Rodrigoflor Reviews

Isle of Dogs (2018)

Simple simplicity

[7/10 · 27 February 2023]

I really wanted to see this film, as the director is one of my favourites. I find his ability to create such "normal" moments and make them emotional, but at the same time from the simplest of simplicity, fascinating. But I have to admit that this time I found it a bit slow and heavy.

It has several interesting factors. Like the values of friendship, loyalty that it transmits through the dogs, that "doggy" society where they show a lot of the current society or the character of Chief.

But the whole political plot and the language itself takes me out of it a bit.

Especially if you're a Wes Anderson fan you should see it.

After Yang (2021)

Love of life

[8/10 · 27 February 2023]

The details. The photograph. The words. The silences.

We could go on and on until completing a description of what this film is about. A hymn to life and death from its purest and most natural perspective.

The symbiosis between modernity and tradition seems splendid to me. It is a kind of "black mirror" or "her" where it tries to preserve the children's knowledge of their roots and their culture.

It has metaphors about the path of life, its development and its end, which make you both move and laugh at the same time.

And finally, all this framed in a plane of memories and memory, as it has a fundamental importance in giving meaning to the present and giving it value.

Simply put, this film has a love of life.

Frances Ha (2012)

Not quite it

[4/10 · 27 February 2023]

Francés Ha is an interesting story. Maybe it doesn't have, for me, the most intelligent dialogue in the world, and the comedy it wants to convey can be hackneyed or repetitive. But hey, a black and white film, which has some interesting and some not so interesting interactions. Where it brings into play something very normal that everyone has to face, which is finding a job, and even more so if it's trying to do it with your artistic passion.

It's entertaining and we see Greta Gerwig giving her all to make us believe her role, and in some parts yes, but not in others. At least for me.

Recommended, as it has a message that penetrates, and also the value of friendship and the couple in a balance that has attracted me.

You Have to Come and See It (2022)

Art in the mundane

[7/10 · 27 February 2023]

You have to go and see it, it is true, as the poetic actions that are recited say.

Within the mundane that spending a day in the countryside can be, these characters transfer it to other types of focuses.

The love of nature is very present, how humanity has taken advantage of it and transformed it into its servant. How we talk about it in vain, and how we lose respect for it.

Another important point is the music, how it accompanies the scenes, the moments, the tensions and tensions, even the lyrics are cleverly put in.

It shows the new normality after the pandemic, and how we pretend that something has changed when everything remains the same.

An ode to the human being, to his art, to his cruelty and his imperfections, carried with entertaining and didactic dialogue and script.

The Beasts (2022)

In front of the beasts

[7/10 · 27 February 2023]

I really wanted to see this film. And I really wanted to see it in the cinema above all. And it fulfilled my expectations.

This Galician thriller envelops us in its claustrophobic atmosphere of a mountain village with an aura of meigas, and also provides us with sweet moments and very bitter moments.

As the title says, we are in front of the beasts, which in this case will face intelligence, experience and good work. Who ends up winning? I leave that to your interpretation.

The relationships in the film are impressive. The looks, the wildness, the silences, the words, the accents... everything makes you get overwhelmed by them and relax with them. A plot that keeps leading towards the inevitable.

A Perfectly Normal Family (2020)

What makes a family?

[8/10 · 27 February 2023]

What is a perfect family? Does it exist? Or are they all perfect and some are not, or is it about us as individuals and how we see it?

All these questions merge into one premise which is ACCEPTANCE. Acceptance at all levels, from the smallest to the largest.

All acceptance goes through a process, and in this film we see how, from an abrupt starting situation, the small steps of this acceptance we are talking about are taken.

It brings a lot of value to our generation. Knowing how to lose and knowing how to win, showing feelings in order to improve, knowing how to express them so that they don't become harmful or go down other paths by not showing those emotions.

This family is going to have funny, sad, shocking and uncomfortable situations, and all from the perspective of a 12 year old girl. Highly recommended.

Triangle of Sadness (2022)

A complicated yet simple comedy

[7/10 · 27 February 2023]

A film, complicated and easy to explain and to leave an impression.

Complicated because the satire in which the film is wrapped, sometimes makes it excessive and predictable. It has some clichés, but that's what this film is about. The cheap clichés of rich and poor and their roles in society.

But on the other hand it is very easy, because the script is measured. It has sequences where the words are the ones that support everything (as they should), and the weight of this one is huge. It puts you in everyday situations, and the doubts that these situations generate in us, giving them a verbal form. Intelligence, politics, absurdity... it has it all.

Deservedly nominated under my little understanding to best film, but very deserved to best screenplay, and even rings the bell.

Having a good time and a few laughs in the cinema is something unique.

Aftersun (II) (2022)

Family Unit

[9/10 · 27 February 2023]

The most fragmented and pure memories of director Charlotte Wells are here exposed as pieces of a whole.

Though perhaps not even the director, much less the viewer, will be able to put together this puzzle, the beauty of which lies in the fact that it is incomplete.

Simply the vision of a daughter about her father, in a simple summer holiday in Turkey, permeating moments in swimming pools and hotel rooms, to paradisiacal landscapes and historical sights, but all supporting actors, in the protagonism of the connection of both.

The parental bond and the capacity of an adult, to protect the innocence of a child, hiding his problems, insecurities and fears, preserving the best moments of a young girl, from what was filmed by their camera, to the camera of the film itself, in a dichotomy of the digital and the tangible, of the past and the present, with cinema being the bridge for this.

