“What do the cruellest criminals do when they are all together?” This looks like the beginning of a joke, but still isn´t… Perhaps if I say “Simon West’s Con Air”, you will guess what the joke is. Wow! What a horrible film (in my opinion)! More than a blockbuster it seems a “blockbastard”! -Sorry for the pun.

Ok. Let’s start again. I am not going to talk about the ridiculous script, the non-existent sense of measure, the extremely confuse action scenes, or the inappropriate performances. I think that something better could Read the rest of this article »

A gang of highly professional thieves is committing a series of robberies… An assassin performs his very own nightly tour de force… Two anti-vice detectives pursue the typical delinquent. While looking forward to seeing on screen Miami Vice´s cinematographic version, both “Heat” and “Collateral” offer us a characteristic mark of Michael Mann´s work as a director, which is not in the detective stories but in his way of portraying the city. In fact, these two movies Read the rest of this article »

http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/cars/

Lightning McQueen, a hotshot rookie race car driven to succeed, discovers that life is about the journey, not the finish line, when he finds himself (…) in the sleepy Route 66 town of Radiator Springs.

For the sake of honesty, I´ll say that I went to see Cars almost forced by a friend. Though I usually love animation films, the way the cars are portrayed looked somehow too bland, too gentle, so to say, and I feared that the whole would share that same spirit.

In fact, while perhaps mild, Cars is nevertheless a good movie. Read the rest of this article »

We all know that the producers’ aim is to make a profit. And it’s logical: like any company, they are moved by obvious interests:

Then, it’s sensible to think that every film will be considered a product to exploit economically. There’s nothing wrong with it.

Simplifying a lot, let’s Read the rest of this article »

Well. I don´t know the reason, but this afternoon I feel naive. Maybe it will be the nearness of summer time, or maybe not. One thing is true, today we are going to talk about romantic moments in the movies. Why not? Don´t I have the right to be mawkish (I expect I won’t) at least once every quarter?

Love or romantic scenes in the movies seem (too often) to be written by teenagers while hugging their pillows. Ugh! Bad vibrations, if we want to make a high-quality film. Is there a hope? I think so, and that is the reason why I will Read the rest of this article »

http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/thedavincicode/

(…) a secret that threatens to overturn 2000 years of accepted dogma

I wonder if “The Da Vinci Code”, the movie, will ever have a life outside of “The Da Vinci Code”, the book, just as much as I wondered before if “The Da Vinci Code”, the book, would ever have had a life outside of its title. In my opinion, both the book´s title and its cover design were the true reasons for its success, more than the plot, which albeit interesting was nothing new sub sole (for instance, check Peter Berling´s “The Children of the Grail“). In this way I would say that I Read the rest of this article »

The first thing you should know, I’m not a Stephen King fan, but I feel interested by the fact that many of his novels have been taken to the Big screen, though not always with great success. I´ll overlook the sometimes terrible or unimportant adaptations, and the overrated ones (sorry, but I don´t enjoy “Carrie” very much).

For a great movie tour around King’s novels, Read the rest of this article »

http://cgi.linkclub.or.jp/~null/unicorn/unicorn0.html

Thanks to the instructions in this site, you can emulate Gaff and leave the same origami unicorn he left Deckard in front of your suspected replicant friends´door. This origami unicorn has an intermediate level of difficulty, but the instructions come both in origami signs and pictures for every step, which makes it a recommended model not only for the film fans but also for anyone who wants to understand origami signs better, since you can easily see how the drawings correspond to the real foldings. Good luck and happy sheepy dreams!

Hi everyone! We can consider this article as a continuation of those “Five remedies for sadness” released several weeks ago. Today we are going to concentrate on a film which, in 1988, revitalized the comedy genre: “A fish called Wanda”.

There is something that distinguishes this film from many others: surely, the charisma of the four main actors and their brilliant and hilarious performances. But, let’s start with the beginning.

Mythic John Cleese (along with Graham Chapman, the two most outstanding members from Monty Python) dumped his acid sense of humour in a story about burglars, and he decided to offer it to a filmmaker (Charles Crichton, who hadn’t shot a movie since the late 60’s). Cleese succeeded in putting pressure on the producers, and (along with Crichton) wrote the final screenplay. They opted to dispense with the dark surreal humour from Monty Python’s stage, and they also impregnated the absurd situations with more dramatic likeliness. And the bet was complete, because they Read the rest of this article »

Is there a gene for Evil? Or maybe do we turn wicked due to life´s circumstances? No; I’m not going to be serious. Not today. This was only a way to introduce today´s review on bad guys in films. Because, does anyone ever ask himself/herself why bad guys Read the rest of this article »

http://www.iceagemovie.com/

The Ice Age is coming to an end, and the animals are delighting in their new world: a melting paradise of water parks, geysers and tar pits.

I liked Ice Age, the first movie, very much. That´s why I was a bit worried when I watched Ice Age: The Meltdown´s trailer for the first time. There was Scratch, the squirrel, searching again for the unattainable seed, there were the same ol´chaps from the first movie escaping again from an inminent danger… I feared that the forecoming movie was to be a sequel made to make some cash by using and abusing all the things that made the original famous. Now I that I finally saw the movie, I´m happy to Read the rest of this article »

Who is Paul Greengrass? He is the director of two films as different as excellent: the brutally real “Bloody Sunday” and the more popular “The Bourne Supremacy”. Our target today will be the second title I’ve mentioned, perhaps the best action film (in my opinion) since “Die Hard”.

Action movies usually have a bad press, due to the dreadful quality (it´s true) of some of these products. Many of them attempt on the audience’s intelligence: We are fed up of watching bad guys killing lots of people with great precision, only to become true idiots when it´s about killing the hero. “The Bourne Supremacy” fortunately respects our capacity of thinking.

When Greengrass was hired to take up again the character of CIA agent Jason Bourne, after the great reception obtained by “The Bourne Identity”, he found himself with some questions to Read the rest of this article »

The smoke and the Truth

When the lights went on a sepulchral silence filled the room. I thought that most of the audience had found it difficult to digest this wonderful but complex film, not suitable for the general public (better for journalists and such), shot in a glorious black and white as the story it tells is one of those stories which can only be recalled in black and white. Some of the audience ran away most likely to smoke as soon they could, since in “Good night, and good luck”, people smoke lots and with such class, especially the main character, Edward R. Munrow (David Strathairn). The smoke itself is actually another character, so good that it would have Read the rest of this article »

Probably there are as many types of humour as there are people. Our sense of humour is like a fingerprint: it identifies us and represents us socially; it singles us out. We can think of it as a collage of circumstances that we try to match with our personal values. Due to this fact, we tend to remember comical situations and gags that fit us somehow. It’s almost an aesthetic matter (intangible, but aesthetic).

Today I would like to show you some pieces of my particular collage. This will be a movie scenes collage, featuring five –in my opinion- memorable moments. Read the rest of this article »

http://www.oscar.com/

“Brokeback Mountain” (8 nominations) is the hot favourite to the Oscars, which will be handed out tomorrow. There´s a high level of competition this year, with the magnificent “Crash” as the outsider and “Munich” by the always great Spielberg. George Clooney, willing to shake off cliches, has caught three nominations: best director and script for “Good night, and good luck”, and best supporting actor for “Syriana”. I would like the cowboys (Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal) to win because of their sober and felt performances, but the same may happen to them that happened to Thelma and Louise (Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis), since the competition is big. Another wish: that “The corpse bride” wins the Oscar for best animation film. To me, it is one of this year´s big movies.