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Fight Club is a visceral movie that can not be analyzed literally, as if the violence that is seen there is only that of a bunch of grown men punching themselves in a basement. There is, behind primary concretism, a critical view of consumerism as an obstacle to people's freedom. Without falling for proselytism, the plot begins with Jack (Edward Norton), called the Narrator - for reasons that will be seen in the end - in an uncomfortable situation. Threatened with death and stunned by an impending cataclysm, he begins to tell how he arrived in that situation. An employee of a vehicle manufacturer and travelling across the country to log faults in safety equipment, Jack has a severe insomnia issue, and when looking for a doctor, he tells him to stop whining and go to a support group meeting for testicular cancer patients to see what real suffering is. Jack does so and, interacting with these castrated men, finally manages to sleep. Addicted to support groups, the Narrator meets Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), who also attends these meetings, but as a kind of voyeur. The two are surprised but gradually establish communication that will be important in history. But the big jump of the plot is a particular night when Jack returns from a trip and finds his organized apartment destroyed by a fire. Without knowing why, he seeks shelter in the home of Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a soap salesman who had just met on the plane. Durden is an antagonistic personality to Jack and charms him with libertarian concepts. But it also surprises him with an unusual request: "Hit me as hard as you can!". The two fight and people approach and adhere to the ritual of males beating each other. It is the beginning of Fight Club, an organization that will lead violence to extreme levels. There is no way not to remember movies like Clockwork Orange. Still, here there is a succession of tricks and metalanguage games that make Fight Club an intriguing film, which, in addition to breaking with the so-called fourth wall, brings an undiscovered surprise present in the entire narrative from the beginning. The Fight Club review, made 20 years later, shows the prophetic character of the film by showing, in its end, the explosion of two twin towers in Los Angeles (Century Plaza Towers), as would happen two years later in New York, in the most significant terrorist attack ever carried out.

Minari is a beautiful film as any human life can be, but, as what happens with everyone else, dreams don’t always work out as they should. And this set of misadventures is told by the watchful eye of the six-year-old boy David (Alan Kim), a sort of alter ego of director Lee Isaac Chung. The story begins with the arrival of David and his family in the rural area of a small Arkansas town. He, his older sister, Anne (Noel Kate Cho), and his parents, Jacob (Steven Yeun) and Monica (Yeri Han), will live in a mobile home (with wheels) on an agricultural property with fallow land. While the expectation of harvesting typical Korean vegetables - to be sold to other Korean immigrants like them - is Jacob’s big dream, the idea deeply angers Monica who considers living in the middle of nowhere a threat to David’s health, that has murmur in the heart and cannot run or practice physical activities. The couple work in the morning on a local farm, sexing chicks, and return in the afternoon to take care of the house and prepare the future plantations. Jacob hires an aide named Paul (Will Patton), a Pentecostal who spends all his time praying and casting demons off the property. After several instances where the situation begins to become untenable between the couple, Jacob agrees to bring Monica’s mother - Soonja (Youn Yuh-jung) - to live with them. The arrival of this grandmother will introduce some cultural elements, but will add a delicious disorganization to the plot. Going to sleep in the same room, David and Soonja fell out, he because she does not act like the other grandmothers and spends the day cursing, watching wrestling on TV and "smells like Korea". The elderly woman says that her grandson does not look Korean (in fact he was born in the United States) and should, contrary to what he does, practice physical activities. Conflicts, unpleasantness and small tragedies follow and, in a way, we get used to the characters, as if we were part of the family.

Joker is not a movie about comics, like the ones we get used to in the Marvel Universe. Although released to tell the story of the origin of the arch-enemy of Batman, what you see here is a big, dark, and dramatic story about mental illness. At the beginning of the movie, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) laughs at his visit to the social worker (where he gets his medication). Arthur's laugh most resembles a painful and uncontrollable bout of crying. Going out into the street, he finds a filthy backdrop of a Gotham City paralyzed by a garbagemen strike. Some recognize a resemblance to Scorcese's Taxi Driver's New York. Not coincidentally, another essential character is the humorist and host Murray Franklin, lived by Robert de Niro. He is the opposite of that character he lived in another Scorcese movie - The King of Comedy. In Joker, De Niro is the boisterous host who is admired and imitated by Arthur, who spends the nights in the company of his ailing mother, Penny (Frances Conroy), watching the show and fantasizing about participation. Arthur works as a professional clown, animating birthday parties, and singing to sick children in hospitals. From reserved habits and oblivious to social contacts, he ends up being a victim of bullies, beaten on the street, ignored in his performances, and ridiculed by Murray in a video of a stand-up performance. A co-worker gives Arthur a weapon for self-protection, and access to this artifact seems to be the way through which a tormented and divided mind could find a way to express itself. He twists his bony torso in front of the TV with his .38 in hands. By then he is no longer Fleck: an evil entity inhabits him, in an almost imperceptible transition. When things start to get out of hand, Arthur is invited to the Murray show and asks to be called the Joker, name of the card with a jester. That's an appropriate archetype for a victim of society and influential politicians, like Thomas Wayne (future Batman's father), who calls activists "clowns." #philips #review

