Reviews

Dennis Villeneuve should take a look back on his early works when he would let himself get lost on atmospheric details of his narratives. A lot of critics are commenting that this version is improved when compared to Lynch's version. Although I don't think Lynch's Dune is his best work, David Lynch's take had more atmosphere, more plastic qualities capable of provoking sensory and emotional effects. Because Lynch, as always, is focused on the richness of plastic imagery and its affections and sensations induced in the audience. What makes Villeneuve's Dune lose its way is the rush and worry to accomplish an classic dramatic structure. To push some causality. If Villeneuve allowed himself some Lynchian absence of logic that allows the movie articulation not link the dots, his Dune would had been a more interesting take.

(We must remember that Alejandro Jodorowsky almost directed the 80's Dune - the cinematic universe of Dune asks for minds that don't want to link the dots, that explodes the causality of a narrative construction in cinema)

There are works in cinema that explores the commonplace motifs in order to extract some other plastic potential of them. That's what Daniel Nolasco proposes to do in every film of his. And yet he's still failing in accomplish that.

The reason of Nolasco doesn't reach the best of his works is given to a comfort zone he puts himself during his picture. The comfort zone of commonplace imagery involving ideas of men and masculinity. Than to dissimulate that commonplace imagetic motif, Nolasco washes it with high tones of stylization and extremely explicit staged sequences. The commonplace explored by Nolasco is the easiest way to reach his audience.

Differently from films like "A Portuguese woman", "Playdurism", "Take me somewhere nice" in which we find high tones of stylization too and some tableux oriented composition. The films of Daniel Nolasco doesn't explore details in his commonplace imagery that would turn to some different perspective or would reveal other sensations or affections hidden in those already highly explored and known images. He doesn't let himself explore those details. Because those details would bring some zone of uncertainty to the construction.

Lacks Nolasco some risky decisions that Jarman's pictures applied to his too extremely controlled and composed shots. That suddenly could awakens some affection or sensation in the pictorial qualities of the shot. That would show some unique gesture, moviment, expression, ways of relation between bodies and space.

Nolasco, unfortunately, stays in the sterilized provocative aestheticization of Gaspar Noé.

Not only, we see the same muscular and athletic bodies wanderlust that already is extremely dated. What about the erotic qualities of other kinds of bodies too? They don't deserve some reverie?

If you are a scientific researcher and wanna find where all the worst of Brazilian audiovisual production and artists come from (like Rio Heroes, Dom, Marcelo Galvão), watch every Malhação season. It subsumes the trashy and kitsch tendencies of our cinema in each year from 1995 to 2020.

Utterly machist. This series is a desperate attempt to attract audience. Specially male, heterosexual audiences. When we watch martial arts action movies of the 70's or the 60's, the scenes are not only in function of the action, or the blood, or the muscular bodies like we watch in the majority of the cinema works today. Here we are looking once again to the comtemporary problem of efficiency oriented aesthetics in order to satisfy some audience.

In King Hu's films like "A Touch of Zen" and other films that further inspired the now known as Action Genre the action scenes deviates the narrativity to keep extracting some plastic qualities of the movents of the relation bodies/space inside the shot. This plasticity is also in function of embody feelings and sensations related to characters.

Not only, films like "A Touch of Zen" and the really best of martial arts genre and action genre works in a way that leads us to revision some machists and irracional behaviors and ideas of a patriarchal society. If not that leads us to revision violence and fear/hate oriented behavior.

Rio Heroes doesn't succeed in operating any of that through its aesthetic. What we see is just tuff and strong men. With muscular bodies. Beating each other. It's like a Fight Club (1999) without its deconstruction of the masculity and the explicitation of a sick capitalist society. Rio Heroes doesn't even succeed in making a critical point of view of Brazil.

This series, in its final result, just shows its intention to satisfy those male and heterosexual men who are waiting to watch the next UFC, PFL, Bellator fight night. A sport which until nowadays doesn't seem like a sport to me. But an excuse to institutionalize barbarie. What makes me more sad is that people keep relating Brazil only with mma, jiu jitsu and Gracie clan. And this series just helps spread that vision of Brazil of a culture based on this kind of violence. Brazil is way more than mma, jiu jitsu and Gracie clan. Brazil's cultural roots are way more complex than series like Rio Heroes shows. And Brazil's cinema productions are way more rich than productions like Rio Heroes, Rinha and other Marcelo Galvão's pictures, Dom, Os Ausentes, and etc. We produce series that shows our political matters and our people and popular culture in a more interesting, more rich aesthetically and through a less sensationalist way... like "Corpo Eletrico", "Boi Neon", "Pacarrete", and others.

