avis de guisreis

Nice zombie dark comedy spoof by Jim Jarmusch with a great cast and a homage to Night of the Living Dead. The awesome beginning seriously reminded me the Coen brothers and was very atmospheric. After the first zombies, the movie did not keep the same excellence but was still good, although perhaps a little stretched. The dialogue of the bud cops inside the car was clever and almost surrealist, and made me laugh. Bizarre Tilda Swinton's character is possibly the one that makes clear it is a film by Jarmusch and not by Coen brothers (and I may say that, somehow, I predicted her background). In a quite satyrical way, the movie criticizes consumer society and US racist far right.

Beautiful black and white cinematography full of close-ups and the depiction of faces, details and of factory workers. Good acting depicting a sudden relationshipt that arises and develops between an unmarried woman who wants a baby (and her married boyfriend does not) and a teenager who has been abandoned by her parents and wants to marry her boyfriend. By helping and listening the latter, the former understands better her own situation and makes decisive decisions. I am not entirely convinced about the development of any of these two characters, and the so much mentioned troubled life of the girl and the labour condition of the woman seem not to seriously influence their attitude along the story. Script perhaps does not show enough coherence (the slap being the most gratuitous moment, perhaps) despite the slow time dedicated to dialogues.

This biopic is a documentary with many scenes of Zico and other people related to him played by actors. Zico's path in football is amazing, and this movie, although not a failure, is clearly very below the potential of such story. Both the documentary parts and the narrative ones have many ups and downs. The footage of matches is always amazing, but the interviews, on one hand, bring some important stories, and one the other hand include some interviewees who are very hard to understand why the hell producers have included them. The acted scenes also have nice moments, which do help spectators to become closer to the events, but also quite cheesy ones. The script is also unbalanced, taking too much time sometimes in some issues, and being shallow or in a hurry when it comes to other issues. To resume, it is not a great disappointment, as there is something to be interested in, but it is far from the biographic documentary great Zico deserves.

I loved innovative and sensitive documentary 'Nós que aqui estamos por vós esperamos'. It is easily noticeable that the present low-budget experimental surrealist movie supposedly (at least, I suppose) about consumer society was made by the very same same filmmaker, Marcelo Mazagão, with his unique edition style and fascination by old pictures. Anyway, despite some very good ideas, they are too much disconnected and even undevelopped. Outcome is mostly pretentious, shallow, and sometimes arbitrary and aleatory, besides having serious problems such as prejudices (against fat people, Asiatic...) and moralism. It is also boring and tiring, seeming a short film which was stretched into a feature one.

It is a colourful Soviet movie held in Moldova, exploring the lives of the "gypsies" (Roma) in their traveller communities and their relations with other people in Bessarabia, Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Art direction is quite beautiful, and acting is also very good, besides the lovely soundtrack full of Roma songs. More than the "love story" (not really love, much more a combination of sexual interest and pride) of Loiko Zobar and Radda, I liked a lot them separatedly. Firstly, Grigore Grigoriu's Zobar's adventures as a horse thief are engaging and amusing. Above that, I must highlight that Svetlana Toma's acting presence, full of self-confidence and debauch laugh, besides the actress's beauty, do impose a presence which convinces spectator that Radda is able to make men, such as Zobar and also nobleman Antol Siladi, become desperate, insane, impulsive, vulnerable. I did not appreciate very much the melodramatic ending, although it was actually already in the original Maxim Gorki's story Makar Chudra, which inspired the movie. The film is very nice and remarkable, anyway.

This may be seen as a post-Elite Squad movie. It is well acted, well directed and well edited. It follows a difficult strategy, which I am not fully convinced about, but that is somewhat ambitious anyway. When it comes to Brazilian (and particularly Rio de Janeiro) military police, and the "war on drugs", and the lack of human rights in slums, there is a fierce polarization between condescendent defenders of law enforcement agents who consider the death of poor people in armed operations as tolerable side effects, and those who are very critical to vicious military police and see each policeman as an racist criminal. The script tried (I am not sure it it was fully successful, but I noticed such attempt) to overcome that polarization, engaging itself in a multilayered exploration of the problem: it both presents the absurd illegal way the police deals with local denizens (perhaps not enough explicitly) and the strong pressures a well-intentioned policeman face in that dangerous situation caused by the lack of a socially fair society and the state priority of pushing lower class people to repress and kill poor people (either as lethal mistakes, or as self defence or as criminal summary execution). There is not an attempt of interpretation of policemen (or of a segment of the police, such as the BOPE as depicted in Elite Squad film) as heroes or anti-heroes, but as diverse and contradictory human beings who try to survive, who take good or bad decisions under pressure and psychological stress, who both help the others or de-humanize them. Off course there are problems, such as a certain support of a view that Justice is too loose on criminals and that the press does not behave well when denounces police crimes, but I believe that the movie counterbalanced these drawbacks with scenes where social political critic qas present.

