Reviews

Low-budget, little-spoken-of, spiritual sequel to renowned masterwork Tokyo Story.

While it predictably doesn't measure up to the lofty standards of Ozu Yasujirô's work, it still is worthy of its own ambition to be a tribute to that masterwork and a heartfelt praise of humbleness and the real foundations of human life. It is worthy in in every way: aesthetical, artistical, and moral.

This is a good comedy film. It needs as little as a couple of charismatic protagonists — one of which bearing a special allure, as Clark Gable inquestionably is —, a good quantity of moments and exchanges of words well able to provide amusement and even laugh, and that discreet pair of sadness and depth that, with its absence or presence, tells apart trivial productions from more meaningful works. Teacher's Pet exceeds the requirements for a good comedy, third cast member Gid Young offers a seriously noteworthy play performance, importantly enriching the enjoyment of the story.

Light jokes, significant humour, whose back side frequently is bitter irony, add to very vivid black & white photography. Aesthetical prowess, brilliance in dialogue, are the shiny, fetching cover veiling a beautifully played beautiful drama.

In this fictional semi-parodic comedy intended for the youth, we follow the life of United States President's daughter, who is having hard time trying to lead the life of a normal girl of her age, while dealing with paparazzi, security surveillance, and electoral needs of her dad.

This does not deliver a reflection on the antinomic nexus between private freedom and public popularity, since «Una teenager alla Casa Bianca» is in fact a long instalment of a TV series such as Dawson's Creek stretched into the film format. Katie Holmes is a stunning beauty, who gained popularity through Dawson's Creek (and, at later time, marriage with Tom Cruise), but this is quite separate a matter with being able to perform in real films, which is not the case for her nor for the couple of TV-series kind of performers she's been paired with this time — her foreseeably beautiful college friend (Ameriie) and predictably handsome wanna-be boyfriend (Marc Blucas), who'd instantly appear ludicrous if weighed as actual film actors.

Aside from the absolute inability to express whatever emotion of the entire cast (except for a wasted Keaton, however made impotent by non-existent screenplay), there is nothing specially despicable if taken for what it is and not for a film, and I advise Dawson's Creek or generic teenage TV series fans to watch this one: it's a long, entertaining episode.

As terms indicate, and none but few even among the intelligentzia had foreseen, the virtual reality sold by mass communication has had an awesome capability to interpenetrate with «reality», going beyond any prediction. To the extent that by antonomasia «reality» became the most common synonym for «reality show». Ambigous by choice, the title of this film can then mean one or another thing: does it refer to a kind of TV production, reality shows, or to «reality»?

Perhaps following the story will uncover the answer to this, however, realities, initially said to be to reflect reality, have then significantly shaped the latter (just as social networks are shaping society injecting virtuality into it, rather than being a mere reproduction of society on a virtual dimension). Perhaps by now reality and realities are one new mixed entity, and not discernible anymore.

It is for a good part of it a decent film, with patently low-budget actors giving their all, non-cheap irony, raising with due discretion a contemporary crucial sociological problem, perhaps the main one: the seemingly limitless influence of mass media on the very lives of masses. The ending is well done, and mention-worthy for beauty are end credits.

Mario is one of those kids whom life puts at a disadvantage since their infancy; he is one of the many, doubtless too many, children who are born and grow in a crime-driven and crime-filled social environment. The kid is given in foster care to Giulia (Golino), a single, high-class woman yearning to pour her motherly instincts into taking care for a hard life kid.

Despite what may be the first impression, this is not a typical Italian «cinema» production, anodyne, stuffed with good feelings and politically correct contents, saying little if anything. It is instead an appreciable work, with Valeria Golino, Marco Grieco (the 9 years old boy) standing out among a bunch of good looking and characterless performers.

«Intelligence is the only freedom», «La guerra di Mario» states. It is unlucky that intelligence is very rare in social workers: just like way too many children in «real» life, Mario is separated from his affectionate found-mother since she is not married and he will «surely» be better fostered by «an actual family, with a married couple, brothers and sisters». From behind the window he watches the woman who loved him as a son leave; there is an airplane up in the azure mediterranean sky, flying free; the war of Mario continues, we can just hope one day he'll reach that plane.

Herzog relates the activity of the Flying Doctor Service, an organization founded by UK surgeon Michael Woods, that try to provide local tribes with medical assistance and education, operating in Kenya Tanzania and Uganda. They avail themselves of airplanes to fly where normal missionaries' (usually Christian nuns and priests) skills in surgery are not enough and a professional surgeon is required.

