of childlike innocence appeal getting torn and abused by a system fulfilling what they dictate as true morally-clean justice (if you know, ironic huh).

It is probably the one film that cements the now often declared modern feminist view of the character as this rebel against general institutional - Catholic Church or the government system, feudal or not. Condemned by men whom acted according to what they genuinely thought was right, trying to act in benevolence, law and mercy under their own gaze, but sinned all the same unawarely in a ironic twist of fictional salvaging turn for historical tragedy, that makes even more ironic how this is both the most upbeat Joan of Arc film and the most openly religiously illustrative, even if coming from a acid textual sarcasm, but whose Preminger's elegance reafirms the theological truth unawarely or not. It helps that Seberg is probably playing her role on a near completely different dramatic-sphere from the other characters surrounding her, that have more of Preminger usual loathing while her is all about the bliss!

Ending up creating the drama of a child whom seeks in the gaze of her accs the divine truth through in which it might reaffirm her faith in the tender truth in her God-set destiny of being rewarded with mercy and clemency beyond a materialist world of political interest and ego-centered rulership. Coming from Seberg's showstopper performance as the enthusiastic faith maiden delivered to her mission in true devoted commitment that could as fanatical demented lunacy, making somewhat easy to understand her later accusations of heretic, but no is rather the opposite in how she delivers in humble blissful wise calm with bursts of ion, advocating for God's will. Driven to push others to share her beliefs in the holy and the church sovereign salvation wisdom. Like... an actual saint? Hardly any other Joan version could really call herself that amidst all the lamorious crying from Dreyer, the torturing guilt object from Bresson or even the schizophrenic from Luc Besson's version.

Or better yet, having "faith' being used as an dramatic act of moral conscience against systemic authoritarianism, that leads current post XX century modernity to the surreal purgatory / invisible reality where ghost chatter the unavoidable damnation of men who remain firmly attached to their ignorances and blind culprit judgment.

Moreover, this additionally packs nice trinkets to behold in bless. Preminger's blocking and creation of mise-en-scène through Bernard Shaw's play structuring with masterful sturdy precision in its dramatical focal points. Next to the text that has a nice Shakespeare and Schiller like quality blended between the tragedy and farcical that gives lots of meat for Seberg to chew on next to a fabulous ing cast of underrated names, and a peculiar Richard Widmark near hysterical having a wicked ball playing a character that's clearly way younger than he is.

Sorry, can't really take the spite hatred against this any seriously, its pretty wonderful!

Roberto Rossellini always seemed like one of those director's whom eventually would come across into making a Christ film. With a career always premuted in an eternal struggle with being or having faith, to the point that some suspected that all his statements declaring himself to be an staunch atheist across his entire life/career, were nothing more than pure nonsense to divert the fact that his fascination or almost obsession with the subject of religion, and Christianity in particular, hid a man deeply moved by the 'crooked lines' that forms the orders of faith, the makings of sainthood and testament of living under the belief of the invisible "supernatural".

By such an extent, if he was ever going to directly tackle the figure of Christ himself it sure couldn't be less than a fraught worn out sort of faith-based drama by either then or today standards, unavoidably making his Il Messia/The Messiah one of the most strikingly soberly undramatized depictions of Jesus and the Gospels, that immediately draws close similarity with another turbulent Italian figure amidst faith related themes and dramas such as Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew; and yet, (un)surprisingly, also one of the most profoundly soulful portrayals of the gospels in cinema coming from the maestro of 'Realist' cinema.

Starting the film right during the times of the Old Testament, focusing on the tribes of Israel after their long exodus from Egypt, desperately seeking to form a Jewish kingdom in the lands of Canaan; trying to take the reins of oligarchy, is precisely the upfront confrontation in which Rossellini wants to present to modern societal strucure that for long gone have delivered themselves to the material, to what defines power under the rule of the human man, forming generations worshiping the death of the flesh as sacrifice and victory. Becoming slaves to the material commands of the earth. Run by the order of power and control in the reign of tyrant sovereignty under a crown made of corruption. Worshipping death and burnt offerings of flesh and blood.

The extensive focus given to Jesus in his childhood witnessing the sacrifices of lambs and that having a transformative effect on him is not without reason considering that he came to put an end to the sacrifice of the flesh through himself becoming the lamb of men and purifier of their sins. To change the established barbaric order ruled by fear mongering domain of violence with teachings of simple love and devotion to the words once thought sacred ideal, but not find themselves so far removed from such once sacred ideals.

For the tougher, more cynical side of Rossellini, such ideals preached, and redefined, once again by Jesus; are nothing but human virtues and how they are essential for good coexistence without the need of a clergical mythological importance surrounding them that too for long has been taken over by a institutionalized guide. Which serve to create this emblem of 'soft-tragedy' if you will that takes over the entire film, and is a recurring factor in any of Rossellini's sainthood/biopics dramas, where is all but certain that such a man with such ideals will sure to be condemned.

But the Messiah we see is far from being seen under a mythical aura of divine and sacred character bound to be a martyr of divinity: he is simply a man with good values ​​and who promotes good deeds with tenderous humility. Grounded on his simple teachings of solidarity and moving kindness, that alone are able to cause a calamitous uproar among his contemporaries. Making them open to a real discussion of plausible effect on a social spectrum, but still able to provoke a shift on the collective consciousness. While the man that preaches them just lives by the example: living in community, in brotherhood with unspoken candor, working, fishing, participating in the sacred rituals of his community, bringing life to his words!

For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you - John 13:15

And having his teachings being spread through his followers - and loved ones – I love how this is one of the rare depictions that sees Mary in a very prominent role, always walking next to her son and he's never seen dismissing her in what usual protestant views might take the material in inexplicably cold portrayals of their relation; rather Jesus seemingly always finds comfort and solace in the brief shared moments of silence with his mother always being his most faithful follower.

Removed from any stylized appeals or manipulative dramatic effects, constructing an almost factual historical proximity. Walking a very fine line between the dramatic austerity of Pasolini's text focused impersonation like The Gospel According to St. Matthew, with the classic / traditional theatrical opulence from a Griffith or DeMille, lavish and grand but in a subdued veristic beauty, a painterly color texture imbued onto the naturalistic staging.

Bringing each moment and excerpt from the scriptures getting reenacted as a banal occurrence but with a truly soft hand of serenity. Removed from the original theological content, making events getting reordered at will, while at the same time reflecting very well the non-chronological structural nature in which the gospels themselves are organized in the Bible. Reconciling the tenuing clergical presentation - not crossing to the sappy pandering lecture; next to the unremarked undramatic takes that usual prestige filmmakers tended to take Bible adaptations, but with the genuine soft touch and tender heart required for this story so absorbingly genuine and moving in its simplicity, conveying all the heart just through the very nature of "being", there, among us. Thus ultimately, retaining its original meaning at full!

Just taken to the realm of the here before, now and after. The gospels as a political affront, the embodied revolution of human materialist nature. The existence of Christ as a everyday phenomenon! A idolyzed figure here seen almost always from an observer's distance, a face in the crowd, one of us. Differing not because he is the firstborn son of the Virgin, not the performer of miracles that just go omitted (for the most part) but because he always believes in and insists on a new chance, on the new man who is reborn after a mistake, extending a hand that caresses, not a hand that judges, being an example for humanity. Is the holy seen at the physical plain of existence and being. Where Rossellini's "intelectual direction" transmits the scenic space of comunal equality though his elegantly composed long takes craming different hierarchies inhabitting the same cinematic spectrum; servants and masters occupy the same space.

"The disciple is not above his master, but every one that is perfect shall be as his master." - Luke 6:40

Which again if this is a movie that reafirms the preach through his examples, this is a pray from both the Catholic side and Rossellini last dying breath of contradictory yet earnest idealist, so that humanity may live and respect the teachings of man, if not for his miracles, but for his mere being, whose strength of love and unshakable faith was perhaps the true force that moved the stone of the tomb and launched his legacy towards the eternum!

At times reaching to appear like the Christ film that Dreyer or Bresson would have made, but never had the chance! Constructed under a intense formal rigor while encoming an humanist nature reaching levels of holiness by sheer belief. A belief in man or a belief in God, whatever it might takes us beyound to be our better selves and embrace the belief and embrace eternity once again!

Happy Easter everyone!

"...creation in the making."

Another one in the long line of Werner Herzog's fascination for deeply concerning eccentrics ultimately getting consumed by their ions when coming face to face with the overpowering menace of nature. So in what could've been yet another tired old subject regarding the stirring unpredictable nature volcanoes, especially for it being one of Herzog's overt fascinations ever since La Soufrière, and even having already showcased the volcanologists duo formed by the Krafft couple, Katia and Maurice, in Into the Inferno; what else could the old snarky German shepperd pull off at a deflating age where his own creative endeavors seem slowly fadding away in relevance or new interesting output?!

Especially one that he probably made seated in a booth while eating some chips and just editing pre-existing footage he always found dope as fuck next to inserting his current spotfy playlist made out of banger Requiems and Ana Gabriel's melodies. But the result found here in a The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft is relied in the strength of Herzog's most special ability: his unique keen sight of curiosity and the animosity to pursue it, to share it with/through others!

On a practical side, this works its didactic way of biographical in efficient display, though for lazy zoomers it might just feel like the "boring"/subdued version of academy award nominated documentary Fire of Love from the same year regarding the exact same couple with some of the exact same archival images being re-used, but it goes so much beyond to perhaps achieving something else. Trusting solely in the singular power of movie image as a powerful narrative tool to understand the unknown forces thriving our world, or something even more simple: what moves an individual's own humanity and connective tissue with the core fabric of existence itself.

Reality of matter is merely an aftertought tooling. Herzog doesn't care about the tactile fact, he cares about what his own experience can absorb from it, and seeks to share it with us. And what he sees on the Kraffts is not focused on the analytical science of their profession, rather the artistry beaming out of their obsessive ion. Isn't that a bit of a projection? Even yet, a stylization of reflection?! He's basically doing YouTube film criticism in big film form. Is what we do here, or at least try in our rambling writings. To share our perceptions and state our individual views of the present truth we absorb from these images, these landscapes, these works of art. Herzog bounds our multitude of experiences as observers, as an audience, as critics or aspiring artists, as one.

In search of poetic realness we can extract from the natural surrounding us; a factual emotional truth projected or awakened by us onto the subjects we face and create an peculiar sort of attachment. Is that the bigger translucid ethereal force in charge of the universe's driving force that we can find at the Krafft's gobsmacking imagery where they filmed the unfilmable, sights and landscapes you never thought possible that a human being would ever cross path with?! A divine source of danger and power like a pyroclastic flow, spewed out of the earth made astonishingly haunting and entrancingly stunning, alluring and yes the rawest form of the tired old cliche: breathtaking. Or the very Fire Within, that fire that's inside of us all, conveying that truth in which is the pursuit of any artist, any filmmaker.

In the director here we found that in the form of an elegy, and ode but also a craving lament for having wanted to share the same experience. A personal declaim, of both envy and iration for what he sees as two tragically doomed artists that found eternity through their footage, a transcendental beauty found at the raw and spontaneous aspect in which the images are captured. But also met with the magnitude of images, of scale, of horror, beauty and a life-span journey. A musical, philosophical and adventurous mosaic made of cascading lava, dark ashened cloud, disentegrating magma, suffocating smoke, water and fire, destruction and birth, life and death. In other cliched words, absolute cinema, that connects us, elevate us, evolves us beyound the mere simple matter to find the spiritual right in front of us and erupts that lasting flame!

The human reach of communicate, express and emote through sequences of images dating thousands of years.

Carved forms of utter communication that prove their eternity by gaining extra ethereal meaning through orchestral music and layered interpretation when added by the ramblings of the old German flexing his usual muscles as an anthropologist and philosophical poet of human nature. Imbuing his usual empathic energy and infectious enthusiasm towards a subject that could've been such an easy fall into specific high-school consuming content niche or History Channel aficionados, but got turned by Herzog into an ode to artistic expression itself.

From where he's both fondly transfixed thematically as well as bewilderedly interested from a documentarian standpoint in composing this historical mapping that covers the methods of imagetic communication through the streched abyss of time imortalized in as a natural part of human history as well as nature. Where everything from Wagner Opera, German Romanticists, Picasso, Fred Astaire and most importantly: "there seems to have existed a visual convention extending all the way beyound Baywatch"; dated all the way back from the Paleolithic era.

Is the often neglected tired old question, that what we are now we were once in the past, and everything we perceive as the pieces of our dreams, the ways we find to describe our complex worldviews, from what we know as mythology, art and the spiritual came from the same starting point as the birth of the modern human being and his still endless ways in trying to to adapt, to be one with the world, to reafirm its being's existence. No matter how long the stretch of times divides from when one drawing was carved or an animal paw got printed in the stone, Herzog answers: it's the boy and the wolf, connected and immortalized through the invisible line of time.

From the cave paintings to cinema, is not just forms of expression, it is a human need. A manifestation of the collective unconscious, is survival and eternity. Conjecturing the image through the 3D imprinting through contemplative gazing that has you embarking on the down beneath the earth sense of exploration adventure as well as immersively transfixed by the wonderous carved images making you almost feel that you could lean over and touch them as part of the fascinating communicable experience of contemplating pieces and messages left by time and forever imprinted into memory, call it drawings, messages or art, is all a part of us eternally connected from above the earth into the unknown dark beyound of the deep and depths of time.

Oh, and genetically mutated radioactive albino crocodiles. Probably the greatest twist in cinematic history and one of the weirdest head-scratchingly endearing metaphors old Werner ever thrown at us?! Going about how we are all mutable undefined enigmatic carbon fibers made of flesh and bones that will one day become the weird alien beings carved in the stones from where the dominant species of nuclear dinosaurs walking the earth will look upon and be endeared by unable to define what we were only trace the echoes of similarity that our scientific, historical or human inquiries and assumptions can attempt to define as a species?! Will art and expression remain the same once our future destroys the natural order that prevailed so far?! Dark.... super dark...

Cavalry Western Mounted Police version. Somehow trying to rework a Army vs Sioux conflict post Custer and the Little Bighorn massacre now set at the beatiful high mountains, deep valleys and hazing waterfalls vistas from the Canadian alps. Its nowhere near Fort Apache's operatic tragedy and more leaning straight to the meat of the racial conflict and system dilemmas grounded in the prompted character dynamics to them let the rest of the play like in a fun adventure spectrum fully dipped in action-driven pace, whom director Raoul Walsh pulls with tenacious vigor and absorting splendour to boot!

