These are the releases that hit movie screens this January 3:
By Jordi Batlle Caminal
Sometimes directly inspired by their own childhood or adolescence, there are many leading filmmakers who have recently traveled back in time to take the temperature of a very significant time in their lives. The list includes, among others, Paolo Sorrentino (It Was the Hand of God), Steven Spielberg (The Fabelmans), James Gray (Armageddon Time), Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza) and Kenneth Branagh (Belfast). Alexander Payne was ten years old in 1971 and not the fifteen of the young protagonist of Those Who Remain, a film set at Christmas, the end of the year and the turn of the decade of Nixon's America shaken by the wind of Vietnam, but the short distance of Five years does not prevent the director from knowing first-hand the historical period evoked here by screenwriter David Hemignson (it is curious that Payne does not sign the text this time, nor did he do so in Nebraska).
The setting of the film is a beautiful, prestigious academy surrounded by snow, one of those places championed by pride and tradition that is almost empty when the holidays arrive, when students and teachers go on vacation. Except for those few, very few, who have nowhere to go and the professor chosen to stay in their care, who is a certain Paul Hunham, a type of sour, grumpy, irascible character (a Paul Giamatti perfect for this task). His tense relationships with his student Angus, a brilliant but impulsive and rebellious student (debutant Dominic Sessa, a revelation), will form the core of the story. But since there are no two without three, the duo becomes a trio with the participation of Mary, the institution's cook (Da'Vine Joy Randolph, another top performance), a woman who suffers in silence the pain of having recently lost to his son in Vietnam.
They are three characters who grow as they go, between gentle melodrama and bittersweet comedy, imperceptibly becoming a family, and Payne films them with sobriety and a very attractive old film style, although often falling, alas!, into the cliché and commonplaces when it comes to exploring traumas and healing wounds (the issue of Angus's mother, stepfather and father is so cliché that it is almost unacceptable). In a way, Payne has softened to us: Those Who Remain is far below the magnificent About Schmidt, Sideways, The Descendants or Nebraska.
By Salvador Llopart
Yeah; It is necessary to start with the “once upon a time” of the classic stories to talk about I Captain, a denunciation as well as a fable of the human trade that underlies illegal migration. A fable-criticism, so to speak, where the allegorical, almost magical beauty of the landscapes of Africa – thanks to Paolo Carnera, director of photography – completes, and is complemented, with the horror that underlies the business of human trafficking : a trade where death, in the end, is the least important thing.
Once upon a time, then, when the teenager Seydou - Seydou Sarr, exciting in his role - leaves Dakar to face, accompanied by his cousin Moussa, a journey that will take them both - through Senegal, with the Sahara in between - to Libya and the sea, from where he can glimpse his objective: the Italian coast. A journey full of hope as well as a journey through hell. A physical and spiritual odyssey where, around every turn, monsters lurk.
Garrone is never forgotten on this journey of human dignity, even in the darkest moments. The director of Gomorrah here approaches the most degrading realism with a fairy tale mood, where his protagonist, Seydou, despite the physical and moral misery that surrounds him, behaves like a prince (African, and wearing a Barça shirt) .
By Salvador Llopart
The violence of lynching, which Fritz Lang's Fury showed so well, way back in 1936, here takes on a new aspect – an unexpected aspect – with the infinite possibilities of the Internet. It's the online witch hunt, when the hordes move to the rhythm of social media, spinning the X logo (formerly Twitter) like the bloody blades of a mixer. Seeking justice when there is only irrational revenge.
This is the most original – most disturbing – part of this Accused, by Philip Barantini – a director who surprised with his previous Hierve, one of the best thrillers of 2021, an unexpected culinary thriller. With Accused he returns to the thriller, this one with a house taken over and intruders in the home. With the victim, pointed by the digital finger. From concern to terror, then, and from tension to persecution. With the growing anxiety of a young man of Indian origin (Chaneil Kular), identified as the author of an attack. There is only one photo that identifies him as such, but that photo becomes a source of investigation and the wizards of the network identify a name and launch a chase. Suggestive.
Por Philipp Engel
After See You Up There (2017), a baroque adaptation directed by Albert Dupontel of the first installment of the Children of Disaster trilogy, for which Pierre Lemaître won the Goncourt, comes the film version of the second, another picaresque comedy, this one once in interwar Paris, without trenches or disfigured “poilus” in between. But Cornillac, another actor turned director, lacks the nerve, inventiveness and courage of Dupontel. The presence of such outstanding stars as Léa Drucker and Benoît Poelvoorde, in antagonistic roles – supported by a ridiculous Olivier Gourmet or an indomitable Fanny Ardant, in addition to Cornillac himself, as a mysterious chauffeur – are the main, if not the only, handles to save a plot that, on the big screen, is reduced to a mere soap opera, which is only moderately interesting when it entertains the idea of an industrial espionage thriller. Luxury locations, polished photography and a great display of shiny vintage automobiles... But Cornillac manages to make a scene as supposedly shocking as the opening one - where a child throws himself, from a second floor, onto his father's coffin - leaves us mortally indifferent. Academic, flat, and of no significance.
