Reviews

It's been awhile since my last review but I cannot stop myself from recommending this movie. Be warned that you won't get out of the movie palace knowing the tricks to pack gold on your pockets but maybe be able to question your everyday routine and finally pursue something else. The clan master has a dream but needs sons and relatives to implement it and those oblige themselves not without questioning their own personal reasons. Good performances... who would have guessed how boring playing roulette can be? But make no mistake... it's the conflict of interests of all involved who keep you tuned. Let's make this 10 lines for the sake of publishing! Cheers and enjoy!

This little comedy is about Albert who's repenting his decision to marry and takes guitar lessons with special-people (read retarded) to distract himself before the wedding takes place or not. If you have a taste for youtube videos featuring retarded people then this movie is not for you. Don't expect a sentimental tragedy instead. This is something else. This is Espinosa's first feature film -David on screen. The same guy who wrote the script for 'Tu vida en 65 minutos' brings us to a place of unease and uncertainty, mixing the obvious anxiety in Albert's face with David's outbursts about letting it-all-go with handy jobs. Espinosa takes the same approach as Woody Allen in many aspects, specially writing, but then he throws in some visual poetry and a voice-over to make you think what makes us special and what makes us jerks.

Life, cards, luck and Russian Roulette... this is why this comment has the spoiler option checked.

This film evokes Valencia illegal gaming back in the seventies. A young peasant -Ferran- plays cards not much to make a living but as a distraction of his daily routine. Ferran meets a larger-than-life character -el chino- who happens to play cards for a living. This other guy is depicted as a Toni Manero look alike but his charisma an arrogance lead the innocent Ferran to join him in his schemes to make money to end up betting all on the next card table.

At some point the action moves to Madrid and Ferran steps down losing track of El chino who takes on more dangerous games making a living out of Russian Roulette until the round gets loaded.

Based on real events this is no Hollywood epic but it captures the desperation of the characters very effectively.

This is the fourth full-length feature film by Marc Recha. By the third 'les mans buides' -Empty hands- I promised myself not to cut my veins anymore. But this time round the plot is completely different -a kind of homage to Ramon Barnils (Sabadell 1940 - Reus 2001) a Catalan journalist-. The visuals in the trailer are stunning -a gleaming river bathed in sunlight- and the promise that Marc himself would be in front of the camera with his twin brother -none of both professional actors- convinced me at last, six weeks after its release. Abandon yourself in this very unusual road/river film. Learn almost nothing about Ramon Barnils but his most poignant legacy: his constant fight against amnesia of what we Catalans chose to forget. 'La batalla de l'Ebre' -look for Battle of the Ebro at the wikipedia- was lost not once but twice because after 40 years of silence and 25 years of half-hearted democracy nobody has done much to remember the legitimate side of the Spanish civil war and those who fought it. This film is about the lonely people roaming the same places with very little conscience of what took place there 70 years ago. This film is about the landscape.

A director guy takes a leave-of-absence of his parental duties to visit some friends in the country and find the space and solitude to think about his new project. But then a violinist woman has had the same idea. The pair gets introduced by their acquaintances. A romance looks likely but...

This film deals with the urge of not having an affair given the chance. The quasi non-existent plot is linear through... and only in a very few places in the last 20 minutes you get a few chills of the uncomfortable state of denial in which the main character is installed.

Sensitively acted and transparently shot. To be enjoyed without pressure by moviegoers in their mid-thirties.

This movie deals with death and digital afterlife.

A woman dies in her forties but leaves hundreds of video and cassette tapes of her life recorded. The main character is an ex boyfriend from time past who watches and listens to every tape to cope with her death and his own sorrow. He amongst other boyfriends appears on the tapes. And through the tapes he gets to know her and even himself much better than he did before.

The originality of this movie resides in the technical aspects. So when the action takes place inside her flat -the same flat where he is viewing the tapes- the image blurs into blue and white as if we were watching a surveillance camera, but when we listen to her tapes we do get a proper flashback of the place she was in.

