sábado, 28 de fevereiro de 2015

Cine Me



Big Eyes


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1126590/


http://bigeyesfilm.com/


Tim Burton's 'Big Eyes' paints a beautiful picture.

As is appropriate considering the story of what amounts to fraud in the artistic community, Big Eyes paints a deceptively simple picture that masks some genuine profundities. The story concerns the strange tale of Margaret Keane (Amy Adams) who (and this is basically first-act spoiler territory) painted a series of best-selling paintings but only after her husband (Christoph Waltz) insisted that he take credit for the work. That’s basically the story in a nutshell, but it’s a surprisingly compelling one that wrings its seemingly low-stakes drama for maximum emotional impact. Thanks to a superb star turn by Amy Adams and a strong character performance by Christoph Waltz (who, aside from his Tarantino adventures, has never been better) that reveals utter cruelty disguised as over-the-top comedy, Big Eyes is a relentlessly engaging motion picture.

"Big Eyes" is a strangely conventional entry in Tim Burton's filmography. The story itself is fascinating, though, which helps, and Amy Adams' quiet meticulous performance as Margaret Keane is a beautiful and emotional piece of work.

"Big Eyes" is full of fascinating questions about the meaning of art, the concept of popularity, and what it means to develop a huge audience. Back to Warhol: whether or not something is seen as "good" by an expert is irrelevant if so many people like it. The cultural gatekeepers will always be apoplectic in such a situation. "Big Eyes" is not a major film from Tim Burton, and it has some tonal issues, but one can see why he was drawn to such material. In a way, it's a very personal film.

Waltz hams it up in high style, though a little more restraint would have made Margaret seem less a dupe for falling for a man whose only artistry is the con. It's Adams who restores our rooting interest by showing us the steel even in Margaret's reserve. It's a performance of haunting transparency.
It's clear that Burton sympathizes, minus irony, with Margaret's fervent belief in what one critic calls "the big, stale jellybeans" she puts on canvas. A recent showing of Burton's artwork at New York's Museum of Modern Art attracted long lines and critical brickbats. Maybe that's why Big Eyes, for all its tonal shifts and erratic pacing, seems like Burton's most personal and heartfelt film in years, a tribute to the yearning that drives even the most marginalized artist to self expression no matter what the hell anyone thinks.

 Walter died in 2000, with no creative output. 

Margaret, 87, still paints every day.


 Burton gives her the sweetest reward in Big Eyes: the last laugh.







segunda-feira, 23 de fevereiro de 2015

Oscars 2015




    “So many people with this disease feel isolated and marginalized,” she explained, adding that movies make people feel seen and not alone. “And people with Alzheimer’s deserve to be seen so we can find a cure.”


    Julianne Moore

terça-feira, 17 de fevereiro de 2015

Earned It





You make it look like it’s magic
Cause I see nobody, nobody but you, you, you
I'm never confused
Hey, hey

I'm so used to being used
So I love when you call unexpected
Cause I hate when the moment's expected
So I'ma care for you, you, you
I'ma care for you, you, you, you, yeah
Cause girl you're perfect
You're always worth it
And you deserve it


The way you work it
Cause girl you earned it
Girl you earned it

You know our love would be tragic
So you don't pay it, don't pay it no mind
We live with no lies
Hey, hey

You're my favorite kind of night



domingo, 15 de fevereiro de 2015

Cine Me



A Most Violent Year


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2937898/


http://amostviolentyear.com/


There's a kind of 1970s American movie that's catnip to directors who grew up in the '80s and '90s while watching that sort of movie on cable TV and home video. It's visually and thematically dark, and very male. It has Rembrandt lighting and a palette dominated by paper-bag brown, burnt yellow, leprous emerald, and dirty cream. There's talk of honor and integrity and tradition, of old ways passing and a meaner, pettier, more chaotic, new way taking its place. It is an organized crime film, or a family drama, or a big city nightmare, or all three things at once. Nobody in it is conventionally likable. The hero, despite a certain reticence about selling what's left of his soul, soon figures out that to get ahead in this world, you have to be cold and calculating, and divest yourself of illusions. "A Most Violent Year," a 1981 New York period piece written and directed by J.C. Chandor ("All is Lost," "Margin Call"), is that kind of movie. Oh, boy, is it that kind of movie. It's quite good, for what it is. But it's that "for what it is" part that proves slightly exasperating.

