October 2022: 1st Week
Hi everyone!
Although technically the introduction post was our first post, this is our kinda real first post. This is a tease of what this website will be about. As we have started the blog on October's second week, we won't record a video-criticism this time and we'll start with those in next week's post. This will be mainly an informative post plus a brief written review of my personal favorite film of the week so that you can get a taste of what this website will be about.
MOST IMPORTANT RELEASES (OCTOBER 1st WEEK)
1. Tár
Director: Todd Field
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Nina Hoss, Noémi Merlant & Mark Strong
Plot: The film, set in the international world of classical music, centers on Lydia Tár, widely considered one of the greatest living composer/conductors and first-ever female chief conductor of a major German orchestra.
Genre(s): Music, Drama
Extra information: This film premiered at the Venice Film Festival and it instantly became one of the favorites of the few people who got the chance to see it in advanced. At the very moment of the film's premiere it over took critic's love straight away. The main reason to go and see this film is, of course, Cate Blanchett, who gives, and I quote, "one of the best performances of her entire career if not the best".
2. God's Crooked Lines (Los Renglones Torcidos De Dios)
(Just to point out, this website will be mostly about USA's new movie releases unless there's some other big releases worth talking about like in this case)
Director: Oriol Paulo
Starring: Bárbara Lennie, Eduard Fernández, Loreto Mauleón, Pablo Derqui & Javier Beltrán.
Plot: This spanish hit tells the story of Alice Gould, a detective who is admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Alice voluntarily enters feigning a paranoid state in order to follow the leads in a murder case that occurred at the center a few months ago. In a mental illness environment, identifying what's true and what's not is much more difficult to discern.
Genre(s): Drama, Suspense, Mystery, Psychological Thriller
Extra information: This film is based on the best-seller novel of the same name Los Renglones Torcidos De Dios written by the acclaimed author Torcuato Luca de Tena. Bárbara Lennie makes the performance of a lifetime in this incredibly well paced psychological thriller which will literally keep you on the edge of your sit until the credits pop up.
3. Werewolf By Night
Director: Michael Giacchino
Starring: Gael García Bernal, Laura Donelly, Harriet Sansom
Plot: On a dark and somber night, a secret cabal of monster hunters emerge from the shadows and gather at the foreboding Bloodstone Temple following the death of their leader. In a strange and macabre memorial to the leader's life, the attendees are thrust into a mysterious and deadly competition for a powerful relic - a hunt will ultimately bring them face to face with a dangerous monster.
Genre(s): Action, Horror, Fantasy
Extra information: Werewolf By Night is Marvel's 5th release so far this year (still waiting for Black Panther's which will be the 6th), but this one, unlike the others, is less focused on the action and spectacle most Marvel movies are known for and more focused on telling a small, interesting compelling story with characters that you care for in this small place with actual practical production designs and almost no CGI. It's also shot in black and white and it's more a celebration of 50s and 60s horror movies era rather than superhero comic films. It's Marvel's much needed step back from the action adventure comedies that simply weren't quite working.
4. Amsterdam
Director: David O. Russell
Starring: Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Zoe Saldaña, Mike Myers, Michael Shannon, Timothy Olyphant, Andrea Riseborough, Taylor Swift, Matthias Schoenaerts, Alessandro Nivola, Rami Malek & Robert De Niro
Plot: In the 1930s, three friends - a doctor, a nurse and an attorney - witness a murder, become suspects themselves and undercover one of the most outrageous plots in North American history.
Genre(s): Crime, Comedy, Drama
Extra information: David O. Russell is not precisely known for a lot of positive things as he has been countless times accused of "bullying" actors while on set. However, he has somehow managed to give us the biggest cast of the year in his new Amsterdam. Although the film stars some of the biggest stars in Hollywood (Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, Anya Taylor-Joy…) and, arguably, one of if not the best actor of all time, Mr Robert De Niro; Amsterdam is being highly criticized as a star-studded mess and one of the biggest flops of the whole year. Anyways, Christian Bale is still impecable in it as the main lead and Chris Rock is a huge standout so, it still might be a film that you don't want to miss checking out on the theaters despite not being David O. Russell's best work.
REVIEW OF THE WEEK - WRITTEN
GOD'S CROOKED LINES
All reviews will be structured in 3 parts: GOOD (positive aspects of the film), BAD (negative aspects of the film) & CONCLUSION (final thoughts and punctuation). Sometimes reviews will also have a MIXED section to basically point out things that worked at times but not completely.
Also, as this is the very first review it's important to explain the dynamics. I will try to be as honest and objective as possible within it being a fully personal-thoughts-based review. Meaning I will point out facts as well as things that did or didn't work for me explaining why.