The soundtrack, though minimalist, adds up to the nauseating atmosphere of nostalgia with an unmistakable repetitive tune.

But in the end the fragmented bits and pieces collected together don't make much sense. This movie lacks warmth and does not charm the viewer.

This movie is outstanding. The non-linear plot reveals itself little by little taking you by surprise at every turn. It all begins with a rape which already happened a day or two ago. The body is found in the middle of a field of sunflowers. All of this, we get it second hand from TV newscasts while the main characters carry on with their ordinary lives somewhere else. We -the viewers- are lead to follow a caver about to explore a virgin cave near a remote village, his girlfriend, two old disgruntled neighbors on an abandoned village who can't stand each other, a salesman, the disloyal police officer, ... We get to see every character from various viewpoints and how somehow their lives are connected without them knowing yet...

And then tragedy and human resolve -call it selfishness or greed- take over everybody's action.

The pace of revelation and the acting work like clockworks. This could happen, this is (s)pain after all.

Watch out for this guy -the director- for this is his first and for sure it won't be his last.

Three twentysomethings out of Sunday morning apathy attend the wrong funeral and life itself becomes apparent.

For Dani who realises he has no idea of what 'falling in love' means, the death of an unknown guy who shared the same girlfriend turns out to be very important to understand his own father's death and past relationships.

At times transcendental but funny throughout with a 'wonderlandish' effect -check Winterbottom's film if you enjoy this one- and a CURE song inbetween... what else could you ask for!?

Extra lines for submission: (out of 65 words though)

The action is set in Barcelona, and a day at the BARCELONA FC Stadium is also included...

As always it feels strange that nobody speaks in Catalan even if the dead guy is called Albert and not Alberto...

It's a pity Catalan film makers prefer to do separated catalan and Spanish versions and not just one bilingual realistic movie for catalan and Spanish audiences alike.

This educative type of movie exposes a tricky subject: the impact on a child of her mother's mental illness. The plot focuses on two aspects: the defensive mechanisms used by an unloved girl -Babel- to have a glimpse of sanity and the 'see no evil, hear no evil' attitude of adults including relatives, school teachers and psychiatrists. Their failed attempts to tackle tragedy give us an idea of how naive is society at times. The mother is mad, the daughter is not, period.

Technically the movie is unimpressive, the same goes for the acting, but nonetheless it is effective enough to interest the viewer. But sadly, the 'based upon a true story' effectiveness is somewhat lost when the director sets the action in Barcelona, a Barcelona no one in Catalonia would recognize as real because the lack of Spanish speaking voices through-out the movie. Back then in 1987, Barcelona was still mostly labeled in 'Spanish', shopping malls and institutions were reluctant to give a chance to Catalan speakers. Even today Catalan is used in one out of 6 TV channels and on one out of 100 movie theaters so is unthinkable a monolingual scenario as seen in that movie. Thankfully, this anomaly has been overgrown with time and local movies and even foreign ones like "L'Auberge Espagnole" reflect a more likely scenario of our bilingual society matching more appropriately the Babel in the movie's tittle.

The director of this little unpretentious documentary takes a Michael Mooresque approach towards denouncing injustice in Chile. The unfair treatment received by Mapuches -a proud, independent people living high on mountains- by a large Spanish energy company -endesa- who doesn't give a damn about these people and builds a big dam where they live.

What goes on -the documentary shows- is that ten years on, with the dam and the damage done.. the democratic government of Chile still represses the unfairly treated -their own people- in favor of the Spanish company.

Maybe the only negative point of the documentary is that in presenting the chilean politicians and endesa executives as villains (Rodolfo Martin Villa-in on top) with excruciating detail... we end up not knowing much about the culture of the Mapuches in what may have been the last chance they will ever get to get their culture heard after the waters of RALCO -the dam- drowned them.

