These are the releases that hit movie screens this March 1:
Por Philipp Engel
If the first installment aimed to leave us wanting more, with this one the opposite happens: too many things happen and at an almost implausible pace. As soon as Paul Artreides (Timothée Chalamet) faces the crossing of the desert, he is already back; In less than the duration of Lady Jessica's pregnancy (splendid Rebecca Ferguson), Paul goes from mindungui among the Fremen to leading the revolution, express training through, and under the watchful eye of the disturbed Javier Bardem, who convinces even by uttering expletives in a imaginary language
The film has more stars than the Orient Express, and they all appear with their most charismatic profile, in very close-up shots, like a collection of epic stickers. There are so many that some are fleeting (Léa Seydoux, Anya Taylor-Joy). Villeneuve does not have time to delve into any of them, neglecting the emotional dimension of a story presided over by none other than the great couple of the 21st century – Chalamet and Zendaya, obviously.
Again, they barely take a peek in the light of the dune. It's not that we're asking for a torrid romance in the desert, but the film is far from being that “Star Wars for adults” that they wanted to sell. There are, of course, at least a couple of masterful action sequences, but the violence (without the annoying protective shields of the Atreides) is very toned down, and even the battles fly by.
The Canadian trusts everything to the incontestable magnificence of the images, achieving some moments of poetry and providing spectacular shots without rest, whether in a David Lean-style desert or with martial formations copied from Triumph of the Will, updated with a touch heavy Nordic aesthetic. And to all this is added the frenetic baton of an unleashed Hans Zimmer, who gives the impression of having hit everything within his reach (in a room with good sound: migraine guaranteed).
It is clear that its peplumesque and bombastic music helps the general public more easily assimilate a film that aims to be contemplative, although a minimalist score, such as Jóhann Jóhannsson's for Arrival without going any further, could have been more appropriate to develop a intimacy that is missing. Too big to be perfect.
By Jordi Batlle Caminal
Without a doubt, the most hilarious story included in To Rome with Love, by Woody Allen, was the one starring Roberto Benigni, a uomo qualunque, without any attributes, suddenly converted, without intending it, into the most famous person , media and adored in Italy. In Dream scenario, something similar happens to Nicolas Cage, but in the opposite, negative sign.
Cage is a modest professor and family man who begins to appear, inexplicably, in the dreams of the people around him, more and more people: family, friends, students, residents of the community... At first he wanders through the dreams of the others like a stone guest, without interacting, but then takes on an increasingly aggressive role. It is not surprising that, half seriously, half jokingly, he is compared to Freddy Krueger.
The Norwegian Kristoffer Borgli had already made a ruthless satire, Sick of myself, about the cult of the image that is currently dominant in the media and social networks. It was a film with an interesting premise but an excessive, over-the-top resolution. Dream scenario follows the same path as Sick of myself (now a satire on the so-called cancel culture, or the mass lynching of a citizen who has committed no crime, no misdemeanor, but who is taken, in an abstract way, as a threat), although it is much more controlled at the level of structure, narration and dialogue.
It's funny and witty and, at the same time, pathetic and disturbing. The prolific Nicolas Cage (this is one of the six films, six!, that he filmed in 2023) is magnificent in his characterization, one of the most enduring of his last stage. And, for Talking Heads lovers, there are a couple of quotes from the legendary group (remember David Byrne's giant suit in Stop Making Sense, a film that by the way will be restored next week?) and the song City of Dreams. in the final credits.
By Salvador Llopart
It is not easy to capture a piece of life, much less approach an excessive life as the Mexican Lila Avilés does here in her second film as a director. She transmits, without raising her voice, in a minor key, a strange beauty of an unnamed totem: that indefinite thing that she identifies and defines us as members of the same tribe. It has something jungle and unexpected too, with the children in the foreground and the animals running around everywhere.
Avilés approaches a middle-class Mexican family, well-off, although with some economic problems, when that family - that tribe - closes ranks around one of their own: Tona (Mateo García) is sick and, despite that, They want to celebrate their birthday with a party. For themselves and their closest friends. There's no more. No less. Only the impending emptiness that he looms like a shadow.
Tona, being there, is already absence, a raised fist to destiny. And the tribe/family is lost and deranged, while Avilés' camera sticks to the characters and draws pure life from them. Things happen and nothing happens. What matters here are the undercurrents and that threatening emptiness around the corner. A proposal as exuberant as it is subtle about that which is not said and not spoken.
By J. Batlle
What about artistic fraternities? Around the same time, both the Farrelly brothers and the Coen brothers have stopped riding together and now each of the four rides at their own risk. Joel, in his first work unrelated to Ethan, dared to travel through Shakespeare's universe. Ethan, more cautious, has decided to stay in known and recognizable territory: Two Girls on the Run, in fact, is set in Coenland, a country inhabited by eccentric people, with a mastery of dissolving humor and sometimes surreal situations.
A marriage of thriller, comedy and road movie, with the addition of a vindication of lesbianism and frank and free sex between women (lesbians are the two protagonists, the police ex-girlfriend of one of them, the large group of happy hikers, etc. ), the mess is caused by a rented car with a built-in suitcase that criminals are chasing. The landscape, the comedy and the fierce gags are Coenian, yes, but everything is presented in a hasty, unpolished way, clumsily filmed at times (the final climax in the street is painful). No trace of the devilish brilliance of Arizona Baby, Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski or The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
Por P. Engel
The vicissitudes of distribution lead us to discover, with some delay (although in a restored copy), the debut work of the American Martha Coolidge, later known for films such as Valley Girl (1983). It is a fascinating hybrid of fiction and documentary, which Richard Brody, star critic of the New Yorker, included in his chronological list of the best documentaries in history, between two monuments such as Gray Gardens and The Battle of Chile.
Necessarily uncomfortable, Not a Pretty Picture is a master class in directing actors in which Coolidge herself appears directing a couple who reconstruct the moment in which she herself was raped by a high school classmate. The actress who plays her also went through a similar experience, and the three analyze their impressions.
Through this device, in its groundbreaking day, we revive a certain problem of adolescent sexuality, at a time when men did not see it as strange to force, to a greater or lesser extent, a female desire that, in the best of cases, , resisted for fear of stigmatization. The most disturbing thing is that, according to the news we receive from the institutes, the film is still valid.
