These are the releases that hit movie screens this February 23:
By Jordi Batlle Caminal
Todd Haynes is a modern when he immerses himself in the universe of pop-rock (his feature films about glam-rock, Bob Dylan or the Belvet Underground) and a classic when he rewrites, with golden calligraphy (the golden, autumnal light of Douglas Sirk), the old melodramas that he carries, that we all carry in our hearts. Haynes's melodramas (Far from Heaven, Mildred Pierce, Carol...) are part of the “woman's picture” modality; they are female portraits of unusual penetration and intensity. And sparks fly when the story pits two women against each other, as in the impeccable Carol and the memorable actress duel between Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. Now, in his new film, it is Julianne Moore, who has already worked with Haynes on several occasions, and Natalie Portman, producer and promoter of the project, who take on the challenge in two dazzling performances.
Haynes remains Sirkian when describing (mirrors, objects, flowers and butterflies) a small community of well-off people, very given to sunny barbecues in the garden and keeping their moral miseries, their hypocrisy, under the rug. But this time there is a certain inclination towards Ingmar Bergman, with Moore and Portman adopting registers close to Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson in Persona. As in Persona, there is some personality transfer or, simply, vampirization: Portman plays an actress who has to play the character Moore plays (inspired by the true case of the woman who had relations with a thirteen-year-old boy). years, she became pregnant, she was convicted, they got married, etc.) and he studies her in depth during the several days he spends in her house, he transforms into her. The delicate scene in which the two, in the bathroom and face to face, play with all kinds of cosmetics could be a love letter to the Swedish filmmaker.
Secrets of a Scandal is full of nuances, of revealing moments without being explicit. His style, civilized and hypersensitive, defies all the tics of contemporary cinema, it is not afraid to be a work out of its time, a cinema without age. Who would dare today to flood their soundtrack with the unforgettable score that Michel Legrand composed for The Messenger, by Joseph Losey? Haynes dares, and it turns out very well.
By Salvador Llopart
The tribute that rock music has been waiting for since at least the success of Heroes of Silence, back in the nineties. There is no better tribute than remembering when everything is forgotten, and The Blue Star remembers a figure of Zaragoza music lost in the mists of time. A firm cinematographic debut, it is worth adding. Sepia portrait of the "maño-way of rock'n'roll", we could say, where the (blue) star of the film is not Bumbury and his colleagues, no, but an obscure and rather forgotten musician called Mauricio Aznar . An almost secret poet and musician whose greatest successes were two: the name of his last group, Más birras, and a song, "Apuesta por el rock'n'roll", which at the time even the Héroes themselves covered.
Exciting in its effort to overcome worn-out formulas, The Blue Star pulverizes the most common clichés of musical cinema without raising its voice, with absolute naturalness, especially the rock clichés, as did at the time the also unexpected Once (2007), by John Meat and. And it moves between the musical that doesn't seem like it and the bus road movie. An unexpected proposal, it should be added, enigmatic in itself. Where fiction and metafiction meet, and the usual "based on real events" is assumed, at times, with the air of a documentary. A film of calm formal daring, with an endearing and close story to tell.
Mauricio, played by a charismatic Pepe Lorente, embarks on a journey that goes from the disappointment of the provincial rocker, fed up with medians and joints, to the unexpected encounter with Argentine folklore. Something similar to what, years later, ignoring the addictions, another master like Santiago Auserón would do in his own way, in his case with the popular music of Cuba. But Mauricio is not Radio Futura, and his unique journey - and his unique story - would have been lost like tears in the rain if it had not been for this exciting proposal from Macipe. His clean and compassionate gaze allows the best, the selfless and the simple in popular music to have its moment. And his song.
Por Philipp Engel
Haigh made a splash with Weekend (2011), an instant gay classic that narrated with tender naturalism the weekend of two strangers. This new film, with the fashionable boy (Paul Mescal), would be the expanded version of that one – less indie and darker, but with a wealth of songs from the 80s (including a magical moment with the Pet Shop Boys) –, which delves deeper on the theme of orphanhood through the literary journeys of Andrew Scott's character to the ghostly suburban house of his childhood.
By S. Llopart
Clever parody of the political world that laughs at everyone and everything. A Poland of politics, in general, with a romantic heart. With a left-wing girl who loses and wins and loses again, not in this same order, to a good right-wing boy. Politics as a game of distorting mirrors, where current attitudes are recognized. Character comedy; especially successful caricatures on the feminine side, where the left and the right hug each other. And even a romp.
By J. Batlle
In the totum revolutum of prolific South Korean cinema, there are outstanding titles, execrable products (even more so on television) and nice works like this one, an ultra-violent thriller, with a lot of action and a crazy plot that proposes script twists every ten minutes (and an unknown constant: who are the good guys, if there are any, and who are the bad guys?), all seasoned with a cartoonish register and filmed with solvency. The result is nothing other than a very entertaining comic.
Por P. Engel
The collective formed by two Catalan filmmakers (Nicolau Mallofré and Adrià Roca) and two other Basques (Ekain Albite and Mikel Ibarguren), tells the life in hiding, from hamlet to hamlet, of a young activist, just when the Basque conflict touches its end. Awarded at the Locarno festival, the film shines for the hypnotic nature of its images: a sawmill filmed like a science fiction film, misty landscapes that border on abstraction, and a carnivalesque ending that seems like pure folk horror.
By J. Batlle
An amusement park, a group of young people, a psychopath with a mask... In 1981, Tobe Hooper extracted the best of this premise in The House of Horrors, so well analyzed by Tarantino in Cinema Meditations. The theme (and its variants, such as the “scape room”) is already worn out and Sandquist does not have the acuity of an Eli Roth to subvert it, thus leaving Horror Park as a slasher without inspiration, without tension, for exclusive use for the very unconditional. of the genre.