Story wise, I wouldn't say there's much left to chew on any complexily investing, resting more on a easy lightheartedness and posturing gallant heroics
and given that Walsh has done surviving through the wild far better (and much more romantic) in Distant Drums, which Saskatchewan in a lot of ways works kind of like an ampler version of that film in a almost mini-technicolor-epic scale. There's a quiet mornful existential melancholy, as in any Walsh picture, taken to the indian conflict that sees bonds of brotherhood, kinship love and peace torn apart by the cold unfairness of misunderstandings and getting into jeopardy by the fearmongering threat of war and racial hatred. That and few echoes of redemption, justice seeking. settling in and craving for the future that often get crammed in the easy-going nature of its primary spectacle focus.

But, despite the performances themselves not being that much remarkable, they are charming enough with Alan Ladd full of pose and Shelley Winters full of sass, making the ongoing premise investing enough while the painting-like landscapes exceeding in gorgeous vivid opulent imagery and stupendous action scenes with thousands of extras covering the frame in massive panache grandeur, work wonders to elevate the stirring show of classic Western mold at its finest!

"We must consider the future"

For those that only consumed or got to known the name of Paul Verhoeven as a cunning filmmaker during his American mainstream run would perhaps be surprised, as pleased to know, that in his early days as a Dutch filmmaker not only he was ten times more insanely bold but also was immensely capable to helm the most sturdy dramas imaginable as they come, with his highly celebrated Soldier of Orange perhaps being his most dramatically straightfoward film to date, sort of removed of his usual provocative smear while settling in for a pretty archetypal war epic drama.

Though there's still a clear presence of a bitting sense of cynical irony in how he approaches the material and how he builds the coming of age journey of this characters, partially executing what you could almost say it's Verhoeven crude touch playing on top of what would be a traditional classical structure of a war picture drama, that keeps jumping between the crude laughter to the outmost personal tragedies, with the director's vulgar sensibilities spreaded all over the place, making for a peculiarly sober, loudly sarcastic, punctually gut-wrenching and thrillingly fun experience.

Taking on the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands during WWII and turning it into a subtle meditation on youth having to reformulate its own sense of ideological comfort when reality knocks on the door. Initially treating the conflict with nothing but disdain as an daily occurrence that would never affect their lives about to blossom professionally and emotionally, up until the time for taking responsibility arrives tough choices begging to be made. Drawing a intricate as near tragicomical back and forth of where destiny and the makings of history will push them: to act on the resistance or enlist with the enemy; flee away from the warzone or partaken in its struggle.

Balancing character drama cemented in an anarchic lightheartedness with war-adventure scale, making effective work of all the espionage tension of the first half with the 'men on a mission' second half while being dilluded to a multi-narrative journey from the group of friends and their resolved/doomed/struggled fates during the war – with Rutger Hauer carrying us through as the pov lead with immense charisma to spare, already showing the chops for a international career on the rise for him working with his perfect English duringt the British-allies section of the film (next to the greatly underrated Jeroen Krabbé).

Crowned by Verhoeven's formal precision that, while not delivering anything particularly exceptional with all the elements it works with, it still all so well staged together in dramatic efficiency and prevailing to deliver a bittersweet tale of friendships, camaraderie and betrayal reformulating as means to survival or forming ideology; and how all of them are doomed to see their dreams, desires and ambitions getting squashed by moral compromise in times of soul-haunting despair. Ending in a total disruption of principles and allegiances made intricate by layered personal stakes and crushing brutal ends.

Ultimately arguing what is the value of living beyond all the losses?! With changes that didn't seem to have much effect and all the laurels as well as the sacrifices faded away in swooping cold blinks of time. History's cruelest weapon came out on top: time. Definetely one of the most succeedding existential war dramas!

P.S.: Quick side tangent mention to the minisseries cut of the film: For Queen and Country/Voor koningin en vaderland, basically working as your typical extended version, with extra bits of dialogue – that do offer more layered pacing for some of the characters dynamics; and removed seconds of scenes that otherwise remain pretty much the exact same, so don't worry much about seeing this as I'm sure Verhoeven was already pleased with the trimmed theatrical cut already working masterfully as it is!

What if Tinto Brass had made a romantic comedy of manners in the way of a 70s Brazilian pornochanchada sex-comedy; though that feels too diminishative reductive to what's a wild rollercoaster ride of emotions that has you dumbfounded like someone had tied you over a pole and taped needles under your eyes - Opera style; and made you watch the wild release of instincts of violence and sex upon the screen in such deliberately irreverent unashamedly raw in disturbing contextually surreal imagery at the same rate that's perversely funny?!

Just in the first ten minutes there's bloody murder getting committed followed by a unwavering montage of sex escapades – including a baby carriage rocking to the rhythm of sex calming the crying child; then we jump into the past and there is a penis getting stuck in a zipper followed by a car crash near death that somehow leads to a abrupt marriage between two young horny idiots where a dog licks the amniotic fluid that ruptures from the waters of a woman going into labor. Besides all that? How about some out of nowhere great vehicle-action scenes?! Wait, who was the cinematographer in this? Jan de Bont?! Oh that explains it!

Following right after lighthearted sex-comedy Business Is Business, but it was here with Turkish Delight where Paul Verhoeven's credentials would plant the seeds to what became his director's masterfully provocative career. Now, is it too much of an irony to think that, this being Verhoeven's big breakthrough film, the main character here behaving like a sadist sex-addict male-nymphomaniac psychopath whom happens to be an sculptor artist swindler – that collects pubic hair; is pure coincidence?! Well our beloved Rutger Hauer became quite a regular Verhoeven actor to the point of near Fellini-Mastroianni partnership in his early Dutch phase, so you'll be the judge!

Because is hard not to see Verhoeven finding himself within this story in some spiritual way as he would've perpetually become known exactly as the unfitting crude observer of social-political spectrum knowing exactly which wounds to poke the finger on to break the shackles of blind oppressing conformity. He is the one who finds the horse's eye in the delicious mash enjoyed by all and reveals it to cause pure calamity and revolt; to reveal the Maggots and Worms on the miracle of Lazarus; to find love within the perversitute and feel every ounce of that disruptive unchecked sickening desire called ion!

Moved by a transgressive state of mind filled in sordid toxic form of love and endless desire. Where the entangled synchrony of love and sex are attached in a tireless dynamic of opposition and mixture, addictive like Turkish delight, consumed compulsively to fill the inner insatiable void. While the interjections of the presence of death, desire and artistic expression mingle together as vicious forms of release. And sex is not seen as merely pleasure fulfillment, but as a demonstration of instincts, exposed in extremely naturalistic staging and penetrating atmosphere of sordid lasciviousness.

The beauty of it is on how Verhoeven presents such layers in any non-morally judgemental way and just exposes then as a bare naked (literally) form of being. Scatologically erotic raw, though restrained to the point of provocative absurdism because he also is on to showcase a level of tenderness that never quite presented itself again, or at least not in the same potent way, in his later films. Letting the very cynical stance in which he approaches some of the sensitive elements at play here being what makes it all the more bittersweet on a intimately sad/soul-crushing level to its often unlikeable protagonists that are made all the way relatable by their very flawed natures sold under so blooming charm and charisma by Rutger Hauer at his screen debut along with the sweetestness emanated by Monique van de Ven whom chemstry share a natural attachment of both feeling and lust.

Cruising between the erotics and the breezy hangout vibes of a romantic comedy just to end at a melodramatic tragedy. Making this merciless abruptness that controls all things and cuts short every moment hovering through it all: the consummation of a wedding night; a sweet romantic moment under the rain; a candlelit dinner; be it the voracity of sex at its rush to reach climax or the immediate pressure of society itself that sours any and all relationships with doubts and anxieties. Is hard to clearly pinpoint exactly what Turkish Delight might be going for as a farse given its so grounded bluntness and savage level of earnestness; or character drama given its edgy often bizarre loose anarchic behavior. Up all the way that presents its touchy subjects of cancer next to fetishes surrounding rape and tender somehow intertwining on a spiritual matrimonial ground, like a thin line distancing both not so far from one another.

Unavoidably making it unsettlingly disturbed, but never for a moment it drops you off the attention upon the screen in its endless wavering of sex, love, search, pain and time slowly decaying till our physical vessels of desire-earn merely become the ancient sculptures of our own handcrafted existential sarcophagus, like relics of a deceased lost present, left to rot to the worms or crumple in the garbage disposal. Somehow roughly nihilistic and melancholically soul-fulfilling... Verhoeven was up to something!

Memories on a Puddle

At face value is pretty much the ever underrated Richard Fleischer modestly pulling a Fuller/Aldrich/Walsh WWII character-driven war drama under gnarly costful pathos under his workmanlike sturdy masterfulness. Evoking the cinemascope lavish spectacle part with his eyes closed, craming kinetic fluidity, neat invisible long takes that must've had a young Spielberg studying non-end and not lacking great war action all around. Elegant sounds way too little to define it!

The kind of soldiers' memories/experience that reading out loud may sound tad redemptive-seeking idealistic that also may fall over simplistic by the finishing line, but what most counts here is the journey that Fleischer leads to arrive at such place, having to go through a lot of cynical ground to cover.

War is hell, there's no denying, but what if one can find salvation through it?! Like an entitled privileged elite douchebag protagonist here who thought that all of life's proud satisfaction was in the material power at his command. But had to go through hell to discover the priceless worth of humanity, building friendship and actual decency through camaraderie and companionship with whom were once his subordinates or the low class workers type like them, all dragged into war. But then meeting the cold reality of war in which such attachments and good willing are forbidden by a cut short relentless nature at the heart of war.

A stream den of panic fear and madness tightening like a hanging rope, pilling up with increasing loses, bonds turned into dead cold corpses, memories of better days burn and getting hit by a bullet becomes the only guarantee in the communicable illness of fear, neurosis and panic getting inherited through the war experience shared in torments. But keep helding on to the pursuit of being a better someone after all the witnessed waste, like a flicker of faith, even if it costs him nothing by the end, is the only thing of decence he can held on to amidst the purgatory of combat.

Pretty solid Robert Wagner as our journey towards humility leading hero, accompanied by a WONDERFUL Buddy Ebsen bringing a younger/less grizzled Walter Brennan friendly energy that strongly s the likeable faces here that grounds the soft earnest touch of humanity prevailing within the bleak story. While Broderick Crawford nearly steals the film away (as usual) as the tormented head of the regiment Captain Waco – which should be a pretty ironically telling name; acting out authoritarianism in sheer ambivalence while trying to pull together the high ranking respect from the men he acts on with abuse like the last thing he has of any meaning in his miserable life, which also adds layers to the more trouble tormented sides of the narrative.

Not sure if its fair to undermine Fleischer as a non-intelectual given there's not a particular imput behind the story to really transcend the text, but it sure enphuses the execution in remarkably hefty-ladden craftsmanship to get the dramatic job done more than accordingly!

"I've almost been fired from all of my movies. Every time they start looking for someone else!"

"I've wanted to tell a story about acting for a very long time. About the place where you end, and the character begin. About truth and illusion..."

"It's like I lived my life and it's sort of all in these boxes, but what is part of the profound sadness is that I know it's incomplete. As much as I've filmed and as hard as I've tried, there's nothing I can do to make any of it understood. I know that's not true, but it's how I feel."

"...the actor's job is to hold a mirror up to nature to capture everlasting truth through an illusion. What we strive for as actors is a performance so true that the audience can see themselves in it. Good, bad or ugly."

"...I'm selling basically my old self, my old career. For many people it's like the lowest thing you can do is talk about your old pictures and sell photographs of when you were Batman (...) But it enables me to meet my fans and what ends up happening is I feel really grateful rather than humiliated."

"...the indians thought that a photograph or the image took away the soul, and it sometimes feel like that."

"Here on earth, the distance between heaven and hell is the difference between faith and doubt (...) Healing is not born of vanity, it is born of honesty. Honesty is born of pure love. And love is the most divine healer, the sweetest, holiest and most effective."

Call it self-pity, tragedy marketing, ego rubbing of an old wasted star trying to promote one last breath of career validation through a life-long biographical of supposed intimate/personal-artistic struggles; the bare naked exposure that Val Kilmer submitted himself and his illness-consumed image here is made trully both painful as absorbing, as well as stylistically and narratively speaking.

Putting us to follow through the kaleidoscope mosaic montage made of archival home footage of his entire life, from his ambitious egomania days, to the sickened frail innocence of his now old/late self. A sneak peek through some of the great, the underrated and the unfortunate movies; the loving but ultimately failed marriage with Joanne Whalley; his ambitious Mark Twain artistic endeavor that would prove to be building towards his Mount Rushmore. To then quickly fall over destiny's ultimatum getting throat cancer. Leaving nothing more than a result of years of tracheotomies: a hole in his neck and a rasping voice.

Self-indulgently narcissistic in nature, but unapologetic honest in delivery. Drawing a incredible portrait of a fascinating and bizarre figure. Branded as deeply problematic prima donna – not far off from the actual truth when he's seen butting heads with John Frankenheimer on the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau.

But most importantly, a classic-Juilliard trained actor – and a extremely versatile one(?!), a peculiar intellectual and a UNDERRATED comedic genius; that took his work intensely serious as with genuine ion, that led him to embark on a endless crusade pursue of artistic expression through his roles that proved his own personal/eternal curse that ended up getting materialized to become his entire condition in more tragically ironic ways than one:

"...it's difficult to talk and to be understood."

Now, would I've liked to see him talking about the crappy direct-to-video action and horror productions of the 2000s?! It can't all be perfect, but then again this is also a testatement to the things and moments he's most proud off. But just to see Kurt Russel acting all joyfully and goofying around with Val at the set of Tombstone, was all the heartwarming wholesomeness that I needed!

Maybe Val's ambitions were never satisfied or met as he expected, though he was grateful for all of it! And at the end of all the heartbreaking losses we go through along with him, in his family, his career, his very physical/emotional/psychological condition; he conquered it all through his most proudest achievement: his kids, being a truly loving father, and an damm good actor that never quited even when himself placed an obstacle in his own way, awarely or not.