Once again, animation is awesome, combining different styles in fast-paced action and beautiful innovative visual compositions with a very complex and sophisticated outcome. The script is also very good, once more among the best when it comes to multiverses. The number of alternative spider-individuals exploded, with several nice varieties of spider supers. Among the new characters, I enjoyed Spot and Hobie the most, but the new Vulture, Pavitr Prabhakar, Mayday and Jess Drew are also very nice. Beyond the good action and drama and easter egg gags, there are several philosofical issues that are well worked in the script: Is there a teleology, a determined coherence in history towards a definite end? Does the individual have power to change fate? Which criteria is appropriate to define good and evil? Is utilitarianism a good principle to chose what to do? How much individuals are composed by experience, by what they lived? To resume, many questions are explored, and the movie advances well, with the personal and family dramas. However, differently from masterpiece Into the Spider-Verse, Across the Spider-Verse is not a full film by its own, but a first part of a two-movie story, which is still unended, waiting for Beyond the Spider-Verse. Well, so am I: waiting for the next chapter of this great achievement in animation and in superhero genre.

It is a fantasy spoof, camp as hell, with a lot of dark humor, which not always is of good taste (some gags on sex and even on pedophillia are dire!). There is also a great number of silly gags which seem to have been written by 14 years old boys. However, overall, despite its drawbacks, it is mostly amusing (and mostly funny), given it is a parody. Special effects for he magic spells are intentionally similar to B-movies from 15 years before. There are some nice costumes, action scenes and mockery on the clichés. I had watched it on October 25, 2014, and gave it only 2.5 stars. Now, almost ten years afterwards (June 9-10, 2025) I increased its rating (I considered either 3 or 3.5 stars, and decided for the latter). In the end, I did also like the characters. It is like a story built by teenagers roleplaying in an idleness dawn, eating crap snacks and burping oversugary soda. Not properly good, but amusing.

Not a bad Batman animated film, but a slight disappointment cannot be ignored. There are good moments, and the characters are well depicted. Well.. there are too many characters... Too many things happen one after the other, seeming that various movies were squeezed into a single feature film. The plot could be perceived as ambitious and huge, but actually it never seems very impressive. Spectator does not feel any of the numerous surprises, events, twists, character arcs. Batman faces extremely tough challenges, has fundamental occurrences in his private life, and a batvillain reaches his deadliest danger level... but none of that is felt as significant. Outcome is just ok, but certainly not one to be highlighted among the best animated films to explore the world of the dark knight.

I do disagree with the very poor ratings this film Morbius has been receiving since its release. I liked the cientific origin of vampirism as has been told here. Jared Leto and Matt Smith fit very well their characters. I also liked supporting character Martine Bancroft (Puerto Rican actress Adria Arjona makes it worth) and her fate. This flick has elements of different cinema genres, such as sci-fi, drama, horror, action, besides belonging to a superhero brand. However, at least two things annoyed me: I felt some edition problems and I hated those chesse trace special effects and slow motions.

By the infamously awful rating, I could never expect to watch a so amusing (and sometimes either funny or cute) superhero action movie. The origin story (and the mystic jungle stuff) works well, the five major characters are well developped given the fast pace, and the divination power is very well portrayed. I guess terrible rating has three different (and not necessarily shared together by all the film's haters) reasons: 1) firstly (and the only reason I do respect), the characters, particularly Madame Web, deviate a lot from the way they are represented in the comics (although it does not bother me as I never read the comics, besides the explanation in the end of this review); 2) secondly, most superhero-movie fans are addicted to a too narrow range of possible scripts and react badly to any movie which innovate and do not copy that particular formula (and therefore there are both numerous examples of mediocre flicks which have high ratings and interesting refreshing movies which are widely rejected); and 3) last but definitely not least, there is a wave of misogynous spectators who hate any film with female leading roles and blame them as "woke". Anyway, despite disagreeing seriously about the bad rating, I must say that I did not like the visual of the spider-teenagers, who, fortunately, and I must say also weirdly, appear very little in the whole film, just as visions of the future. However, all the three girls are nice characters as nearly adopted daughters of quite likeable Cassie Webb. To resume, the very fact of the young age of Madame Webb, quite different from her portrayall in comics, is not really a problem if one takes into account that the film story happens in the past of Spider-Man storyline. Actually, there is an Easter egg which makes it doubtless.

