LeCronopio

I was tearing up and laughing uncontrollably in the same scene. And I think that's the perfect synthesis of a certain timeless magic that I keep finding throughout Bong Joon Ho's filmography. Tarantino said something about this very thing. There's a deeply human element--profoundly absurd and emotional--that Bong Joon Ho manages to capture in the cinematic experience: a kind of inverted triumph in the ridiculous, one that consecrates us. Something that Spielberg, for example, achieved in the '70s, and that made him timeless.

Having seen most of his films at this point I consider Bong Joon Ho a master of the craft. His cinematography never ceases to impress me--gorgeous photography that utilizes the full architectural potential of a sewer system, creating extraordinarily powerful images of the deplorable. In the sophistication of concrete and metal at the banks of the Han River.

The acting, this hybrid of subtlety and caricature often found in Korean cinema, just overflows with life. And the precision in shooting incredibly complex scenes, with people running, maneuvering through the framework of a bridge, executing physically demanding long takes that progress to different perspectives, is simply exceptional. The story strikes the perfect balance between verisimilitude and imagination in favor of the magic. Immensely entertaining.

The Host is just full of soul; to the point where it's a little sad to see how lifeless (how fake, how simply bad) films feel today, with 20x the budget.

I was kinda scared after watching Pedro Páramo, the also Netflix adaptation of the legendary Rulfo novel. The images and photography are simply beautiful there, but they fail to combine the novel's elusive narrative.

One Hundred Years of Solitude, whether you like it or not, is a story that is nourished by it, that grows and germinates on the impression that Rulfo once made on a young García Márquez. Not for nothing, when his friend lent Gabriel his copy of Pedro Páramo, he said passing it to him, "So that you learn how to write." But One Hundred Years of Solitude has managed to embody everything that the fragile adaptation of Pedro Páramo could not. From the beginning, the tone, the atmosphere, the remote and dreamlike and volatile reality is set: the images are not afraid of silence, and they are guided, in the decisive moments, by the powerful words of Gabriel.

At times it suffers a bit from being a Netflix adaptation, in the script, in certain shots, in parts of the production, but the result, the whole picture continues to prevail as a success.

That the actors with their intonation and pauses, give themselves over to subtlety instead of melodrama helps a lot. And that it is the novel's own voice that precedes the beginning and the end is probably the only way to convey the incontestable beauty of Cien años de soledad.

The premise and development of it, as basic or formulaic as it may seem, it kinda worked for me. The story evolves using the predictable artifacts of the genre and, with Mia embodying the object of the story, the images are filled with the necessary charm to win the viewer's attention.

But the last third of the film could be just defined as hilarious, and the problem is that it was not a comedy.

I don't know if Ti West considered that the previous films (which are roundly better) were worth certain licenses with the viewers; but there is a limit to the degree of naivety that I'm willing to grant to a story. With MaXXXine, it was simply too much. The entire last third was just too silly, like idiotically naive and good-willed. Even if we hypothesize a Lynchian finale where the last sequences only occur in Maxine's imagination, the events surrounding that moment are simply ridiculous.

So, yes. If you can put aside common sense and eat miraculous conveniences, you can have a good time watching the whole movie. If not, the first two-thirds make up for the bad taste of the last.