The role of his life and ultimate expression was accomplished: just being Val; and he managed to sell us his art, the truth and the illusion!

He was one of our greatest and we neglected him for far too long... So let this indulgent self-portrait remain as that pursued testatement of his genius...

Godspeed Val!

General, I’ve been thinking a lot about the things you said. Especially what you said about the power of fear and the fear or power (...) I never agreed with your point of view before but I wasn’t sure you were wrong. Now I’m sure. Two men carried me 18 miles through the jungle. A Baptist minister and a wandering Jew. But they didn’t do it out of fear, they did it out of love. But they did something else, besides save my life, general. They showed me something I’ve known all my life but I’ve forgotten. There’s a spirit in man that will survive all the reigns of terror and all the hardships. Man cannot achieve the authority of God, and no man, whether he’s a politician or a general, should try. The spirit in man is God-like. Eternal. Indestructible.

After taking the WWII warfront scenario through a small multitude of interpretations that would establish genre trends ad eternum, from delivering a showcase of camaraderie and reminiscence through pretty standard postwar fighter pilot in Fighter Squadron; a sumptuous romantic melodrama of the slow tearing loss of innocence struggling with the inevitability of War and the intimate/psychological cost of it in the massively underrated Battle Cry; or the masterful 'boots on the ground' military detailing seen in Objective, Burma!.

The Naked and the Dead sees Raoul Walsh taking that "combatents GIs" template of war feature and just leading in into what usually late-period phase of a renowned directors – especially those from the old guard / classic era; usually take after such an extensive line of work following behind them: on absolute rageful contempt. Suppressing any traces of its supposed patriotic or pacifist message that could've been at the initial draft idealized for the project, and simply projects it on the screen with a raw and merciless crudeness wrapped in a psychological and revolting drama, reckoning with the world as it is and trying to find a remaining flickering light of hope yet burning.

There's no glory to behold on the battlefield, the biggest you get in here is Walsh resurrecting Wings' big parade massive battle at the climax with the max extent big studio money can buy and visually ornament it in gorgeous Technicolor cinemascope. While the rest of the military proceedings endured by our soldier characters have turned into a slow walk of death made out of few small skirmishes with quick deads and cold executions. Sacrificies no longer hold meaning of bravery, its just waste meat and dogtags; there's no ideal to prevail at the end of the mission, just pure plain survival. But to fight and survive in a war, is less about coming off clean and unharmed out of a barrage of enemy fire, and more how an individual's sense of conduct and morale can cross clean through men's worst impulses that he unleashes on the heat of battle or what is driving / pushing his efforts of duty: bloodthirsty sadism, honor, nihilism, God complex, display of power, empathy or hate, love...

Through mud and jungle, high grass and rivers, from the beach sands unto the hills above clouds, through fire and smoke, wild snakes and little dead birds; from the present laid in terror of death and the haunting past made out of torments and regrets that forms a man disturbed psyche. Walsh's war takes the Pacific theatre now turned into a impressionistic meditation of raw nature of violence against the physical and the interior. Between the nature burning into ashes and a man's moral and ethical cost both on the verge of all consuming collapse. Where once a heroic display of human resilience is replaced by the dehumanization of character body and soul going from personable charismatic chaps to agonizing in pain bodies drowning in their own pool of blood.

Crowned by the director's ever relient discrete formal mastery that has you transfixed to every frame and every ounce of scope, landscape of its spectacle but also the human core lost amidst it like small little ants about to get crushed. There is always a uniform unity in the way it conjectures the cast of characters of the soldiers. There is no central protagonist role in what we could call the good guys, faces and names even get confused between the ensemble, intentional or not; the closest thing you get is Cliff Robertson's First Lieutenant Hearn, but even he's acting subjected to a subordinate role to what is one of the central prominent roles of the film, Raymond Massey's General Cummings and the other one being Aldo Ray's Sergeant Croft leading our main squad on the field. Men with different levels of taste for power and blood, who see their subordinates as pieces of meat and nothing more.

Not fully stripped of their humanity, rather there's enough left there in both of them for you to see the cracks on the fractured wholes of what could've once been great valiant men – Aldo Ray has this every day men sensibility underneath his gruff exterior that makes him a ruthless bastard that doesn't cease to be enjoyable even when he's progressively taking increasingly abhorrent decisions; but whom sadly got lost to their own worst impulses, or rather...

I assumed its a bad thing when millions of people are killed because a few jokers want go get something out of their systems...

With Robertson's character being positioned right at that threshold acting like a symbolic in-script gesture of him being relegated to just being sent as another faceless casualty of war or a individual in control of his fate!

In a world where the acceptable number of casulties are decided by authoritarian commanding officers seating from affar, or the vile unleashed nature taken corrupt by animalistic instincts; the real glory of battle one can take out of the merciless carnage isn't won by one general's gutting will of order, rather in the spirit strenght of the men under their command, or at least in the altruistic faith that such will be enough! At a point in the film the general says they are facing a new era of a new power leading the way to the future. At the end, in an almost premonitory act, the film seems to announce this to the character and the audience, history was made at the behest of the will of men and the floodgates opened for a new century of war and destruction...

Can somebody please explain to me why this is such a nebulously thrown away masterpiece isn't hailed as one of the grimmest, epic and most complex portrayals of war in cinematic history?! Well, perhaps the angry harsh truths presented in such ambiguous haze of Hollywood spectacle says it all...

It's sort of funny – as well as pervadingly symbolic, to think that a movie about the judgement of an example of absolute devotion, came to be from a reaction/judgement of deep spite that Robert Bresson felt for what he recalled as "sappy masqueraded buffoonery" - or along similar lines; defining Dreyer's The ion of Joan of Arc. And out of it, he ended up lowkey making perhaps the most historically based and accurate depiction of Joan of Arc in cinematic form – next to Rivette's Joan the Maid of course; that perhaps sours as one of the director's most formally rigid ventures into specific religious depiction that gives away more than a plentiful dish for his detractors to declare Procès de Jeanne d'Arc / The Trial of Joan of Arc as one of his weakest or at least thematically derived, when it couldn't be farther from the truth!

That much like the other titles he was making at the time – and beyond – getting crudely as empty stapled around the same empty complaint criticisms that take this nagging annoyance because Bresson detractors seem like people that just can't look past sober "emotionless" type of performance other than claiming it as blank tack of wood; while Bresson is rather (and yet again) using the very stoic blank composure of the performances – specifically its central protagonist one – that momentarily breaks in punctual moments of tears of anguish and sadness, tearing the sculptural image and unveiling the palpable melodramatic heart of the piece filled with utter devastating human sadness, that in this film's context subject matter, it pushes towards illustrating sainthood at its purest form.

Unfair comparisons with what Bresson himself repudiated in Dreyer's masterpiece are inevitable, and while Florence Delay is definitely no Maria Falconetti to stand the test of time as an cinematic icon of human expression both as an stellar performance and culturally imprinted cinematic image; but this Joana's sublime under completely different reasons under Bresson's compositing in how he took his usual non-professional actors to achieve an intimate destructive truth in their inhabitedly inflicted tragedies in a quiet sorrow burned in slight tears.

In it making his most economical films and one that best emphasizes the spiritual element beyond the suffering inflicted on the carnal level. Taking the real transcriptions of Joan's trial and rehabilitation line for factual line to build up each meticulous step of Joan of Arc's final hours of life, standing on trial in front of a ecclesiastical court answering for the crimes of heresy and blaspheming, undergoing an irrational interrogatory all the way onto her final sentencing that not only the viewer but also the characters already know what the conclusion will be: getting burned at the stake.

Performing yet another stripped-down minimalistic ing through an reserved visual arsenal of big closeups, low angle details, structuring in endless procession from one room to another, following doors opening and closing through each ing minute detailing of the institutional process that forms the enclosured suffocating routine of suffrage. The similar veins from A Man Escaped meticulously-detailed process of institutional purgatory, now taken to a spiritual battle on the intelectual level of belief, subtlely debating its own core persona in either if she's the chosen Virgin daughter of God that became 's patron saint, or very well be a poor psychiatric nutjob that suffered of a sad case of epilepsy – which some question its veracity till today.

But Bresson was an artist part of Christianity belief and sees the holiness from his protagonist coming less from the atributed supernatural nature of divine presence of her testimony listing the visions and voices from Saint Catherine, Saint Margaret and Archangel Michael; and the apparent miracles that she partaken. Rather coming from her resilience and deliverance, even under the excruciating pain of judgment. Getting condemned by the church of Christ itself, which made the same mistake and judgment that condemned the Messiah in the first place, ordered by a clergy driven by foreign influence and political stratagem such as the Romans and the Hebrews in the days of Christ, and now the Burgundian French allied with the English monarchic regency for the throne of during the Hundred Years' War.

It becomes quite clear why Bresson went under so many circles nerves, being a traditionalist ascetic Catholic asside, he also didn't spare to expose a clergy slowly turning politicized and overriding their own traditions to serve political goal. It does not go into the details of this fact narratively here – unlike modern angry filmmakers, he knows it wouldn't be a fitting place; but the criticism is blunt and unfortunately universal as timeless. At the same rate it understands salvation and martyrdom as a path to liberation towards eternal life. To act on behalf of God is to pay in tears and blood in this world, the only possible destiny left for those who believed deeply and piously will suffer and die for forces and reasons beyond human understanding and comprehension.

From the very first scene onwards Joana knows she will be killed, just as her persecutors know that the process is a mere formality of a preordained decision of punishment. Taking what's basically recreating 'The Way of the Cross' getting filmed through the lenses of feminine sanctity. A unnervingly somber clergical self-annihilation of their own belief, but also the condemnation of a youth that choosed to believe in what the old generation had corrupted to correspond to power policies that refute the divine out of their own reach. Taking in that final scene the summit of recognized sanctity spirit of z martyr and her historical canonization power, resumed in a moment of real divine that should belong next to the final scene of Ordet: seeing tears and faith turn into ashes; back towards God that sent it.

Now who said anything about a "Art-house hit" couldn't also get a typical overblown unnecessary sequel?!

Guess I can't really afford the luxury of a (complete) criticism over the existence of Faraway, So Close! as a sequel given that the original offers a leanway into the continuing narrative thread that gets picked upon here – though granted that To be continued... present at the end of Wings of Desire served much more as a symbolic gesture that now life was to go on beyound the afterlife now left behind for our Angel protagonist being promissed with the blessing of mortality through his choosing of earthly love.

Sure, but given that the character of Cassiel (Otto Sander) was just as interesting (nevermind a prevalent co-lead) as Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and shared an equal fascination for mortal human life (if not more), it makes perfect sense to turn him into the primary focus of what's also a logical proceeding of what that story presented as a wandering lament of divided Berlin, now getting to be set in the post-reunification scenario and what sort of climate that reawakened in German society's mindset and its existential state entering a new promissing decade. On paper, Wenders' excuse to return to his created afterlife fantasy sounds perfect!

Problem is that it takes quite a bit of a two lengthy quarters of hours into this to really justify its narrative existence other than replicating a past greatest-hits catalogue – for as much as it might try to avoid, but Wenders just falls into the genetic trappings of sequel formula: directlessly story wise, overstuffed with ideas and loose threads crambled together in derived strucure that feels way too schematic while completely removed of the hypnotic and truly spiritual naturalism of the first film to give mere seconds of breathing room to monologues and digressions about the ongoing mourning on how modern immediacy has stolen the beauty of living; casting humanity to its ultimate folly: removed from the spiritual and attached to the material yada yada; where not even the Angels won't shush complaining in all the rambling about how time is a bitch. Perfectly relatable though!

But especially, overcrowded, with its fatter budget granting not just some pretty spectacular grand scale images of Berlin, impressive/impossible oner-shots and bringing the entire OG cast back, but also some others of Wenders regulars like Rüdiger Vogler being amusing as always; Nastassja Kinski fitting like a glove in Angelical grace; but also Willem Dafoe filling his timely quota of showing up in a film of some of the most acclaimed directors of all time, here playing a weird blend of Lucifer and incarnated time itself?! Is never clear but he sure steals every minute he's in there. Plus: Lou Reed, U2, Laurie Anderson and...Mikhail Gorbachev?! What the...

His presence alone might be poiting to a new millenia type of positivism around restructuring society, ideologically, geographically – Gorbachev being seen as a very strong symbol of such by the dismantling of the Soviet Union; which grants a movie that's unashamedly trying to be so life-affirmingly loud about its hopeful joy to what one yearns for the future despite all the murky shadows still covering it, precisely what drives the character of Cassiel in his unquenchable thirst for life. Delving into this 'fish out of water' story about stepping outside the touch of grace and the purgatorial paradise of immortality – which is basically extending the climax of the original film with Damiel's catharsis in experiencing life now becoming 70% of the film. But to yearn for mortality only to be welcomed by the age made of addictions, individualism and empty absorptions made by momentary stimuli. Is far louder about its melancholy too, and the tonal incongruity doesn't stop till the credits roll!

Along with it I can also see some remnants of a subtle yet insightful commentary over the nature of mainstream moviemaking that Wenders might've been going for, in how the only way to tell or create stories to draw attention and explore something of meaningful in our modern cultural landscape, needs to be through sequels or popular genre films, packed with crime and violence – exactly the type of tragicomical shenanigans Cassiel sees himself getting entangled with. The thing is that Wenders in trying to convey all that, ends up pulling off something closer to a slapstick romantic comedy completely, drawn out in deep-drama tentpole and a climax that feels preceding the typical third act from a Pixar film, and well... you can try calling him visionary for that, not that he intended to.

Clearly the closest Wenders came to a full on commercial film and that to a director with European sensibilities and particular strengths like him, is bound to come off a little awkward and stiff, which the only reason it doesn't go completely off rails is due to the very talent involved. Otto Sander is fantastic and he owns up the lead role quite fittingly – and you still get enough of Bruno Ganz goofing around in his sappy dork who loves live more than one could humanly express and is a delight of its own watching him here being the sweetest warmest father/husband imaginable. Carrying an almost Fellini-esq warmth synergy amongst all its cast , sharing the moment on frame with near surreal heartfel joy of just being there together.

