Esse Mundo É Meu (1964)

English title according to IMDB: That World and Mine.
Correct translation of the Portuguese title: This World Is Mine.

In a shantytown live two men, one white and one black. The white guy is an ironworker and the black guy is a shoeshiner. The white guy has a fiancée who moves in with him and wants to have a baby. The black guy wants to own a bicycle so he can conquer the girl of his dreams.

Social drama. Not exactly a well-made movie, it especially lacks a decent script. The abortion angle lacks plausibility; we never get to know why the white woman changes her mind from first wanting a baby despite presumably knowing that it would be difficult to raise it to being resolutely determined not to have it. Overall, a curious movie but not much more than that.

Rating: 32

Topaz (1969)

Second viewing; previously viewed between 1983 and 1986.

Version watched: 126'.

A Soviet intelligence official defects to the West, and reveals that the Soviets are installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. A French agent working for the Americans is sent to Cuba to find out what is happening. After returning to the U.S., he goes to France to uncover a Soviet espionage ring.

Unexciting, though well-filmed, spy thriller. The plot is diffuse, traveling through various countries and situations without much of a climax or central point. The French wife's infidelity is a plot point which is only glossed over; it seems, furthermore, to be completely irrelevant and should probably not be in the movie at all.

Rating: 40 (up from 28)

Good morning Babilonia (1987)

English title: Good Morning, Babylon.

Second viewing; previously viewed on May 14, 1996.

Two Italian brothers who work in old building restoration move to Hollywood where they find work on the set of Intolerance. After being initially rejected, they become part of the team that sculpted the sets for that film. In Hollywood, they also meet love, and tragedy.

I rewatched this because I was a little disconcerted with the abysmally low rating I gave it upon my first viewing. Well, I raised it a little. Just a little. What we have here is hollow sentimentality, absurd character behavior (e.g. the production director's animosity), and a missed opportunity for dramatizing in a minimally realistic way the lives of Hollywood workers of the silent period. On the good side, I found the theme of the equality between the two brothers, and the recurring threat of its disruption, an interesting one. But there are better films on that theme, for example Dead Ringers.

Rating: 20 (up from 10)

Lolita (1962)

Second viewing; first viewing with the original audio; previously viewed on September 20, 1994.

A middle-aged professor falls in love with his landlady's teenage daughter.

I found this terrible on my first viewing, but perhaps I was too easily bored then. Character Quilty provides some funny bits, but he is obviously not a realistic character, and that seems a little at odds with the rest of the movie. The film has some brilliant sequences, but its big problem is that its plotline is not terribly interesting.

Rating: 50 (up from 30)

I pugni in tasca (1965)

English titles: Fists in the Pocket; Fist in the Pocket

It depicts an impoverished family living in a big house. The father is absent, presumably dead; the mother is blind; the three sons and a daughter are, respectively: Alessandro, who has incestuous feelings towards Giulia, who in turn has incestuous feelings towards Augusto; there is also Leone, an idiot. Augusto wants to marry Lucia, but has no money.

Drama with interesting and well acted individual sequences, but psychologically inconsistent as a whole. It reportedly caused a commotion among the filmviewing elite who saw it upon its release, but its predictability makes it ultimately ineffective as a shock piece. Also, must they really have two epileptics in the same family?

As for the title, Spiritoso78 at WordReference.com says:

"fists in your pockets it could mean that you can no longer stand the situation around you; basically you're fed up about everything surrounding your everyday life, therefore sooner or later you'll blow up.....and then you'll pull your fists out!"

Rating: 44

Roberto Carlos em Ritmo de Aventura (1968)

Roberto Carlos is a pop singer who is starring in a movie; he is chased by a gang led by a woman who has a plan to use a computer to write songs for him and other famous singers. But our hero is a composer too, and does not want to be replaced by a machine. Meanwhile, the actor who plays the villain in the film R.C. is doing is a real villain who wants to kill him. R.C. gets to drive a fast car and a helicopter, and even ride a rocket to space.

This exercise in metacinema follows the vogue of madcap films starring pop stars in the 1960s; it is possibly out of sheer frankness that at the very start, through the voice of its protagonist, it confesses: "I am terrible". So, viewers cannot claim they weren't warned. Anyway, A Hard Day's Night it ain't, though many a spectator will want to cry for Help! while watching it. Speed driving is a recurring motif in the songs' lyrics.

Rating: 12

Beto Rockefeller (1970)

Beto is a penniless guy who mingles with rich people pretending to be rich himself. He employs cunning tricks to get away with his imposture, and also to avoid paying for the basic items of survival (like his rent, or cab fare). His goal is to enjoy life and to make love to beautiful rich women. His friendship with a car mechanic is instrumental to his schemes, since he is the one who provides him with cars "borrowed" from the garage where he works. Beto is mistaken with an international jewel thief.

Spin off from a very popular daily TV serial (telenovela). Class struggle in this film (as on the serial) comes down to the poor envying the rich. Not exactly a marxist approach, of course. The film is very thin on plot, and fills its running time with lots of scenes of jet set gatherings, yachts, natural landscapes, urban architecture, and, on the opposite end of the social spectrum, street scenes. There is no sophistication whatsoever in the humor, or in the narrative, but the succession of images is not exactly unpleasant.

Note: on IMDB, as in most other places, the spelling of the title is Beto Rockfeller, which is different from the film's title credits, but matches the spelling of the TV serial's title credits.

Rating: 31