Tess was the first movie directed by Roman Polanski after his flight from America to get away from the accusations of rape. There is no way to talk about this subject (rape) when you look at Tess, for that is the big issue also in the book Tess of the d'Urbervilles by the British writer Thomas Hardy. The movie is superb. The cinematography of Geoffrey Unsworth, who died of a heart attack during filming, is stunning. Nastassja Kinski is so perfectly beautiful, demure and vulnerable that her seduction seems inevitable. Sent by her father, a drunken farmer from Wessex County, to visit a wealthy family whom they believe are relatives, young Tess receives a job offer from her supposed cousin, the avid Alec who, in the first dialogue, already asks if the girl would be coming in search of pleasure. Raped by her "cousin", Tess returns to her parents' farm where she finds herself pregnant. The sick son soon dies, but Tess is forbidden to bury him in a Christian graveyard because of its origin and the certainty of the local society that the death of the child would be a punishment from God. Tess goes to milk cows on a farm and meets the pastor's son, Angel Clare, with whom she falls in love with. By the arts of fate, Tess cannot tell her secret to her future husband, only being able to do it on their wedding night. The beloved cannot bear to absorb the truth and leaves the wife, going to Brazil in search of a new life. Abandoned, Tess is again besieged by her cousin whom she rejects at first, but by whom she becomes a lover to help her (now a widow) mother and her siblings. Sick, Angel returns from America deeply regretted by the way he treated Tess and, after many searches, manages to ask her forgiveness in the house where the girl lives with Alec. Tess decides to eliminate the person responsible for her absurd suffering, flees with Angel and finally consumes her happy marriage. Trapped by police at Stonehenge, a well-known altar of sacrifice, Tess is arrested and sentenced to death. #polanski #review

You Can’t Take It With You is an ode to the cinema. At the age of eighty, there is nothing that makes it more naive or outdated. In the residence of Grandpa Vanderhof people live together and do exactly what they want and only what they want: children, grandchildren, sons-in-law or simply people who went there and did not leave. This anarchic family-community, perhaps a harbinger of what, thirty years later, would become the hippies contrasts sharply with the other family plot, the grumpy banker JP Kirby who, investing in the design of an ammunition plant (the movie is prior to World War II), needs to buy a whole neighborhood, but his investment is frustrated precisely by a resident who insists on not selling his property: Vanderhof that regards ​​more the family values ​​than any value in money. But another quarrel makes the fate of families intersect: the romance between J. P.’s son and vice president of the company, Tony, and his secretary Alice, by chance Grandpa's granddaughter who does not want to sell the house. The scene of the rich family's visit to the Sycamores house is worthy of the so-called screwball comedies of the 1930s, though the film lacks a vocation for laughter, drifting to incredibly modern themes like greed for more and more money, impoverishment of the population (would the 2008-09 Recession be a remake of the Great Depression?), and even the fear of the "red peril," the Communist threat that has been attending America's electoral agendas. The ending of the movie is a good example of what was called in the Capra-corn era, movies that extol the best that was (and still is) in human nature: sensitivity, gentleness, humility, and good humor. If we understand that mankind is governed by greed, selfishness and lack of love, it is easy to understand how the solutions of You Can’t Take It With You lead us to moments of pure enlightenment and dream. As Vanderhof persuades the accountant Poppins to leave the bank and move to his house to make masks and toys, he, still wary, says: "the die is cast". #capra #review

Curious is the word "subversive" that has been the adjective most applied to The Last Tango in Paris. Curious because, 46 years ago, when the film was released, subversive sounded like a libertarian in Europe and a destroyer of good manners in Third World countries. Now, on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, and on the director's death week, the film reappears in the media as offensive or disturbing. But what was, at the time of the launch of The Last Tango in Paris, and is on the rise again, is a real inability to deal with sexual themes, an inability that never ceased to exist, but sounded a little tacky in "culturally correct" environment. Paul and Jeanne met in a Paris apartment for rent in 1972. For some of these reasons that seem strange but certainly inhabit the minds of many, the 45-year-old man kisses the 20-year-old girl and initiates a sexual breakthrough that just cannot be considered rape by her agreement. From there they begin a relationship with the condition, imposed by the American, that no names or personal details were revealed. The movie is so restricted in this respect that we never knew the name of Rosa's mother, Paul's wife who had just committed suicide. If social intimacy does not appear, sexual intercourse is wide open, potty-mouth and dirty (in a good sense, we might say). Bertolucci leaves the actors free for improvisations, and what you see are moments of pure lyricism. Impossible to forget the metamorphosis lived by Paul, a violent man in a little boy sobbing next to the body of his dead wife. There is also an emblematic scene that we might classify as prophetic, in which Jeanne voices against her fiancé Tom, who is filming her life, complaints about how she "can not stand being used" and even "feels raped", phrases that would be employed by the actress Maria Schneider later, in the real life. The photograph of Vittorio Storaro and the music of Gato Barbieri frame this work of art. #bertolucci #review