All that adds up for the movie packing genuine tender energy that, even if it misses the contemplative transparent state of being that made the first movie so special, it compensates with an abstract collection of individuals and their fleeting moments, trying so hard to clinge themselves on to their memories of better times and aspirations for a better brighter tomorrow, all slowly wandering off existence or membrance, running out of time for trying to control it, which makes all the melancholy all the more saddened precisely because of it. And yet, still holding on, falling madely in love with life yet again in both its beauty and its uggliness, its brightest and darkest, the contrast that connects both worlds, the visible and invisible, the one sole truth that brings us closer to "Him" and the heart of the creation that brought us here. Oh yeah, far more openly religious film to, win win for me!

By this late in a vast career of accomplished unique craft signature presented through more than a few masterpieces that could've easily be called his crownest achievement; it's beautifully gratifying to now that Abbas Kiarostami was still making films so relevantly up to date in bringing all his motifs to a perpetually moving modernity and creating a narrative that modules itself after the very same. The long reflective conversations and endless car rides with characters that are always in constant existential transit, not knowing exactly where they are drifting towards, but now stucked in the omnipresence of the digital age.

If it wasn't already clear with Certified Copy, since it was a film in the universal language of English; it's beautiful to see how the Iranian filmmaker so easily accommodates his trace in any language or culture up to no hiccup in translating his signature. Carry that off into Like Someone in Love and its modern day Tokyo and the effect in what's easily one of the director's most gorgeous formal constructs, finding inventive ways of blocking through car mirrors, windows and screens maintaining a simple yet effectively intringing découpage that tranverses through each scenery through naturally orchestrated compositing. The endless in and outs of locations that take place during the uneventful happenings of the film aid to emphasize their strong sense of comfort intimate place, but left stranded at drift in the constant unrelenting wave of time and space.

Bringing the digital frame rate now adapted to a vivid dimension that finds in reflections of a windshield and lights ing through the windows a mesmeric abstraction around ntimate lives and ambiguous relationships and the feelings within them – an old missed grandma; a once craved love; someone you wish you could find the ways and words to help and comfort in unspoken angsts; condensed and juxtaposed through freezed images, the pov facing of everything through lenses, of old pictures forgotten at the shelves, glass windows separating two individual realities, or even divinding the same space, but not the same reality made of their individual experience selfs. A reality made of mere reflections all so fragily about to break into pieces.

A small undermentioned factor revolving Kiarostami's films is how they more often then not crossed into autobiographical lenses, sometimes very clearly blatantly in a self-inserted persona – the director in Life, and Nothing More…; while others converged within the very metatextual filmic/narrative fabric of the making – again the director persona Through the Olive Trees pulling the strings / observing the main romantic drama playing out.

Or as a way to comfront issues from his lived in cultural surrounding and time frame while coming into grips against his own demons through the expressed conflicts of human condition laid on screen – the protagonist in Taste of Cherry living in a existential purgatory having lost his will to live; the engineer from The Wind Will Carry Us trying to balance his often demanding work with his endless iration for rural life, to inhabit the space in which all those he ires strives through existences beyound his knowledge; or the characters in Ten encoming sensitive sociological archetypes of its depicted era of Iran political turmoiling. All while trying to experiment new ways that he could take his artistic drive to perform cinematic authenticity, or argue its very nature, like Certified Copy that saw cinematic forgery as an authentic documentour of human expression.

The old man Takashi here follows the same path as encoming an now elder, sickened widowed Kiarostami. Striving on his being and views, still caring more about the intimate/emotional exchanges of a conversation that allows us to know a person on a intimate level, than a sexual venture as the sex worker profession that the character of Akiko promises. Seeking attachments, holding on to the moments, but constantly finding himself trapped in isolation, perpetually getting sidetracked or held back by the ephemerality of modernity in its constant coming and goings, where every conversation is cut short and nothing is ever experienced only pushed to the accelerated now, in unrelenting state of motion.

For one this is the most that a Kiarostami film felt mainly attached to a dramatic logic over its blended mundane natural – that too could fool you into thinking none was rehearsed merely observed; but in the sense this has a very clear focus point A to point B in a clear dramatic sense: "oh its all about the two helping one another to grow past their own lived pains between an elder and young generation counterparts" sort of way; with few key meanderings in the middle.

But the often trademark meanderings from Kiarostami are not much of the focus as they were in other of his movies, rather the implement on a well-structured time loop built on what you could call a comedy of errors, built in a continuously tightening string wave of misunderstandings. But this is all too surrounded by a load of akwardness, emotional neediness, loneliness and shame, that I have a hard time calling it any of it funny though it might be part of a bittersweet tragicomedic intent to some degree – especially the ending, though that one felt like more haunting than anything else for me, made all the more uncomfortably heart shattering by its own bitter undelivery of closure. There's no Ikiru or Wild Strawberries way out of this. Fate is left at a stranded open path towards likely tragedy!

In some ways is like watching a melodrama tainted in the stillness of the mundane, and where the eviscerating sadness to watch these interpersonal tragedies comes nuancedly quiet. Though this film must be a nightmare for modern etilist critics or angry zoomers that can't grab any real thematic glare that they can politicize and elevate over the film as some sort of made up symbolic importance. It only goes as far as ing what's presented on camera with its minimal though punctually orchestrated character interactions, and where the yes present reality of marginalized individuals, belongs solely to their experience, as well as their past, inner being, real ambitions and motivations; omitted from critical undertake judgement. That sure what it finds of abuse in all its forms and the showcase of feudal traditionalism inserted mindset of Japan culture directly contrasted with the hyper digital flare of modernity and its mazing architecture of ever growing directionless.

Probably a tragic showcase of Kiarostami copping with a slight dose of cynicism in how this follows through his previous movies onto our current now. Where the demonstration of resilience and affection seen in the Koker trilogy are no longer capable, the journey is trapped in an indistinguishable urban labyrinth where only in the nest of a house can one find the comfort of the familiar and a representative countenance of a life, a lived story. Where the search for answers and the contemplation of one's reflections wandered in Taste of Cherry and The Wind Will Carry Us is now thrown into contradictions and white lies told to survive the daily moment of troubled relationships. Where the emotional release/resolution through art promised as a thread of hope in Close Up and Certified Copy now seeks its own meaning in a cynical and vague sea of loose threads and never fulfilled odds.

The view might've been taken by the visceral malaise of its era, which the warm honest authenticity of his characters makes it all the more saddened to take in the truth about the corrupt immediacy brought to us, removing our dreams and only at constant reminiss like feeling a heartbreaking dream of never fulfilled love.

Unrated Extended Cut

A few things that go undernoticed about how much The Counselor – perhaps Ridley Scott's most underrated title in his now long line of post 2010s projects that proved the filmmaker going absolutely savage in creative decisions (and a few stinkers); with it being a peak turning point in its director's career: One for a incredibly versatile career, this feels the most Ridley Scott from The Duelists/Blade Runner days back on track, tackling a weird, often zany abstract mood-crisp genre vehicle with this intense bleak foreboding aura of conspicuous laced mystery and melancholic character tragedy.

Two: I'm willing to bet it was this one movie responsible for settling the current more irreverently farcical dry sense of humor phase that took on old Ridley and has turned into his work motto with his latest slate ever since Alien Covenant. All thanks to some inspiring inclusion inspiration that he took by working on top of a Cormac McCarthy original material fresh off hand straight to the screen, so obviously the reactions wouldn't cease to be polarizing, even with its uncut complete "clean" unrated version – that needless to say should be the only way you ever watch this movie!

Tackling a inheritedly American genre type of crime gangster story should've come feeling a bit uncanny for a European in heart like Ridley, that early in his career and during the 2000s would generally fit only into a transparent and unsigned functional formalism, aka: G.I. Jane or Body of Lies; when directing the type of material his brother Tony was cooking up memorable mainstream bangers with his eye closed. Though The Counselor transcends that norm into something particularly wild. Basically already doing everything guys like Andrew Dominik were going about tackling dialogue-heavy existential gangster pulp like Killing Them Softly, paired with what you nowadays usually get from Taylor Sheridan in its pursued gnarly depiction of drug-war / modern frontier setting like the natural sad dark grim evolution of Western reality.

Though it stands more closely, as well as sharing, similar ground with the Coens' No Country for Old Men in the Neo-Noir/Neo-Western thriller setting serving a cautionary odyssey over greed, just taken towards the broader more abstract philosophizing rambling of McCarthy's writings to what may be the most accurate textual adaptation/depiction of his work of austere fatalist ramblings, ihumanly bizarre characters and sheer nihilist absurdity put into actual existential meaning. Brought to life like a novella of crime and punishment inflicted by the faceless merciless God of moral retribution.

Once again turning in yet another evidence - to an already widely known fact among fans; that a Ridley Scott's is only as good as the script he's carried with. Though this being McCarthy handwriting you initially don't know if this is coming as a unique artistic benefit or a curse hazzard because the dialogue nearly takes a life of its own in its collection of surrealist long-winded conversations like a exhibitionist display that ranges between the philosophizing jabbering leaving meanings at the mercy of public interpretation – "grief trancends value"; to the absolutely hysterical – "I would like to forget about Malkina fucking my car"; "You see a thing like that, it changes you". The tonal whiplash presented in such an austere "bussiness as usual" formality is sort of fascinating!

Dialogue that feel used like brushes over a painting that form an idylic cloud of ravaging smoke out of a landfill burning covering every corner part of this underworld of trafficking that works as a business venture like any other. That once it loses prestige, it quickly bankrupts, crumbles like a house of cards much like a snake eating its own tail. A universe equipped to offer the comfy luxe of air-conditioned cubicle spaces, with the sardonic escapades of late-night bars and "car-fucks" taken to extreme literals. But always one second too late ready to pull the rug out from under you and reveal the merciless grotesque violence lurking outside in the desert.

Packing a grounded factuality to its fictional Noirish plunge from skyhigh power into scorched dirt tragedy. From living in the life of the materialist opulent mansions, fine restaurants, hunting wild rabbits with pet cheetah, to becoming a sack of meat prey hidden in a shithole Mexico hotel room after a deal-gone-wrong type plot getting bible levels of repercussions, where by the end after all the intrigue, treachery, gnarly destructions of body and soul; to go out strangled/beheaded through the neck by a shaddy high tech device called "bolito" from faceless enemy entity, might be the most merciful way to go!

Kind of impeccable how it manages to blend in it all the traditional fundamental elements of said Noirish origins: doomed romance, femme fatales, erotic drive and cold executions, with a slight taste of lowkey globe-trotting conspiracy lurking underneath. Though removed of any stylization to fit in Ridley's stern bleak helm that by removing of any dramatic cognitivism, it aids to build the real abstract savagery of its original author into life. Leaving nothing but us to really endure its tale of a individual getting ravaged by his own privileges being slowly eviscerated. Turning cartel wars at the Texas-Mexico border into the stage for a metaphysical poem of human error paying the price of building its palaces of ego. Of trying to live at the gates of hell of earthly pleasures without wanting to get burned by it.

"The heart of any culture is to be found in the nature of the hero. Who is the man who is revered? In the classical world it is the warrior/ but in the Western world, it is the man of God"

In America that culture is money, where individual value has no currency of worth!

Probably the closest old Ridley ever came close to a John Schlesinger t, though most certainly it is him at his most unrelenting hardcore!

When you hear that Bong Joon Ho fresh off a, by all intents and purposes, landmark hit like Parasite would come in to work in a semi-original sci-fi project, starring one of the hottest/most committed and interesting stars in activity today like Robert Pattinson; all while being guaranteed with complete carte blanche of creative freedom, you AT THE VERY LEAST think that the execs over at Warner actually took a look at Bongs work and his (mostly) rock solid track record as a filmmaker of unique voice and peculiar talents for endeavoring into genre variations, and trusted, as well as expected of him, to deliver a bonafide autheur masterpiece coming under a ambitious big-budget studio production banking a director's vision that might've echoed the days of Kubrick, Spielberg or even Nolan ‐ if you're willing to accept look past his early limitations.

But...not what you end up with because Mickey 17 is exactly the dilluded version of what an algorithm could draw of a Bong Joon Ho signature take on political satire, or at least the one portion only made aware to American audiences with the sucess of Parasite; made blandely obvious, fatigeous and near excruciatingly dull. Coming like a rock hammer realization after a two hour reactionless stare at the screen, only slightly smirking a chuckle or two at the sight of Pattinson getting to play loose at the cartoony antics employed in his character to some brief punctual effect; so that in the end your cognitive cells rekindle and make you that what you've just watched was yet another cardcopy faux artifice of mainstream social satire, listing all the usual elements of that generic recipe to the letter.

Once again fulfilling the narrow minded liberal mindset that targets one showman fundamentalism for all the evils in the world with huge teeth and mutant hair looking. The optimus relativization of a shallow idea of imperialism through Trump allegory that anyone can deny or excuse by making similar comparisons of worldwide symbols of proto-fascist authoritarian, but is all coming from the same limmited mindset which by this point has turned material like this into baby food for 20 and 30 year old zoomers who think they are politically conscious, perpetually trying to blame it on a monster and not with the system, nor the social climate, that allowed it to rise into power in the first place; so the main thematic discourse is all but lost in one tightened ideological conveyour belt of by now industrialized scripted criticisms checklists to display the idea of intelectual cinema through accessible idea of corrupt evil. Having to resort to symbolic tokens of idealized liberal-daydream that sees stuff like Ruffalo's performance hitting on such a level of akward that makes you reappreciate a SNL sketch performance better.

While in others in juxtaposition it's trying the usual showcase of the idolyzed empowered woman of color Kamala Harris insert like an action figure, that the beta white male ally protagonist must do the dignified thing to cleanse his past sins ("this is my punishment") as his debt to humankind, and help to elevate his superior muse into that place of power. Which hits zero to none effect other than serve as yet another prime example of modern Hollywood obsession with race like a ethnical/moral high ground com as if they were performing gender bending/rule breaking boldness. Where is no longer a matter of on-the-nose anti-subtlety and more like shoving the barrel of the finger-pointing gun right between your forehead and if you dare call any of that out, judgements will be set to condemn you either a Red Menace er or part of the "Trump obsession". Well...those red hats followers don't disguise nor fool anyone people. Smart enough that is...

