Reviews

For the Christopher who cleared the author's blockbuster, to sublimate the superheroes with super torments, the depiction of his usual topoi and trademarks continues.

Proverbial dissertations on the arbitrariness of affections, in the course of Space Odysseys, through "dominant strategy", in Search of Lost Time in which to find a Yin & yang (inner and outer) that takes shape culminating in a relatively sinister, threatening and apocalyptic vision. Relatively. Because this time the dark side is only partially threatening, compared to the one depicted in Strangelove. In other words, the message creeps in that, for better or for worse, a future in Gotham City always awaits us around the corner.

Of a blockbuster, it has only the mainstream cast. And a workhorse montage of a major season. Elements that can already compete for nominations for the Academy Awards.

Julius Robert Oppenheimer is a Vitruvian man. A little different from the one described by Malcolm Gladwell in the non-fiction Outliers. Just look at his interactions, owing the Rule of the Game to an Altman-esque plot. At the same time Matt Damon, Downey jr. & co. Put on a mask, without turning into a "tench". We suspect and regret that Michael Caine would have been a perfect Einstein.

The plot is more usual than usual. Let me be clear, we have plenty of flashbacks and parallel montages. Also with surreal, futurist and hyper-realistic touches. With a total mastery of the set and the themes, already exhibited in Dunkirk, which fears no rivals in Aronofsky, Iñárritu or even in Paul Thomas Anderson.

Like Interstellar, in some sequences, the most obvious visual reference is the Cosmos docuseries (in particular the one with Neil DeGrasse Tyson). To go back to the masters of other times, there is more and more entrepreneurial spirit in the reconstruction of a set in the west(ern) on which Hollywood was born, following the tradition of John Ford and his pupils (or followers).

Instead, for the masses, despite the added value of a structured viewing for IMAX screens, it can come as a massive and exhausting work. That is, what happened and happens to those who see a film by David Lean like Lawrence of Arabia. In fact, Cillian Murphy, the former Peaky Blinder, already busily lunatic and spirited in a (professional) role similar to Danny Boyle in Sunshine, is increasingly Peter O' Toole's heir.

As Variety noted, the segment of the first nuclear test may be the center of gravity on which all the work revolves. And it can become a milestone of the seventh art. We live the stroke of the Atomic Age with our own eyes, just as we observed on our skin the symptoms of schizophrenia in A Beautiful Mind. Or the breaking of the sound barrier in the documentary Senna.

While a good storyteller like Ron Howard concocts chronicles for episodes with a known epilogue, moreover representing obstacles to their crowning, here we have an Author like Nolan who, among those of his generation, now competes only with Tarantino in terms of style. Like a famous sequence from Reservoir Dogs, we even feel a hidden anguish for that situation with a well-known and perhaps outdated outcome. Around this scene, throughout the rest of the film, revolves a story of the trial, which in its way follows the archetype of Caine Mutiny with Bogart, able to satisfy the needs of the plot, rather than the expectations.

Won't it be a masterpiece? Of course, it's not a step backwards in the director's filmography.

In contrast to recent biopics on legendary rock stars. A monumental tribute to Bowie and experimental cinema, honored with their most iconic extracts (from Kenneth Anger to the inevitable 2001) in the heterogeneous cauldron of an MTV video montage. Authorized by his wife Iman and his son Duncan Jones who, like the duke of glam rock, did not like the gossip of the film VELVET GOLDMINE. Without any narrative voice, other than that of the subject of the documentary. Thanks to his style, it renders his dual, glassy and volcanic essence well. Fans will certainly be satisfied. Indeed, they will feel in the presence of a hagiography. The neophytes will not remain fully acquainted with the figure of him: not even a cover of an album of him appears. However, there is more avant-garde and magnetism in this anti-narrative report than in the calligraphic sensationalism transposed by Todd Haynes in 1998.

What to say? The expectations have been fulfilled. Vince Gilligan reigns! He was right when he said BCS would pass BrBra. My heartfelt congratulations to all the cast, crew and especially Peter Gould. Perfect episode. Masterpiece. I'd say it's worthy of 57 minutes of standing applause. Could not find a fault. And this last season isn't over yet. If you haven't seen it yet, get ready for delirium. Go through it yourself. Nothing else to add.

It reminded me of what happened with Benigni's Pinocchio. Mainetti made us wait almost six years for his "cinecomic". He wants to repeat the call of his previous experiment. He opens with a dazzling incipit. Then almost everything derails. The increase in the means available - which prevented the immediate release in streaming - had to guarantee even more visionary than his last test. Unfortunately, the only revelation worthy of the other undertaking consists in the choice of the protagonist. There was Ilenia Pastorelli, here is the very young Aurora Giovinazzo. So far we are. Then, between a few empty passages and a smashing epilogue (reminiscent of the own goal of the final battle in the dark in the Games of Thrones) one gets more and more the impression of witnessing a long drawn episode of a fantasy TV series. It is recognized the good will to want to be different, at least in intent, from the Italian cinema of recent seasons. At the same time, by raising the bar of ambition, any appeal that could become cult again is inhibited: on this occasion, there is some politically incorrect idea or some Chaplinian tenderness but it is not enough to give freshness to Italian popular cinema. The "coming to age" journey of his gentle misfits - much more successful in Jeeg Robot - this time does not compete in depth with his obvious models (X-men, Guardians of the Galaxy, Suicide Squad). Claudio Santamaria, now elected as the director's alter-ego, is masked in Chewbacca style, despite being the only star of appeal (together, perhaps, with Giorgio Tirabassi). One wonders why Luca Marinelli has not returned as the villain.