by Felipe Rosa
Days of Heaven: a pure movie, in the sense that the story is told with minimal use of anything but images. And what beautiful images they are, Nestor Almendros did in fact a great job. The simple, focused story serves (or is served by) well Terrence Malick’s style. But the film is a bit emotionally dettached, makes it hard to connect to fully.
Categories: Film reviews • Tags: drama
by Felipe Rosa
Larry Crowne: as a comedy, not that funny; as a romance, not that interesting; as a social commentary, not that deep. It has a bit of charm in the cast, even thought Julia Roberts is stuck in a mostly charmless, thankless role.
Categories: Film reviews • Tags: romantic comedy
by Felipe Rosa
Senna: a competent, somewhat emotional, but ultimately quite square documentary. As a Brazilian watching it (one that followed F-1 driving quite intensely at that time, in particular, but, as it’s well documented, one that’s never been anything close to a Senna fan), one feels as if a particular dimension is missing. The Piquet-Senna rivalry split the country, still does, and it’s not even acknowledged in the film. It also doesn’t really touch how important an idol he was for the […]
Categories: Film reviews • Tags: documentary
by Felipe Rosa
Bad Teacher: for once, the marketing didn’t lie. The trailers suggested one of the worst movies of the year, and by golly, until Uwe Boll gets something released, this is the one.
Categories: Film reviews • Tags: bottom, comedy
by Felipe Rosa
Transformers: Dark of the Moon: it’s quite irrelevant if this is the best of the Transformers’ bunch, as they are all pretty bad. The mix of poor comedy with some of the characters and the ultra-violence that we are suppose to bear because it’s commited by robots (multiple beheadings and dismemberments nowadays yield only a PG-13. Nice!) doesn’t work. On the positive side, the sound design is a thing of beauty.
Categories: Film reviews • Tags: action
by Felipe Rosa
Super 8: another view doesn’t do much to change the previous experience. Only one thing that dawned on me: just like the films it tries to emulate, all the FX-heavy scenes happen at night. It doesn’t bother me, but it’s certainly a big change of pace to what we are used to nowadays. See what I wrote before: Super 8
Categories: Film reviews, Revisit • Tags: sci fi
by Felipe Rosa
Cars 2: once more, Pixar is dazzling with the visual creativity, with an expansion of the world seen in the original. As far as story goes, this is certainly more to the light side for their recent standards; also, thematically, it doesn’t feel right at home with what they did in Cars. That would be the main weakness in a very fun movie. (But still, incidentally, one lap ahead of both DWA and BlueSky).
Categories: Film reviews • Tags: adventure, animation, pixar
by Felipe Rosa
Cars: there are many great qualities to this film, not the least of them the heartfelt earnestness of the story (which is sorely missing from many of the recent films from DWA and BlueSky). The visual creativity is also sky high, particularly in the care for the background. And, of course, the genius casting of Paul Newman. (The discussion if this is the worst Pixar to date is immaterial. But I’m a assumed fan.)
Categories: Film reviews • Tags: adventure, animation, pixar
by Felipe Rosa
Something Borrowed: I don’t know what was actually borrowed, but definitely a good (or even a mediocre) script was not it. This movie is quite amazing in the sense that one scene has very little do do with the previous or following one. No wonder the theater was completely empty. (In a geeky note, the change of stock for some of the scenes, particularly in London, made the whole thing look cheap and distracting.)
Categories: Film reviews • Tags: romantic comedy
Fifth about The Seventh