People... if you are reading this. Try to watch works of Laís Bodanzky, Walter Salles, Marcelo Gomes, Karin Ainöuz, Luís Fernando Carvalho, João Dumans & Affonso Uchôa, Marília Nogueira, Erik Rocha, Gregorio Graziosi...

What ruins the potential of this movie is its failed maneuvers trying to push (really hard) some poetic qualities related to the order of sensations and affects. In the terms or Deleuze and Guattari concepts. There is a rush during the depiction of the sequences through shots that doesn't allow the poetic details invade the images in a natural flow. What really contradicts the film's intention in capture strange and emotional aspects rising through the register of the camera. The film stays in place in between Sean Penn's Into the Wild (2007) and works like Silent Light (2007) or Syndromes and a Century (2006). But the film don't exploit that place in between in order to extract some aesthetical potential, what would have been interesting if he had built the film in that way: exploring the zones of interference between aesthetization of the image and non interference in camera's register.

That problem is a constant in Felipe Barbosa's filmography.

What I point in Felipe Barbosa's filmography is a constant problem present in other contemporary filmographies manifested by different forms, in the works of directors like Xavier Dolan, Esmir Filho, Luca Guadagnino for example. The pressure of efficiency. This happens when the director rushes to reach a result of the aesthetical experience intended by his/her film. So he/her detours of the inicial aesthetical proposal of his/her film in order to built images that rapidly, easily and in a too given way provokes certain sensation or emotion. He/her forgets to explore and to extract in every single sequence, in every single shot of that sequence, the especifics aspects that his/her expression brings through his/her particular aesthetical proposal.

That problem keeps the Gabriel e a Montanha in a place close to travel documentary shows that we watch in television.

What let this series lose its power is a problem present in the majority of film productions made for mainstream television, cinema and streamings (mainly but sometimes, present in indie or alternative too): a film built with an efficient aesthetic and narrative material to easily satisfy what its audience wishes to see. The result is a work with a beautiful visual, easy to apprehend, free of any quality of sensations related to an aesthetic experience.

The problems of the series is similar to aspects that makes CW's Riverdale so lame.

In this case the recipe follows as: a lot of pretty characters with models or mma fighters bodies, dark stories, twists desperately inserted, uncontrolled emotions.

The series doesn't explores the artificiality or the kitsch qualities of the details commented above through an aesthetically way (like we would see in a John Waters movie or Almodóvar's) that results in reconfiguring our point of view of experiencing and seeing the world in our real life experience. Making us question conservative values and ideas.

The thing is: all this beautiful people are not utilized as meanings to design intensities or plasticities of a subjectivity distortion responsible to shape the point of view that guide us through the series universe, or make an pallet of affections and gestures. Unfortunately, they are there just for the visual. Creating an aseptic experience.

What let this series lose its power is a problem present in the majority of film productions made for mainstream television, cinema and streamings (mainly but sometimes, present in indie or alternative too): a film built with an efficient aesthetic and narrative material to easily satisfy what its audience wishes to see. The result is a work with a beautiful visual, easy to apprehend, free of any quality of sensations related to an aesthetic experience.

In this case the recipe follows as: a cross genre cinematographic work starting from a gangster film narrative structure, a cast full of pretty people with models and mma fighters bodies, desperately inserted twists and over psychologization. What is pointless since the series, from its beginning, proposes a film genre exploration and depiction.

The direction only worries in showing dramatic details. It doesn't make a minimal interesting imagetic explorarion of what is inside the shot and outside the shot. What is shown and what is not shown.

What let this series lose its power is a problem present in the majority of film productions made for mainstream television, cinema and streamings (mainly but sometimes, present in indie or alternative too): a film built with an efficient aesthetic and narrative material to easily satisfy what its audience wishes to see. The result is a work with a beautiful visual, easy to apprehend, free of any quality of sensations related to an aesthetic experience.

In this case the recipe follows as: a lot of pretty characters with models or mma fighters bodies, dark stories, twists desperately inserted, action scenes intending to show how warrior like and hero like those male or female characters are. They are all beautiful and amazing.

The series doesn't explores the artificiality or the kitsch qualities of the details commented above through an aesthetically way (like we would see in a John Waters movie or Almodóvar's) that results in reconfiguring our point of view of experiencing and seeing the world in our real life experience. Making us question conservative values and ideas.