yu's Talk

Milk

Don´t expect anything close to "Elephant", "Last Days" and "Paranoid Park". "Milk" is definitely a mainstream, but purposely. Gus Van Sant hasn´t got caught by the big movie industry, but chose an easy and usual format, wich includes known actors, to make Milk´s story acessible to everyone.
Very good directed and with brilliant perfomances, specially by Sea Penn, "Milk" is a touching and inspiring political teaching.

L'Heure d'été (Summer Hours)

"Summer Hours" is a movie about life just like life is. Such as we see in "L´eau froide", his first movie, Olivier Assayas offer us great and naturalistic interpretations/characters placed in simple stories without almost any action. As realistic as it is possible.

Madeo (Mother)

Bong Joon-ho's other work includes The Host and Memories Of Murder. 'Mother' is a psychological thriller but with a more sombre atmosphere than Memories Of Murder. Starring Kim Hye-ja as an over-protective over-bearing mother. Her 27 year old son, who has learning difficulties, becomes arrested as the main suspect for a murder of a young girl. Utterly convinced of his innocence, she sets out to investigate on her own. In one almighty intense scene, this slightly-built acupuncturist visits the funeral of the murdered girl. Although she is besieged by distraught family members who think her son is the murderer, she looks them in the eye and proclaims, "My son could never do something like that."

I wouldn't want to reveal the outcome and spoil the essence of 'Mother'. This is one of those movies where you have to pay attention to the little details and you'll be rewarded afterwards. It is quite a lengthy movie at over 2 hours and although the first half starts to meander a little, the last 30 minutes is worth it. The cinematography is grade A, the dialogue is intense and witty, the performances of the actors are all excellent, and the plot twists are explosive. If you enjoy Korean cinema you have to watch this movie.

Madeo (Mother)

Ghosts

A moving and powerful film based on the tragedy that took place in 2004 at Morcambe Bay, Lancashire, UK. 23 Chinese illegal immigrant workers, cockle picking on the notoriously dangerous coast, died after becoming trapped by rising tides. Nick Broomfield, a veteran of creating documentaries, writes and directs. He cast amateur actors to play all the roles to help bring a sense of realism and grittiness to the story.

'Ghosts' is an ambiguous title. In one sense it is the word Chinese use to refer to white westerners and the other is a reference to the invisibility of illegal immigrant workers who are unprotected and poorly paid.

The story follows Ai Qin, a young Chinese girl who pays Chinese snakeheads to smuggle her to the UK in order for her to support her family and child back in China. Once she arrives in the UK she is forced to live in cramped shared accomodation with many other illegal Chinese immigrants. They are desperate for any kind of work to enable them to send money home to their families. Not only are they faced with racism and threats of violence from their neighbours but also from fellow cockle pickers. The gangmasters take them to pick cockles in the evening at Morcambe Bay but they're completely unaware of how dangerous the changing tide can be.

Some facts about the real incident: 21 bodies were found but 2 people were never accounted for, many of them in their teens and some were discovered naked having attempted to swim back to the shore. They were working for gangmasters, slave labour to you and me, they were working for a tiny amount of money to send back to their families. Instead of dialling 999 for the emergency services on their mobile phones, they called their families to tell them they loved them and the majority of them never saw their families again. Neither the British nor the Chinese government were willing to give financial help to the families who lost loved ones.

Anklaget (Accused)

A teenage girl accuses her father of sexual abuse. Whatever the truth is, the consequences will be devastating. Top-class acting and an impressive script fuel this tense Danish drama.

Entre les Murs (The Class)

Most movies about school/teaching tend to glorify the image of the professor. In a boring or hard enviorment, comes a different teacher that encourages and inspires all the students, even (or specially?) the most difficult ones.

"To Sir, with Love", "Dead Poet Society", "Dangerous Minds", "Mona Lisa Smile" are the names I can remember now, but I´m sure there are many others.

Some of them are really good or, at least, do what they are suppose to: to inspire. Inspiration. That´s where resides the great difference of "Entre Les Murs": it doesn´t have this ambition/ goal at all.
Based on the same-name novel written by the teacher François Bégaudeau, that plays himself on screen, the film shows the relationship teacher/student in a multi-ethnic and contemporary suburb of Paris, where the teachers are evrything but a hero.

Like Gus Van Sant did in "Elephant", Laurent Cantet chose a cast of real teachers and students/non-actors, what gives the film a natural and realistic atmosphere. The cast + the movements and proximity of the camera + the dialogues give the impression of a documentary that shows the difficulties of teaching in an info modern society
and brings up important issues in France today: immigration, race, French identity, suburbs (banlieues) versus cities and changes in the spoken French language.

Jesus Camp

The Devil wears... Jesus. The devil is called Becky Fischer.
The devil says: "because we have, excuse me, we have the truth". Smiles.
Think in the worst horror movie you´ve ever seen. It´s funny, but at the same time scaring. Picture it.

Rachael is a 9 yo very smart girl that in an typical american teen movie would be the boring and irritating class leader with a lot of potential but a limited mind. Tory, 10 yo, would be the stupid cheerleader dancing in front of the mirror and saying she couldn´t care less about Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan. Me too!, but maybe this is the reason why a ten yo child have so many tears and guilties to scream out. Because listenting to such music as to like Harry Potter is a sin. Levi is 12yo and well, he has no salvation. I´m sure he´s gonna be an "important" pentecostal minister or who knows what. The intrguing about these kids is that they are the "army of God".


Home-schooled, living in a completely evangelical and manipulative environment, where their George Bush voters and fanatic parents teach, among other things, that global warming is only a mith, nothing but a political issue. When most kids go to summer camps, they go to bible camps where they pretend to feel the spirit of God, shacking their whole body and speaking in tongues. It´s as much scaring as Palestine kids with arms in their hands and I truly can´t say which one is the worst. It´s the same type of manupulation, but this "army of God", at least for now, has no fatal ends.

Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus

"Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus" could easily be a modern "Beauty and the Beast" directed by Tim Burton. I have to say that the beast is not that bad; he actually looks like a cute dog, maybe a Cocker Spaniel. But the fact is that, in this case, David Lynch could fit better with the Arbus's work. Don't get me wrong, the movie is directed by Steven Shainberg, the same director of "Secretary". Not having seen Secretary yet, my interest was totally in Diane Arbus.


Even knowing it was "an imaginary portrait", I expected something more biographical and maybe more faithful to the image I have of Arbus. Her photos can lead us to such a portrait, but knowing a bit about her we know she was not "one of us" , but was more to a nice intruder. (Susan Sontag talks about it in "On Photograph"). Also, Nicole Kidman's Diane, and this is not her fault, could be both a model of Allan's ads or Arbus's strange photos, not mentioning that she seems a contemporay version of her previous Viginia Woolf. The film is not bad but it ends up resuming Diane Arbus into a fetishist herself and tries to explain her work by her supposed inner freak. But don't take me that seriously. "Fur" can be a good watch, specially if you like fantasy genre.

Little Murders

Entertaining. Sarcastic. Unpredictable. Hilarious.

Frozen River

I've been in love with Melissa Leo since "21 Grams" and "Melquíades Estrada", and it's great to finally see her in a leading role. It also attests her great feeling for good scripts. One of the best American thrillers I've seen this year.

Eden Lake

One of those rare moments in horror film making when the project overcomes the boundaries of its sub-genre and heads for the peak of its terrifying possibilities.

Don't miss it for the world.

Doubt

The Fall

Absolutely breathtaking - a masterpiece.