Oh boy! What a shameful experience. Stakes were high with this one. Four fine actresses on a 'Dangerous liaisons' type of film but somehow in the process everything witty and entertaining contained in this great novel of the 15h century was lost in translation.

The film gives no clue whatsoever if the tales being told have anything to do with some army in particular in some period of history or with the lord of the rings saga..

(Hint: the turks are the orks, and Tirant resembles Aragorn, though no Virgo Mortensen in sight just a lookalike). (Another hint: the standard flag of Tirant's side in battle scenes)

The film carries a solemnity that echoes through the halls and chambers of every step of flight of stairs of the palace in which the static action takes place. Can you hear my yawn from the aisles of the castle?

Esther Nubiola as Carmesina -the princess-, Ingrid Rubio as Estephania, Leonor Watling as Pleasureofmylife, Victoria Abril as the Peacefulwidow and Jane Asher as the queen do their best in trying to liven things up.

But the dead funeral air of Vicente Aranda's take at sex scenes won't make you have a hard on if it's not in the way of rigor mortis.

This documentary takes on another documentary by the same director. Jordà reunites a bunch of factory workers 20 years later or so -hence the title.

In Barcelona in the late seventies, a factory was about to close, the managers couldn't manage the working class people so they decided to shut doors. The rebellious workers gave it a try and tried to run the company by themselves for two years. This is documented in the previous documentary 'Numax presenta..'.

In the new one, Jordà tracks those idealistic, anarchist, maybe anarchic people and investigates what became of them.

I haven't seen the original, so I don't care about these people reunion -hugs and kisses infest the film- although some footage from the previous film is included. What's left for me is the mystery force that make these people thrive whatever they do.

It's about the people not as a union but as individuals. The motto 'Every man is an island' comes to mind.

Watch out for the bank robbers segment for thrills and chills.

Well, this is an unpretentious documentary mixing reality and fiction in very special circumstances.

Old men and women are interviewed about events that took place 70 years ago! No kidding, they talk about their earliest memories on an orphanage during the Spanish civil war where... -surprise, surprise- they acted -as lead actors and actresses- on an a film by an amateur film-maker. The film was not destroyed so it is mixed effectively with images from present times in the same location to add atmosphere to the story.

The documentary investigates how the religious orphanage masters survived while on the republican side, how the poorest of kids enjoyed the time as if no war took place outside the orphanage walls and in the end how a blissful oasis for these kids could exist in a place and time where a civil war was taking place.

Worth seeing to get a glimpse of the human side of things.

This little movie is worth seeing if interested on grass-roots movements to get something done about people real problems.

It is based on a true story about a handful of mothers with drug-addicted sons who fought not only to improve their lives but also fought against the drug-dealers denouncing publicly who they were in the context of late eighties Galicia where the benefits of illegal traffic were legendary.

Adriana Ozores carries the weight of the film as the lead rebellious mother. Pity is this Ken Loachesque offering by Gerardo Herrero is somewhat confusing trying to be epic at times when in reality everything was really sordid. If realism is not enough for a full length-feature film, maybe shooting the same real story as a documentary would have been really something.

This documentary does the admirable job to try to upset the old establishment keeping an eye on some public persons, places and events which are about to be forgotten by all of us in modern Catalonia: 20 years on this people will only exist in film.

The action focuses in post-war Barcelona (40's 50's), old people is interviewed and through their memories, the usual NODO -news and propaganda from Franco's dictatorship- from the times illustrates what they remember. One event in particular is so obscure that the director felt the urge to recreate it with actors to get us an appropriate idea of what went on. The documentary tells us about the double standards, the misery and the hypocrisy of power players of that era. One person in particular -Juan Antonio Samaranch - even got into the top of the International Olympic Committee which concluded that Barcelona hosted the olympics in 1992. But this is not the point, the point is to expose by word-of-mouth from different sources the dirty laundry during the 40s in the not-so-repressed Barcelona.