Reviews

I've come to notice that Iñarritu likes to show perspective in characters. It's almost as if he feels guilty for not showing all the people involved in the story. But that's not to say he has no focus. This movie definitely made me feel depressed and every movement felt painful. I liked the subtle hints of the paranormal, they're shown as something natural for the characters, a twist of magical realism for such a melancholic movie. There's this moment where the protagonist tells his ex-wife to drop down the cigarette, however, when she's smoking in the dinner table again, he says nothing. Those seconds lingering on the shot give an entirely different meaning to the scene. Perhaps he's tired, perhaps he's said enough. Biutiful manages to make one feel awful as they watch the character's life, guilty as they see him in agony and, for the very first time in my case, the film makes death seem peaceful. Because maybe it really is.

I felt the tone with political Mexican movies has been a bit overdone, but perhaps this is just the voice of our good cinema. Out of the three, my favorite was the last story, Maru and Martin. For love is not always romantic, and thus, even more raw. I could definitely say this seems to be the quintessential Mexican film.

I found that the story wasn't very important, and that the ending was more of a cop-out, but never, not once, did I feel uninterested. My attention was solely on the psycho, and what I loved most was every part of his ongoing ridiculousness. However, I liked the sudden change of pace, that perspective that tells us that the story takes this man seriously: when the hooker starts to see him as we would a horror movie villain. We're not entertained now, we realize what he's actually doing. And the moment he breaks down, I can't decipher if he cries because he laments the lives he's taken or because he knows the society he desperately wishes to fit into doesn't accept killers.

I enjoyed the story, through which only females seem to appear. Through different phases, with different minds and different fates, it seems the once innocent are all that seem to die. And only the main character and the audience, are left to live on to witness the tragedies. I liked it.

Liked the sounds of the water, backgrounds and animation are both beautiful as always for Studio Ghibli. Not one of their best, but the mystery was enough to keep me engaged with the characters and watch it until the end. I'll even go so much as to say that it's one of their most underrated films.

Stylized, detailed animation used by silhouettes. Story and ending are predictable, even the needed twist in a short can be seen a minute away. Not a great story, but creative imagery nonetheless.

Short, yet great animation. A message about what violence we teach our children, how only humans have war on their own species since the beginning of time.

A girl, naïve and innocent, blinds herself to care for only the spiritual, a midst a crowd of statues that only hunt for fish, the physical. After finding a human, she feels joy. However, he cracks the egg she cares for, and finds it was an empty shell all along. Her faith, her hope, was for nothing. She dies and becomes part of the statues, she's the dove, the angel they have all waited for. However, it's much too late for any of them. The young man stands in awe, but he's all alone. A truly beautiful film. A masterpiece, dare I say. You get sucked into this world, where the end has come, but it also never feels like it was anything before this apocalypse. There's so much more to analyze, but that won't be a problem for me if it means re-watching it. The movie is made to make you forget where you were some minutes ago, you feel like the same wandering statue, waiting for a sign of hope.

Beautifully detailed animation, vivid palette of colors. Perfectly intertwined storylines, all about the fascinating concept of Akira, pure energy. Something so perfect in metaphor and in the literal sense of this storyline, a concept that everyone has but not all are meant to. Worth to watch many times, just for the character arc of Tetsuo alone. I really liked it.