The optimistic me may want to believe that Bong just might've (though likely) ran into clear studio interference clashing with contractual final cut guarantees promised / granted to the director before production, that gave way to the hodgepodge result of what at one hand definitely feels like his sole American outing that feels the closest to his Korean productions on a narrative tone level, especially in the self-deprecating miserable bittersweet humor it converges through the protagonist – with Pattinson clearly playing the caucasian version of what would've been a Song Kang-ho character; mingled with what could be the American sanitized version of his now recognized political farse watered-down to common level recipient of what mainstream studios think that the audiences want to see: a walking wacky meme of political checkbox to what could be the most relevant trending; turn the subtext into viral messaging that's moderny stylish and all so filled with class awareness that "corresponds to reflect the world we live in today".

At the one hand, there's no other way around for it then. This was the only path that Bong could follow to have his "message" across through variables of what could be ible within a industry that treats its audience like complete idiots that needs to be spoon fed with the 'how' and 'why' they should think and act morally correctly towards their reality or how reflect over a work of art, but if he made such a concession with the powers at his hands then the picture doesn't get any prettier, just messier. Not just due to how it executes tiresome allegories, but how it next to fill them along its pot of themes and concepts chewing its way through over so much crammed ideas without tasting none of them! Either the systematic infectious evils of colonization spreading out like a disease into the cosmos; the slaughterhouse torture on the environmentalist sad ode shown in Okja that can now be seen affecting blue collar workers realities – though fittable to any job imaginable; bound to enter dystopian capitalist meat grinder; or how its trying to convey weaponized populism and indocrinating chauvinistic ideals of superior higher hand infects collectivism with empty regulated/segregative fundamentalism. Or if you prefer the modern media terminology: fascism.

It could've suited all well within that irreverent bitting cynicism within its one-set of the space colony ship serving as the obvious microcosm of current political landscape and modern society fitting all its comedic shenanigans in one effective farcical staging. But then when it tries to tie its moving threads towards a "save humanity" crescendo climax with a hefty load of self-important meaning, it just gets lost like any bloated blockbuster tends to do. Making this feeling less like a Bong Joon Ho film and more a next to Neil Blomkamp attempting comedy or Edgar Wright attempting relevant dramatic seriousness – and you know how that latter went. So the result is a studied tasteless decently staged emptiness of good production value but loose drafts of ideas built around a sterile grey compartmentalized setting and inserted with brief loose farts of high-thrills to justify the big screen blockbuster experience. That after departing a half-hour introduction with truck load exposition and ditching its main sold premisse of live die repeat with its main star; it struggles to sustain a new key point amidst its own need to experiment and tonal interchanges only to arrive at common place.

Then once it gets to the worm like hippopotamus with telepathic aliens feels too little too late and the doppelganger situation set midway through the film, that gave me weird The Flash déjà vus seeing the two Pattinsons interacting with crazy good chemstry just as much and less anoying than two Ezra Millers; just left me having two thoughts: one, feels a bit of a wimp how it closes all the stakes and existential dehumanization concepts of mortality turned industrial ran like a photocopy machine and the ultimate capitalist nightmare built on a conglomerate of desperation and empty promises of prospect; only for it to end on a self-appreciation/self-validation/self-love yada yada catharsis to its ive dumb dumb protagonist. That granted in such a nihilistic and cynical current landscape we are today this should be totally welcome, but its pursued catharsis seems more like a textual prop than something actually felt or achieved, which is the exact main problem with the rest of the film that manages to only its own schizophrenic irreverence but with subpar storytelling throughlines.

And also...the Manikova triple serial killer thing sounded like the way better story within here. That and Steven Yeun's character of Timo that when not being a punchable face absolutely unnecessary character, his swindler ass-hole living his own hustler cyberpunk Noir thriller also sounds like a WAY more interesting story than the one told in here...

A prime example of mainstream spectacle of its era!

Not the most remarkable WWII war movie of its era, nor the most effective in its propagandistic sell; still presents itself with resounding craft at display because director Allan Dwan was yet another name in the studio craftsman line from the classic era with enough in his hands to make the bare minimum result in true movie spectacle with hefty essence, and that's exactly what Sands of Iwo Jima is!

A bit telegraphed 'boots on the ground' journey that's all about the rough edged sargent proving to his young amateur unit that his brute ways are the only way to get most of them out alive from the combat they are about to get sent into. Only brought with a stance of levity sort of expected for a John Wayne star-vehicle where he clearly has some creative input, so all the old vs young generation, father vs sons mirroring conflict, is prevented to have an impact on par with say Red River.

But what's accomplished here still works. Recruits become veterans, veterans become like fathers leading their sons towards the prospect of a brighter future where everything they stood, bled, lost and fought for, was worth something! And all the interpersonal banthering relationships and the soldier's individual struggles feel afflicting thanks to the punctually good acting at hand, all well-integrated with each other – Wayne included.

When not filling the thin narrative throughline with its nice actors, its taking on the war spectacle with some pretty impressive scale worthy of an epic, and a relentless body-count. And the juxtaposition of real archive combat footage and the staged onscreen battle sequences, blending between the historically documented real battle stock images with the heightened individual dramas of the soldiers banthering, conflicts, evolving and bounding; remains rather splendid!

I care to know which t should have I smoked before seeing this because I have the feeling I probably watched it the wrong way.

Aussie High Noon (and Apocalypse Now?!) crossed with El Topo and a tiny seasoning of the aboriginal-historical set from Walkabout with Jarmusch's Dead Man dry cynical humor. Compactedly efficient while meanderingly digressive in its own scorched stage of blood-spilled dirt and burnt sand. Or at least picture if someone drawn a spaghetti western out of a John Ford material, meeting the meticulous classy glance of a refined traditional Western of keeping commune together, only blood-soaked in grim stylized textures of near hypnotic motion. Deliberately making the genre reckoning with its historical skeleton stuffed in the closet.

Trying to keep a sight of stable normality: holding on to values of family ties; to believe in serving justice to uncivilized land lead by revenge-hungry righteousness; the dream ideal of humble peace and tranquility of matrimony and family; in a world drenched in natural horror. Trying to establish civilization where the colonization malaise has left its irreparable toll in a hellish outback wasteland where men-coyotes reign and where the endless swarm of flies are attached to walking corpses.

Where serenity and wildness inhabit the same place and sometimes the same being. And violence is blunt crude and dry as the landscape where it takes place. Where Nick Cave's banging those soft chords then with crackling harsh buzzing tunes is running the temper off the cliff of brutality about to harvest its way through the flash and bones. Making trully poetic cinema laced on acid trip meditation around the nature of men's inherent instinctive violence. Everybody seeking atonement out of guilt, but perpetually failing to recognize the raw reality just outside the doorstep, or the real savagery that lingers within! Where the ultimate realization is the pre-obviously expected: Indeed, there's nothing more savage in nature than a white men!

Guy Pearce might be the top billing cast name (and he's at his great commendable usual) but this is Ray Winstone, Emily Watson and Danny Huston movie through and through, and each are at their supreme thespian best. Winstone remains the most underrated lead-star ever – starting off as the antagonist figure but slowly evolving to form the very tumultuous and tormented heart of the story; Emily superbly melancholic as usual, and now I get why Hollywood kept perpetually try to put Huston jr. in villains roles but constantly falling miserably because, just as Christoph Waltz, he was never this hovering feral menace again! John Hurt is the true MVP scene stealer though. Truth be told this is easily one of the best used and stellar ensemble cast to crown a Western ever!

Crude as unapolagetically gruesome, there's a non-romanticized closure that offers little else to chew on after it unleashed onto us the real animals that ravaged a civilization and painted history with the dry blood staining the sands, and perhaps that's enough of a tragic point. Either way, one of the supreme 21st century Westerns which his own immensely talented director is still to this day trying to top it!

What if Heat got a French Connection II type sequel

I'm so sorry for the people whose only argument to back up their negative criticism towards this film was the most resounding nagging: "oh its so boring" and other simmilar superlative synonyms. Underestimation might be something to do with it given the very nature of its predecessor first film got born out of that assumption: a direct to video Heat knock-off that somehow saw its way into theaters thanks to fit in the midbuget actioner Lionsgate productions catalogue becoming an instant January-trash cult classic starring unfitted star Gerard Butler that was actually "better than it had any right of being", or so they say.

A sequel to this was so obviously bound to follow the same fate, perhaps arriving six years too late to a ever-consumed by self-engradizing alienating movie market that has barely left no room for specific genre ventures like where the first Den of Thieves could exist. And so if Den of Thieves 2: Pantera has anything going for it – outside one RAD of a title, like if a metal cover band got injected with 80s testosterone; and something of interesting left to show within its macho cops vs robbers formula and sleazy turn at genre-caper beyound seeing the new ways that good Gerard can keep channeling new layers of scumbag filth energy with his Big Nick; might be in how is basically delivering a "what if Heat got a French Connection II type sequel", that's perhaps equally as unnecessary though somehow made more engagingly integrating and absolutely fitting well with its first film!

It's a small joy of its own seeing an actual sequel for a grown ups movie that feels just as tonally as narratively consistent with the events of the first film, while naturally evolving its narrative and characters into a whole new set of genre play, departing from the tactical armory FX-cop show field of action with a added dose of hefty punch of destructive violence, and diving head first into globe-trotting heist thriller territory. Fully embracing the aforementioned French Connection II territory and just as it treated its dirtbag scum leading anti-hero of Popeye Doyle, Big Nick too is placed in a off-his league territory, getting thrown in literal foreign backdrop, at a very similar coastal French setting that irradiates this local flavour vibes from its French Riviera vistas – there's even a similar doping scene, though for completely tonally different purpouses: "FUCK NATO" / "I WISH I COULD FUCKING DANCE!"; and leave it to sunk in his own attempt to repay his outspoken failures from the past.

Although as many have also rightfully pointed out other John Frankenheimer comparison with Ronin though that's more of a tonal/mood similarity. But well, for what surely promisses some slow-burn macho-existentialism, it mostly plays as a genuine super chill buddy movie?! Going from a complete toxic law-abusing/torturing his unwanted informer relationship established in the previous film, with Butler's Big Nick that started out as our pissing-contest leading man to eventually turn the full on walking menace antagonist by the end, and O'Shea Jackson Jr.'s Donnie that went from side young character going through a criminal coming-of-age to reveal himself as the mastermind thief behind it all.

Two dudes that couldn't better define polar opposites, by all s sworn enemies; getting to see themselves thrown in this situation stuck as a bickering odd couple, that have actual crazy good chemistry?! Bringing a unexpected dose of sweet 'dudes being dudes' lightness, cruising around scooter driving, drunk fighting together, yelling at each other lovely insults like a buddy-cop duo when threatened by a super shaddy Italian mafia, and opening up in a 'couple's therapy session' about their feelings and their past in the best shawarma scene ever - Nick should've yelled FUCK THE AVENGERS too! All that you ever imagined could come following the brutish tone of the first film, and it feels totally welcome while aptly as cohesively delving further into uncovering who these guys really are and what drives them. Going from a relation of total spite to naturally evolve into genuine mutual respect and even friendship (?!), bonding in their own private commiseration that still keeps the characters feeling individually nuanced while still with yet a lot left to explore, making you wish for more!

Who could ever imagine that Ice Cub's baby could actually turn out a super charming/hugely charismatic lead actor?! Well, I haven't seen Straight Outta Compton yet so maybe that's a joke on me, but he's really good easy to latch on to his nonchalant charm – its absolutely priceless seeing him eye-rolling when Big Nick shows up to ruin his show like: "oh my God, this vulture creepo again"; but steadily growing from that into great camaraderie back and forth. And inadvertently making Donnie steadily grow in his pursued ambitions for being the best at his craft by each new setback, working once again as an audience pov journey of growth while remaining an ever nebulous intringuing chameleon dude that always has you second guessing, but made far more engaging.

While the old Monster Red Bull addict bear steals the show yet again. Grunting every syllable out of his lines as if the old scottish actor is using his own rusty emulation of American accent to convey the burly menace of his gorila like persona that barely ever learned social skills in complete grimey energy, but with an added dose of fraility when he's met with the Brian O'Conner dilemma of seeing himself to fit into the criminal lifestyle so well that's sort of a cathartical surprise, and ironically making Big Nick a more bearable/likeable character?! Fully embodying that Gene Hackman or Nick Nolte rugged grizzled ass-hole with a palpable vulnerable side to full effect. His once pitiful looser that completely failed in family life so finds his mojo in the perpetual hunt for death, now has us really rooting for the guy to find himself away from the obsessions and actually find the pleasure just as Nick in seeing/living a way of life and fulfilment-seek in a sort of Point Break/original Fast and Furious path but conveyed like a pseudo-Michael Mann male-bond catharsis at theur craft – this owes more than a few echoes to Miami Vice especially in its use of OUTRO by 83 in its final needle-drop.

At the same rate that's perpetually embracing some old-school Eurocrime sensibilities into the heist/"action" thriller formula this, that has no ride or die / law and order that separates moral com from American cop thriller: as the crew of International thieves here are rather always the primary focus and all of them share a warm likeability, that never calls attention upon itself, it/they simply are a gang nurtured in respect and bond in the thrill of their profit pursue that has you feeling the stakes of the game as well as rooting for their jackpot, milimetrically planned loot. That once again behind INSANELY formal eyes of director Christian Gudegast has this operating under such tight professionalism, taking the subpar derived material so 100% committed, really going off his way to aspire for the big leagues of Le Cercle Rouge and Rififi in its scoreless painstakingly methodical-craft attention and nail-biting tension climax, that then is followed by a John Frankenheimer car-chase in the Alps blended with Heat's shootout and yes it is as good as it sounds watching it unfould under such precise intercut clean-frame stunts and terrific ear-blasting sound design.

Hell, it might not even be one of the best heist movies of all time, but it sure behaves like it was, so MASSIVE respect for the confident ambition! Making genuine adult entertainment out of its beefy dad cinema textures but covered in robust genre class, that it just brings forth to fruition the ever-present tragic realization that "they don't make like they use to". But as long as Gudegast persist as a CRIMINALLY UNDERRATED director and Big Nick remains with us, I want at least five more of these now please!

P.S.: The first and only heist movie ever where the bank staff/owners are shown crying over the robbery?!

Watched on Tuesday March 11, 2025.

(ENGLISH VERSION RIGHT BELOW)

"As vezes... a gente tem que acreditar em alguma coisa... se não é fogo."

