TIFF '24: “Hard Truths” hits hard

by Cláudio Alves

It's been six years since cinemas have been left waiting for a new Mike Leigh film. Moreover, the British portraitist of working-class life and struggle, joy and pain, secrets and lies, had for a while abandoned the contemporary stories upon which his early career was built. Though the director's forays into historical pasts have produced naught but great cinema, it's fair to say it's been over six years since the world has encountered what most associate with the words "a Mike Leigh film." Well, the wait is over, and I'm pleased to say Hard Truths is well worth the wait.

Not so much a return to form as a return to familiarity, the film also finds the auteur reuniting with Marianne Jean-Baptiste, the Oscar-nominated star of his Palme d'Or victor who also scored the director's Career Girls. And if what Leigh delivers behind the camera could be called a triumph, what his leading lady accomplishes demands a stronger word. She's the stuff of legend and what actressing dreams are made of…

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Venice '24: "The Room Next Door"

By Elisa Guidici

THE ROOM NEXT DOOR

There’s no living storyteller with a more profound, intimate understanding of death than Pedro Almodóvar. I call him a "storyteller" because, in the 2020s, that’s become his most defining identity. His first English-language feature—set in an alternative, upper-class, hyper-cultural, Almodóvarian version of the United States—once again showcases his incredible narrative talents...

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TIFF '24: "Grand Tour" confirms Miguel Gomes has the Magic Touch

by Cláudio Alves

Some directors wish to transcend the artform they practice. Watching their creations, one senses a force pressing upon you, pushing toward a prescribed and somewhat contradicting immersion. Their hands are forever busy, guiding the viewer away from the theater, from their awareness of the cinematic device. Such artists want you to forget you're watching a film. They beckon surrender, but not to cinema. Instead it's to their story, their vision, sometimes their message. And there's nothing wrong with this approach. But there's nothing right either, not necessarily. I know I fell in love with cinema because of its particularities, not in spite of them. So, I don't wish to forget or abstract myself from the lot. Maybe that's why I adore the cinema of Miguel Gomes as I do. 

Regard his filmography and you may realize he is the antithesis of those other cineastes. Moreover, Gomes is all the better for it. If you want proof, look no further than Grand Tour, for which the Portuguese filmmaker won a well-deserved Best Director prize at Cannes…

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Venice 2024: "Kill the Jockey" and "One to One: John & Yoko"

by Elisa Giudici

KILL THE JOCKEY © Rei Pictures, El Despacho, Infinity Hill, Warner Music Entertainment) 

KILL THE JOCKEY by Luis Ortega
There is a certain aesthetic in the self-destruction of genius. In El Jockey (or Kill the Jockey), this is encapsulated in a visually seductive scene where Nahuel Pérez Biscayart prepares his signature cocktail: a base of horse medicine in a glass of whiskey, drowned in a cloud of cigarette smoke. He downs it in one gulp and then mounts his horse for a race that ends sooner than expected.

Kill the Jockey has an explosive first half-hour...

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Review: M. Night Shyamalan's "Trap" is a B-Movie and there is No Shame in that

by Cláudio Alves

Over the past 25 years, M. Night Shyamalan has built his reputation on twisty tales that sting with some nasty surprise before the end credits roll. Depending on the picture and the public's willingness to accept the director's oddities, his strategy has resulted in a handful of triumphs, a slew of mediocrities, and a couple of outright disasters. Going into Trap, one expects much of the same, but, in the biggest twist of all, Shyamalan has presented his audience with a fairly straightforward affair. The premise is simple, if ludicrous, the tone is sincere, and, for once, you feel the filmmaker's focus on entertaining rather than pulling the rug from under the viewer. M. Night Shyamalan's Trap is a B-movie that makes no apology about its ambitions or lack thereof…

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