Hotel Atlântico (2009)

An actor takes some time away from work, wandering aimlessly from city to city. He encounters some people and gets into serious trouble.

A more or less inconsequential exercise in the bizarre or absurd or surreal, consisting of a series of sections each of which a transfiguration of a classical movie. Thus you have "The Morning After" in the episode with the woman on the bus, then "The Most Dangerous Game" with the psycho and his buddy, then "The Beguiled" in the small town, and then it all switches to a more lyrical tone in the last act, and you have "Midnight Cowboy". What is extraordinary is how, in a country where bad acting is the norm, this filmmaker has managed to assemble a set of absolutely correct performances.

Rating: 52

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

A journalist, aided by a hacker punkette, investigates, at the request of a millionaire, the disappearance of a girl a long time ago.

Quite silly and boring.

Rating: 15

J. Edgar (2011)

Momma's boy is spurred by her into becoming a big police chief. He modernizes libraries, then the police. Rejected by a girl at work, he turns to boys. His strange perversion is having meals with one of them. He wiretaps people in power. He becomes too powerful himself. His mother makes a speech, then dies. After his death, the girl who rejected him burns all his "private files".

A film consisting in alternating a man's old age with his own account of his youth. My opinion of it should be inferrable from the synopsis above, but, to spell it out, I frankly do not get what the precise point is, and the dialogue and dramatics follow recent standards of inverisimilitude and enigmatic patterns of behavior and emotionalism.

Rating: 28

The Descendants (2011)

A rich lawyer and landowner in Hawaii is legally pushed to selling his lands. Meanwhile, his wife is in a coma after a jet-skiing accident. He finds out she was having an affair. All that and he has two daughters to look after, whom he hasn't payed much attention to in the past.

An absurdly bad movie, almost totally devoid of storytelling interest and human understanding. The only bearable moments are when good old Beau Bridges brings his unfailing acting charisma to the screen (and, well, his part is well-written, which accounts for the "almost" above).

Rating: 25

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Our hero investigates a certain maharaja's theft of a sacred stone and some children.

Second viewing. It is a parody of ancient Hollywood trash and, to a certain extent, of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The fact that the franchise continued afterwards, and went back to a more serious tone, is interesting but not surprising.

Rating: 50 (unchanged)

Aquarela do Brasil (1942)

A short cartoon in which an American humanoid duck named Donald Duck meets a Brazilian humanoid parrot named José Carioca. The latter shows the wonders of his country to the former. The narrative is situated at one remove from the spectator, as the latter views a hand with a paintbrush draw the images on the screen. The levels of diegesis are deliberately confused, e.g., the water or a river is used as ink by the painter.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

In 1936, a U.S. archeologist looks for the Biblical covenant ark which is supposed to have extraordinary powers. The Nazis are looking for it too.

This is my second or third viewing. I am a little amazed that I used to admire this film. It is not extraordinary in any way. It is competently directed, but its screenplay leaves a lot to be desired. And what does the climactic scene (where, in order to survive, Jones and his girlfriend avoid looking at the ark's visual projections) tell us about the film's stance toward itself?

Rating: 52 (down from 75).

Tati (1973)

Based on the short story "Tati, a Garota" ("Tati, the Girl"), by Aníbal M. Machado.

Manuela and her daughter Tatiana (Tati for short) move from her humble house to an apartment. Manuela is unmarried, and Tati is an impossible kid. Manuela works as a seamstress and Tati makes friends in their neighborhood. Manuela finds it hard to make ends meet and, to complicate things further, is pregnant again. A boat captain becomes attached to the two.

Not very good. It has obvious deficiencies of mise-en-scene, and is plagued by often inadequate vocal utterances. Carvana is miscast as a boat captain. The fact that the movie is almost invariably attributed an erroneous title in Brazilian film dictionaries is a dead giveaway that practically no one in that country has watched it.

Rating: 31

The Next Three Days (2010)

Based on the French film Pour elle (2008).

A man does everything he can to clear his wife of a murder conviction, and after all devices are exhausted he decides to break her out of prison.

A well-designed thrilling machine. The psychological angle was not disregarded.

Rating: 53

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Based on the novella "Dream Story" (Traumnovelle), by Arthur Schnitzler.

A New York doctor goes through some strange nocturnal adventures after his wife tells him about a sexual fantasy of hers.

Second viewing. It is a well-made movie, and a thoroughly enjoyable one, but the simple fact that it is based on a 1920s literary work makes the situations a little anachronistic. A few of the directorial choices are odd, to say the least, like 'Marion''s eye-rolling, but mostly the director has an intelligent way of handling the story and the characters.

Rating: 64 (unchanged)

Oscar (1967)

A rich businessman is awakened one morning by the visit of an employee of his. He is there for an important communication. And a series of subsequent revelations, twists and confusions ensue.

A well-designed farce, well directed, well acted, with De Funès at his hysterical best.

Rating: 60

Goodbye, New York (1985)

A woman leaves her husband and New York for a trip to Paris, but she falls asleep and ends up in Israel instead.

I could not find any review by professional critics. Dale Thomajan, a critic who worked for Film Comment, puts it among his Top Ten of 1985. There are a few user reviews on IMDb, some of which praise it highly and the rest pan it. Most of these reviews got the film entirely wrong: it's not a journey of personal growth, it is not Israeli propaganda, it is not Arab bashing. I see it as a comedy where things keep happening unexpectedly, and comicity or amusement is extracted from it. To be honest, I found it neither exciting nor boring. But I plan on seeing more stuff from this director. And I plan on seeing Goodbye, New York again, because I am not so good at getting film dialogue in English without subtitles.

Rating: 50

Houve uma Vez Dois Verões (2002)

English title: Two Summers.

Two teenage boys vacationing on a beach town are after sexual or romantic adventures. One of them gets involved with a con woman and thief.

Interesting as a concept, it has a sense of style which at times comes out all right, and other times does not. Too much rock music in the soundtrack is a problem. Anyway, love and money are the themes, or rather, the conjunction of both is the theme.

Rating: 50

Edward Scissorhands (1990)

A man-made man-like creature is found in an abandoned castle. He has scissors for hands.

Second viewing. I took issue with it on the first one. I found it enjoyable this time, but its setup is better than its development, which in turn is better than its finale. Thematically it echoes Frankenstein (obviously) and Of Mice and Men (perhaps not so obviously).

Rating: 60 (up from 49)

Me and Orson Welles (2008)

A teenage boy gets a small part in Welles' directed play "Julius Caesar" in 1937. Welles is an arrogant dictator.

This is a very formulaic coming-of-age story, with nothing to say about artists big or small except old clichés.

Rating: 33

Militia (2000)

Government agents bomb a community which advocates free use of fire weapons. Their leader goes to jail and is later offered parole in exchange for helping a special agent to infiltrate the newly formed community which developed after the massacre and is planning a terrorist attack.

Very cheap actioner with lots of scenes from other films used as stock footage. The screenplay is implausible and the film is very poor.

Rating: 13