Cachorro (2004)

English title: Bear Cub.
Synopsis: A child is left by his mother at the care of his homosexual uncle when she goes on a trip to India; she is arrested there and a conflict arises between said uncle and the child's grandmother for his custody.
Appraisal: Drama which has been mysteriously classified by some as a comedy yet hasn't got the least vestige of humor in it, and which tackles a multiplicity of interrelated subjects in a uniformly balanced, instructive, and boring manner.
Rating: 30

Le fusil à lunette (1972)

Synopsis (SPOILERS): World War II. A snow field. An allied soldier is looking through the telescopic lens of his rifle and spots a German soldier. The German soldier sees a cat and gets distracted trying to attract the cat. The allied soldier watches the scene and then shoots the German soldier, killing him. Then he tries to attract the cat unto him and gets shot too.
Appraisal: Interesting 15-minute movie.

Peindre ou faire l'amour (2005)

English title: To Paint or Make Love.
Synopsis: A middle aged couple gets to know a younger couple and their relationship gets deeper than imagined at first.
Appraisal: In certain crucial aspects, this is unlike anything I have ever watched, aside from so-called pornography, in that there is no lasting conflict and things evolve to harmony. Most other films follow one of two patterns: either there is a conflict that is solved or not, or (which is considerably rarer) it has no conflict and things advance inexorably towards a catastrophe. For an example of the latter category, take The Wicker Man (1st version). The thing is, Peindre... could be viewed as pornography after all - of the softcore kind, but pornography all the same. It deals with partner exchanges between couples, or, as it is commonly called, swinging. It has a long set-up during which there is little sex, yet from the beginning there can be no doubt about where it is heading. The plot is firmly entrenched in the bourgeois milieu, and it is clearly a film for the bourgeois; certain details, such as when they decide they are not going to sell the house after all, make it clear that these people have no financial concerns of any kind, which may be a little off-putting to members of the audience who live on any kind of budget.
Rating: 49

Gomgashtei dar Aragh (2002)

English title: Marooned in Iraq.
Synopsis: In the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq conflict, an old Kurdish musician living in Iran decides to go to Iraq in search of his ex-wife who appears to be requesting his help. He summons his two sons to accompany him in that journey.
Appraisal: Amateurish filmmaking which still may interest some for providing a glimpse into a not so well known culture and also for the beautiful scenery. The plot is simple in its general terms yet complicated in some of its details (the old man had been abandoned by his wife when singing became forbidden to women in Iran; his sons know the truth about his divorce, but, in an attempt to convince them to participate in the quest for her, he tells them that the divorce was a lie to preserve the honor of the family and that, in fact, she is still his wife) and incomprehensible in others - a matchmaker was being harassed by a thug for having given a woman whom he coveted to another man; said matchmaker is buried up to his neck in the ground by the musicians, apparently because he was trying to prevent the wedding (is that really it? why? the subtitles mention that the father didn't give his permission; if that is so it could only be the groom's). No one that I have read seems to have gotten this, yet no one seems to care either. There is a conspicuous double standard when it comes to films made by ethnic minorities or obscure countries; they are praised in spite of their blatant shortcomings, in a sort of tacit affirmative action destined to encourage these poor communities to participate in the global film market. It would be better if critics were more honest about it. Or, what do I know, maybe they really liked it.
Rating: 30

Gordos e magros (1977)

Synopsis: A rich, obese and spoiled man causes a tumult during a party his parents are throwing, then leaves and meets a hunger artist whom he decides to transform into a media circus. There are flashbacks to both men's early days.
Appraisal: At times it is hilarious, but it never really soars as social commentary on Brazil's economic disparities, due to its lack of focus and preferred emphasis on being noisy and frenetic; also, it feels too much like a party among close friends who are having more fun than us viewers. The main actor carries the film with a vigorous and clever performance. For Brazilians it is probably required viewing, as there aren't so many watchable films made in this country.
Rating: 43

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

Synopsis: The mutant community is shaken with the news of a drug that has been developed to revert mutant individuals to normal ones. Meanwhile Jean is revealed to be alive, but her dark side has emerged and threatens to take over her personality. Magneto plans to destroy the facility where the drug is being manufactured, along with a mutant subject who is being used by the researchers at the facility.
Appraisal: I don't know exactly why, but this installment of the series was the most endurable one to me. I think the whole series is overrated, and really more suitable to adolescents than to adults. I think it was Jorge Luis Borges who once said "In cinema we are all readers of Mme. Delly"; he was right of course, but the phrase should be updated for modern days to "In cinema we are all readers of Stan Lee". Yet the film is not so bad, and I wasn't too bored either with its action scenes filled with special effects or with its addressing of the theme of minorities and how society deals with them (and vice versa).
Rating: 50

Jarhead (2005)

