Dirty Harry (1971)

Second viewing.

A San Francisco police officer investigates a series of crimes committed by a lunatic who demands payment so that he will not kill a certain person or persons.

A thriller which depicts the policeman's angst stemming from the various vicissitudes to which he is exposed: the legal system, low salaries, deficient sex life, etc. An interesting film, and very well made.

Rating: 54 (up from 49)

Le colonel Chabert (1994)

English title: Colonel Chabert.

Based on the novel by Honoré de Balzac (1st ed. 1844).

A man given as dead on the war returns to claim a share of his possessions. His wife remarried to an ambitious man.

A tale of ambition and the fragility of human bonds. The cinematography is gorgeous. It is well directed too.

Rating: 52

Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)

Second viewing.

Riggs and Murtaugh fight a South African gang of drug dealers led by a diplomat who hides behind his diplomatic immunity. While they do it they must also look after a key witness in a drug case.

A frantic comedy with nonstop action, with a racism subtheme.

Rating: 50 (up from 40).

Il bidone (1955)

English title: The Swindle

The exploits of three men who make a living out of swindling poor people out of their money. Their leader is a middle-aged man, whose relationship with his daughter becomes sort of the focal point at around midmovie.

*SPOILERS*
Second viewing. I was not very impressed. The characters act for the viewer, example: 'Carlo' is a struggling painter, so he is shown making observations about a landscape, comparing it to a Corot; Roberto is always singing (that is his intended career); etc. The film is very easy to watch and, concessions being made about the points mentioned, well directed. Another interesting aspect is the moral ambiguity of the main character, shown in the ending of the movie: he tries to be a good father even at the moral cost of fleecing both a poor family and his crime partners.
There is an allegorical level to Il bidone which I am not sure anyone has remarked. On that level, its theme is cinema itself. The criminal activity performed by the swindlers has a necessary component of staging which makes it akin to the theatrical art (and by extension to cinema). The two auxiliary members -- the would-be painter and the would-be singer -- symbolize respectively the visual and aureal artistic ideals which a cinematic work of art should aspire to. By the end of the movie they have defected the crime life, presumably to pursue their art. The older man, devoid of their assistance, must resort to other persons. It all goes wrong, signalling the fate of cinema itself should it forsake its artistic potential to focus on profit alone. The attempt to divert the money for a good cause will be curtailed by the businessmen (criminals). So, what it is saying is: when cinema becomes dominated by the business side, Art will necessarily be crushed.

Rating: 60 (down from 70)

Hallam Foe (2007)

A teenage boy lives in social isolation and antagonizes his stepmother on account of his mother's death. He also has developed voyeuristic habits. One day he packs his things and leaves for Edinburgh where he finds a job and meets his mother's lookalike.

Not exactly the smartest film of all times, nor the most original, but I found myself watching it painlessly, and especially enjoying Forlani's performance. She builds a very sexy character. It is curious to observe how several hitchcockian themes and imagery (from Vertigo, Rear Window, Suspicion, Shadow of a Doubt, Saboteur, and who knows what more) were incorporated into a film which is very non-hitchcockian in style.

Rating: 51

Ruby (1992)

A drama based on the final period of Jack Ruby's life. He was a club owner in Dallas who got involved with the Cosa Nostra and ended up killing Lee Oswald. The film invents a female dancer whom Ruby takes under his wings.

A fine film, but its plot at every moment leaves the less knowledgeable viewer with a sensation of incomplete understanding about what is going on. The fictitious relationship with Candy serves the story well, the film is well written and very well directed. A study on the loser.

Rating: 57

Snake Eyes (1998)

Second viewing at least.

At a boxing event an attempt is made against the life of the Secretary of State. An investigation is carried out by a corrupt police officer, who is a childhood friend of the security chief. A conspiracy is unraveled.

The first half-hour or so is one of the most dazzling pieces of cinema in history, and that alone would put to shame the IMDb 5.9 rating, but let us not get into sordid affairs like the masses' tastes. It would be next to impossible to keep the film on that initial level, but the fact is that it is good from start to finish. Cage is very much at home in his part, and Sinise's performance is also anthological. One of the best-directed, best-written films of the 90s, not easy to grasp fully in a single viewing perhaps, but worth the effort. Of course it is about corruption and evil and levels of corruption and evil, and smart as hell at that. Enough said, watch it.

Rating: 83 (unchanged)

Rushmore (1998)

Second viewing.

The one about the boy who excelled at numerous extracurricular activities but was dangerously deficient at the mandatory ones, in the private high school he went to, with a scholarship, since he was the son of a barber and couldn't afford it otherwise. His love life was not going anywhere either, a fact he would try to change by targeting a new English teacher, a young widow.

One of the most brilliant movies of the 90s, it established (along with the equally amazing Bottle Rocket) its director and co-writer among the principal filmmakers in activity in the world, even though his subsequent efforts were (perhaps) not on the same level. A film of endless enjoyment, infinitely sophisticated, wonderfully cerebral and at the same time vigorously assertive emotionally. An event.

Rating: 88 (up from 86)

Missing in Action 2: The Beginning (1985)

A group of American soldiers are taken prisoners in Vietnam after the end of the war. The camp commandant is a sadist who demands the American leader's confession to war crimes he has not committed.

Quite effective and well made, with competent direction (the one exception, save error of mine, being an apparently unconvincing sequence where Braddock is looking for a buddy and inspects an enclosure which is full of armed enemies who fire at him). The film is almost entirely made of exciting sequences, and the plot has an interesting underlying idea. Nevertheless, the historical references should not be taken seriously, it seems to me.