Showing to be happy, even when not, as an act of supreme love, the continuation of the other, the division of life, the union of the two in a family unit.

The Whale (2022)

Masterful performance, carrying an average script

[6/10 · 27 February 2023]

It is always good when Darren Aronofsky releases a new film, as it's usually an original bold movie, with a unique style.

The best about this film is obviously Brendan Fraser's acting, which is masterful.

Yet it's a masterful performance, carrying an extremely average script and terrible supporting actors who constantly try to sink the film, which besides treating obesity with fetish, is superficial in the loss of faith of the protagonist, as well as in the obsession of the essayists and exaggeration in the analysis of literary works (or art in a general), in a parable with Moby Dick that makes complete sense, however thrills much less, than Brendan Fraser's deep looks.

Empire of Light (2022)

Respects the past, but does not give value to the present

[5/10 · 27 February 2023]

If in his previous film: 1917, Sam Mendes (not even the one who made the masterpiece American Beauty, nor the best 007 of all times) valued form more than substance.

Here the content fades away once and for all and not even the spectacular photography by Roger Deakins is able to polish something so artificial. Just as there is no high level acting by Olivia Colman or Micheal Ward that brings enough truth, for when the script wades through every imaginable theme with the depth of a saucer, this is the result.

It treats Racism as if they were isolated cases in hideous 1980s England during Thatcher's rule, Class Struggle in a micro cosmos of privilege and Psychological Problems as justification for bad actions by an unsympathetic protagonist.

As beautiful as it is as an ode to cinema, it respects the past, but does not give value to the present, to itself, the film itself ignores itself as a work existing today, becoming insufficient within itself, turning in on itself a thousand times, without any purpose.

Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes (2021)

Deeper than it's surface

[9/10 · 27 February 2023]

Kevin Kopacka's film "Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes" is as shrouded in mystery and poetic as its title.

Whats starts out as a classic ghost story, devolves into something much deeper and more profound. A very personal story about the meaning of being trapped and its implications.

A film that clearly states that if you can's break free from the cycle of behavioral patterns, you will be forced to repeat them over and over again. Sometimes it's better to leave your past behind in order to move forward.

A story that has so much to say, that repeated viewings might be necessary - but even if you don't manage to engage with its ideas, you can at least be sucked up in the films breathtaking visuals and style.

Knock at the Cabin (2023)

His best since The Village

[7/10 · 27 February 2023]

Shyamalan's cinema is shrouded in the mystery of the supernatural and when not strictly speaking, permeating the mystical, bringing to reality, absurdisms that appear in nuance throughout the film, to take full shape in its end, when some of the plot twists work, while others not so much.

Here, not only this is subverted, but we have more immediate confirmations both of the director's intentions and of the antagonists (but not by far the villains of the plot). In this game of faith, in which it is necessary to lose something for the greater good, we have not only the delivery of a family at its limit, but also the performance of one of the most underrated actors of his generation, coming from the WWE: Batista has been taking very different decisions from the career trucks chosen by John Cena and The Rock, opting for intimacy, even if in blockbuster, far from comic reliefs and yes, being central piece even when not protagonist of the stories, motor valve of the transformation of the plot and gear for the larger pieces to spin the plot, in what is certainly the director's best film, since The Village (2004).

Infinity Pool (2023)

The apple and the tree

[6/10 · 27 February 2023]

Just like his father David Cronenberg: Brandon is a master (even at such a young age), in universe building and making the spectator feel uncomfortable in the environment that is inserted, by the abrupt way he presents us with the place and its rules, in addition to a sense of alienation and lack of feelings in his protagonists, who more witness than feel.

However, when acting, not in the artistic sense, but in the action sense, they are capable of the greatest atrocities that one can enjoy the pleasure of not answering for the consequences of it, given the high hierarchical power they find themselves and the absurd amount of money they have in their bank accounts.

The problem is to create empathy for protagonists so abject and despicable, such as the lifestyle they live, even wrapped in a great sci-fi, very disturbing, but that does not engage, nor create connection, just also numbing us and watching the path that it will take, without fear of any misfortune that may come from a territory so wild and that discards the lower classes, as product and commodity, only stoking our curiosity, but not our emotions.

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

Two sides of the same coin

[9/10 · 27 February 2023]

The reunion not only of the duo, but of the trio that did something magical in In Bruges, returning a decade and a half later not to recreate a previous experience but to transport us to another setting, another relationship.

While Collin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson's characters started off physically and emotionally distant in the previous work, here in Banshees they start from the ordinary and become different, faces of the same coin, but who can no longer see each other as equals.

They begin to hate what is different about them and fail to recognise what brought them together, the essence of their friendship.

In a masterly way, McDonagh directs the film permeating the theme of the Irish Civil War, without ever making superficial the conflict that split families, separated couples and destroyed homes, but also does not diminish the core of the problem between two soul brothers. In a mix of depression and nihilism, we see the desperation of one side wanting at all costs to get away, focusing on marking its name in history, while the other tries to enjoy every minute of its day, in the most banal and everyday way.

Reflections of their animals, the Donkey and the Dog, victims and partners of this petty human conflict, full of pride, ego and ignorance, while a small town living on a coastal island, shouts together without ever listening to what their fellow human beings are saying on their side. If only the animal-like silence were used for reflection, it would exist for even a minute...