Without further ado, let's get on with it.
GOOD:
The first thing you need to talk about is the magnificent performance Bárbara Lennie does in it. Her character is a very complex and reserved person fighting with herself at times, and that is not easy to portrait at all. However, Bárbara makes an incredible job and transmits the perfect amount of emotion and unsettledness without being campy or quirky by any means.
Also the thing that got the fans of the novel concerned about once the trailer released, was the actual plot of the story. Whether it was going to be loyal to the original work or it was going to take that concept and do something else with it, I was actually surprised with how true to the original material this movie was. It didn't take much liberties while not feeling forced. Now, that's something really tough to do and this movies crushed it. Also the movie has a very organic feeling to it. As the story goes on and new characters appear and new storylines are added to the mix, the movie knows perfectly how to handle everything by taking what I thought was one of the best decisions and risks the movie could possibly take to combine all the storylines. This decision was to tell the story in a non-chronological order way. From time to time, the movie would jump in time going forwards and backwards to completely develop every single story the movie introduces. Each character is important and has its moment before the big finale, so that when the climax arrives, everything makes sense and doesn't feel as if it came out of nowhere. Probably this was my favorite thing about the film, the story-telling. The movie is always 4 or 5 steps ahead and it knows it and uses it in its advantage to confuse and engage the audience even more.
Also, the film is beautifully shot. There are several long-shot sequences where the camera work helped a lot to make the audience uneasy and uncertain while watching them. The cinematography is really really good, and I would personally point out the lighting of the film. It really made a difference and it really stood out.
The score of the film might be one of the year's bests. It's subtle but confound and really well utilized in certain scenes to increase the suspense and the tension of them.
Although I've mostly talked about Bárbara Lennie, pretty much everyone here is at the top of their game. There are no real standouts because all of them were equally good and relevant and important. That helped building atmosphere which, with the story-telling, might be the best thing the movie does. This really feels like a psychiatric of the 1970s/80s. Everything from the production design, to the costume designs to the supporting characters and performances, to the extras in the backgrounds, to the lighting and editing bringing tension to each moment… Just everything, simply genius.
Finally, of course we have to talk about the mastermind behind this piece of art: Oriol Paulo. Known for his critically acclaimed series The Innocent (on Netflix), I think this will be the film the establishes him as one of the most talented filmmakers Spain has working nowadays. The way the film is handled having taken a character and making it the lead that you will follow and sympathize with for the next 2 hours and a half and still not knowing whether what you're seeing is true or the character's imagination. That's very tough to do specially with a non-linear storytelling. But he does it to perfection. The way he is constantly reminding the audience that this character might actually be crazy and that everything you're seeing might be an invention of hers as well as constantly giving reasons of why that is not possible and all of it done at the same time without falling into the category of messy or pretentious. It was an incredible experience and much of it was because of Oriol Paulo's vision adapting this really memorable material.
BAD:
Although I don't think there are particularly bad aspects, just things that don't completely work, it's true that when compared with the rest of the film they feel like really odd out-of-place mistakes.
The movie is heavily influenced by a film (which happens to be one of my favorite films ever created) called Shutter Island. Now it's not the exact same till the point it feels like a copy, because it's not, but a lot of the narratives and the directions the movie decides to go with are the same, or really similar, as those in Shutter Island. Meaning some of the plot twists, not the main one at the end, but some of the small ones at the middle of the film were actually kind of predictable.
The only really "bad" (more like not as good) thing was one of the side characters the movies presents. Now, that character that I won't spoil just in case someone doesn't want to know, is very important to the plot specially to Alice Gould (Bárbara Lennie's character). And, maybe because they didn't want to prolong the runtime, I don't feel like that character was completely explored, so when one of the ending's twist occurred which was related with something that character did, didn't pay off as well as the rest storylines.
But these are really minor errors that do not take you out of the film at all.
CONCLUSION:
If you're in for a complex character study within a psychological thriller full of suspense, tension, twists and turns, paranoia, non-linear story-telling and incredible pace; this is your film. I believe this film is worth watching on the theaters and also deserving of receiving the badge of Top-Notch Movie. It is by far one of the best films of the year and I will give it 4 and a half out of 5 stars.
UPCOMING FILMS (Next Week)
- Halloween Ends: the highly anticipated end of the David Gordon Green epic Halloween trilogy.
- Pearl: the prequel of this year's X.
- Hellraiser: the new addition to the Hellraiser iconic franchise.
- Smile: a creepy, truth or dare vibes new horror story.
Hope you found useful all of this information.
top-notch movies are always out there you just gotta find em
Alejandro Gómez, Top-Notch Movies
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