Among the other things, we are shown a faith-healer (who gets paid from people he deceives, but would never admit his earnings), and related how differently a different animal species than the Western mankind perceives and conceives reality, even in regards with diseases and how to heal those. For some instance: the successfulness of an operation is believed to be in proportion with the dimension of what is taken away, many are afraid to step on little stairs leading to the inside of a van, they try to eat food at any occasion before undergoing surgery no matter the medical personnel's effort in explaining it will probably be fatal; an operation or injection is trusted to be effective much more than something having no immediately visible effect, like pills, since the brain of these species has not reached the stage where it can link cause and outcome over a temporal distance.

This exhaustive documentary concludes — which extensively features Flying Doctors's founder presence — criticizing our inability to realise how diverse the brain and thus the thought structures are between European and Central African human species, how groundless is our expectation they may learn anything we explain them in our terms, and what a wide change of mindset about educating these populations would it take of us to be of real help. This is a work from Herzog in the beginnings of his career and moreover in the 70s' cultivated European milieu: it is well comprehensible that he speaks of this question in zealously time-serving terms. That parents frequently refuse to let a son returning from medical treatment live again with them, and this might be the only chance for kids to go to the school and receive a modern education, makes Herzog wonder whether this be good for the child or not. One could notice that it is oddly inconsistent to wonder about this and not also if it be good or not for these populations to receive financial and medical support.

There are really myriad waves. Even we produce waves with any of our actions. Most of them are intangible and imperceptible, though present; some, even some very essential, are one-direction, and missing them once means losing them. This film is about waves. From the occasional meeting between Francesca (Anita Caprioli), who wears a large birthmark on the left half of her face, and Francesco (Ignazio Oliva) who became sightless at the age about 18 years, many waves arise. One suffering from a hugely life-impairing handicap, the other from an appearance trouble of very relative importance, they regard their problem oppositely, Francesco gathering from it even more than normal will to live, Anita secluding herself from contact with the others, firstly affective contact. In a perfect world, theirs would be a perfect story, yet human world is far and away from perfection, thus they will perhaps miss some of the many waves arising from their lucky meeting.

In the ample commentary included in precious Italian DVD release, director Francesco Fei states «Waves» was a four-hand work by himself and film editor Claudio Bonafede; they both declare their primary intention was to stand clear of making it mercantile and require some thought effort of the viewers, rewarding them with artistic sincerity. An «honest» work, they say. There is no gainsaying that, along with refined and atmospheric (and well-paid for to get it licensed, something Fei says — and we shall agree — wouldn't've been done if this weren't an independent production) music (much needed, in a film on waves), good acting (mainly by Oliva and Timi — while Anita Caprioli appears as more suitable for TV series and fiction, something her following career has then confirmed), long-sighted and courageous direction and editing choices featuring a barely believable passion for detail, the prime of the many qualities of «Waves» is the fundamental one: artistic honesty. Not that we guess Oliva did so much as to read books about people who became eye-impaired, ask to a blind woman to stay in her house for some days, watch other films having blind characters, yet when he tells us so we instantly trust his word. Nor do we feel surprise coming to know director shot images by a distance and using zoom lenses, in order to catch anything in the surroundings, to the purpose of respecting reality first of all.

This is a particular film in itself, and a very peculiar one on the scene of Italian cinematography, that is by some decades blighted by a system corrupt up to the roots, absurdly awarding funds to awful trash productions that grant by themselves high earnings, furthermore coming from the same producers, directors, and featuring the same actors year by year, luster by luster. «Waves» was fully overlooked on its release, and while less for a good Marina Remi all actors have had good careers, neither Fei nor Bonafede have been asked to realise other real films by any producer after this beautiful essay of theirs.

Nothing to this film diverges from the expedient path of what is crafted to encounter a wide audience's expectation. When the man the woman will fall in love for first appears, who doesn't know that is the man the woman will fall in love for? And so forth, and so on. A series of well played clichés, each eliciting some cheering, some even stock tears.

And yet. And yet among the assorted humanity of this film, betwixt the sea, the mountain, trees, fire, thunder and storm, timid, as timid as a fallen fragment of inexplicable heaven by accident fell onto the Earth, lies a lost angel. The camera finds the strength to let us see the bottomless offense it takes when coming in touch with humankind: the contrast between inferno and heavens is ice that melts anything, demands for an undying tear, and stands as a genuine cinematic moment.