The film's title refers to an actual, statistical designation: 1981 was the most violent year in New York City history up till that point, with 1,841 homicides (the number climbed through 1991 before starting to level off). Coupled with the retro look and rhythm and subject matter—the film is a dirty business movie, a crime film, a crusading New York DA story, and a visual homage to cinematographer Gordon Willis ("The Godfather," "The Conversation"), and a lot of other '70s-film signifiers as well—it all feels like a romanticization of a past which, through a twenty-teens, American middle-class filmmaker's eyes, looks like a Brigadoon of urban ethnic machismo. The movie is so funereal that at times it plays like a memorial service, not just for a particular kind of American drama, but for the male heroes who populated them: a snapshot of one of the last cultural moments when American men could be Men, in that old fashioned, two-fisted, furrowed-brow-and-whispered-threats sort of way

The movie is devoted to the scrappy side of fortune-building at the end of the industrial age.

The glory of “A Most Violent Year” lies in Chandor’s sense of how a certain corner of the world (and, by implication, a much larger portion of it) works, for ill or for good.

A tense freeway shootout and car/foot/rail chase sequence aside (the latter plays like a sombre variation on a theme from The French Connection), A Most Violent Year keeps its action tinder largely dry, the fireworks generated instead by tense conversations between husbands and wives, lawyers and district attorneys, police and putative thieves. Chastain is terrific as the Lady Macbeth power behind the throne, chiding the authorities for being “very disrespectful” while cooking the company books with fingernail-saving disdain. Isaac is a portrait of manicured, camel-coated anxiety, a man struggling to maintain his moral-code cool amid overstretched mortgages and 30-day payment deadlines. Top marks, too, to David Oyelowo as the DA whose crime-busting clampdown masks naked political ambition and Albert Brooks as the world-weary, dyspeptic lawyer walking the thin blue line between his client and the authorities.

When “New York, New York” lyricist Fred Ebb wrote that immortal line, “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere,” it’s doubtful he imagined the life-or-death stakes such sentiments take on in “A Most Violent Year,” an ’80s-era NYC crime drama in which just making it from one day to the next seems like a major accomplishment. In his third turn behind the camera, writer-director J.C. Chandor has delivered a tough, gritty, richly atmospheric thriller that lacks some of the formal razzle-dazzle of his solo seafaring epic, “All Is Lost,” but makes up for it with an impressively sustained low-boil tension and the skillful navigating of a complex plot (at least up until a wholly unnecessary last-minute twist). Like last fall’s “Out of the Furnace,” this solid, grown-up movie-movie is almost certainly too dark and moody to connect with a broad mainstream public or make major awards-season waves, but it does much to confirm Chandor as a formidable filmmaking talent, and star Oscar Isaac as one of the essential American actors of the moment. 

The movie is also a triumph of subtle period craftsmanship on almost every level, especially the work of production designer John P. Goldsmith, who has a field day with long-bodied Cadillac coupes and diesel Mercedes, metallic desks and filing cabinets; costume designer Kasia Walicka Mamone, applying bounteous earth tones (with Chastain outfitted by Giorgio Armani); and the great cinematographer Bradford Young (“Ain’t Them Bodies Saints”), whose widescreen images are retro without ever verging on kitsch, with ungentrified Gotham locations bathed in a crisp winter’s light and swirls of indoor cigarette smoke.


quinta-feira, 12 de fevereiro de 2015

Cine Me



Fifty Shades of Grey


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2322441/


http://www.fiftyshadesofgreymovie-intl.com/ww/



At the end of a recent New York sneak preview of “Fifty Shades of Grey” — in the blackout between the final lines of dialogue (“Anastasia!” “Christian!”) and the first breathy notes of the last Beyoncé song — a lot of the audience burst out laughing. The source of that laughter continues to puzzle and intrigue me, perhaps more than the actual movie did. Was it delight? Derision? Embarrassment? Surprise? All of the above?
The last answer seems the most likely, since Sam Taylor-Johnson’s screen adaptation of E. L. James’s best seller is, like the book itself, a wildly confused treatment of a perennial confusing subject. Sex is a knotty business, perhaps all the more so when actual knots are involved, as they tend to be in the world of Christian Grey, the kinky billionaire bachelor who lends his name and his impressive collection of neckties to this Seattle-set tale of seduction, submission and commodity fetishism.


