Songs From The Second Floor (Roy Andersson, 2000)

Well, is there a director who looks like making the harlequins dancing at the absurd, dark, comedy, drama walk of the not of this earth society? Did anyone identified  with something that knows and has seen again? If yes, then the characterization was a 90% failure, because 90% of Songs From The Second Floor is a movie made by aliens with big white heads and small red lips, moving their skulls really slowly from left to right and then from right to left again.

If you have a gesture of question and baffled and you haven't used it quite a while you can easily be prepared and go and rent this film. The last some years I have come to be both  cinema and music fan of the Scandinavian countries (putting Iceland in there also), but this is weird even for the Scandinavian weather. It's a post apocalyptic movie, about people living in ordinary, miserable apartments, having to put up with problems and having very edgy reactions for events that you bleak your eyes more than three time to be convinced that they are happening in front of you, right there on the screen.

Songs From The Second Floor might be a difficult movie, even very difficult for some, but it is one of the masterpieces that the European ultra weird cinema family has to offer. Exquisite, in a equally weird way, made, "irrationally" conceived and certainly incredibly organized, this is a film that makes your heart and mind feel free, even only for the fact that there are people on this planet who can see reality and art in that way. A moment that even if you put as a goal in your life to erase it, will never happen.

Cry-Baby (John Waters, 1990)

Johnny Depp is really an amazing actor and one of the most important contemporary people of cinema. His filmography consists  controversial and juxtaposing choices and he is definitely one of the actors to whom, as a cinema fanatic, you become a follower... So Johnny Depp in a John Waters film. Johnny Depp in a John Waters, 50s rockabilly musical, coming-of-age film... OK you got me by the balls here.

The first time that I watched Cry-Baby was in a very young age and it was on VHS. I had no idea what John Waters meant, I only knew Johnny Depp from 21 Jump Street (TV Series 1987-1991) and Nightmare On Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984). The other reason why I rented this film was because from a very early age it seemed that I had a very big sympathy for America's retro 50s aesthetic. I had seen American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973) and also Porky's (Bob Clark, 1982), apparently the nude girls in there was a very significant reason also, and finally I was very big fan of Back To The Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985).

I remember liking the movie, but the image that I had of it, two years ago, when I thought of watching it again, was vague. I only remembered that Iggy Pop was somewhere there... Well, the movie is a "fuzz" masterpiece. I really couldn't remember and apparently couldn't fully understand also, its humour, irony, anarchy and so damn good cinema, that was in there. (I think that there is one scene, the one where Johnny Depp makes the musical in jail, which should go down as one of the Epic moments of cinema).

The Goonies (Richard Donner, 1985)

(Ruth... Ruth... Ruth... Baby... Ruth!... Jeez mister you are even hungrier than I am). Goonies is a major and crucial moment in the history of adventure cinema made for children, teenagers, well justified adults and elderly people. If you don't like this movie, you haven't seen it, you are not intrigued by it, you find it naive, childish, shallow, empty of content, without true artistic value, I suggest that you start going to amusement parks, chewing bubble-gums, play with children toys, make a pirate ship, go up in the mountain in the search of a hidden treasure..., do what's you got to do because you... have Issues.

Goonies is the VHS that I have destroyed more than any other from the repetitive screenings. I used to rent it every month and sometimes twice a month and many times I would watch it twice. Goonies is where imagination, exuberance, spontaneity, wildness, craziness, aloofness and pure energetic life-style begins and ends. It's a pill, a remedy, a drug, an addiction, a wet fantasy, a sexual desire and one of the highest ingredients of what is called the essence of life.

 Give it as present to your moody friend, to the girl or boy of your dreams, to your grouchy neighbor, make it a statue in your backyard, dress your child as Chunk, manufacture  a chest belonging to One-eye Willie, protest outside your parliament for a retrospective nationwide so the cinemas start playing Goonies, buy the DVD, download the movie from the internet, buy the stickers, T-shirts, underwear and most of all hang a flag outside your apartment which says "We Are All Goonies".