«The sun has overcome every fence, and no arrow can reach it.» This is a saying, a deeply wise one, from the Wodaabe, a semi-nomad tribe dwelling the Sahara desert this documentary is on.

Their way of life is covered and exposed with something that defining abundance of detail and care would still be not satisfactory, as passion is involved and, like always, passion is the sole explanation to itself. Members of the tribe are customarily made marry at an age of around 10; however, there is freedom of choice to the marital matter unknown to our self-defining «advanced» societies: partition from one's spouse is allowed for both genders, and wives frequently exercise it; furthermore, when the love feast comes every woman can pick a young man to couple with for the night.

Beauty and making-up (some derived by liquid from exhausted torch batteries), as well as ritual feasts, play a cardinal role, the sole distractions from the fatigue of every day. {mettere dove? Rain, and terrain fertility, are vital for survival.} Such vainness among a population feeling few needs and leading a natural, unsophisticated life, seem to indicate vainness be a constitutive trait of the human kind.

Herzog's approach to cultures distant from the West's ones is his methodical, lucid yet fresh interest, the outcome of it being a dynamic, effective report, that catches the spirit, and traces back the very root, of far and away civilizations. So, after a ceremony has been completed, the Wodaabe are inquired on their next destination. the answer is that they don't know yet: they are simply going to follow the route their cattle will take.

{I skipped 2 or 3 minutes of the documentary, where an animal is slayed, which I strongly believe had better not be featured in this motion picture.}

Irremediable antinomy between the wishes of the heart and the impositions of the human consensus: ideals, values, duty, and pride: flags flags to worship, flags to pay one's, everyone's, life to. Therefore: permanent, inescapable winter; snow.

Apart from its being weighted down with constant historical falsification of the same typical kind of French cultural production on the matter of World Wars as it is, this is a nice motion picture, owing to source material by Vercors, Howard Vernon's remarkable play-acting, and direction.

In this 25 minutes long story taking 2 directors and 2 writers, we are in the countryside, in France under German occupation, during World War II; love between a local girl and an occupying soldier arises.

There is affection for nature, tree-lined roads and how light fills the space in their centre till the sky, the murmur of a river's water and foliage under the wind; a tone and language of a traditional tale, with frequent intervention by narrating voices.

Pictorial talent is remarkable; we sink into far yet hypnotic light, landscapes seem portraits of dreams, and are spoused to a sorrowful piano that knows when it's time to comment with its melodies and knows when it's time to comment with its silence. Love is true, a faith to embrace which they accept to receive the subsequent embrace of death, never for a moment — while the verdict of the world and its retribution are nearing them — being touched by regret or hesitation. This is an elegy, its essence lying in visual beauty — even tragedy glistens, although with cruelty.

German-occupied France, World War II, countryside: a local teenage girl finds an injured foreigner near the river, and accepts to hide him in the farmhouse where she lives with her family, until he recovers his health and will be able to continue his secret mission.

The story revolves about Muriel Catalá, who at the age of 19 is not much believable as the 14 and a half years old girl she impersonates, and Horst Buchholz: they both look like fashion models, the diversity consisting in that Buchholz is more fascinating and, most important, actually an actor. The fact that production was unsure between Catalá and Isabelle Adjani demonstrates they were resolute on betting on a character with sightly body features rather than solid acting, nevertheless the substance of Le Salveur is not mainstream at all. The primary theme is the impossibility of orientating oneself in the jumble of tangles of human will, and the resulting solitude involving everyone; the uncontested dominion selfishness greed meanness and deceit exercise over other affections and feelings, the resulting unavoidable mutual violence. War between nations and populations mirrors on an enlarged scale the universal reality of human relations, be them ties of "love", "family", "loyalty". As the German officer learns in the end, even wisdom is impotent in front of the human hell, which turns innocence into thirst for revenge, brave ideals into betrayal, the sunny juvenile mornings laying on a field where hope shines like the sun into worn grey evenings with no hope to expect anymore. Rather than to spoken analysis, the film inclines to the force of picture, to portrait rather than description. Distinct music by Pierre Jansen accompanies the pictures.

There is a piece of awesome foresight, when the German officer says his country is going to lose the war, yet that is somehow only in appearances, as some decades by then governments of other countries will take inexplainable decisions {implicitly meaning: that will have only German supremacy as their explanation}. Every non-unaware European citizen of early XXI century should well realise what the anticipation of the officer was about.

