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Reviews
Salve Geral (2009)
Prisional binarism
Brazilian cinema has some history of attempts to deconstruct traditional canons of cinema as a school of consumption, alongside with big problems to finance anything that is not imitative of blockbusting soothing products for mass consumption. In the meanwhile, globo filmes pray in the lines of the orthodox confession of faith, and finance things like ... salve geral. What is seen is a bad plot composition spoken in Portuguese. Bad guys vs good guys. I imagine that things such as this are happening in other cinema schools, what doesn't add to the understanding of how Brazil - or Brazilian prisional system really works. If you put a Bruce willis here and some denzel washington there, you may even generate an Oscar-winning piece of ...work. Facts are correct, but badly narrated, this is it.
Lo imposible (2012)
tourists, stay home?
A good catastrophe story, not a lot more. A happy family with a typical irritating adolescent vs. good compassive mother conflict structure goes to retrieve the exotic and is almost destroyed by the real exotic. And that means a big adventure centered around a white family in a foreign country that simply doesn't appears to exist in the drama construction. Okay, it's an adventure that drags everyone in a breathless adrenaline exercise until when the title of the movie becomes justified. It seems that the not-so-hidden message is something like "Beware tourists. Stay close to your homelands". The film is well done narratively, attractive on the whole technological project - what means trivia and a lot of blingblings for cinephiles to quarrel about. With some good camera work, etc., etc., but all that just to tell Hollywood that other cinema schools can tell a good story with competence. What strikes me the most in the whole work is that it must have the (good) intention to preserve tourism but openly spouses manicheism to the point of preserving Nokia in such a catastrophe - and in that sense, it falls into old good Hollywood clichés. A must see, anyway. The watcher gets entertained all the time - but that's it. Watching tourist's disgraces is always good, even if spurious, entertainment. Just another question: local people didn't die, right? (THAT impression that the film conveys is the real catastrophe. Eurocentrism. Not the tsunami. At all).
The Rite (2011)
catholic faith - good shape in bad times
Like the former "The exorcist", this is a film about faith. A crisis of faith in the main character renders the plot very acceptable and catches very well the feelings of the audience. In this case, the crisis is mingled with a series of conflicts on science and on the vocation as a human being and as a family member. The moment in which a turning point raises the volume of music in the narrative is also the moment in which the young priest takes upon himself the burden of aiding his (new) friend. But it is also the moment in which his life finally receives meaning. OMG. As a catholic, I long for such works that treat my faith with respect. Really interesting.