Reviewers have complained about Ms. James’s pedestrian prose, but the bad writing serves an important purpose. “Fifty Shades” not only destigmatizes kink, bringing bondage and spanking to airport bookstores and reading groups across the land. But it also, so to speak, de-sophisticates certain sexual practices, taking them out of the chateau and the boudoir and other fancy French places and planting them in the soil of Anglo-American banality. If E. L. James were a better writer, her books would be more — to use one of Anastasia’s favorite words — intimidating. And much less useful.
The movie is neither one of those things. It dabbles in romantic comedy and splashes around in melodrama, but the one thing it can’t be — the thing the novel so trashily and triumphantly is — is pornography. Ms. Taylor-Johnson’s sex scenes are not that much different from other R-rated sex scenes, though there are more of them and more hardware is involved. You know the routine: an arched neck, some curled toes, a buttock here, a breast there, a wisp of pubic hair, a muffled moan, another Beyoncé song. Maybe a riding crop for variety.

Mr. Dornan has the bland affect of a model, by which I mean a figure made of balsa wood or Lego. What vitality “Fifty Shades of Grey” possesses belongs to Ms. Johnson, who is a champion lip-biter and no slouch at blushing, eye-rolling and trembling on the verge of tears. She’s a good actress, in other words, and Ms. Taylor-Johnson matches the colors and the visual texture — the chilly blues and pulsing reds, the drab daylight and the velvety dusk — to Anastasia’s moods and desires.



“Fifty Shades of Grey” might not be a good movie — O.K., it’s a terrible movie — but it might nonetheless be a movie that feels good to see, whether you squirm or giggle or roll your eyes or just sit still and take your punishment.








segunda-feira, 9 de fevereiro de 2015

Stay with me




Oh, won't you stay with me?
'Cause you're all I need
This ain't love, it's clear to see
But darling, stay with me


Why am I so emotional?
No, it's not a good look, gain some self-control
And deep down I know this never works
But you can lay with me so it doesn't hurt

domingo, 8 de fevereiro de 2015

Cine Me



Still Alice


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3316960/



http://sonyclassics.com/stillalice/



This milestone film on Alzheimer’s draws its power from Moore’s emotionally restrained but very potent central performance.

The toll the disease takes on the life of a brilliant linguistics professor is superbly detailed by Julianne Moore in a career-high performance, driving straight to the terror of the disease and its power to wipe out personal certainties and identity. Written and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, the screenplay is faithful to Lisa Genova’s best-selling novel which has a fan base of its own.

Rather than focus on the destructive effect of the disease on relationships, the drama dives deep into how one woman experiences her own deteriorating condition, placing all the emphasis on Moore’s face and reactions, her vulnerability seesawing with her strength. 

In one standout scene, she stumbles onto suicide instructions she has left for herself on her computer. Though this is one of the film's most intense scenes, the directors are able to slip in a moment's humor to lighten things up.
Not all is doom and gloom here. Another key scene has Alice invited to address an Alzheimer's conference. Her anxious preparations end in a triumphant monologue about her condition that is truly touching.

The fact that a woman who’s an expert in linguistics has trouble articulating herself may seem like an obvious device, but it also adds to the film’s sense of sadness and frustration, because Alice knows all too well the power of self-expression. “Still Alice” is about how she reacts to her own deterioration–how she constantly reassesses it and figures out how to cope. She doesn’t always do it with quiet dignity, which is refreshing; sometimes she even uses the disease to manipulate those around her or get out of a social occasion she’d rather avoid.

Despite all that, and in the absence of the anger and the wildness that are crouched and caged within this most terrible of themes, “Still Alice” is worth watching, for the sake of Julianne Moore. She has always compounded sweetness with steel, and both are brandished here. The smile that Alice gives, as her utterance falters, is more heartbreaking for being so radiant; we understand at once what it will cost this particular woman to put on a good show, and a happy face. At the other extreme is the message that, when still compos mentis, she leaves for herself—or for a later version of that self—on her laptop, issuing instructions for suicide. The tone of practical plainness is wonderfully caught. “Hi Alice, I am you,” she begins. To be and not to be, at the same time: that is the question that Moore would, if unleashed, have pursued to its tragic limit. “Still Alice” gives her only half a chance.

Film-makers Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, adapting the bestseller by Lisa Genova, then track the rapid progress of the disease and its fallout for the family, as some try to dodge responsibility, others to defeat the unbeatable. We stay close to Alice throughout; at times entering her vision - image blurred, context distorted, sound edit frightening - but mostly studying Moore's face as the light fades from it. You gain awful insight into a fate whose horrors its sufferer, for a while at least as she attempts to stymie the disease with word games and bright positivity, appreciates.