Animated movie with origin story of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Animation work is frentic and innovative character design must be praised. The first half hour is very promising, with both cute and dark humour moments. Unfortunately, from the establishsment of the partnership of the foursome with April O'Neil on, the movie worsens a lot. Until the end there is a lot of silliness, terrible dialogues, and some pretty stupid ideas such as the way they adopted their names (with no relation to the Renaissance artists!). I began with good expectations but it turned out to be a serious disappointment.

Norwegian (co-produced with Denmark, Romania, Poland and Sweden) unique faiytale movie. Unlike most adaptations of Cinderella fairytale, Emilie Blichfeldt's is mostly based in the brothers Grimm' version and not in Perrault's. While it is a dark humoured drama, it brings many elements of body horror and scatology, besides fantastic realism (not pure fantasy as recurrently in Cinderella tales). It deviates from Manichaeism, portraying Cinderella far from being a pure angel (despite being abused indeed, she does not have many moments of empathy), her father is ambitious, the prince is disgusting, and, well, the stepmother is as mean as always, but her daughters are much more nuanced than usual. Beneath all the dirtiness in the film, there is also an implicit critique towards patriarchy, with (besides many other scenes of misogyny) that ridiculous ball where girls offer themselves as if they were goods and aiming to marry a rich man as the goal of their lives. The arc of the leading character (who is not Cinderella, as you certainly noticed by the title) is a harsh and depressing drama, perfectly portrayed. Indeed, direction, cinematography, edition, makeup, acting, everything works well.

This is a German anthology movie which as screened in Berlinale festival. It is composed by eleven short films, or segments, from different filmmakers and about varied sides of football. While neither of those short films is extraordinary, they are all well produced and share the interesting approach of exploring each issue from inside. Among the variousnissues there are blind football, players with Dawn syndrome, female teams with foreign players (two segments addressed that issue), a left-wing team in a town full of fascists, and so forth. It was a nce experience, and I felt interested in following some of those teams.

The documentary is about the director's grandfather who has been football player in Atlético Mineiro and "champion of ice" in an European tournée. Well, the first part of the title is well explored, and spectator does know about who was that man, and there are some funny moments (the former player's sister must be highlighted). However, there is almost nothing about the pioneer campaign of Atlético Mineiro in Germany. Testimonies are more worried about crying for past defeats than about giving more information about the tournament that is mentioned in the club's anthem. Therefore, the title is misleading.

Vivwntes is a Brazilian short film shot in Niterói, neighbour town of Rio de Janeiro. The film is hard to define, vut perhaps the definition as a social political surrealism with elements of fantastic comedy horror fits it well. There are three connected stories of people in vulnerable social and labour situations. There are funny moments, great surprises, innovative elements, and an important social critique. The fact that sometimes it is supernatural, and other times it is oneiric, did not work so well in my opinion, despite all three being good segments. I also missed a stronger link than the presence of the unemployed boy. The movie is nice, anyway.

This is an excellent feature-length documentary about the rise and fall of a small team from Itaperuna, a small tall in the North of Rio de Janeiro state. The edition is nice, there is great game footage, and the interviews are no less than fantastic, with hilarious testimonies. The documentary is very informative, with a very good research, and is extremely amusing too, not only for the nostalgy of Rio football in the 1980s and 1990s, but also because there are numerous remarkable anecdotes. I never noticed that there could have been an unimaginable rivalry between Itaperuna and Remo! By he way, I loved Porto Alegre's kit!

