These are the movie premieres that hit the screens starting on August 4:
Por Philipp Engel
No man should decide on a woman's body. What could be obvious is still the subject of sterile debates and, above all, retrograde laws. This endearing reconstruction of the activities of the Jane collective, which carried out more than 10,000 clandestine abortions in Chicago, is good proof of this: Jane ceased its activities in 1973, the year of the Roe v. Wade sentence, which, in practice, legalized abortion in the United States. But, just months after the Sundance premiere of We Are All Jane, the landmark ruling was unexpectedly overturned, allowing every state in the Union to ban or limit the right to abortion.
A progressive message does not, by itself, make a good movie. But while We Are All Jane is a self-conscious pamphlet, with a very classic narrative, it is also a sensual trip to 1960s America, shot on 16mm like the movies of the time (it's thrilling to see the celluloid grain on the screen). big screen), with a beautiful Kodak color photography by Greta Zozula who, thanks to a discreet and careful artistic direction, can be inspired by the photographer Vivian Maier. No less well cared for is the excellent musical selection (memorable dance in the kitchen to the sound of the Velvet Underground), a recital of not-so-obvious songs that is only allowed a Let the Sunshine In for the final credits.
Formally impeccable, the film is led by a sensational Elizabeth Banks, who already took on the role of pro-abortion Republican Jill Ruckleshaus in the notable series Mrs. America, and here she is the suburban housewife who, after one of those experiences for the ones that many women pass by, park the cakes and sign up for the underground fight led by the veteran Sigourney Weaver. The fact that the film starts with the Democratic Convention of 1968, like The Trial of the Chicago Seven (Aaron Sorkin, 2020) and that Phyllis Nagy became known by adapting the novel Carol by Patricia Highsmith for Todd Haynes, allows us to situate her first film as a director between these two titles, between the prosaic and the sublime, closer to Haynes than to Sorkin. I wish all the protest pamphlets were so concerned with the form.
By Salvador Llopart
A cadet is dead: a hazing fool has killed him. He was a brilliant young man of North African origin who put France, and the army, above all else. This beautiful and unexpected film by Rachid Hami could be reduced to a struggle between the cadet's family and the military institution, which refuses to bury the young man along with his comrades in arms. But if we do so, we are wrong.
Because A matter of honor is more, much more than another story of discriminated Muslims. More than the eternal struggle of the dispossessed. More than the intransigence of the army. The death of the son is the painful crack through which we peek into something vaster. The accumulation of scenes of emotional weight is creating, in an impressionistic tone, with continuous time travel, the remnants of a broken family. Where the wayward and dissolute older brother of the dead cadet -the director's alter ego, if you will, since Rachid Hami's brother died in the same way- is the other great protagonist of the tragedy.
The director's gaze is mobile and subtle. The tone of each scene, the camera movements and what we could call staging never responds to a stiff pattern. A grim, dry look for scenes with the army; a media and close-up look at family life, and a colourful, imaginative, fanciful and unreal camera, as the drama, in an unexpected leap, moves to Taiwan.
But above all we are facing the claim of the value of the symbol, exemplified in the desired burial. The symbol, treated with a respect that one has not seen since the trials of Joan of Arc in Jeanne la Pucelle (1999), by Jacques Rivette. There where the values of representation are erected in the measure of the value -or degradation- of a society. We are facing a precise, excited and exact reconstruction. Where a drum roll resonates strongly, necessarily, in our hearts, just like an emotional and vindictive rap does.
By S. Llopart
How difficult it is to make people laugh. How much mystery is behind a well told joke. Although when it doesn't work, the humor dies in your hands as if they did an autopsy. Lost to Rio ends up leaving you that unpleasant feeling of dissected humor.
Despite the title, forced and without grace, expectations for Mazón's film start high. With some well-drawn characters and the perspective of the trip of three friends to Rio de Janeiro with the aim of recovering the body of an acquaintance. We are, then, before a mixture of This dead man is very much alive (1989) and The Hangover (2009). Until hope is fraying as the event progresses.
I have no doubt that those behind the project know what humor is. Their resume speaks for them. Starting with Pablo Chiapella, the protagonist. One of the mainstays in the various television incarnations of Aquí no hay quien viva (now called La que se avecina) that is not at its best here. The struggle to achieve an ingenious, ribald and obscene humor in the hands of miserable or directly silly characters is noticeable. But the thing deflates and does not curdle. I already say, like a bad joke, excessively explained.
By Jordi Batlle Caminal
Two feature films by Emily Atef have just arrived: the interesting More Than Ever, released last week, and the not so interesting Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything, which opens today. It is a country melodrama starring a young college-age girl who spends time with her fiancée on the farm where the boy lives with her family. Happiness seems to smile at the lovebirds in these days of leisure and caressing sun. Until, one day, while walking through the countryside, the girl runs into the neighboring farmer, a solitary guy, and the flame of desire “ipso facto” ignites between them.
Their relationships will have something reminiscent of the sneaky lovers in The Messenger, but the fiery passion and emotional intensity that Julie Christie and Alan Bates exuded in Joseph Losey's magnificent film is not manifested in the performances of Marlene Burow and Felix Kramer, actors completely devoid of charisma. The film, which aims to be romantic (and fictional: the final reference to The Karamazov Brothers), remains a mere faded postcard, although it maintains a certain charm, the charm inherent in the bucolic story (here rather nephritic bucolic).
By S. Llopart
It must have been an affront to see how Chinese cultural traditions were happily plundered by a production like Kung fu Panda (2008), to the greater glory of Hollywood. They say that, under the aegis of President Xi Jinping, Chinese studios were encouraged to transform their rich cultural heritage as a millennial nation into cinematographic material. The Kingdom of Terracotta is one of the most successful results of this effort in the field of animation.
The historical reference is found in the famous Terracotta Army: those eight thousand statues or more of buried soldiers and horses, each one of them different, that keep the remains of Qin Shi Huang Di, the first emperor of China. Magnus, a young apprentice soldier in that millennial army, comes to life in a magical world to face the monsters the army has been fighting for who knows how long. Jade will be his beautiful partner in a series of epic challenges that are not what they seem. Because behind everything there is, of course, a secret. Much of the opening is reminiscent of How to Train Your Dragon (2010), although the narrative drifts towards the intricate grandeur of Japanese anime. He admires the technical capacity, with an impeccable drawing. He exhausts the story.
