Cinema, Aspirinas e Urubus (2005)

English titles: Movies, Aspirin and Vultures; Movies, Aspirins and Vultures.

Synopsis: In 1942, a German man roams the poverty-stricken Northeast of Brazil selling acetylsalicylic acid pills. He befriends a local.

Appraisal: This is a real drag of a movie, never getting anywhere, and doing so in a rather unappealing fashion. The characters' actions and dialog are right out of the Cliché Factory, with lots of room for civility lessons from the benign foreigner to the uneducated (yet with a good heart down deep) Brazilian. Brazil's middle class and its artistic exponents must be the people who care most about what foreign people think about them, even if these foreigners view Brazil simply in terms of their own personal interests. For the sake of fairness, let me point out that a few sequences show a glimpse of directorial talent, e.g. when the two guys are in the truck with a pretty young hitch-hiker, and there is a well orchestrated succession of glances amongst the three of them. But these are rare occasions and even then they could only interest mise-en-scene freaks. The sour cherry on top of this stale cinematic cake is the mandatory bleached cinematography - nowadays, it's either that or saturated, you take your pick.

Rating: 20