These are the releases that hit movie screens this September 29:
By Jordi Batlle Caminal
The first sequence, located in 1947, which almost seems like a rewriting of the beginning of The Big Sleep (Coronado and a Wellesian Josep M. Pou as emulators of Marlowe and General Sternwood), is disconcerting. There is already a biographical note in it: the allusion to The Shanghai Haunting, which makes one think both of Sternberg's film and of the adaptation of Marsé's novel that Víctor Erice had to make, which was ultimately frustrated. When we discover the true nature of that sequence, we are already several decades later, which is where Closing Your Eyes begins and sculpts a plot around the disappearance of an actor years ago, a television program that evokes the case, a director of cinema that will try to find his whereabouts, etc. In reality, we are being told about time and its ravages, about memory and its absence: amnesia, the most effective way to erase our past.
The figure of Erice himself flies over for almost three hours. He also disappeared (from the feature film) more than thirty years ago and now he returns, staring (and we already know what his gaze is like: clean, essentialist) into the past. This is a film that moves forward looking not through the windshield, but through the rearview mirror. Nobody like Erice to convey an idea of time gone by with the simple gesture of opening a box full of memories, a scene of utmost delicacy. And then there is the reunion with Ana Torrent, who was called Ana in The Spirit of the Hive and is called Ana in Close Your Eyes.
It is impossible to imagine, for the final stretch of this sentimental chronicle tinged with longing, a more suitable space than an old movie theater already closed but still equipped to be able to hold, among the accumulated dust and humidity, one last private screening. And it is there where Erice concentrates a few moments where the looks multiply: the looks of the characters in the projected film, the spellbound looks of its spectators, ours no less captivated. And, accompanying this epiphany, a sad farewell perfume that breaks our hearts. But we still float in a worthy cloud of celluloid because, minutes before, Erice gave us a memorable fragment, let's call it the Río Bravo moment, that made us cry with emotion.
By J. Batlle Caminal
In the last stage of his career, Woody Allen has filmed many films set in various European cities, but in English as the main vehicle of expression. He now returns to Paris in Lucky Stroke, spoken in French. Luck is a strictly French comedy and, at the same time, strictly and recognizably Allenian. That is to say, a well-structured, well-written work with a fluid rhythm, qualities common in the times of Preston Sturges or Billy Wilder but today as rare as the consumption of elvers.
Based on a classic sentimental triangle scheme (married, upper-class, but dissatisfied woman, reunites with an old high school friend who always pined for her, and begins a love relationship with him), Allen offers us a deliciously light comedy accompanied by criminal intrigue. , a combination already successfully cultivated in titles such as Manhattan Murder Mystery, Scoop, Cassandra's dream, Irrational man or Match point, its closest relative while here it reintroduces the theme of chance as a primary concept of resolution. The story flows with the usual narrative agility, in scenes with perfect timing, indoors or outdoors, in the capital or eventually in the countryside, always attentive to natural gestures (the way of buying, for example, a cone of hot chestnuts during a lovers' walk in the park) and extracting the best from each member of the cast: the sweet Lou de Laâge, the elegantly diabolical Melvil Poupaud, etc.
The filmmaker must be congratulated for having reached this point, almost a nonagenarian, with his fiftieth feature film, without having lost an iota of creativity, and for having given us so many pleasures over more than half a century. Hopefully the chimpanzee from I Feel Younger who discovered the elixir of eternal youth has passed the formula on to Woody and the party never stops.
By Salvador Llopart
Let me get paranoid: will The Creator be the first step in the AI invasion? An exercise in whitewashing new technology? As a dramatic artifact, it is somewhat monotonous. A long chase to, first, hunt down a unique calf and, then, to protect it from all evil. Technically he is a prodigy of naturalness. Full of portents and premonitions. Where humans turn out to be ruthless killing machines; and machines, the last repositories of spirituality.
Por Philipp Engel
The ambassador of Japanese cinema works on his obsessions like a Rubik's cube, playing with different versions of the same story, like Kurosawa in Rashomon (1950) or himself in The Third Murder (2017): in a case of school abuse, the monster is the teacher, or the student, or maybe it's something else... Kore-eda provides a new combination of social themes and childhood that, although it does not live up to his masterpieces (Nobody Knows, Still Walking), does not falter either. like the most recent The Truth or Broker.
By S. Llopart
The first Saw (2004) was brutal: brutally imaginative and unexpected. As if Dr. Franz from Copenhagen, the one behind the TBO inventions, had turned to terror and called himself Jigsaw. In the following ones, horror-porn, unpleasant and cruel, increasingly prevailed. This tenth installment, chronologically located between the first and the second, is like a new beginning. There torture, yes, trademark of the saga. But of more interest, much more, is the clash between characters of true dramatic force.
Por Ph. Obstacle
It is not a remake of the Brian De Palma film of the same name. What's more, Mars is only mentioned as an unlikely destination, and the biggest expenditure on special effects is three old gas masks, to prevent the impact of a supposed toxic haze. A mix of stoner comedy to the sound of radical Basque rock and a black and white family road movie, the tiny-budget debut feature by a former UPF student doesn't even take itself seriously, although it ends up leaving a strange residue, between absurd and desolate.
By J. Batlle Caminal
A disappointing fourth installment, on sale, with much less humor (and less sharp) than in previous chapters and a less stellar cast, ingredients that made up the appeal and good entertainment that are conspicuous by their absence here. It maintains the constant action (disseminated in a rather inept production) and the artisanal and stallonian B-series aroma characteristic of the saga, but now without punch. The contribution of Andy García is painful, who couldn't be worse.