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, 2004)

There are some films, very few, that leave you... numb. Life Aquatic is an excellent movie and Wes Anderson is one of the most distinctive auteurs of our time, but still these words haven't explained anything really. When emotion and imagination, along with such an intellectual film language and content, come together, you firstly feel little... awkward (along with effortless enthusiasm).

Is Wes Anderson's film planet a hippie planet? (And I use the world hippie only with positive sound). I think it is. Maybe is the closest think that I have seen, especially in contemporary filmmaking, that moves so close to the word hippie. Is it possible that a film environment make you feel so uplifted  when there is not even a bit of naive and silly happy in there? It is.

I think that I chose Wes Andersons's least praised film deliberately, because I believe that it is an avant-garde, weird and uncompromising masterpiece, but also because I strongly suggest that this is a film that the first time is not possible to fully communicate and attach with it. Although I don't know if I utterly believe myself, nevertheless, I consider Wes Anderson the best contemporary filmmaker and a true joy of cinema, imagination, warmness, humanity and dream. An incredible auteur who takes the art for a ride that no one has ever taken before. ( I am very happy to hear that in its upcoming film, The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014), Edward Norton will again be there after Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson, 2012). Another magnificent persona of cinema, respected as an actor and person).

Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russel, 2012)

(A tear.. no two... no they were more, positively they were four...) If you take on account that I censored a large armada of them, by pulling up the handbrake that sits around my chest... Silver Linings Playbook is a terrific film about life. Away from the cliche, the boredom, the happy-sad characters who want to have a marriage, a house, a dog and children and unlucky for us made their shelter into another romantic comedy, this movie lives in a total different planet and is more like a psychoanalysis character comic film, than a straight romantic comedy really.

 Bradley Cooper, Yes Man (Peyton Reed, 2008), is excellent, Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone (Debra Granik, 2010) is fantastic, as she always is (that role gave her the Oscar also, although I would go for her role in Winter's Bone), Robert De Niro, Casino (Martin Scorsese, 1995) is... there (and that's enough), overall this movie is something that can only make you good.

 Even if you are in a shitty or even deeply shitty emotional situation and the love potion has been causing you unexplainable and hazardous phenomena, this film won't make you grab your teddy bear and then your pillow and then call your mother, because there is  some kind of very distinctive comment that this film makes about the way we understand us, reality, our hopes and the thing that we finally want and not the ones that we try to force ourselves to want. Really, really good American movie. (I know that is not among the films that I will be reviewing, but I finished it half an hour ago and I definetely find that my desire to write about it, it's much more important than my stupid schedule).

Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002)

This is certainly one of the best American films since the millennium. One of the best screenplays and a highly effective movie that it almost tears you to pieces with a delicate and  at the same time "disturbing" touch. An old fashioned melodrama film with a social and racial commentary. The epitome of "cliche" in its most  true, reversed and melancholy moment.

I have the poster in front of me and thinking that maybe I should watch it again, in order to fresh my memory about it. But the moment that I see Julianne Moore's, Short Cuts (Robert Altman, 1993), face I am starting to decide that I don't need any  refreshing. The movie is there on the poster. (Really this character could have been the love of my life). If there  is one film about gossip, social imprisonment, suffocating emotions and hypocrisy, then there is no other..., maybe Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945).

It's not depressive and it's not weeping, it is a very melancholy film. It's like a very slow movement of the head starting to look down, but instead of drama and grief it has this disappointment together with the understanding of how the world, morality and society work and what are the inevitable burdens that you have to come through... Really down-tempo film with an inside fire that can light a city full of skyscrapers.

L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson, 1997)

There is something about this movie and this something is the atmosphere, not so much in the visual style, but mostly in that decadence Thing existing "underneath" the Hollywood Land. I think that the best moment, although it sounds almost ridiculous is the opening titles and the best character is the "yellow" journalist played fantastically by Danny DeVito, Ruthless People (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, 1986), who is making the ironic and unmasking comments about the city of Angels.