This is an American story of irrealizable love between a black man (Haysbert) and a white and already married lady (Pfeiffer), whose meeting is arranged by the chance of President Kennedy's murder. Apart from its effective stressing on the suffocating racist climate of the time, the course of the plot proceeds along the path of averageness and predictability; nevertheless Pfeiffer's enlivens the otherwise meager scene with her magic. About 10 years later Dennis Haysbert will play in another, deeper and closer to poetry yet despicably imitative and also possibly more biased towards commerciability, retelling of this story, «Far from Heaven› by Todd Haynes.

The beginning is formidable: Larry David does in this motion picture by Woody Allen that which Woody Allen uses to do in motion pictures by Woody Allen. Untiring-ly speechifying, he exposes how hypocrisy-governed and sexually repressed, blind and greed-based, idiotic and inclined to bringing offense to their neighbour, human society and all of its mindless members are. He states that, restates that; again, and over. The human species is a failure, as close-minded, intellectually incapable, avid as it is (along with the quantity of present campuses, there should be educative concentrations camps whereto send the youth for some obligatory time: to the fellow wondering what parents would ever send their sons there, Allen/David replies that every parent willing their sons to open their eyes on reality and know what humans are capable of doing would). Also stated and riveted on is that everything and everyone, starting from our selves, is exactly nothing; and life a senseless ride, best withstood when a newly found illusion keeps us busy for some time. Not only every time's human self-deceit, but nowadays cults and obsessions, such as that for disease prevention, dietism, and fitness, get graded as fooleries and their adepts lively mocked («If to live I need to have fruit and vegetables nine times a day, I choose not to»). The terms chosen for mass communication media and mass art are as vitriolic as sincerity demands, most used one being «horror» («It's scientifically proved that TV devours brains»). He warns that this motion picture is not intended for the noodles, who view a movie to «feel good» in the end. His line of conduct is: whatever works — also said as: I want to live as I wish, fully free, provided I don't do wrong to anyone —; his prime will to live estranged from humans. An upheaval of epithets such as «idiot» «microb» «cretin» «imbecil» «earthworm» falls onto common people marking them away from thinkers, who can see reality as what it is, by a distance, whom he regards as geniuses.

How should critics react to a work stating, exempli gratia, we are merely amasses of molecules, driving the car is made intolerable by the belligerent imbeciles around us that are driving too? Naturally, having recourse to their resort for such circumstances, the kind of astuteness that is their finest art: that is to pretend obtusity in order to slate a work while eschewing any serious discussion on what it says. Oftentimes in the last two decades Allen has presented us with slightly — or a bit more — trite works; this time we enjoy a relentless procession of delightful puns and jokes, a refined composition of brilliant irony and laudable intellectual frankness — although it can't surprise that the perfectly coherent perfectly tragical conclusion has been mistaken by many for a happy, or at least consolatory, ending.

Watching this film prompts one's mind to be crossed by a reflection on how can Hollywood productions adhere to the same commonplaces with as huge constancy as they do. All, from voicing/dubbing, to «emotions» and «events» comes foreseen. «Un segreto tra di noi» is exemplar in its mediocrity — here «mediocrity» being a term which means «averageness» as it did over the centuries before getting its modern negative connotation.

It might sound a mystery how people do not get fed up with watching the same things an indefinite amount of times, a mystery whose solution is that, simply, they do not realize it's all time the same. «Un segreto tra di noi» proves small effort or talent even in fulfilling that necessary delusion: suffices it to see how plain and everyday sex sequences are: they are radically lifeless whereas obedience to stereotypes compels their presence.

This is all what I was thinking about this work till a certain moment; but then, something not customary to mainstream occurred, and there is no denying this film brings us a message — carried by Willem Dafoe who often happens to in a lapse remind us how decisive actors are to films — worth being listened.

