Chère inconnue (1980)

 U.S. title: I Sent a Letter to My Love

A woman and her cripple brother live together. She places a personal ad under a pseudonym in the newspaper looking for a companion, and receives a reply... from her own brother!

This is one of those premises which look promising but seem to be difficult to develop into a complete story. Perhaps in the source novel it delves into some interesting points which in the movie got lost or were just implied. Anyway, it is all very frustrating.

Rating: 30

A ilha dos paqueras (1970)

A cruise ship is transporting some beautiful models to a fashion show. Two stewards on the ship keep flirting with them. On the trip back, they meet again and the two men devise a plan to be with them on a supposedly deserted island which they happen to pass by on their route.

Terrible comedy which starts with a certain level of technical professionalism and falls into sheer amateurism after a while. Some really pretty girls and a mildly agreeable soundtrack are the only things that keep the movie from being totally unwatchable.

Rating: 11

Rocky II (1979)

 Rocky is a previously unknown boxer who became somewhat of a celebrity after a fight with a world champion which Rocky lost by points. Being in dire need of money, what with his wife having their first child, Rocky accepts a rematch with the same guy.

The Rocky movies are noteworthy for two things: they have working-class characters, and they have an individualistic worldview. In a way, they do a reductio ad absurdum of individualism by implying that a guy must be punched to a pulp to escape his miserable condition. The big problem is that this irony is lost on most viewers, who get stuck in the enjoyment of very elementary emotions and come out of the movie with a sense of vindication for the poor hero. As a user review by one darin-wissbaum in IMDB very appropriately points out, around the sixth or so sequel "if you count how many times Rocky has been hit in the head and face he should either be dead or a vegetable". Anyway, this was 1979, and the next year Reagan was elected, marking a conservative turn in the U.S., so there you have it. The film is technically well made, and, though decidedly on the dull side, it is watchable, barely.

Rating: 32

Unfaithfully Yours (1984)

 Based on the homonymous 1948 film.

An orchestra conductor is married to a younger wife. Some apparently incriminating evidence is brought to him concerning his wife's activities while he had been on a trip. Further inquiries by him seem to point to a violinist who plays with his orchestra as her lover. He devises a retribution.

This begins as an examination of communication and the sources of its failure; in its final section, it is a contrasting of plans with their realization. So, the general theme seems to be Ideal vs. Real. I don't remember the source movie too well, but, from what I have read, the two do not differ a great deal in plot. That movie ascribed the misunderstanding to an artist's "creative temperament" (I take the words from Wikipedia). Well, explaining creativity through garbled communication is certainly intriguing. Anyway, this film is not an examination of paranoia: the husband was provoked by fortuitous misinformation; besides, the film implies that women do cheat, and so mistrust is not in itself unreasonable. Overall, it is a nice pastime, and the acting is very good.

Rating: 52

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010)

 Alfie and Helena, an elderly couple, get divorced because Alfie wants to live as a young man. Helena starts consulting a fortune teller. Their daughter Sally is married to Roy, a writer. Due to financial pressures, Sally gets a job in an art gallery. Roy starts flirting with a woman he spots through his window. Sally becomes attracted towards her boss. Alfie marries a call girl.

Agreeable dramatic comedy which relies on somewhat overused themes and concepts, but still manages to entertain due to its polished text and its very competent cast. One of the central themes in the movie is the need for faith, and an amusing insight it displays is how peculiarly cruel the people under the spell of a particular creed can be.

Rating: 51

Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)

A drug dealer has a dent in his reputation and decides to assassinate a famous police chief as a means to restore it and thus secure an upcoming drug deal. It turns out that at the moment of the attempt someone else is in the police chief's car instead of him. The police chief takes advantage of being presumed dead to conduct a secret investigation on the criminals who attempted against his life.

Much of the humor here is a rehashing of jokes which are recurrent on the series. It manages to be funny at times; at other times it is mildly annoying, or simply dull. There is an idea here (a female actress which plays a male character impersonating a woman) which may have been the germ to the filmmaker's remake, a few years later, of Viktor und Viktoria (1933). The last act, at a Hong Kong shipyard, has an uncanny resemblance to one of the hypotheses put forward regarding the recent catastrophe in Beirut.

Rating: 45

Rio fantasia (1957)

Four friends from a small town who have formed a musical quartet move to a big city in the hopes of becoming widely known. A TV producer becomes interested in one of them, a woman, and rejects the remaining three men. She becomes a star, and her former companions struggle to land a contract as a trio.