Basicamente se Sindicato de Ladrões fosse refilmado como um Poliziotteschi italiano dos anos 70 só que sobrecarregado com a efervescência do Cinema Novo.

Eu não sei ao certo a que ponto estamos no "síndrome de vagabundo" que nós Brasileiros adoramos nos auto taxar – se já virou piada ou continua sendo uma auto-crítica intelectualizada; e nem sei se é justo dizer que O Marginal de Carlos Manga serve como reflexão disso já que foi feito ainda nos tempos de ouro onde o mero cineasta Brasileiro apenas se atentava em fazer o melhor filme que podia do seu jeito, sem ter uns trezentos porta-vozes da racionabilidade crítica, tanto na produção quanto na recepção, declarando se é o tipo de cinema certo ou não que precisamos ou melhor nos reflete como cultura, como sempre superestimando o valor da palavra até ela perder todo o sentido num engodo de saturamento.

Mas é inegável como o diretor usa dessa visão e estilística, que muitos até hoje tendem a chamar de "americanizado", como forma de se criar essa fábula do Brasileiro que sempre sonha para além daqui. Preso aos sonhos de revista e promessas da televisão e cinema. O luxo inível que deixaria o que temos de miserável para trás e ter algo para com que se orgulhar e nos levar além, seja como indivíduo, como arte, como imagem. E Manga deliberadamente usa desses artifícios aparentes de gênero – o Valdo ser apresentado como um brutamontes que cai na porrada com a polícia como um espírito vingativo contra o sistema tal como se ele fosse um anti-herói digno de Charles Bronson; é lentamente levado para desfarelar esse ilusionismo de perspectiva Hollywoodiana pra apresentar uma narrativa que é intrinsecamente Brasileira.

Os flashbacks quase Sergio Leoninos dão ao filme o ritmo uma mescla de ado, presente e futuro atrelados no mesmo plano sem nunca perder o fio central. Formando um "estilo" anti tradicional à uma narrativa de batidas e acontecimentos talvez óbvios, mas também servindo para solidificar o estado imutável de seu personagem central: uma criança que nunca foi permitida crescer direito; que a cada tentativas de ser honesto ou tentar ser bom foi empurrada e jogada ao lixo, o trauma continua invadindo e ardendo como feridas abertas jamais saradas.

Se inicialmente se apresenta como um filme de gangster sobre um vigarista vivendo de seus trambiques que vão obviamente se ordenando numa crescente de acasos e más escolhas que vão lhe levar aos maus lençóis de um Noir fatalista, O Marginal logo se revela um estudo de personagem sobre como um pé de chinelo que pensa que foi alçado a alta classe só por se vestir, falar bem e desejar as mulheres granfinas e de classe, só para ter o banho de água de realidade que, socialmente, todo pobre é um instrumento nas mãos da burguesia. Ou seja, de novo, a auto ilusão tão tipicamente Brasileira, sempre à um sopé de se desmoronar. O que é viver sob mentiras e ilusões até elas te rechaçarem por completo.

O próprio Tarcísio Meira tá servindo como um biotipo perfeito pra isso com essa pinta brucutu charmoso de um Burt Reynolds, só que carregado com a melancolia maltrapilho de um Warren Oates, fadado a levar rasteiras, sendo ado a perna, mentido e aproveitado; mas acostumado a tal até mesmo depois de se implodir em revolta. Ainda aberto a tentar ter algo para se agarrar, pois é a única coisa que pode fazer no tempo que a vida permite uma pausa em meio à suas cobranças e reviravoltas. Até a mulher dele – Darlene Glória excelente; recebe camadas dentro disso porque ela também tenta viver dos sonhos e ilusões à qualquer custo pessoal, então no final nem resta julgar certos e errados quando ela também fez parte do abuso infligido contra Valdo quando ela – como uma típica femme fatale sempre a – também confrontou sua parcela de abuso e tentou sobreviver. Basta então aceitar a tragédia certa que tá vindo como uma cruel cobrança do destino escolhido pelo personagem.

Quando todas as peças se encaixam no quebra cabeça feito das ilusões por qual ele foi consumido, a quebra narrativa tempestuosa para e o filme apenas foca em Valdo só saindo em busca do mero pacato, da promessa de um filho, uma casinha humilde um emprego feito de suas próprias mãos; mas até aí o drama no qual sua figura se moldou o nega de ter tal conclusão e o faz tomar o caminho de sair de cena como entrou, atacando o sistema como um último recurso quando nada mais importa; e sendo fuzilado por ele. Morrendo como um pistoleiro, um marginal que a sociedade o transformou, enquanto ele só quis o que Marlon Brando já queria em Sindicato de Ladrões – "be a somebody" / ser um alguém.

No mais, é até insultoso o quão exímio o filme consegue ser um baita thriller criminal, infalível na execução de "ação" franca por pouca que seja – mas sempre gerando um impacto chave na história; e astutamente coeso em sua funcionalidade dramática. Sim tridimensional e um tanto óbvia no quanto martela seus pontos de crise existencial – ainda mais se você prestar atenção na letra da música tema de Roberto e Erasmo Carlos, mas que tem seu efeito sendo cumprido; e sempre de maneira sincera e com verdadeiros sentimentos de quebrar o coração sendo presentes, nunca deixando seus momentos de ínfima e ageira alegria e emoção soarem piegas e sim dolorosamente trágicos, tal como devem ser no ser Brasileiro, vivendo desde cedo de sonhos da sarjeta em alcançar os arranha céus.

//

"Sometimes... we have to believe in something... otherwise goddam..."

Basically if On the Waterfront got a remake as an 70s Italian Poliziotteschi, but overloaded with the social effervescence of Brazilian 'Cinema Novo'.

I'm not sure how far we've come in the "bum syndrome" that we Brazilians love to call ourselves - whether it's become a joke or it's still an flawed form of intellectualized self-criticism; and I don't even know if it's fair to say that Carlos Manga's O Marginal (The Thug or The Criminal if you prefer my free translation) serves as a reflection of this since it was made back in the golden age when the average great Brazilian filmmaker was only concerned with making the best film he could in his own way, without having about three hundred spokespeople for critical reasonability, both in production and in reception, declaring whether it's the right kind of cinema or not that we need or better reflects us as a culture, as always overestimating the value of the word until it loses all meaning in a black hole of saturation.

But it is undeniable how the director uses this vision and style, which many around here still tend to call "Americanized", as a way to create this fable of the Brazilian who always dreams of something beyond. Trapped in the dreams of magazines and the promises set by TV and movies. The inaccessible luxury that would allow one to leave behind the misery and have something to be proud of and take us further, whether as an individual, as art, as an image. And Manga deliberately uses these apparent genre artifices – the character of Valdo getting presented as a brute anti-hero who gets into fights with the police as a vengeful spirit against the system as if he were an lead tough-guy worthy of Charles Bronson; and is slowly led to dismantle this illusionism of a Hollywood perspective to present a narrative that is intrinsically Brazilian.

The almost Sergio Leone-like flashbacks give the movie a mix rhythm of past, present and future tied together in the same shot without ever losing the central thread. Forming an anti-traditional "style" to a narrative of certain obvious beats and turns, but also serving to solidify the immutable state of its central character: a child who was never allowed to grow up; who at every attempt to be honest or trying to be good was pushed away and thrown into the gutter, with the trauma continuing to invade and burn like open wounds that never healed.

If it initially presents itself as a typical gangster film about a hustler living off his scams, which are obviously arranged in a series of accidents and bad choices that will lead him to the tragic mishaps of a fatalistic Noir; it soon reveals itself to be a character study about a lowlife who thinks he has been elevated to the upper class just by dressing well, speaking well and desiring classy, ​​elegant women, only to be hit in the head with the reality check that, socially, every poor person is an instrument in the hands of the elite. Once again, the self-delusion so typically Brazilian, always on the verge of falling apart. What it is like to live under lies and illusions until they tear you apart completely.

Tarcísio Meira himself is serving as a perfect prototype for this, with that charming, brutish look of a Burt Reynolds, but loaded with the ragged melancholy of a Warren Oates, doomed to be abused, cheated, lied to and taken advantage of; but accustomed to this even after lashing in revolt. Still open to trying to have something to hold on to, because it is the only thing he can do in the time that life allows a pause amidst its demands. Even his wife – an excellent Darlene Glória; receives layers within this because she also tries to live off her dreams and illusions at any personal cost, so in the end there is no point in judging right and wrong when she was also part of the abuse inflicted on Valdo when she – as a typical femme fatale always does – also faced her own share of abuse and attempt to survive it. So, all we have to do is accept the certain tragedy that is coming as a cruel charging of the destiny chosen by the character.

When all the pieces fit together in the puzzle made of illusions by which he was consumed, Valdo only goes out in search of the mere peace, the promise of a son, a humble little house, a job made with his own hands, but until then the drama in which his figure was shaped by, denies him of having such a conclusion and makes him take the path of leaving the scene as he entered, lashing out against the system as a last resort when nothing else matters; and getting gunned down by it. Dying as a gunslinger, the marginal that society turned him into, while he only wanted what Marlon Brando already wanted back in On the Waterfront – "be a somebody".

Furthermore, it's almost insulting how excellent the film manages to be as a great gangster thriller, infallible in the execution of the blunt "action" no matter how little it may be - but always generating a key impact on the story; and astutely cohesive in its dramatic functionality. Yes, it is three-dimensional and somewhat obvious in how much it hammers home its points of existential crisis - even more so if you know portuguese and pay close attention to the lyrics of the theme song by Roberto and Erasmo Carlos, but it has its effect being fulfilled; and always in a sincere manner and with true feelings present, never letting its moments of fleeting joy and emotion sound corny but rather painfully tragic, just as they should be in the Brazilian way of being, living from an early age with dreams of reaching the skyscrapers from the gutter it came from.

Like watching the bastard young cousin from Friedkin's To Live and Die in L.A.; similarly taking 50s Noir caper into the wet-soaked pavements and Hollywood-hills dirty clostered apartments from the 80s cultural iconography and distilling a traditional procedural plot under serial killer horror-movie module and tone, but taking the pov from the hard-boiled sargent consumed/committed to the investigation like his most primitive instinctive impulses push him towards it like a mechanic order of bussiness.

There's this almost contemptful vibe hovering over each small sturdy/economical texture of James B. Harris's film, like it didn't had the right of existing or that it got made in the first place. Like a forceful harsh raw truth being imposed down on you that innocence is a society's hazzard and living like a immoral scumbag may be the only way to not become a prey and stand outside its corrupt violent dirt with any ounce of pleasure to be taken, professionally or personally. The uncomforting fact that we are not so far away from being like this in our most unspoken angsts.

Some compare Woods' Lloyd Hopkins as Dirty Harry with a bleaker moral code unbounded by law, and he probably would've served as the sort of dark mirror character/antagonist for Harry Callahan in a Dirty Harry flick; but this guy has no qualms, no limits to see his way around getting done. A slimy sleazebag that gives pride to the "pig" cop-nickname that lives for his profession like a neurotic angry fuck, while reveling in how many ways he can abuse his way around with the law power on his side, withot giving a flying f#ck about moral concerns to his actions nor comprehend how sick in the head him telling stories about his criminal stakeouts to his eight year old daughter like he was telling "goldilocks and the three bears" really is.

A obnoxious scum to an ALMOST pitiful degree of sympathy given how much of a lonely looser he keeps burrying himself at while indeed trying to catch a bloodthirsty mass-murderer; but at any given opportunity he's coldly taking advantage of friends, coworkers, suspects and victims to see his next step of loose-cannon ilicit investigation getting done, making you rather pity the corrupt beat cop he comes across and executes in cold blood. Living by the way of his desires while blindly favored by the rules of the system that wipes his dirt off underneath the carpet all so naturally as it threatens to punish him for it.

The indifference is one replicated so accurately by Harris' robust minimalist direction that can deceive at being textureless TV-work efficiency, but the text too has this very 'matter of fact' straight detailing of clues and related-case evidences that counterpoints all the abuse, amoral and vile gruesome violence at display with the main rigid execution of a cop brute walking through the empty existential void where acting like a normal person is the real chore, that never tops the thrill of uncovering death and blasting a shotgun to cause it. Perhaps most essence/tone accurate adaptation from a Ellroy novel just for that!

Accurately ressurecting B Noir potboiler under 80s grimy grit with enough questionable depictions of systemic justice and using feminism as a plot device – with a male feminist being the main serial killer; to feed what Twitter leftist idealizes that a chauvinistic Republican supposedely relishes on and paint this as some sort of proto right-wing fascist wet-dream that would've probably come by John Millius' mind and whom James Woods was born to play.

The more uncomforting it gets the better, it doesn't give two shits about your state of mind and bluntly presents ugliness as it is – S. Craig Zahler must love this movie; and yes Woods is as perfect as anyone could think he could be in a role like this, not because the "oh he's like that in real life ha ha" joke you all love to make, but because him too cares about the uggly details around his character persona and actions, while not holding it as a moral com through his performance, rather commit to showing that as blind stiff sense of conduct, of a uggly man white-knighting a broken execution of righteousness drunk in its own violence, becoming a blunt instrument of his own nature!

"Well, there's some good news and there's some bad news. The good news is you're right, I'm a cop and I gotta take you in. The bad news is I've been suspended and I don't give a fuck!"

Coldest cut to black ever!

When he wasn't busy setting a name for himself and becoming known as the one responsible for some of the most iconic and celebrated film Noirs of its era; director Robert Siodmak would also be pulled to helm interesting varied experiments, from the underratedly peculiar Southern gothic blend with Universal monster of Son of Dracula, to a proto-Langian tropical adventure with Cobra Woman, or in the case of The Crimson Pirate, a colorfully zestful swashbuckling adventure that gives pride to its old-fashioned Technicolor spectacle with zany motions and absurd glee, pretty much establishing everything you would ought to see later through a well known Pirate and his caribbean escapades through Tortuga!

From the wacky escapades exhilarating pacing, the slapstick injected cartoon-logic humor and loads of pirate triple-crossings – though still bounded by a code of conduct; all preceding the Jack Sparrow days of "a Pirate's life for me". Even the gag of the boat turned upside down being used to breathe underwater is taken straight from here. Verbinski you pirate! Can't blame him though to steal from a mighty chest filled with priceless treasures, made better if not for the non-stop thrilling romp that might run a one or two too much fluffy gags in spots, truncating the motions along its ever-constant vibrancy, then just for the sheer star power of old Burt exuding from the screen!