The film is a priceless audiovisual relic, which made me feel deeply moved. Off course it is far from a great narrative flick, but its footage and documentary elements not only have good quality (congrats for cinematographers Afrodisio Pereira de Castro and José Stamato, and camaraman Ruy Santos) but also have an outstanding importance for the history of Brazilian sport and for recording life in Rio de Janeiro in the 1930s. The plot is a romantic comedy with a love triangle story which is merged with the transition from amateur to professional football. There was also the transition from silent to sound cinema, and one of the drawbacks is precisely terrible acting (which turned to produce unintentional gags, besides the sometimes funny intended ones). The fact that a great part of the movie was shot outdoor, and not only inside the studio as was so common in the first half of XXth century, is one of the reasons the film is so precious despite its problems. Spectator sees Rio de Janeiro streets with few cars and crossed by tram rails. Besides that, there are several scenes of sports, mainly football but not only, and of players and athletes, mostly from Flamengo but also from Fluminense, including extremely famous and important ones. They do not appear in static photographs, but actually training, playing, talking in the changing room, and even singing and playing instruments (unfortunately, the sound of the latter scene is currently lost). Stars like "black diamond" Leônidas da Silva, "divine master" Domingos da Guia, and "black arrow" Jarbas appear in detail, among others who I could not identify. There is a match in Gávea Stadium when its structure was still being built (indeed, the movie was partially produced by Flamengo and its grossing was used to finance the building of the very stadium!). In that match scene it was possible to see Lagoon Rodrigo de Freitas very near the field, and it is very special because of a particular event which was remarkable: the lagoon used to be larger, before an artificial increase of the land area around it, and it was closer to the Stadium; in a derby that Fluminense was winning, the thre-coloured players shoot the ball intentionally several times into the water in order to have the time advancing and then avoiding a reaction of Flamengo. Although it was a different match, the scene made it easy to understand how the famous Lagoon Fla-Flu happened! There is also in the movie a long and detailed scene of a match of the Fla-Flu derby, held in Laranjeiras Stadium (Fluminense's), and it is possible to see it in various angles, including the box office. The movie also shows Flamengo's old headquarters, a building that does not exist anymore, in Flamengo neighborhood (now Flamengo's headquarters are placed in Gávea, where the aforementioned stadium is located). The historical movie also shows athletes of Flamengo from other sports, such as rowing, athletics (racing, jumping and throwing), swimming, and even wrestling! I am very grateful for Cinédia and Cinemateca Brasileira for restoring the movie, and for CineFOOT festival for screening it. I hope I will be able to watch it many times, and notice more details and identify more past idols of Flamengo. By the way, it was originally released on Flamengo and Proclamation of the Republic anniversary, and had a special screening for president Getúlio Vargas and other authorities.

What a great film! It is simple, but deep, strong, and carefully developed throughout its length. The characters's arc is built coherently as they are forced to cohabitate the same space instead of isolating themselves from each other. Acting is very good for the entire casting, but the leading roles must be highlighted: Sam Rockwell has an amazing performance, so complex and convincing, and Taraji P. Henson also goes very well, with a strong presence. Script and direction (Robin Bissell's directorial debut!) are very effective in bringing to the big screen a very beautiful and remarkable story which actually happened in real life. The two last scenes are very moving and make sure that this is a very special movie.

US-Japanese-Korean animated anthology movie about Batman. The segments have very different tiles and are independent of each other (or loosely connected), but together they explore the iconic traits of the dark knight.

While the first episode, Have I Got a Story for You, has a very nice plot, playing on the Gotham knight's mystique, I seriously desliked its bizarre drawing style. (3 stars) The second episode, Crossfire, has a much nicer animation, and there the debate about Batman is also in the core (not among skateboarders, as in previous segment, but between cop parterns), until the dark knight's action answers the question. (4 stars) The third, Field Test, has a good animation in a very Japanese style, and some excellent dialogues (one by Bruce Wayne about the murder of an activist and another about a date, and other dialogue by Batman about mobsters' territories), but it is mostly sluggish and confusing. (3 stars ) The fourth, In Darnkess Dwells, has a very innovative animation, an expressionist one. Batman investigator and bat-gadgets are both explored in a neo-noir atmosphere, where the dark night fights two classic bat-villains. (4 stars) The fifth, Working Through Pain, has a very nice concept, showing Batman in serious trouble interwined with past moments in Bruce Wayne's life in which he learned useful lessons about how to deal with such painful situations. (4 stars) The last, Deadshot, consistent animation (which mixes styles but partially reminds painture) follows Batman facing the nicest batvillain in this movie, a quite charismatic one. (4 stars)

Certainly one of the best movies with Jean-Claude Van Damme (I know it is not that much, but this is a compliment!). There are some plot holes in the middle, and clichés seem to multiply in the last moments of the film. However, it is still a very entertaining action sci-fi (and superhero, although never mentioned as that; and road movie, and horror sometimes) flick. There are both nice action and funny gags, and Ally Walker makes a good partner for the good-hearted universal soldier GR44. There is also a great rivalry and mouse-cat duel with vicious GR-13 (Lundgren's top character after Ivan Drago and - perhaps - He-Man?). I did enjoy this.