This is a common story of mutually bored husbands and wives and mutual unfaithfulness, among Lombard middle-high class. However, it takes short time to prove not ordinary at all, filled as it is with subtlety by the artful direction and the acting by Martinelli and Gastoni. Most scenes are powerful reminders of how seemingly slight, and yet thick, the separation between commercial productions on the one hand and what Scorsese calls «true films» on the other is. (It is also a reminder of how in the past of Italian cinema a sexy actress was primely an actress, and additionally an enticing and arousing woman.) In spite of meager critical reception, if not obtuse silence, being the common attitude of critics towards it (a retribution suffered by the whole opera of Lattuada, in consequence of his unyielding denial to compromising his art with the mandatory intellectual fashion of the time — that which critics will always sanction keenly — as well as to greet and grant the wishes of mainstream audience) together with the riveted, elegant dismantling of society's hypocrisy (friendship is reduced to reciprocal competition and envy, «love making» to coupling for the sake of it, marriage to «what it is», a contract) Lattuada's psychological and scenical detailing, its atmospheric, pervasive bitterness, are what distinguishes the film.

More often than providing solutions, «Quiz show» uncovers questions not usually thought of. A work from a mainstream milieu and for a mainstream public, featuring renowned stars in the cast along with a celebrity as its director and producer, obeying to the most part of hollywoodian formal stereotypes, Quiz Show manages to be elegant in its aesthetics and narration, while taking the hardest of duties: to suggest truth. The truth this film suggests is that very little, if anything, of what TV shows (and, implicitly, the entire mass media system) present is as it appears; the only rule being the maximization of audience shares and money gains, while manipulating credulous masses by giving them «what they like to believe»; the only reality being market, the sole truth being untruth.

While watching, I was touched by the suspicion that Redford is better a director than a performer. The course of the film is strewn with thought- inducing fine particulars. It is a film on a specific circumstance yet of general scope, that will be relevant as long as both shows and mass media system, and masses' short-sightedness, will be there

Eighty families live at an altitude of 3,200 metres, in the South-West of «People's Republic» of China. The camera follows the quotidian life of one of those, providing a portrait of rural existence.

This film makes sense as a work aimed at the average 22th (and 21th as well, probably) century inhabitant of advanced countries, who is in ignorance of rural life. These viewers are they who will perceive «San Zimei» the wise it is intended to be perceived in; its peculiarity merely coinciding with the ordinariness of peasant life in preindustrial society.

Response from the average spectator has proved that a series of scenes displaying what was the life of nearly the whole world population up until a few decades ago is now felt as estranging, or - which is disquieting - just mistook for an array of oddities. As if a considerable part of the human kind would have already parted from the Earth and ignorant of its soil where actual life, including their own, has its roots.

Awards to actors and films have sadly been most often minimally meaningful, driven by the socio-cultural and political fads of the year (or of the decade, or of the half century) as they are, and are bound to be. The prizes this production was given at several cinema contests are a perfect example of the above.

It may be to be noted that no artistic take at all is present, never the intention , and in my judgment the capability to add anything to plain documenting being there.

Diversity from reality shows is uttermost. Whereas in the latter there is nothing but feigning and we behold the devastating metamorphosis that the human person inflicts to themselves once set - or feeling themselves as set - constantly before a mirror. Here it is not even possible to pretend to believe these aborigines behave as if not at the presence of strangers, nonetheless they are much more credible.

In his trip to Guyana Werner Herzog noticed the indifference of aborigines, even toddlers, in front of an hot-air balloon, without a doubt the largest flying object they had ever seen. He was explained that, since they lacked any idea of the balloon's function, it represented nothing for them. Peasants in the film look unaware of the camera. Hence stands out the difference, by our time anthropological, difference from modern well-off people: the conception- certainly prevalently subconscious in many of these - of reality as show, as fiction: not just one but the most powerful of relativistic mindsets. Human kind is not at risk, as long as his conditions of life do not expose him to the possibility of ending up by staring at himself in a mirror frequently and long, to reach the suspicion of being merely an image.

A rare example of accomplished Italian serious film, featuring distinguished music and photography (colour setting). A work on the irremediable emptiness of existence, on which the stare of the protagonist (a mention-worthy Cecchi), that does not see things people their occupations ambitions nor anything the others see, is and stays fixed.

At times he expresses the formulae of life in a mathematic wise, such as in a conversation with his ex; she says: «I was more affectionate to you, however {compared to her present lifemate}» he replies: «Therefore I am the one who hurt you most», she continues: «I am the one whom you have been more affectionate to», he concludes «Therefore you are the one who hurt me most». The music of life, accompanying people's existence, giving their lives its rhythm, alleviating struggle and sorrow, is but distantly heard, forlorn echoes to him. No escape is, obviously, given: more than once the camera stops for a while on a caged bird. Never has the Neapolitan sun felt as impotent as here.