Glatzer and Washmoreland have teased one thread from the book further, brought it a touch more up to date (it's set a decade back). Just as Glatzer's own diagnosis with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2011 has led him to speak only via an app, so too Alice's reliance on new technology impacts on her illness: after all, she has instant access to a bank of memories.

It's not perfect – or, rather, it is a little too perfect. That Alice's profession concerns cognitive function over-eggs the pudding, adds to the unhappy sense that the tragedy of Alzheimer's is heightened when it hits an intellectual. Making the disease genetic as well as so early – and especially as Bosworth announces her intention to have a baby – also feels unnecessary. All you need is Moore; you don't need seven layers of irony to perk things up.
But it's hard to deny the flooring impact of that central performance; a word too for Kristen Stewart, initially bratty, but developing into something much subtler. Alice quotes Elizabeth Bishop's line: "The art of losing isn't hard to master". 

“Still Alice” remains as polite, as informed, and as cautiously compassionate as the society that it depicts.



This is an effortlessly excellent film, about a horribly hard subject.




sábado, 7 de fevereiro de 2015

Tomboy





An homage to the 1981 Richard Avedon Vogue portrait of Nastassja Kinski.


“Jennifer Lawrence has the perfect combination of strength, sexuality, and humor, and, above all, tomboy to pull this off,” says V.F. fashion and style director Jessica Diehl, who styled the shoot.

P.S- Lawrence only became uncomfortable when the snake took a fancy to her neck. Then the shoot was over and Mr. Boa went back into his box.

quinta-feira, 5 de fevereiro de 2015

segunda-feira, 2 de fevereiro de 2015

Cine Me



The Theory of Everything


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2980516/


http://www.thetheoryofeverythingmovie.co.uk/


Here is the sad and frustrating irony of “The Theory of Everything”: it’s a biopic about one of the most brilliant people in the history of the planet, the renowned astrophysicistStephen Hawking – a man famous for thinking in boldly innovative ways – yet his story is told in the safest and most conventional method imaginable.

Of course, Hawking’s story is inspiring – the way he’s battled motor neuron disease over the past 50 years and defied the odds not only to survive, but thrive. And in playing Hawking,Eddie Redmayne more than rises to the challenge of portraying the man's gradual physical deterioration but also conveying the spark of mental acuity that has remained, and marked all of Hawking’s important work. Nothing the 32-year-old actor has done previously (“Les Miserables,” “My Week With Marilyn”) suggested he had this sort of complexity in him. It’s an impressive performance, so much so that it makes you wish it were in the service of stronger material.

“The Theory of Everything” comes from screenwriter Anthony McCarten, based on “Travelling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen,” the memoir by Hawking’s first wife, Jane. A general feeling of tastefulness permeates the proceedings, as if everyone wanted to be overly respectful toward these people, and their life, and the access they provided, at the expense of revelations that might have seemed inappropriate or startling or, heaven forbid, thought-provoking.

We watch biopics for the same reason we read memoirs and obituariesto walk through the chapters of another person’s timeline, to feel that life has a narrative. But a successful biopic doesn’t just reenact events or an individual’s journey; it is a study in character. We go into a movie knowing that the subject was as genius or a hero, a martyr or titan. We should leave with a more nuanced understanding of who he was, his complexities and flaws. Amadeus gave us a Mozart who was as childish and irresponsible as he was genius. Milk showed us a man whose inexhaustible political zeal exhausted those closest to him.
Where both Theory and Imitation fall short, despite the efforts of their stars, is that they seek to glorify rather than to interrogate their subjects. Of course, both of these men deserve celebration. Hawking fundamentally changed our understanding of black holes, quantum mechanics, and relativity, all the while popularizing science with his best-selling A Brief History of Time. And Turing was responsible for breaking Enigma (Nazi Germany’s secret military code), inventing the computer, and saving millions of lives. His was a gripping, extraordinary tale, and Cumberbatch excels as Turing, his watery eyes, stiff jaw, and slight stutter conveying a man who is awkward and difficult, vulnerable and brilliant.

The Theory of Everything  is pleasing to watch, especially for Anglophiles who enjoy the predictable charms of Masterpiece Theater: period trappings and solid performances. But it leaves little lasting impression. After seeing this film, we know little more about Hawking  than what we could have gleaned from their Wikipedia pages. The fine actors portraying it, deserve better.


domingo, 1 de fevereiro de 2015