This antology movie is certainly the best made by Pedro Carlos Rovai. The first segment, The roof, is is a drama of a working class man who is cheated by his wife when he is in the factory. The story is very simples, but cinematography, art direction and acting (particularly Sérgio Hingst in the leading role) are really well done. Poor Zé... The second segment, The signature, has an interesting contrast with the former. While the first portrayed the working class, this one portrays very rich people, but the issue of unfaithfulness is, offcourse, cross-class (and obviously not only amatter of cheating wives). The way the film explored more thoughts than dialogues was funny (and so was the yoga teacher, although he was completely unnecessary to the story. In the end, unfaithfulness was not the core of the segment, differently from the previous one.

The third and last segment, The recipe, portrays middle class. Interestingly, in all segments, although it is mentioned only in this one, the patriarchy is the norm, and only the husband has a job, and the woman stays at home (and is responsible for housework in the first and third segments; in the second there are obviously many employees to do it). The husband (Mário Benvenutti) wants his beautiful wife (played by Romenian actress Jacqueline Myrna) to say at home, and is a womanizer outside (all his colleagues in office have the same mood, but he is the worst). The scenes portraying his imagination are funny Well, perhaps his absence will not be felt as a problem by another man...

While I watched Joker: Folie à Deux, I thought that bad ratings were very unfair and were due people usually react badly to unusual narrative in cinema, and I was enjoying it. In the end, I still thought it is very underrated, but I also considered that many bad ratings could have been motivated by anger. Why? Because, although not a masterpiece as the first film, this movie was going pretty well, until it had one of the worst and most frustrating endings I have ever seen. If we could consider the movie only until a little before the last moments of the trial, it would deserve easily a four-star rating. The musical genre is a strange choice, for sure, but it did work, as both main characters are crazy and performatic. The dark visual of the film is beautiful and fits very well the dramatic plot. The scenes of situations imagined by Arthur are perhaps the best representation of the Joker ever. Charming letterings were nice and represented well the showbiz environment the Joker intended to enter. The animated opening scene was a great surprise and worked well as an abstract of the core issue of the movie. Lady Gaga worked well, as always, but it was Joaquin Phoenix who once more had a brilliant performance. His facial expressions, his baffling thinness, his body work... everything is striking. Harley Quinn was a well built character, and the initial apparent plot holes eventually proved not to exist. Dialogues are well written, in the ambiguous path crossing humor and drama. The trial was also very nice, with great moments, until everything went badly in its terrible completion and the incoherent sequence of events that followed it, leading to my serious disappointment. That was really a shame, and a pity. An awful joke.

"Starboy", or "O menino das estrelas", has an interesting plot. It is a kind of Southern Brazilian "Carrie", but with mentions to the X-Men and to professor Charles Xavier (both in the name of the school and in the toy), but unfortunately it seem unfinished. There is a clear and serious situation of bullying, the mother is not attentive, the teacher starts to notice that the problem exists, the boy acquire energy powers caused by a comet but does not know how to control it, and... well, then the movie ends! Deffinitelly a further development would have been desirable, 23 minutes was not enough.

A fine sci-fi movie which is very representative to the 1990s, in both its aesthetics and plot. The first half is very amusing. I liked it much more than its further develpment in the second part,when there is less mystery and the plot solution is not the best according to my taste. Anyway, it is still a nice film. Curiously, Kurt Russel's character, who looks like a live action Guile from Street Fighter, becomes more interesting precisely when the movie advances. On the other hand, the best throughout the film is James Spader as the clumsy cientist, who looks like John Lennon! Viveca Lindfors, cute Mili Avital and Alexis Cruz have nice minor characters. The teleportings in the end are terribly confusing, but in general ending is the predictable one you wish to be confirmed and likes.