Currently browsing the "South American" category.

Aquarius

Aquarius is the name of an apartment building overlooking the beach in Recife, Brazil. Clara (Sônia Braga) is the only resident there. A beautiful woman in her mid-sixties, she loves her apartment, and try as hard as they might, the company that has bought out all the other residents cannot persuade her to take their very generous offer so they can build another high-rise like those surrounding her. But to Clara this is her home, where she loved her now deceased husband and raised her children. It is where she is planning to die, after a life well-lived. The developers suffer under the mistaken notion that they can force this old woman out. But Clara is not going!

Ixcanul (Volcano)

This fascinating drama takes its audience into a culture few of us will ever experience. Ixcanul means volcano and the film takes place in a village that is just on the edge of an inactive one in the mountains of Guatemala. A family lives there cut off from the modern world, speaking Kaqchikel, the ancient language of the indigenous Mayans. The few times they interact with the outside world they mistakenly trust a translator with an agenda to tell them what was said in Spanish. Though it is mainly a coming of age story of the central character Maria, it is also a tale of the divide between the powerful and the powerless, and a starkly written and beautifully shot enthnography of a mysterious place out of time with the world. It is probably too slow for many people (Mainstream Chick, I’m talking to you), but I was taken with it. And it’s Guatemala’s Oscar entry for Best Foreign Film.

CinemaClash Podcast: 10 Cloverfield Lane, Knight of Cups, Embrace of the Serpent, and more!

I’m not a big fan of horror movies, but 10 Cloverfield Lane is more of a psychological drama filled with twists and turns and solid performances that keep you on the edge of your seat for a surprisingly entertaining – or at least, attention-holding – two hours. For more (spoiler-free) insight and debate on 10 Cloverfield Lane, Knight of Cups, Embrace of the Serpent, and more, check out the latest CinemaClash podcast with me and my cinema nemesis Charlie Juhl:

No

Academy Award nominee No is another film based on a true story, but what makes it remarkable is that this story changed history. It takes place in Chile in 1988, when the brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet bowed to increasing international pressure and allowed the people to vote YES or NO to keep him in power. He assumed that it would be an easy win, what with his goon squad intimidating the country. But what he did not count on was the ad campaign that the NO side was able to muster. Think Don Draper takes on Hitler.

El Secreto de Sus Ojos (The Secret in their Eyes)

El Secreto de Sus Ojos was the very deserving winner of the 2010 Academy Award for best Foreign Film. (I have to admit it is the only one of those nominated that I have seen so far, so stay tuned.) It is both an absorbing crime thriller and a heartbreaking love story. Set in Buenos Aires, in the years between 1975 and 1999, the central character Benjamín Espósito is played by Ricardo Darín who reminds me of a Latin Alan Rickman, and I LOVE Alan Rickman. Darín is the same kind of sensitive, sensual actor.