Rating: 52

Callas Forever (2002)

An impresario has the idea, in 1977, of making a film with Maria Callas in which she would only lip-synch to her old recordings, as a way to overcome the fact that she no longer has a quality voice.

It's not very clear what the whole point is. My interpretation is the following: certain women will ruin the men who get involved with them; in the case where no romantic attachment is involved, a milder version of this is at play: she manages to lead him to the edge of bankruptcy and disrupt (maybe only temporarily) his love affair with someone else.

Rating: 37

La vieille fille (1972)

English title: The Old Maid.

At the Mediterranean town of Cassis, a bachelor on his way to Spain has car troubles and is forced to stay at the hotel while it is fixed. While there he meets the "old maid" (40-ish), and also a pastor and his weird wife. Not to mention the maids.

Nice and harmless little dramedy (I hesitate to classify it thus).

Rating: 50

Rebel without a Cause (1955)

A new kid in town is bullied by the high school gang who rules over the place; he tries to get attention from a female colleague, but she is in the gang too, so... A younger boy, on the other hand, is highly infatuated with him. All three have problematic familial relations.

Second viewing. An extreme case of opinion change for me; I have little idea of what I liked about it the first time, but the fact is that I adored it then. Now, after viewing it again, it seems to me that the writer or writers had the tongue firmly placed in the cheek, and the director did his best to conceal it. Anyway, it is something of an event of sorts: the acting, the filming, the bizarreness of situations which may be construed in two or more ways, in short an interesting film.

Rating: 60 (down from 100)

The Tenth Man (1988) (TV)

Based on a novel by Graham Greene, published in 1985, the idea for which was born in 1937 for a film and subsequently dropped.

The synopsis from IMDB is very complete, with SPOILERS (kind of), so I will give it here:

"Based on the novel of the same name by Graham Greene, this is a story of a French advocate Chavel who, while imprisoned by the Germans during the occupation, trades his material possessions to another prisoner in exchange for his life when condemned to the firing squad. At the end of the war, Chavel, posing as one of the other prisoners, returns to his home which is now occupied by Therese, the sister of the prisoner he traded his possessions to, and who bitterly awaits the return of the man who had indirectly caused the death of her brother. His real identity unknown to Therese, Chavel is invited to stay as a caretaker and to identify Chavel should he return to the house. The relationship between Chavel and Therese develops until one night, someone calling himself Chavel turns up at their doorstep. Written by Thariq Ahmad ."

Second viewing. An interesting, ingenious story, and Hopkins is excellent in it. It has a XIXth-century romantic novel air to it, despite being set in WWII France. Perhaps one could say it is too plot-oriented to be great. I may have overrated it a bit in my previous assessment.

Rating: 64 (down from 75)

Jogo de cena (2007)

American title: Playing.

Several women tell an important episode or aspect of their lives. Sometimes it is the women themselves who speak in the film, other times actresses, some famous in Brazil, some not, deliver their lines. Some of the actresses talk about the experience.

It is not exactly a null film, but, honestly, what is its point?

Rating: 33

Seems Like Old Times (1980)

A writer is kidnapped by two men who use him as an accessory to bank robbery, in a way that makes him the fall guy for that crime. He takes refuge in his ex-wife's house. It so happens that her present husband is running for D.A.

IMDB cues us in that it is in the style of screwball comedy. The lines try to be funny all the time, which is a nuisance, even though some are. It's watchable, but not much more; the middle section is the worst part.

Rating: 32

One Million Years B.C. (1966)

Set in prehistoric times, it centers on a fellow who cannot get along with his tribal fellows and so decides to wander alone until he meets another, more advanced, tribe, where he and a beautiful woman fall in love with each other.

Worthy remake of a 1940 movie. It is a nonrealistic depiction of prehistoric times, featuring lots of animals which were long extinct when Man appeared on the Earth. The flow of narrative is diverted at regular intervals by the appearance of such monsters; they often fight each other, too. The monsters are all made in stop-motion animation, a welcome improvement over the 1940 version, which had live animals. The cast consists of unknowns (to me anyway), except for Welch, who is marvelous in it.

Rating: 51

The Killer Inside Me (2010)

Based on the novel by Jim Thompson (1st ed. 1952).

In a small town, the deputy sheriff is a psychopath. His victims of choice are women, but in order to conceal his crimes a few men must go too.

A faithful adaptation of the novel. The central problem it analyzes is that of the monster, the madman, the complete alien, the wolf in sheep's clothes. There is no solution for his problem, of course, but he keeps going anyway, until he cannot go any further. The tone is surreal, and therefore makes for uncomfortable viewing. Comedy is not excluded: take the scene where the protagonist chases a bum down the city streets, for example. The performances are good, with the exception of Hudson's.

Rating: 60

Aviso aos navegantes (1950)

A ship leaves from Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro; in it go several artists, a stowaway, and a spy.

Musical comedy which is not very funny. I remember one sequence which I thought very funny: Frederico (Oscarito) impersonating a doctor ("...sistema vago-simpático, muito vago, muito simpático.."). The rest is either mildly funny or not funny at all. The musical numbers are simple, the songs are mostly mediocre, with the exception of two or three (there are a lot of songs in it). The camerawork is good.

Rating: 34

Thinner (1996)

An overweight man starts getting thinner after a gypsy man puts a curse on him.

This film is bad. On more than one level. And let's leave it at that.

Rating: 11

Estrada (1995)

Two couples go out on a trip to the countryside in a car. A truck driver leaves on a job to deliver a heavy load.

The banality we are used to expecting from this filmmaker.

A segment in Felicidade é...