Drama with some comic bits and some musical numbers. Conventional and predictable, but done with a certain competence; the musical numbers are mildly agreeable.

Rating: 34

Cala a boca, Etelvina (1958)

Adelino lives above his means and is constantly harassed by creditors. He fails to keep his payments on the fur coat he bought for his wife, and, after it has to be returned, she decides to leave him. On that same day, Adelino's uncle, from whom he expects to inherit a fortune, drops in to stay for a few days. Adelino doesn't want his uncle to know his wife left him, and so he makes his maid pass off as his wife.

Unimaginative comedy. The second half is filled with mildly attractive musical numbers. Not a terrible film; it is effectively staged and paced.

Rating: 33

O gato de Madame (1956)

A wealthy woman's cat escapes and she places an ad promising a reward to the person who finds it and returns it. A poor shoe shiner finds the lost animal and plans to collect the reward, but is kidnapped by a gang who also covets the reward.

Poor comedy with a very basic comicity. The 50s ambiance and cityscapes are quite interesting to watch, though.

Rating: 32

Zui quan (1978)

 English title: Drunken Master

A young man gets involved in a series of conflicts and his father hires an old martial arts instructor with a reputation of extreme rigor to discipline him. The young man is terrified at first and flees; he eventually accepts to undergo the training.

Curious fight comedy with elaborate choreography and childish humor. The central thesis of enhancing fighting performance through alcoholic intoxication is absurd but probably just intended for comic effect. The protagonist learns in the end to stop fearing his feminine side and instead use it to his advantage.

Rating: 51

Fathers' Day (1997)

Based on the film Les compères (1983).

When her teenage son runs away from home, a woman looks for an old boyfriend and tells him he is the boy's father and asks him to help find him. Then she phones another old boyfriend and tells him the same thing. Those two guys accidentally meet and join in a search for the missing kid.

Unremarkable comedy which might help pass the time in a desperate situation. The dialogue has a tendency to try too hard to be funny, with variable results. I haven't watched the French original, but what we see here is a really uninspired comedy.

Rating: 33

Uma certa Lucrécia (1957)

A seamstress falls asleep while reading and dreams she is Lucrezia Borgia.

While the idea behind this movie is interesting, the humor displayed in the dialogue is not funny at all, and was surely aimed at a very undemanding audience. The only funny thing in the movie is the carnival costume which is being finished at the protagonist's workshop. On the other hand, if you forget the humor and imagine this as a strictly adventure movie, it isn't as unbearable as all that, and has decent production values for a Brazilian movie.

Rating: 31

The Rains of Ranchipur (1955)

Based on the novel The Rains Came, by Louis Bromfield, first published in 1937.

A rich slut visiting India falls in love with a physician who is inexperienced in matters of the heart. A local princess of sorts is against the romance. There is also an American expatriate who drinks all the time. The resolution of dramatic conflicts is accelerated by the arrival of an earthquake which destroys a dam and causes a general flood.

Disagreeable drama. It's hard to take an interest in these characters and their conflicts seem most of the time overblown. The  romantic parts are interminable. Most of the actors seem ill at ease in their parts, though admittedly the leading lady is fairly convincing in hers. The 1939 filmic version of this novel was, if memory serves, reasonably engaging and effective, which proves that the fault is not in the overall plot.

Rating: 31

Golias contra o homem das bolinhas (1969)

Augusto is a poor office worker who is bullied by his wife at home. He meets a prostitute in a bar and gets her telephone number. He sets a date with her at her apartment and, when he gets there, finds her dead. He becomes the main suspect of having murdered her.

The main actor in this film is billed second to a famous TV comic whose real name appears in the film's title. It's a mostly predictable and tame comedy in which the unassertive protagonist gets involved in a lot of trouble; there's also a poorly-done sequence featuring the protagonist riding in the sidecar of a motorcycle driven by the semi-idiot played by the top-billed comic. This is yet another entry in the prolific Lima's career, this time unusually exploring the cityscapes of São Paulo instead of his native Rio de Janeiro.

Rating: 31

Juventude e ternura (1968)

Beth, an aspiring singer, rises to stardom with the help of her manager Stênio, who is also a bootlegger. Stênio's illegal activities are being monitored by a police detective. Beth is in love with Gui, a composer, but Stênio also develops feelings towards her.

Boring Svengali-type drama with lots of song numbers. The only minimally interesting part of the movie is a car chase through the streets of the Brazilian city of Salvador.

