O Rei do Baralho (1973)

Nearly plotless. The titular "king of the card pack" is a gambler who has a stunningly sexy girlfriend.

Bressane's films (with very few exceptions) follow a certain pattern which has become a veritable formula. His doctrinary master is Brecht, and his fellow cinematic disciples are Bresson, Straub, and Godard. He seems to be very fond of film theory, and also of classical culture. In his early career, he displayed a certain attraction to the lower classes of society. Later on his career his films would abandon this fictive milieu in favor of a decidedly bourgeois one. I find most of his films awful, with few exceptions and only one which I can say I really like (Killed the Family and Went to the Movies). O Rei do Baralho is not one of his worse ones, probably because the director managed to assemble an interesting cast.

Rating: 31

Araya (1959)

Documentary about a semi-desertic region in the Venezuelan coast and the community of its inhabitants. The local economy is based on salt mining and fishing.

This is a splendid documentary, aesthetically pleasing in a visual sense, informative about its subject, and with a poetic voice narration.

Postcards from the Edge (1990)

Second viewing; first viewing with original audio; previously viewed dubbed on September 4, 2000.

After having a drug overdose, actress goes into rehab. She lands a part on a cheap action movie, but the insurance company requires that she lives with someone "responsible", which, in her case, means her mother, with whom she has a conflictuous relationship.

This is a very good movie, which I apparently didn't give its fair due when I first watched it. It's mostly brilliant sequence after brilliant sequence, even though the storyline and situations per se are not strictly original. The acting is good, especially MacLaine, which does a terrific job as the slightly self-centered mother. The film conveys well a relationship which, although far from healthy, has genuine love in it. The MacLaine character suffers from the same psychological illness which was the theme of the novel Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov.

Rating: 71 (up from 67)

In the Army Now (1994)

Two losers join the army as water purification agents, expecting an easy time and a generous monetary compensation. They are sent to Chad in the campaign against the Libyan invaders.

Poor comedy which offers little or no humorous rewards, but has reasonable production values and an overall not too unpleasant story flow. Christopher Mulrooney called it a "splendid satire of the New Army", and he possibly knew better than me.

Rating: 31

Sleeping Beauty (1959)

It is impossible to ascertain whether I have viewed this film on an earlier date. If I have, it was very long ago, in the seventies, or maybe even in the sixties.

Based on a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, published in 1812, and on its earlier version by Charles Perrault, published in 1697. According to Wikipedia, "This in turn was based on "Sun, Moon, and Talia" by Italian poet Giambattista Basile (published posthumously in 1634), which was in turn based on one or more folk tales. The earliest known version of the story is Perceforest, composed between 1330 and 1344 and first printed in 1528."

A resentful woman endowed with magical powers casts a deadly spell on a beautiful princess, which, after the intervention of a good fairy, will entail that the princess enters a dormant state on her sixteenth birthday, which can only be interrupted by an adequate kiss.

Graphically, this is an impressive accomplishment, superbly merging modern concepts with traditional ones. The weaker part is the script, which shows little flair for invention and has magic as an ubiquitous resource to solve all dramatic problems.

Rating: 64