int32

Excellent costumes, three times over. The story may be weak, but frankly, I didn't care, lush colors and beautiful women in beautiful apparels, - that was more than sufficient for me. Those who enjoyed Greenaway's experiments such as "The Baby of Mâcon" and "Prospero's Books", should enjoy "Tirante El Blanco" as well. 8 out of 10.

I'm not sure why other reviewers give so many low marks for the film, but I guess that's typical for productions of one's own country. Like the famous "Goodbye Lenin", where literally everyone but East Germans praised the film, Spanish reviewers here create a picture as if the film doesn't worth a look. I think this is completely unfair, and the film deserves to be known better.

"Drawing Restraint 9" is a kind of movie one either loves or hates; fortunately or not, I left it with a strong feeling of wasted time and of being thoroughly stuffed with "killing whales is bad" propaganda. Aesthetically, the movie could have been pleasing, especially its first half, until it is not clear that every action portrayed serves as an allegory of various aspects of whale hunting. Until then, it might be slightly amusing to look at daily chores of japan workers, but later it becomes obvious that anything that appears on the screen is a propaganda, and no single frame is an exception. I use the word "propaganda" because the movie uses basically the old morality play device, where "good" and "bad" are not deduced in the course of action but are set in stone. Probably it's just me, but I find such type of art shallow and preconceived, even when it's all about the noble (no sarcasm here) quest of protecting the environment.

In my opinion it is a cardinal sin when a movie material is stretched out without any justification, for the sake of stretching only. In my opinion, "Drawing Restraint 9" could've been easily fit into 75 minutes, but has a torturous length of 2 and 1/4 hours. Yes, there were interesting shots, but there were not enough of these to leave 15-minute gaps of nothingness without notice. The movie has no standard scenario, and there's no evolution of characters, but neither it is a documentary, it's rather a kind of conceptual installation. That's an unusual form for a movie, but it still can be viewed as art even when the concept is as simple and naive as here. OTOH I also believe that the director should've had some honesty and did not pretend that it could be only delivered in no less than 135 minutes.

And yes, the music score mostly resembled whale sounds. How surprising.

2/10.

I was searching through IMDb for comparisons between original Norwegian Insomnia from 1997 and Hollywood's Insomnia 2002, to find out whether it is worth to see the latter, and not to repeat the experience I've had with Vanilla Sky and Abre Los Ojos. It is not that I dislike the VS, but ALO obliterates the impression from VS completely, so I wondered if I should bother renting I02 (Insomnia 2002) at all. Well, I was surprised that I02 is worth viewing _even_ after I97. So, here I'll try to write for those who also wonder which one's better.

First, both are very good films, with excellent actors' work, graphics, and music, and I won't compare these. But I believe that I02 scenario is a bit flawed, because where I97 gives less or no reason at all for a particular response or action of a character, I02 invariably puts things so that the same response or action is the only choice for the character. To put it bluntly, psychologically I97 is more like a David Lynch's movie, whereas I02 resembles more a thriller with Michael Douglas, where all pieces are meant to move by a strictly defined orbit, a brilliant but still somewhat dumbed down version. I personally value the former kind of movies more, so naturally I97 gets more of my credit.

So, if you can, see both, I97 and then I02 ( at least I've seen them in that order ), but if you only want to choose just one, I97 would be, in my opinion, better.