Rating: 22

O meu pé de laranja lima (1970)

In the 1920s, a five-year-old boy from a poor family suffers domestic violence from his father and his sister. He befriends a middle aged man from his neighborhood.

Poorly made literary adaptation. The source novel suffers from suffocating sentimentality, which is a bit attenuated on the screen. While that is not exactly unfortunate, it also makes more evident the banality of much of the narrative. For justice's sake, the film has some virtues: the main actors don't do a bad job, and as a portrait of a specific era in Brazil it is not completely worthless.

Rating: 31

Fome de amor (1968)

English title: Hunger for Love

Felipe, a frustrated painter, takes his wife Mariana to live in a deserted island. Mariana comes from a bourgeois family and Felipe is penniless. After a few days, they notice that another house has dwellers, Alfredo and Ulla, with whom Felipe was already acquainted. While Felipe begins to spend his days with Ulla, Mariana feels attracted towards Alfredo, a former revolutionary who became blind, deaf and dumb after an explosion. Mariana feels more and more ill at ease with the situation she is living in, and is increasingly suspicious of Felipe and Ulla.

Mostly mediocre drama with a few interesting moments. The last section is probably the best part, with its nightmarish atmosphere and crescendo of paranoia which explodes into ideological delirium. Much of the film, on the other hand, has its characters simply wandering about and conveying information to the viewer through dialogue. Anyway, it is a valuable document about youth in the late 1960s and the madness it was subjected to by Mao and his writings. In that, it makes a curious third-world companion to La chinoise.

Rating: 45

Sonhando com milhões (1963)

*spoilers below*

A tax inspector is going through the tax declaration of some big sugar mills who have defrauded the IRS on a large amount of money in taxes. At that time, his maid is sacked by his wife and, through happenstance, goes to work for the owner of one such company. She then acts as an intermediary between the defrauders and the tax inspector, with the mission of bribing him into exonerating the companies from the payment of their due taxes and fines. The inspector's wife -- who is fed up with her materially mediocre life -- is the maid's ally in her mission.

This drama deals with a chronic problem in Brazil: corruption of public agents. It exposes the social and psychological mechanisms through which corruption comes to happen. In Brazil, things haven't changed much from what they were at the time this movie was made. The ending leaves a certain amount of doubt in the viewer as to whether the author was being naive or cynical. (*big spoiler ahead*) The protagonist does not yield to the temptation of accepting the bribe, and is "rewarded" for his honesty with a job offer in one of the companies he was auditing. He accepts it, and everyone is happy. Though this goes unstated, this would be a very clever way of getting rid of the tax problem for the companies in question. The film does not see a moral problem in it for the protagonist. The maid remarks that "sometimes honesty is rewarded" and that's that. As I said, that is either very naive or very cynical. Anyway, although the film has merits and depicts a very real situation, its sense of humor isn't terribly sophisticated, and neither is the dramatic development.

Rating: 37

Gisaengchung (2019)

Englisht title: Parasite

A young man fakes a diploma in order to be hired as a private English teacher for a rich girl. He manages to get the whole household staff fired and replaced by members of his family. Complications ensue.

Social inequality is the theme here. It has some clever touches and twists, and does a fine balance of humor and horror. Its director states that the title is a two-edged sword, but, according to Wikipedia, an Irish critic named Kehoe was not satisfied with the film because it will not cause "riots in the streets". The revolutionary potential of Irish critics is something not to be taken lightly. Still according to Wikipedia, and on a perhaps lighter note, the Associated Press, that paragon of progressivism, thought that the Academy Awards made up for not acknowledging women in the past by acknowledging diversity in 2019. Yes, absolutely. South Korea is one of the most diverse countries in the planet, and you can check that out by watching this movie, which shows pets of assorted breeds getting along just fine under the same roof.

Rating: 60

Guns Don't Argue (1957)

Made by putting together several episodes of TV show Gang Busters, possibly with some new material added to it, this is an episodic narrative about several famous criminals of the 1930s, e.g., Dillinger, Van Meter, Karpis, the Barkers, Floyd, etc. The stories are fictionalized to varying degrees.

My assessment about this film would be roughly the same as that of Gang Busters, which I reviewed prior to it. Overall, a passable entertainment, except that character Ma Barker, as it is depicted here and in many other films and assorted media, is a notorious and ridiculous fabrication which somehow I find hard to enjoy.

Rating: 37