Any reasonable cinephile just should allow himself the decency of enjoying their dose of Burt Lancaster in any given context of filmmaking, even when his ego-persona is taking a hold of the entire character he's playing, but that so happens to work so much in its favour here. His brash charm and sharp-tongued chatterbox Captain Vallo is designed as utter joy to get entangled by each new caper act he's about to commit next to his entrusted loyal partner Nick Cravat as the mute friendly sidekick; improvising as they goes along just to see where they land at the next death defying stunt. Then there's Burt Lancaster in drag, which is quite a sight to behold on its own!

Radiating his big wide smile with shining teeth while doing backflips and rope-swinging acrobatics overload, to the point you beging thinking this is taking a direct eye-winking self-parody to the swashbuckling days of Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn or a ionate rescue of that type of genre romp, with Lancaster straightly playing it with wholehearted intensity putting his circus performer days to use; and Siodmak orchestrating all with genuine earnest self-aware delight that doesn't let the stupid grim on your face to fade off for a second!

With whole lot less swordplay than expected a whole lot more of punching and throwing people in the water like a big aquatic circus, making you think its playing the light breezy audience friendly route of fun, but then the climax piles up a ridiculous body-count with its abnourmously epic scale and insane-inventive set-pieces getting taken to absurd extravaganza with hot-air ballons, steampunk flamethrower cannons, musket machine guns and... nitroglycerin(?!) – and somehow all that's not even the final battle cramming up the runtime!

Entertainment of the olds really could fit some ludicrous conceptual ideas that feel tactile magic while inserting interesting subtext, or in this case some pro-commy manifesto hidden as a high-sea whimsical shebang advertising free democracy by the tip of a blade in its way of surviving the backstabbing trade of favour-exchanges from capitalist imperialism, the world where a honest man's trade is criminal anti-heroics. Greatly defining its paperback slice of pirate characters with enough content to through the executing the near farcical theatrics with absolute gusto and never dilluded amount of fun!

Boy... and modern Hollywood today LOVE to brag about their pattern-breaking progressivism with their boring, cynical, morally wretched girl-boss characters in mainstream franchises, while back in 1951 Jean Peters was already heading a Technicolor studio mainstream swashbuckler, making men walk the plank towards their deaths in absolute cold blood just in the first five minutes; dueling Blackbeard himself; becoming the pirate version of Kriemhilde's Revenge descending upon the sea, all with complete sass badassery and scene-chewing comand of the screen.

In addition to being a skilled handful craftsman, Jacques Tourneur also had an masterful aptitude knack for visually expressive screen spectacle with doozing taste for opulent theatrics and Anne of the Indies stands as yet another of this examples of unthinkable versatiliy and brings high-sea sword-dueling romp that owes next to nothing to the swashbuckler epics from Errol Flynn or Tyrone Powers. In what it might lack in scale under its economic detailing, it oversells in stirring vibrant excitement that's a feast for the senses – the intro short ship battle scene alone could've been a what if Powell and Pressburger directed Italian peplum mimickery of American genre spectacle.

It starts off in blazing high energy and it doesn't let off from there because the story too gets caught up in the large sea of violent / dangerous emotions. Picture pirate Johnny Guitar but from Mercedes McCambridge's Emma perspective, where the jealous other so happens to be the dashing cunning captain Anne Providence whom accidentally falls for the souring lie of "love", and tragedy is about to ensue. Begining like a identity crisis tale of a girl raised like a pirate men, slowly discovering her own femininity as she "knows no other life than the law of might" as Peters herself described the character. But that soon evolves to escalating lies propelling danger-looming turns like a cannon fuse about to fire!

Even when there's no cannon balls getting fired and blades clashing, you're still fully engrossed by Tourneur's tight direction embedded by an idyllic sense for dramaturgy that encomes its characters around spaces of feverish desire, longing tender and glooming dread making every frame second more vital than the last. Building an adventure navigated by love turned into spite, performative dressing giving place to corrupted natures and undressing the disguise roles of power. What does it portray about an abuse portrayal of female condition in patriarchal sex-oriented guide-control system is as pervasively nuanced within the stage and never getting in the way of the main drama built on the simplicity of broken hearts and existential struggles; it's all so masterfully intrinsically conjured together its absorbing.

Made even more so by the fierce commanding presence of Jean Peters ahead of the film, imposing respect along with tangible dramatic solemnity that makes you have no other feeling for her than total empathy and even when she becomes the tyrant of the seven seas. Along with a fine cast of filthy gorgeous Debra Paget; Herbert Marshall as a wonderfully self-loathing drunk with a heart of gold doctor; a WAY TOO UNDERUSED WONDERFUL Thomas Gomez as Blackbeard, and extra bonus James Robertson Justice, a (great) strangely recurrent seamate character-actor adding up a nice presence.

Further note: I didn't thought possible I could hate Louis Jourdan more than I did in Ophüls's Letter from an Unknown Woman, but here we are: his stone plank of wood charm breaking another woman's heart, that whenever the movie is trying to use him as a moral counterweight against Peters' Annie as she slowly descends into rageful revenge and his actions are lit as justifiable as: "oh he's just a honorable men that lied so he could get his ship back and now is just trying to save his wife" WELL WORLD'S SMALLEST VIOLIN TO YOU ASS-HOLE! You broke a woman's dreams of normalcy and happiness, turned her into a monster now removed of any ounce of honor she ever had, making her loose her friends along with the slowly withering respect and the loyalty from her men. YOU DESERVE THE PLANK!

It's more evident now how Tourneur could have the dramatic grandeur of intimacy and suggestive nuance from Ford, just as equally evoke the the rawness from Boetticher. Anne of the Indies could be seen as a high-sea Western of sorts in its moral tragedy character drama in direct relation to the relentless nature of its environment. But the way the director takes its elements adorned to a sprawling fully romantic dynamic, he's simply taking the piece to its highest evocative level of the medium. You're meant to feel every blow of fierce combat as the heartbreaking outcomes, it's almost experimental at the same rate its wonderfully traditional. Anyway, long way to say: one of the best and definitives Pirate's movies ever!

Solid though kind of a whatever year, especially if compared with 2023. But anything that was great did felt especial and unique in their own particular ways.

Still pretty incomplete because I'm yet to watch few others from the year that I've missed out and time runs always too short to find gold in a coal mine. So here's mine pretty random favourites' selection of 2024!

Side note: The Rebel Moon – Chapter Two version considered here is obviously the director's cut Curse of Forgiveness.

1. Juror #2
2. Nosferatu
3. Megalopolis
4. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
5. Adagio
6. Trap
7. Anora
8. Look Back
9. Hit Man
10. Chime

...plus 39 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Spider-Man 2
2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
3. The Godfather Part II
4. Aliens
5. Dawn of the Dead
6. The Empire Strikes Back
7. Bride of Frankenstein
8. Gremlins 2: The New Batch
9. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
10. The Dark Knight

...plus 75 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

'Perfect' is the most lose and subjective term one can use to define a movie based on criticism level alone, but sometimes, just sometimes, there are those films where you just can feel down in your heart that have absolutely NOTHING wrong with, they are exactly what they were meant to be, even if by accident, and stand as undisputed perfection that, on the very least, is so very hard to point out one single flaw.

Please note that this ISN'T a All Time Favourite's list, as I have many movies I consider 5/5 masterpieces but that aren't quite the PERFECTION I'm reffering it here.

And as usual, this is subjective for anyone, and these are just my personal picks, but I offer you the opportunity to do similar rankings of your own!

• Casablanca
• All That Jazz
• 12 Angry Men
• Singin' in the Rain
• Back to the Future
• White Heat
• Barry Lyndon
• Seven Samurai
• Anatomy of a Murder
• 3 Godfathers

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Basic Instinct
2. Flesh + Blood
3. RoboCop
4. The 4th Man
5. Turkish Delight
6. Total Recall
7. Elle
8. Black Book
9. Starship Troopers
10. Soldier of Orange

...plus 7 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

You might be wondering why Snatch, Lock Stock or even The Italian Job aren't here. Well, I wouldn't exatcly call those JASON STATHAM flicks, you know, this are the movies where the Jason Statham created action persona does take the main spotlight and leads the film around his cockney brutting brit guy we all love, and these are to me his best while at it!

1. Wrath of Man
2. Crank
3. Safe
4. The Bank Job
5. The Transporter
6. Crank: High Voltage
7. The Expendables
8. Transporter 2
9. The Beekeeper
10. Killer Elite

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Or: "How I constantly lived trying to remake my own directed version of Training Day and failing every time" (but with some good movies here and there).

1. End of Watch
2. Fury
3. Street Kings
4. Sabotage
5. Harsh Times
6. The Beekeeper
7. A Working Man
8. Bright
9. Suicide Squad
10. The Tax Collector

The name should've speaked for itself, its about the sequel movies made after a reaaaally long time after the previous installment and brings back much older versions of the original characters. Only mostly counting the ones I really like and consider real proper sequels! (so none of Terminator Dark Fate or Genesis, The Last Jedi or Rise of the Skywalker in my yard)!

P.S: HUGE honorable mention going to the Cobra Kai series that in its entirety has been a masterpiece of a sequel for the Karate Kid series. It maintains the old characters leading the forefront with much more depth given to each single one of them, while wonderfully balancing out with the new characters that you're also made to like and care for just as equally!

1. Twin Peaks: The Return
2. Blade Runner 2049
3. The Godfather Part III
4. Saraband
5. The Color of Money
6. The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse
7. Top Gun: Maverick
8. Scream 4
9. Rambo
10. Rocky Balboa

...plus 25 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Mission: Impossible – Fallout
2. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
3. Final Destination Bloodlines
4. Fast & Furious 6
5. Lone Wolf and Cub: White Heaven in Hell
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Eternally divided between kind of loving and being distressingly upset or frustrated by these...

• Star Wars: The Last Jedi
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
• Wreck-It Ralph
• The Lost World: Jurassic Park
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
• Rambo: Last Blood
• Opera
• Resident Evil: Retribution
• Resident Evil: The Final Chapter
• Lockout

...plus 26 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
2. The Godfather Part II
3. A Better Tomorrow III: Love and Death in Saigon
4. Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
5. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
6. X-Men: First Class
7. Alien: Covenant
8. Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones
9. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace
10. Prometheus

...plus 9 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
2. Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in the Land of Demons
3. Fast Five
4. Final Destination 5
5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
6. Battle for the Planet of the Apes

Another name for a guilty-pleasures list? Maybe. But this ain't exatcly guilty pleasures per say in regards for me to know that some of the movies here are bad but I still like them, no. And yet some of them did conquer my empathy and heart even with their flaws, while others are really excelent movies that I found to be of great quality and have no idea whatsoever of why people bash hard on them.

Well, if this movies couldn't find the love of others, they did found mine.

• Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
• Alexander
• Spider-Man 3
• Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
• Kingdom of Heaven
• King Kong
• Watchmen
• Blackhat

...plus 147 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Tree of Life
2. The Skin I Live In
3. Killer Joe
4. Hugo
5. Drive
6. A Separation
7. Melancholia
8. Carnage
9. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
10. Shame

...plus 32 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Not exatcly ranked, but kind of ranked.

• Raging Bull
• Lawrence of Arabia
• Andrei Rublev
• Amadeus
• The Color of Pomegranates
• The Social Network
• Schindler's List
• Oppenheimer
• Bird
• Patton

...plus 34 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Yes people, Dredd absolutely counts!

1. Dredd
2. Warfare
3. Ex Machina
4. Annihilation
5. Civil War
6. Men

1. Mission: Impossible – Fallout
2. The Way of the Gun
3. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
4. Jack Reacher
5. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
6. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

1. Mission: Impossible
2. Mission: Impossible – Fallout
3. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
4. Mission: Impossible III
5. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
6. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
7. Mission: Impossible II
8. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

aka: The Best Bond film director, there I said it!

Definetely not having the best films of the franchise under his belt, for sure, but Glen not only spended the most time on the director's chair and was behind the production and editing of earlier ones of the franchise, and showned to know and love the character better than anyone else that seat in the helm of this movies. Even at the most ridicule level ones that he made, the action was ALWAYS top-notch impressive and pratical-effects and stunt gold, and brough the very best of both Moore and Dalton, the comedic old granpa and the shakesperean ruthless killer; and made them two of the very best incarnations of the classic character (some say one of them is even the best and I would've agreed).

This may seem few but deserve their recognition and respect as some of the most well-made, hugely entertaining, creative and some of them even bold films, that brough pride to the franchise's name!

1. Licence to Kill
2. The Living Daylights
3. For Your Eyes Only
4. Octopussy
5. A View to a Kill

Alright yeah, I'll be the first one to addmit it that this is the perfect definition of a "weird ass concepted list" (if that such definition even exist). But take the forhead meaning of "action" here over the movies actual over-all quality. So no, Terminator 2 is an amazing piece of filmaking in all its own regards, but better than Seven Samurai or The General? FUCK NO. But in regards of action...it might just be the perfect and definitive masterpiece of the genre, PERIOD. But also I take in count here movies that are not actual action films per say, but there is 'action' in them integrated in their story and even in the storytelling building. Say wathever you want about how AWESOME and FUN Michael Mann's Heat is, that AIN'T an action film, but there is some SWEET SWEET action in it (all Mann's film for that regard).

And suffice to say that this are not a supposedly affirmation of devine and irrefutable truth of all this picks being the ONLY and VERY best action movies of all time. Just the ones that really hitted me with some entertaining action composition, in all its different forms, that just blasted me with some badassery joy.

P.S: Tried to avoid most War and historical/fantasy films for number one - Those are not really "action", and yet battle portraits and recreations etc etc, and there will be another list devoted for those. And number 2 - I'll pick whatever the heck I want so peace!

1. Hard Boiled
2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
3. The General
4. Raiders of the Lost Ark
5. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
6. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
7. Sherlock Jr.
8. Heat
9. Predator
10. Aliens

...plus 176 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Apart from being my all time favourite movie genre, the Western genre is the undeniable center beam of everything that may define what cinema is to its profound essence. It is fantastical but also realistic; it is full of action and violence but is also full of complex dramas with good chunks of places to levity and fun. It can be small and independent in its scale and design but also can be grand and epic in its porpotions and ambitions.

