These are the movie premieres that hit the screens starting this May 26:
By Jordi Batlle Caminal
From these pages, two weeks ago, we greeted the rare landing in our theaters of a western, The Bounty Hunter, by the octogenarian Walter Hill, and today we must enthusiastically greet another, Strange Way of Life. In this case, the anomaly is threefold: because it is a western, because it is signed by someone as foreign to the genre as Pedro Almodóvar, and because it is not a feature film, but a half-hour short. If the filmmaker from La Mancha had thought of shooting a gunman movie in the glorious years of the Madrid scene, he would probably have presented us with a shameless product along the lines of Lust in the dust, a parodic western (mock of Duel in the Sun) and delightfully camp directed by Paul Bartel and performed by Divine and Tab Hunter. But in the days of Parallel Mothers, Almodóvar's look at the traditional iconography of the Far West is naturally more calm, serene and reflective.
And from this vantage point of maturity and responsibility, he has made a western with a respectful classic aroma, practically without subverting its codes despite somewhat picturesque touches such as starting the story with a soft fado or observing how the protagonists make the bed after a night. love night. In Strange Way of Life, despite its brevity, there is everything: the horses, the shots, the streets of the town, the sheriff's star, the personal confrontation, the nightly bonfires (and what a subtle and melancholic way to fit there, before the fire, the memories of love!), the rocking chair... So classic is the set that the film comes to tell, although in a gay key, the same story (of reunion and rivalry because of a wayward son) of El Last Train from John Sturges' Gun Hill, with Hawke and Pascal reprising the roles of Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn.
Pedro Almodóvar is a master of dazzling final shots (The Skin I Live In, Pain and Glory…) and the one that closes Strange Way of Life exhales a very pure emotion and describes true love with extraordinary penetration. After this shot, delight yourselves not by reading, but by listening to the final credits, a master class on what a soundtrack should be, and another feat by the incombustible Alberto Iglesias.
Por Philipp Engel
Denis Villeneuve, director of the last Dune, said that looking at Javier Bardem was "like looking at a tiger." Surely, King Triton did not see it coming. All in all, it must be said that the canary knows how to maintain his dignity with his snailed beard, his shell armor, his incandescent trident and that long mermaid tail. Casting isn't the problem in this new live-action remake of a Disney classic, even if Jonah Hauer-King, the intrepid prince with a sailor's soul, still looks like a cartoon. Melissa McCarthy delivers as Ursula, the witch with tentacles, and the choice of African-American Halle Bailey, passable actress and best singer, is most appropriate, as much as it may seem like whitewashing from the slavery era: it rhymes with the already classic calypso hits composed by Alan Menken for the original 1989 version. The increasingly regulated policy in favor of diversity has its musical raison d'être here, since it is not hard to imagine that we are in Trinidad: even metallic drums appear at the final party!
Regardless of the fact that The original Little Mermaid was a renovating masterpiece and what we may think, in general, of all the flesh and blood remakes carried out by Disney since The Jungle Book: The Adventure Continues (1994), And of the many that will come, the biggest handicap of this film by Rob Marshall (Chicago), especially if we think of the smallest viewers, is once again its excessive footage, which adds more than three quarters of an hour to the concise 83 minutes. original, in addition to the fact that the scenes added to make the show bigger are not particularly memorable and that some musical numbers of the caliber of Les poissons, that of the French chef, have even been lost along the way. The action is also quite confused, as a product of an unintentional immersive effect, and the kitsch of the depths, which could have been taken to the extravagant extreme of a proud parade, is as fleeting as it is mannerly. And the worst: humor is conspicuous by its absence.
By Salvador Llopart
This melodrama does not take flight and remains in a soap opera. He wants to embrace the mystery of life, what happens to us while we make plans, and remains in something vain and, at times, crude. Despite the good work of his interpreters, especially Favino. The game with time is excessive: it confuses more than it illuminates. And Moretti, with his mere presence, unintentionally, highlights the implicit comedy in this drama of lost occasions and broken hearts.
Por Philipp Engel
Images never seen, that we would still prefer not to have seen. The couple who became famous with Leviathan (2012), a bloody trip aboard a fishing boat that left us without the desire for sushi, does the same with hospitals, their morgues and the entrails of their patients, explored with micro-cameras. Live operations, senile patients lost in the corridors... The gore version of Once upon a time... the human body, a starkly poetic nightmare filled with humor as dark as it is questionable. Not suitable for the squeamish, but essential to test the medical vocation.
By Salvador Llopart
Between the arrival of Michael Jackson in Tenerife, in 1993, to give a concert, and the boarding of the island by the first Sub-Saharan migrants, in a boat, there are only a few months apart. They were, Jackson and those in the boat, they were the first blacks to be seen there. Omar Razzak approaches that Tenerife from before everything with a scrutinizing and compassionate look at the same time. A film of corners in rubble, like the lives of its protagonists. Chaotic, unpredictable proposal, but with a captivating poetry.
Por Philipp Engel
Victor Gaviria, director of the classic La vendedora de rosas (1998), continues to create a school among young Colombian filmmakers, like this newcomer who delves into the marginal underworld of Medellín drag: what could be a mere first-person documentary is transformed in a hybrid between fiction and reality, as fascinating as it is raw, nihilistic and depressing, which even flirts with the fantastic based on what Montoya calls spectrophilia. That is to say, having sex with the many ghosts of several generations decimated by violence and drugs.
By Salvador Llopart
A sick woman, Noelia, decides not to fight anymore. An island, her native island, Vieques (Puerto Rico), a paradise beset by hurricanes and the war trash that the military has left behind. The story of an internal catastrophe that has its correlate in the catastrophic natural environment. The beautiful and the sinister together, as usual. A beautiful film, very independent cinema, one of those that are not seen -or produced- on platforms. Much attention to Isel Rodríguez.
