These are the movie premieres that hit the screens starting this February 10
By Jordi Batlle Caminal
His friend and colleague George Lucas evoked his youth while still young in American Graffiti, the movie that catapulted him to fame. Spielberg, on the other hand, has waited fifty years to evoke his, although throughout this half century he has already been leaving traces of the child that one day he was or would have liked to be, generally children who look at the sky fascinated: Encounters in the third phase, E. T. or the empire of the sun. In The Fabelmans, the protagonist, alter ego of Spielberg as a child and later as a teenager, looks no less spellbound at the imaginary worlds (another kind of heaven) that are projected on the immense white sheet of a movie theater and that will indelibly mark his future. in that same thaumaturgical cosmos.
It is a brilliant idea to literally use the Wellesian metaphor of the electric train to begin the journey, linking the railway tragedy of The Greatest Show on Earth, seen on the big screen, with the precious toy that the father gives to the son and that he will drive him to recreate De Mille's scene with a homemade camera, the first stone of the incendiary passion to which he will dedicate his life. Starting from that seminal moment, the Fabelmans recreates family life (in which affection prevails even when the marriage is in crisis) and the incipient creative life of the future filmmaker, masterfully blending the two universes over the course of more than ten years. in domestic filming loaded with meaning, such as the revealing moment (a very blow up moment) of the editing of a family outing that betrays a problem: the eyes of the cinema see more than our own eyes.
Told with immeasurable expressive fullness (that ability to be a teacher with modesty, without being noticed, as in the extraordinary The Pentagon Files), The Fabelmans is a love letter to cinema, the oxygen of our lives, and to enhance it Spielberg He has chosen, as an emotional finishing touch, a true anecdote from his first contacts with the industry, which he already recounted in the updated version of Bogdanovich's Directed by John Ford. It's five minutes that, more than looking at the sky, they touch it, make us cry and stick happily in our hearts until the day of reckoning.
By Salvador Llopart
The first Pakistani film to arrive at the Cannes festival, where this brilliant debut by Saim Sadiq has been recognized with the Queer Palm, an award that denounces discrimination based on gender and sex. When talking about its geographical origin, we underline the uniqueness of the proposal. And by pointing out its militant value, we highlight the social aspect. Both arguments, important as they are, can undermine the true value of Joyland. Make us forget, with its picturesqueness, that it is a beautifully told story of universal value. And that its role as a social revulsion ends up eclipsing its complex humanity. Where the overwhelming visual palette, with vivid and unexpected images, fight with the shadows; as combat, in its protagonists, the moral sense with the emotional surrender.
Hypocrisy is in his sights. And compassion is the privileged instrument to approach the desires and desires - to the frustrations and cowardice - of his characters. Family chronicle that, as a film, goes from less to more. Joyland is gaining in depth and determination. It begins almost like a comedy, with the arrival of a new member -a daughter; yet another, as shocking as that is, to a traditional Pakistani family. But he soon leaves behind the mere criticism of conventions -easy criticism- to delve into something more subtle and complex: in the anguish that complacency produces and the taste of defeat that it leaves behind. Only a trans woman stands up to the prevailing hypocrisy; in fact, she is the most vulnerable of all those involved: the only character, of all of them, honest and innocent. Hence the "queer" recognition that Joyland has had. A film as charged with sadness as it is with hope, in a combination that is difficult to match.
By J. Batlle
The Communion Girl is a film of curses, nightmares and ghosts from the past that visibly operates in the hemisphere of James Wan (the Warren File or Annabelle sagas), but also in Japanese horror (there is no lack of climax in a well). . However, going through topics, it is a work with its own voice. In the first place, because it does not abuse the terrifying effects, it does not exceed the scares of rigor; Yes, there are, but less than what is usual in this type of cinema and at its right point of cooking.
In fact, after the prologue with the obligatory impact, the first three quarters of an hour develop, in a rural setting, a story of adolescent conflicts that would be, due to its female protagonist, in the field of recent films such as La maternal or El agua y , when the male secondaries intervene, in the one of Las leyes de la frontera, among other things because it also takes place in the eighties, wonderfully evoked. We will not find in any Wan production situations as well nuanced or characters as well described as the ones that Víctor García serves us here, solidly supported by a plot in which Alberto Marini intervened and in the script that Guillem Clua ended up signing.
By S. Llopart
Santiago Segura once commented to his colleague Fausto Fernández, from Fotogramas, and to yours truly, the difference between his own cinema and, say, a Bergman or a Hitchcock. "It's like comparing a calamari sandwich or a tortilla skewer with an exquisite dish," said the creator of Torrente a few years ago next to a wonderful beach in Cancun. To then state: "Sometimes we fancy a sandwich instead of any delicacy, right? And that doesn't mean we don't know how to distinguish between one and the other."
Well, El piloto is a good example of that "tortilla skewer" cinema that Segura talks about. A good skewer, it should be added. Fast-paced action cinema -always fast-paced- although predictable, well made and better performed. A plane with problems and a group of terrorists who want to kidnap the passengers after a forced landing (the trailer tells it). Gerard Butler, its protagonist, the pilot of the title, is, of course, one of the mature heroes of action cinema. He at times gets off the hook with the humor of Bruce Willis; in others, due to his forcefulness, he approaches the grim gesture of Liam Neeson. The pilot is movie fast food, okay. Fast food, but well done... Santiago Segura, and Cancun, is another story.
By S. Llopart
There is a lot of rap in this film based -rather inspired- on the story of the rapper of Kurdish origin called Giwar Hasjabi, in Xatar art. A winner with a dramatic past and criminal origins. One of the current stars, according to what they tell us, of German rap. I want to say that, like rap, including German, this film opts for a constant and syncopated rhythm and the result is a homily of forceful images. An accumulation of moments of guaranteed impact. Speed -and effect- are everything in the film by German Turkish Fatith Akin.
It begins with the birth of the star, in the north of Iran, of Kurdish parents. Surrounded by bats in a cave fleeing from the bombs of war. He goes through a long march across Europe and a childhood on the streets; his dealings on the streets of Bonn, and then his criminal life in Amsterdam. Everything, as in a good rap, as I say, served in a bite. Spit more than narrated. Where the character, rather than grow and experiment, advances like a steamroller through his own existence. Do you like rap? Well that.
