jhmb2003

"Red Rocket" (Dir: Sean Baker) is a good metaphor of Mickey, an off-market porn star, whose main feature is his egotism and lack of any kind of loyalty or empathy. This naturalistic comedy starts out well and fades a bit in its eagerness to parade around minor characters, most of them caricatures of characters with real flesh and blood. If the director's previous film, The Florida Project, had anything, it was the real flesh of its characters, its somewhat compassionate and sympathetic look with the misfortunes of the protagonists. In this film he takes a certain distance and works on characters that attract more for their eccentricities and moral emptiness than for their true human condition.

Nevertheless, the story is lively and maintains interest throughout the more than two hours of running time. The central character, Mikey, is undoubtedly the driving force of the action and the axis around which the rest of the characters orbit. However, the film could have been half an hour shorter and the final effect would have been no less satisfying. If the intention of Sean Baker was to make a grotesque parody in the style of the unforgettable Italian film "Brutti, sporchi e cattivi" he barely succeeded. Althoug being a good film, it is 2 or 3 points behind his previous effort. If The Florida Project is a rocket, Red Rocket is more like a firecracker.

Fever Dream seems to be pieced together from fragments of other films, without it being possible to identify where and when things happen and to whom they happen. The movies seems more like a cold calculation to include all Spanish American nationalities so that no one feels excluded, and in the end they all are. It is a tedious but superficial film, with no merit beyond the occasional beauty of the odd isolated scene. A flawed, tenuous and irrelevant product.

Astonishing documentary about this rather unknown settlement in the Chilean Andes, populated by a weird, almost unbelievable flock of young Germans led by a crazy Führer, which endures for over 3 decades. The story is so engaging, twisted, mysterious and implausible that it is almost impossible to stop watching. Eerie and incredible testimonies and footage, as well as witnesses and victims of this cult sometimes seems to be the produce of a unleashed imagination. The only documentary of this sort that I´ve ever seen is "Wild, Wild Country", which sometimes looks weak and naïve in comparison with this true nightmare. Highly recommended.