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Violeta no coge el ascensor (2019)
1 hour 27 minutes I will never get back
I'm a big fan of European films, and especially Spanish ones. There are many gems, some classics, and above all, a freedom of originality that Hollywood often filters away in favour of tried and tested formulae.
This is no such gem. Production-wise it feels like a poorly executed student movie. The acting is forced, awkward and hollow. The pacing is painfully slow. The plot is so thin and vague a synopsis would read like a weekly horoscope.
I watched it on a train on the way to Madrid, so as a bored and truly captive audience, I decided I would persist. The only saving grace is Violeta's performance was reasonably apt. Or maybe she just looked better sorrounded by far worse actors.
One to avoid.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022)
Mixed feelings
I'm a lifetime LOTR fan, and had high expectations for this series. The acting and the production value cannot be faulted. Excellent work. The orcs are scary, the Harfoots are endearing and true to the nature of Hobbits, but different enough in their ways that you get a sense of them being initially quite unsophisticated and nomadic, until they finally settled in the Shire.
However I found it hard to engage with the stories. They seem more driven by modern concerns and expectations of what people should act like than interpreting the source material in an engaging way. That said, this is based on just 2 episodes, so let's see where it goes and ends up...
Spencer (2021)
Time to change your mind about Kristen Stewart
Well, that came out of nowhere! Everything I had seen of Kristen Stewart up to now was hollow and uninspiring...and then she does this. Twilight really did a lot of damage to the perception of some actors, because I have have also seen Robert Pattinson pull off some very competent performances since then too. Not to mention Lee Pace, who is masterful in Halt and Catch Fire.
This film tackles a story that I thought had already been milked for everything it had, yet it does so in a way that, to me, makes it the definitive cinematic account of Diana's story. Well done to everyone involved.
Last Night in Soho (2021)
Mesmerising
The story and some of the characters come across somewhat stereotypical at first, but the excellent cinematography and ambience kept me watching. Things get more and more interesting as the mystery develops, and the twists as events climax were quite masterful. The main cast do a wonderful job, but some of the secondary acting, especially of the other college students, is quite hollow.
La escopeta nacional (1978)
Satirical, political, surreal, funny and relevant.
Luis Garcia Berlanga provided much needed satire during the Spanish dictatorship and transition to democracy. He imbued many of his films with enough surrealism and silliness to get away with it even during the censorship happy years, and he spread his wings when democracy arrived to the country.
La Escopeta Nacional is a series of events without a clear plot, simply a businessman trying to sell his goods in a chaotic setting, among all sorts of unlikely characters, caricatures inhabiting the nest of corruption that Berlanga didn't have to think too hard to imagine in Spain.
The comedy was funny then and it is funny now. But now the satire has aged like a good wine, with undertones of still being sadly relevant.
2012 (2009)
Spare yourself the pain
Apparently, when the next end of the world comes, they will build an arc and save all the bad actors, every Hollywood action movie cliché ever, a few very stressed giraffes and elephants, and a kid called Noah, just in case you didn't know what story Hollywood is copying this time.
Almost from the start the movie has so many ridiculous 'saved by the skin of your teeth' moments that they get old very soon.
Most of the comic relief moments added to stop some of us from falling asleep were poor, with the exception of Woody Harrelson, whose more than reasonable performance lifted his scenes from the mediocrity of the rest of the film.
Apparently now that Dakota Fanning has grown up there are no decent child actors left. Either that or they were casted by lottery.
All the supposed graphic glory of the CGI is lost when buildings purposefully fall in slow motion while a plane moves between them as a normal pace, or when cracks only ever appear in convenient places, like just behind the car the protagonists are in. This happens, not in one, but several scenes, and it borders on plain stupidity.
All in all, a very poor movie.
Disneyland: Hero in the Family (1986)
Family boredom...
Hero in the Family is one of those movies that in wanting to be family entertainment ends up in a grey zone that is more likely to mean nothing to any one of any age.
Like a long list of movies, especially in the 80s, the story revolves around a mind/body exchange. This time it is an human astronaut and a chimp astronaut who suffer an accident while on a space mission.
They touch a crystal at the same time and the rest is predictable. As usual only the protagonist (the astronaut's teenage kid) and his girlfriend realize (and want to believe) what has happened and they make it their mission to revert the situation, which involves a few 'action' and 'comedy' scenes whereby they hijack the ape and the dad, steal the crystal and build a home-made machine in a kind of 'A-team' montage meets Star-Trek 'scientific' blabber.
The the outcome is the obvious happy ending.