guisreis

This is a charming and visually wonderful animated fantasy film with elements of steampunk, expressionism, romantic drama, musical and even Western and high school. The fantastic often appears as metaphor, as the discover of the world and of love is risky and the clockwork heart may break. I simply loved the twisted architecture and the slim characters. Genius filmmaker Georges Méliès deserves the homage. The are are nice adult gags and smart oneiric usage of animation possibilities. Pace and the script are a little uneven (and I did not enjoy musical score), but the ups overcome the dew downs.

Amusing movie about the history of crime in the largest slum in Rio de Janeiro, Rocinha, emphasizing the life of the first female narcotics leader, who also wrote the book in which the film is based. There are many qualities besides the interesting story. Good direction and edition provide a pace which allow developping well the charcters and events and also attracting spectators' attention throughout the movie. It is also visually nice, using well different filters, lights, fog, sometimes emulating the 80s in a vintage way, in others showing pink and néon in a stylish crime girl power look. I liked a lot each segment portraying Rebecca's life since childhood, with class and patriarchy blows, all crime and drug lords with their unique traits, the way African Brazilian religion crossed personal relations, the connetion between crime and police along decades, the remarkable and unusual music score choices. To resume, I must add that the movie is considerably light given the great violence and serious social issues which are depicted and not hidden.

Rebel Moon is a movie where spoilers are impossible, as there is nothing original and everything copy what has already been done uncountable times before. You may expect all the clichés: star wars-like evil space empire (and light swords!!!!), the heroes teaching untrained villagers how to fight, a romantic dialogue about the fear to lose each other (many other terrible dialogues eventually appear), motivational screams before battle... The scene with royal family (the first one with a royal family; the second one was not good either, but far from this silliness) was laughable, with quite embarassing acting, and a ridiculous quartet playing calmly music throughout the violent scene wearing bizarre masks. Anyway, this bad sequel is still better than the awful part 1 released one year before. I will never understand how Zach Snyder was able to make Watchmen, and I thank the gods of cinema for not having it directed by him a decade afterwards, or he would certainly make a crap despite the wonderful quality of the graphic novel. Snyder simply does not know what cinema is, and cannot distinguish between it and videogame.