It is a genre that houses others genres, but still has its specific recognizable trademarks that may be familiar to all, to the lawmans, the cowboy anti-heroes, the frontier-tensions; and as for the point of this list, this same trademarks shown to have been of great influence in several types of films, inside and out of the genre. So go ahead and be free to discuss either if this or that film shouldn't be here because they have nothing of "Western" in them or that are true worthy Westerns and should be considered as such.

Or my fun here and feel free to suggest any movie that you feel is influenced by the Western genre, but that aren't exactly Westerns.

• Seven Samurai
• The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
• Star Wars
• Cop Land
• Heat
• The Hidden Fortress
• Mad Max 2
• No Country for Old Men
• Harakiri
• Kill Bill: Vol. 1

...plus 100 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Ordered by a mix of release date and time which I watching it since the day I first going to the movies!

• Shrek 2
• Shark Tale
• Madagascar
• Two Sons of Francisco
• The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl
• Chicken Little
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
• The Game Plan
• Golden Oldies
• Bezerra de Menezes: O Diário de um Espírito

...plus 216 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

What would it be of a film without its script or their screenwritters?! It is he or she whon builds and shapes the film we are watching from beginning to end, giving the material to the director to work his craft through the writing craft itself, and many of them are written with an incredible either you call mastery, originality or ingenious crafiting of adaptations and creations, or simply and pure geniality.

And these here are for me the ones that have caused controversy, and left me puzzled, emotional and entertained, each one with an incredible mastery of their own regard, and that is thanks to an amazing writing that came with them.

1. M
2. Shanghai Express
3. Design for Living
4. It Happened One Night
5. Fury
6. Grand Illusion
7. The Lady Vanishes
8. Only Angels Have Wings
9. The Grapes of Wrath
10. Rebecca

...plus 386 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Not adaptatios of any game franchise / brand or title, just movies that get their inspiration on technique, execution style etc on videogame dynamics and rules.

P.S: Outliers go to some of the Resident Evil flicks and Monster Hunter from PWSA because they fit in that category - not faithful for their original material but to the idea of game dynamic.

• Edge of Tomorrow
• Game Night
• Snowpiercer
• Alita: Battle Angel
• John Wick
• John Wick: Chapter 2
• John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
• John Wick: Chapter 4
• Mission: Impossible – Fallout
• Speed Racer

...plus 16 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The most beautifully tragic and cinematic of all genres in cinema history, period. And that showned to have their fare share of influence, just as much visually and narratively speaking, in various types of movies throught out history, till this day.

And here are some of this films that, to me, carried with them lots of clear influences and inspirations from the classic Noir cinema. Since the presence of femme fatales; the characters journeys doomed to tragedy ends; the complex character's study about morale in a world doomed by injustice; among others types.

Fell free to recomend new additions.

• The Apartment
• Lost Highway
• Sudden Impact
• Brick
• Blade Runner
• Blade Runner 2049
• Taxi Driver
• Basic Instinct
• Sunset Boulevard
• Ghost in the Shell

...plus 137 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Plot? FUCK THAT. These are character pieces, and character pieces ALONE. Where their sit and talking random subjects, and living through the moments are more dramatically intense and gripping of any action scene, and all marvelous because of that!

(no particular order of preference)

• Rio Bravo
• M*A*S*H
• Pulp Fiction
• The Big Lebowski
• American Graffiti
• The Breakfast Club
• Hatari!
• Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
• Licorice Pizza
• The Quiet Man

...plus 27 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
2. Iron Man
3. Avengers: Infinity War
4. Guardians of the Galaxy
5. Thor: Ragnarok
6. Spider-Man: No Way Home
7. Deadpool & Wolverine
8. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
9. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
10. Ant-Man

...plus 37 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Spider-Man 2
2. Logan
3. X2
4. Spider-Man
5. Blade II
6. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
7. X-Men: First Class
8. Iron Man
9. Avengers: Infinity War
10. Guardians of the Galaxy

...plus 68 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Just a brief compilation of some of the comedies that makes me laugh – which might also be a way of putting together my 'favorite comedies' list, but maybe not so much; but rather those that whenever I rewatch them, they still manage to rip me off belly laughing gut busting, not just in chuckles of smart humor as any refined comedy does, but more like loud and hysterical screaming coffing like a pregnant seal kind of laughter, no matter how many times I watch them again and again!

• Ball of Fire
• Some Like It Hot
• His Girl Friday
• The Quiet Man
• The Gold Rush
• City Lights
• Bringing Up Baby
• A New Leaf
• Young Frankenstein
• Blazing Saddles

...plus 67 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• American Sniper
• Black Hawk Down
• 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
• The Hurt Locker
• Warfare
• Guy Ritchie's The Covenant
• The Outpost
• Three Kings
• Jarhead
• Lone Survivor

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Sinners
2. Creed
3. Fruitvale Station
4. Black Panther
5. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Long live forced progressive agendas!

In the times we live in, where political social representativeness have taken on a huge dominance over the main topic of discussions and demands on public tabloids for women, and minorities have their equal footing and voice of equalitie as anyone, Hollywood mainstream sure would get the perfect recipe to do just that and gain financial sucess and order of speech from many creators, by simply making everysingle white guy of your movie either the slimy treachrous racist sexist villain or just a uneven gag punch line for comic relief.

Here follows some examples of this now common expected trade, because we ain't gonna gain social ethnical equality between us by giving equal importance and room for everyone, we are going to bring down the white enemy for all his historical sins against the human race, and bring up diversity with forced empty characters! EQUALITY RULES

• Barbie
• Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
• The Invisible Man
• Black Panther
• Captain Marvel
• Ghostbusters
• Charlie's Angels
• Promising Young Woman
• Watchmen
• Midsommar

...plus 43 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Who said that John Carpenter wasn't a influencer of soo many filmakers?!

• The Guest
• Upgrade
• It Follows
• Halloween II
• Sinners
• Army of the Dead
• Neighboring Sounds
• Event Horizon
• Resident Evil
• Overlord

Movies from multiple genres and decades where the existence of God is made perfectly clear that's 100% real. The divine exists, there is a heaven and hell,
his son walked the earth to pay for our sins, and his will shall be done!

Addendum: Excluding bible-related adaptations and consecrated saints biopics because that's just cheating (and would be a way too long and theological of a list!

• Ordet
• A Dog's Will
• Stars in My Crown
• The Seventh Seal
• 3 Godfathers
• Tokyo Godfathers
• The Virgin Spring
• Silence
• Faust
• Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

...plus 42 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Better late than ever, I was waiting till I had watched all the big acclaimed movies from 2022 before the Oscars to TRULLY rank rightfully the best of the best of that year.

But, as that became impossible given one reason called: private life; I'll leave it here and hopefully down the line I'll edit adding the films I still want to watch but couldn't get my hands around yet like Decision to Leave; TÁR; EO; Barbarian, among others that I might have missed.

Anyway, here are the 2022's best/favourites by the Klopper:

1. The Fabelmans
2. Avatar: The Way of Water
3. Top Gun: Maverick
4. The Fire Within: Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft
5. The Banshees of Inisherin
6. The Batman
7. Aftersun
8. RRR
9. Three Thousand Years of Longing
10. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

...plus 18 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• All That Jazz
• Fitzcarraldo
• Nope
• Inception
• Tucker: The Man and His Dream
• Pig
• The Wind Rises
• Opening Night
• Megalopolis
• The Prestige

...plus 16 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Fitzcarraldo
2. The Enigma of Kaspar Ha
3. Aguirre, the Wrath of God
4. Nosferatu the Vampyre
5. Grizzly Man
6. Stroszek
7. The Fire Within: Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft
8. Cobra Verde
9. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans
10. Heart of Glass

...plus 26 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Those big blockbuster juggernauts that both massively underperform at the box-office and got mixed to worse critical reception and that people are just TOO HARSH on.

And yes I actually like them!

(basically a companion list to mine A LOT of people HATE but I actually like list)

• The Lone Ranger
• King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
• Hellboy: The Crooked Man
• Speed Racer
• John Carter
• The Flash
• The King's Man
• Mortal Engines
• Dark Phoenix
• Solo: A Star Wars Story

...plus 9 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Twin Peaks: The Return
2. The Irishman
3. The Tree of Life
4. The Turin Horse
5. Silence
6. Certified Copy
7. Blade Runner 2049
8. Holy Motors
9. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
10. The Other Side of the Wind

...plus 171 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Close-Up
2. Taste of Cherry
3. Where Is the Friend's House?
4. Certified Copy
5. Through the Olive Trees
6. Ten
7. The Wind Will Carry Us
8. Like Someone in Love
9. Life, and Nothing More…
10. Shirin

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Hunt
2. The Master
3. Holy Motors
4. Like Someone in Love
5. Django Unchained
6. Life of Pi
7. Amour
8. Lincoln
9. Moonrise Kingdom
10. Neighboring Sounds

...plus 26 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Alien
2. Blade Runner
3. Kingdom of Heaven
4. American Gangster
5. The Duellists
6. Thelma & Louise
7. Napoleon
8. The Counselor
9. Gladiator
10. Legend

...plus 19 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Wolf of Wall Street
2. The Wind Rises
3. Venus in Fur
4. Her
5. Before Midnight
6. Prisoners
7. Nymphomaniac: Vol. I
8. Nymphomaniac: Vol. II
9. The Immigrant
10. The Counselor

...plus 30 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Memories of Murder
2. Parasite
3. The Host
4. Snowpiercer
5. Mother
6. Mickey 17
7. Okja
8. Barking Dogs Never Bite

"Fun" is a tricky and complex word to count down and maybe analyze it, I know, but let me try to explain as best as I can: THIS ARE THOSE MOTHERFUCKING GREAT, AND MAYBE THOSE NOT EVEN THAT GREAT, BUT SCREW IT, GREAT INDEED ANYWAY, MOVIES THAT LEAVES YOU WITH A HUGE OPEN SMILE FROM CHEEK TO CHEEK, FROM BEGGINING TO END.

THAT LEAVES YOU COMPLEATELY PUMPED ENOUGH TO GET UP FROM YOUR SOFA AND START RUNNING AROUND THE HOUSE, AND MAKES YOU DREAM ABOUT GREAT DEEDS AND ADVENTURES TO DO IN LIFE AND LATER BY NIGHT YOU CRY ON YOUR PILLOW WHEN YOU REALIZE THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN...but, when you come back to watch this films, that escapist dreamlike feel of hope, happiness and pure joy returns to our hearts.

Something joyfull like that. The same joy that this movies gave and keep giving to us.

• Big Trouble in Little China
• Commando
• Ferris Bueller's Day Off
• It Happened One Night
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• Young Frankenstein
• Bringing Up Baby
• The Gold Rush

...plus 218 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

All those movies that pack a real sense of adventure that not only makes you enthralled in entertainment, but also wanting to travel along this people no matter how dangerous the journey may be, because you know its going to be a heck of a great/fun time to sit-through!

• Gunga Din
• The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• The African Queen
• King Kong
• King Kong
• Moby Dick
• The Man Who Would Be King
• The Bridge on the River Kwai
• Lawrence of Arabia

...plus 74 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The title speaks for itself. The best and some favs from the Conspiracy Thriller cinema category in all its forms (and genres)

List made with the help and recommendations from my friends:
Daniel Vargas
Caio Matheus
Luis Guilherme.
Heitor Guedert.

• The Conversation
• Blow Out
• The Manchurian Candidate
• JFK
• Chinatown
• Kiss Me Deadly
• Blue Collar
• Marathon Man
• The Parallax View
• Three Days of the Condor

...plus 60 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Fly
2. Videodrome
3. Naked Lunch
4. A History of Violence
5. Crash
6. Maps to the Stars
7. Dead Ringers
8. The Dead Zone
9. The Brood
10. M. Butterfly

...plus 12 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Films that are clearly continuing a story line unseen by the audience – including constant references and callbacks to the past; to the point it makes them feel like sequels to a first film we'd never saw.

• Hook
• Robin and Marian
• The Mask of Zorro
• The Man in the Iron Mask
• In a Violent Nature
• Return to Oz
• Watchmen
• Superman Returns
• The Wild Bunch

I always wanted to make one of these, so here we go!

Judging not only based on quality, but how impactful / 'breaking the Academy tradition' the victory represented (specially reflected in the higher ranked ones!).

1. The Deer Hunter
2. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
3. Unforgiven
4. Casablanca
5. The Godfather Part II
6. Lawrence of Arabia
7. The Godfather
8. The French Connection
9. It Happened One Night
10. All Quiet on the Western Front

...plus 86 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Just gonna say out of the bat here that this one is actually a rather personal list for me, so just don't go wining about some of my pics here (or go for it, I'am always open to instructive suggestions). The 'epic' cinema genre, per say, was always one that I found myself watching and uncovering in my cinephile youth till to this day. That being said, the 'epic' of the Word may sound a little tricky

The definition of 'epic' cinema, and films that can be considered as part of its medium, may be a more complex response than one can imagine, or try to define. If on the one hand some people may refer this to the classic biblical films or those depicting dynasties of antiquity such as the Roman Empire, the classic "sandals and swords", or medieval knights of swords and armor, etc. While others may refer to films of very high technical production values ​​that build a real immense scale for their films, and that often reflected in their run time of stiching long hours.

But the actual proposal of my list here is in exactly to make some sort of homage to both of this sides, that persisted in making part of the creation and evolution to the epic cinema until today. Containing here not only high-scale production films, long hours run-times, or heroic journeys full of battles and romance, but also films that even containing these factors, allowed themselves to construct stories of great dramaturgical ambition in the portrayal of its characters in different times of the human history, and performed it in the form of a true cinematic spectacle. Films that challenged the scale of cinema itself to tell their epic journeys, brutal wars and universal dramas.

A selection of truly epic movies that deserved to be seen at least once in your lifetime, ranked here from the "less good" to the simply unmissable, which you can check below:

P.S: The trilogies you might see together are counted as one, you now the drill.

1. Lawrence of Arabia
2. Ben-Hur
3. Seven Samurai
4. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
5. Andrei Rublev
6. The Leopard
7. Once Upon a Time in America
8. Heaven's Gate
9. Das Boot
10. Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages

...plus 94 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.