Synopsis: Swoff has enlisted in the Marines but is not cut out for military life. He participates in the Gulf War.
Appraisal: I don't have much to say about this movie. It is interesting, shows realistic details about a recent war, has some moderately funny moments; it is not a great movie, it's not strong enough, either because some of the situations depicted are somewhat banal or have been shown in too many previous movies or because the characters were not sufficiently fleshed out. In any case, it's a decent watch.
Rating: 60

El abrazo partido (2004)

English title: Lost Embrace.
Synopsis: The film is set in a shopping gallery in Argentina. Ariel's father took off to Israel when he was a baby. Now an adult in a country immersed in a crisis, Ariel is planning to emigrate to Poland, the land of his ancestors. Meanwhile, his brother Joseph, the owner of a small commerce company, has some financial disputes with an ex-associate which will be settled by a race between Joseph's assistant Ramón and the ex-associate's assistant.
Appraisal: Shoddily filmed - its trademark is the fast zooming in and out - dramedy which lacks an aesthetic vision, or even some script refinement that would render its characters, or its final plot twist, significant or even moderately convincing. That being said, some performances are competent (e.g. the mother), and some scenes achieve some degree of naturalism which is to be valued.
Rating: 32

Private (2004/I)

Synopsis: A Palestinian family has its house invaded by Israeli soldiers, and is confined to the living room.
Appraisal: Drama with obvious metaphorical pretensions (house = land) that is quite tedious to watch, not to mention dangerously simplifying in political terms.
Rating: 29

Sei mong se jun (2004)

English title: Ab-normal Beauty.
Synopsis: A young female photographer develops an obsesssion towards death. Then she receives some weird photos by mail.
Appraisal: Badly written and apparently hastily put together, yet endurable horror thriller.
Rating: 34

Æon Flux (2005)

Synopsis: In the future, the survivors of a terrible epidemics live isolated in a city surrounded by walls; they live under a dictatorship whose head is the scientist who invented the vaccine against that deadly virus. Aeon Flux is a female member of the resistance and has been assigned to attempt against the life of the scientist-dictator.
Appraisal: I am a great admirer of the leading actress of this film; she, and the good-tasted production design, are the only (feeble) reasons to watch this otherwise vacuous futuristic thriller. One note: whoever says that this is a feminist movie should be reminded that it was written by two males, based on a graphic novel created by another male, and production designed by yet another male.
Rating: 12

The Origins of Scientific Cinematography: Early Applications (1993)

The last installment in this documentary series is also the one that contains the most repulsive imagery (medically related), and should be avoided by squeamish viewers. It subsequently shows some more attractive scenes, of primitive cultures.

The Origins of Scientific Cinematography: Technical Developments Around the Turn of the Century (1992)

Here, he shows the work of some lesser known pioneers.

Dark Angel (1990)

Alternative title: I Come in Peace.
Synopsis: An alien comes to Earth with the purpose of extracting a powerful drug from human beings' bodies. He is chased by an alien cop and also by an earthling one.
Appraisal: Watchable sci-fi action thriller, with lots of fire blasts and some explosions. That being said, the dialogue is poor, and the film is not especially remarkable let alone memorable.
Rating: 35

Le promeneur du champ de Mars (2005)

English title: The Last Mitterrand.
Synopsis: A young writer is commissioned to record the memories and opinions of a dying statesman for future publication.
Appraisal: This is quite a poor set-up for a movie; it has a good performance by Bouquet and is not hard to watch,but it's just an old guy talking about his past, and a young guy with relationship problems (and this subplot is even more tedious than the main one).
Rating: 35

The Origins of Scientific Cinematography: The Pioneers (1990)

Documentary about the precursors of cinema. The works of Janssen, Muybridge and Marey are shown. It is very informative.

The Great Outdoors (1988)

Synopsis: A family's vacation by the lake is disturbed by the arrival of their annoying in-laws.
Appraisal: Not very good; although the set-up is interesting and it has two great comedians leading the show (and a good cast to complement them), the actual development is uninspired and by-the-book. Note: the subtitles available on the web contain funny dialogue between the skunks that I presume should be shown on the screen, but TNT didn't show any.
Rating: 41

Was geschah wirklich zwischen den Bildern? (1986)

English titles: Film Before Film; Film Before Film: What Really Happened Between the Images?
Description: It shows several devices that preceded cinema in the task of displaying moving images.
Appraisal: Interesting documentary, but it lacks a historic perspective; some of the devices have no historical importance in the path that led to cinema; that doesn't make them uninsteresting, of course, but it seems that more of the film is devoted to them than to true film pioneers; for example, Edison gets only a mention to his name in the end - no information on his contributions is given. Perhaps this should be examined as the first of a series; the problem is that I haven't seen any of its successors, and do not know what is in them.
Rating: 58

Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles (2001)

Synopsis: CD's wife gets a job in LA, and he comes with her and their kid. There he helps uncover the illegal acts of a film producing company.
Appraisal: Anodyne.
Rating: 33

La métamorphose du papillon (1904)

I watched it online, and it bore the title "Métamorphoses du papillon". I am supposing it is the same film.