These are the releases that hit movie screens this January 12:
By Jordi Battle Caminal
How many years has Wim Wenders been carrying the label of perished or dead-end filmmaker? Not years: decades. Already shortly after the unanimous and deservedly revered Paris, Texas, still in the eighties, some authoritative critical voices denigrated Sky over Berlin, one of his most famous works. The discredit grew over the years. Marcos Ordóñez began his review of the almost psychotronic So Far, So Close with these forceful words: “What happened to Wenders? Have you taken ecstasy?” It is true that a good part of this rain of disqualifications has been earned by the deceased with an overdose of rhetorical speeches and an undisguised veneer of affectation and pedantry. But where there is talent, there is talent. And Wenders' talent periodically rises from the ashes: Pina or Knocking on Heaven's Door were truly remarkable films and almost no one saw the second one.
Perfect Days is the most brilliant resurrection of the best Wenders in a long time. It is his new trip to Japan and a fully Japanese film. It is modest, minimalist and silent, as silent as its sole protagonist (formidable Koji Yakusho), a lonely, middle-aged man who works in Tokyo municipal services cleaning public toilets. Wenders's camera, as natural as the waters of a stream and with spontaneous lines, follows him in his daily tasks, work or domestic, repeating his routine over and over again in a series of short scenes that end up clearly drawing a character (almost without words, we end up getting to know him as if he were a close friend, especially his good taste in literature and music, an assortment of rock classics that liven up the soundtrack) and also describing, with precision, the rhythm of the city.
Although others cross paths in his daily life (a co-worker and his girlfriend, the owner of a bar, his own niece...), this is a symphony of a single character. Wenders's gaze is as humble as he is humble, clean, extremely refined. Sensitive, tonic and balsamic cinema, essentially human. And, yes, very Japanese, between Ozu and Kurosawa: isn't the protagonist Kurosawian, so much a brother to the trees that he seems like an urban Dersu Uzala?
Por Philipp Engel
The dean of Italian cinema continues, at 84 years old, in top form, once again delving into the garbage can of the History of his contradictory country: if in Good morning, night (2003) and in the exemplary series Outside night (2022 ), addressed, from different points of view, the kidnapping of the Christian Democrat Aldo Moro, here he goes back to nineteenth-century Bologna to remember the also media case of Edgardo Mortara, a Jewish child, baptized in secret to be kidnapped, under the protection of the law, by the guards of Pope Pius IX, in the context of his progressive political and territorial decline, which culminates with the uprising of the people and the end of the papal states. Bellocchio once again relates the intimacy of closed spaces with the course of great History in a work as austere and stripped down as it is joyfully pictorial for which Francesco Di Giacomo, who was already his director of photography on Outside, Night, draws inspiration from chiaroscuro baroque. Contrary to the false realism of the great historical productions by more impersonal directors, Bellocchio cultivates an atmosphere of dreaminess by injecting the story with dreamlike fugues that illustrate both the desperate embrace of faith of the boy torn from his family, and the fears of the grotesque pontiff.
The idea of the historical fresco, in which we see the dark truth of Catholic absolutism drying up, contrasts with the rhythm of the growing anguish of the Jewish family, like a disturbing operatic thriller in the style of his celebrated The Traitor (2019), perhaps the best film about the Mafia. Under the guise of a certain classicism, the story evolves in a linear manner, but the Italian supreme master has fun modulating the tone with moments of sinister farce in which the papal cohort is reduced to operetta villains. Once again, Bellochio demonstrates that cinema can be ideal for a masterful historical rereading, as emotional as it is penetrating and revealing.
By Salvador Llopart
Calvo, as a director, thinks big. In this case in the Himalayan mountain range, no less, to capture all its immense beauty. The story, while emotional, is dwarfed by the landscape, which leaves you breathless. The odyssey of an abandoned and wounded man, played with enthusiasm and optimism by Miguel Herran, loses effectiveness when it comes to showing his suffering. In Calvo's film there is adventure and there is emotion. However, it lacks the grandeur of the mountains that surround it.
Por P. Engel
The idea of a laconic black comedy in the style of the Coens is applauded, with nods to the American narrative such as a family car from the 70s or the roadside motel that gives the film its title. The Lynchian overtones contrast with a very local cult of Mazinger Z to form a suggestive mix, supported by an effective cast chaired by the great María Vázquez. However, there are problems of verisimilitude both in the emotions of the characters and in the succession of events, and it lacks a cooking point to refine the tone.
By S. Llopart
There is something annoying - I would say repugnant, but I restrain myself - about this, on the other hand, effective action proposal, in which a quiet beekeeper (Jason Statham) is dedicated to distributing tow left and right. He starts with a computer scam. That's original. The start of the matter. What comes next, no. It is the revenge of the common man at the hands of the superman, who has stopped believing in the law to defend his justice. The guy takes out enemies like in a video game, while his humanity evaporates in the action. Also that of the viewer.
Por P. Engel
After the Oscar nominee The Mole Agent (2020), the young Chilean director returns to old age to show the cruel advance of Alzheimer's in the now deceased Augusto Góngora, one of the greatest champions of historical memory in Pinochet's time as presenter from the clandestine news program Teleanalysis. Hence the bitter irony of the title, which she appeals to remember in times of renewed obscurantism, through the quixotic fight against illness. Cinema is an essential part of the fight against oblivion, so that history does not repeat itself.
By J. Batlle
Crazy comedy of multiple entanglements, with sentimental affairs, wedding plans, dirty games, extortion, etc., and a hair salon as the epicenter of the damn mess. It has (appropriately) gossip magazine aesthetics and sophisticated humor like a zambomba. If we divided cinema, in a somewhat reductionist way, between good films, discreet films and bad films, Palacio Estilistas would be, exceptionally, two or three steps below the latter.