This is mostly a winter's film but I can imagine it on a Summer's night also, with low light and smoke from cigaretos. I believe that I need the touch of the retro noir, whether is classic or neo-noir, because it helps me come into some kind of peace and order (but not with the authority sense of the word). My head is been detached from my body and travels very lightly. Jackets, ties, shiny shoes...

For some reason the scene that it is mostly stuck on my mind is when Kim Bansinger, Blind Date (Blake Edwards, 1987), enters the liqueur store on Christmas Night and Russel Crowe, The Quick And The Dead (Sam Raimi, 1995), watches her for the first time... and how this thing continues with the girl with the broken nose and then the massacre... yes this film travels you to scary "places" with a heavy murder - corruption cocktail... On the rocks! 

Licence To Kill (John Glen, 1989)

Bond becoming furious and asking for personal revenge. Somewhere along the way loses also his Licence To Kill and becomes an outlaw. Certainly some miles away from the "shaken not stirred" clean-cut and very confident persona of the British spy, Licence To Kill has very much in common with B movie action and exploitation films.

 Action packed, suspenseful and even a slice  of sleaze in there, this 007 movie has also one of the best casts, although not very "flashy" in names. The villain, Robert Davi is like watching The Goonies (Richard Donner, 1985) in its adult version, Bond's girl played by Cary Lowell, is one of the most classy, and humorous girls that the British spy has ever had for company and there is also a supporting role from the early days of Benicio Del Toro, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (Terry Gilliam, 1998).

 I won't hesitate to admit that I have seen this Bond film four times with the last planing to watch only a small part of it. But I couldn't. I had to watch it all. My only objection with this film is the climax chase scene. It's very long and way over-the-top, to a point that it becomes tiresome. (As a non particular and big supporter of the Bond film history, I can say that my favorite 007 was definitely Timothy Dalton. He had an irony in his gaze and the every day man look which made the British spy figure to look more earthly to my eyes and not the cliche "ououou yeahhh" lover action boy).

Hercules In The Haunted World (Mario Bava, 1961)

Hercules and his Labors was of the stories that I was reading very often when I was a kid. I would say that along with the story of Prometheus were my favorite Greek mythology stories. And Mario Bava is one of my favorite genre filmmakers... But this film is very difficulty affordable. Kitsch is a word that I usually use describing something nice, humorous, different and valuable, like Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodovar, 1988) for example, but here situation is... bad. 

The acting is very close to the word terrible (maybe the only exception is Sir Christopher Lee), the characters are so wooden that you think that they were made by a cliche machine and the humour antagonizes that of the cheap TV serials. The set and the colors have certainly more than something of Mario Bava's talent and aesthetic but really this is not enough to take the film up to a descent level. The central spine of this organism has major problems which you cannot leave behind and doesn't leave you to enjoy the film in any way.

Maybe back in 1961 when it came out it looked astonishing or interesting, but in 2013 this movie looks... bad. Really awkward thing to write such words for a filmmaker that you like and admire for his unquestionably imaginative work in the Italian genre cinema. Let's leave this review with something "cheerful". Blood And Black Lace (Mario Bava, 1964).

Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami, 2010)

Being simple in the thing that you want to communicate and in the way that you do that is often a misjudged thing. There are people who can only work when the adrenaline is on the peak and others who take everything slow  paced to be a masterpiece. I don't like the idea of neither of these "non movable" opinions. But this film made by the Iranian filmmaker and "supporter" of cinema's realism doesn't fall really to any of the above categories. Is it realistic? Oh my God yes and no. Is it simple? By all means yes and no.

It's a character film, a film about emotions, a film about our nagging and "self-destructive" side, a film about marriage, a film about living together, is a film about Ego and how gets on the way of what really life is about, is a film about a quite place in Italy, is a film about humans and it's a perfect study about mature eroticism.

 Is it simple? I 've stuck to that question because theoretically you can answer, "yes of course is simple, there is practically nothing happening there". If your idea of something happening comes only through events and happenings, yes there is nothing happening, but if you can see what these two people (changing identities) are talking about, then there is a whole lot of Serious things happening in which we all have been protagonists in our life. Man and Woman. Truth and Emotion. (Enough to fill Santa Claus's sack).