Apocalypse Now is not a war movie. Conceived initially from Joseph Conrad's book Heart of Darkness, which tells of the pursuit of an adventurer in the jungles of the Congo, he was transposed into the Vietnam War, where he certainly found a scenario even gloomier than the original story. What you see in the movie are guns. Weapons that, at first glance, would be the most obvious element of a "war" movie, but which, during the narrative, show their power to bring forth the horror and power of destruction that, we discover, dwells in each one of us. The main plot shows Captain Willard, from the so-called "special forces" (read license to kill), who, like a backward Ulysses, heads to a remote location on the battlefield in Cambodia, with the mission of exterminating the Colonel Kurtz, a decorated officer who, insane, starts to command an army of mountaineers as if he were a demigod. On board a US Navy patrol boat in the company of four crew members, the captain climbs the Nùng River on a mind-blowing bad trip laden with icons of the American way of life as background for destruction. Thus, a surfing competition is why Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore (who loves the smell of napalm in the morning) destroys all the vegetation of an island. On a routine inspection on a fishing boat, a puppy becomes a motive for slaughter. Two of the boat's characters are equally ridiculously killed. Strangely, the encounter with Colonel Kurtz (the moment we finally find Marlon Brando, though half hidden by Vittorio Storaro's magical lenses) is not as shocking as the expectation of reviewing the best actor in the world in action. But nothing, neither the revivals nor alternative endings nor criticism nor problems of production take from Apocalypse Now the brilliance of being one of the darker films already released, and one of the majors in the history of the cinema. #coppola #review

When asked why I started Filmes Fodásticos (Fuckastic Movies in English), I answer that it is for people to feel tempted to watch movies like The Seventh Seal. There is always this curious belief by people who simply go to the movies that the movie must "show" something or "teach" something or whatever. As if art (cinema is an art, remember?) had some utilitarian function. Ingmar Bergman becomes annoyingly perfect in building this movie. They say about psychological plot or film about death, but the story shows an almost psychotic clarity about an eternal subject: fear, and, in a special way, the fear of being alone. Hence the despair of God's absence. Antonius Block, the knight who perceives to have wasted ten years of his life on the Crusades recognizes: "I cry for him (God) in the dark but there is no one there." Curiously, the only fantastic figure present is the Death who, with his black cloak, says to accompany the knight throughout his journey. Block proposes to the entity a game of chess, not to delay its departure but to speculate about God (without success). The game runs through the entire movie until the horseman cheats, and in a seemingly suicidal move, manages to save the life of a couple of artists of a troupe: Jose, Maria, and his son. Beside the squire Jons, who, unlike the traditional auxiliaries, is literate, philosopher and atheist, the knight returns to his castle through a scene of destruction in which are mixed black plague, Romanesque architecture, the burning of a teenage witch and the passage of a multitude of pilgrims practicing self-flagellation. The end of the movie is not equally palatable to moviegoers. Asking who wins the game of chess is irrelevant when we learn that Death never loses. And will never lose. The artists lead their wagon to the horizon, while Joseph, who is a sort of seer, observes: "The strict Lord of Death put them all to dance." Maria doubts about her husband's visions. And the child smiles. #bergman #review

If not mentioned its release year, 1971, Clockwork Orange could be mistaken for a modern documentary on gangs. The subject here is not the violence itself, which caused the ban on the movie in several countries, but it is about politics, which appears all the time in the plot as a mechanism (clockwork?) for the maintenance of the status quo. Thus, protagonist Alex DeLarge leads his group of droogies ("friends" in the dialect Nadsat in which the film is narrated, and also in the book by Anthony Burgess), organizing the inherent activities of the youths of that dystopian society: beating beggars, rapes, robberies and depredations in general. Alex's post-correctional counselor, the bizarre Fr. R. Deltoid, just waits for the time when his ward to commit some crime to hand him over to (equally violent) police. The opportunity does not delay, as the boy ends up killing a cheeky cat breeder and is sentenced to 14 years in prison. Already in prison, and now a devoted chaplain's associate, Alex volunteers for a government-sponsored behavior change experiment. Called Ludovico's treatment, the experience consisted of implanting an aversive response to visual stimuli of violent scenes. By accident, the soundtrack to a film about Nazi atrocities is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Alex's most beloved song that will thereafter be equally painful for the "regenerate" prisoner. No longer the perpetrator, Alex becomes a victim. Not only of the state but also of all its ancient objects of torment. One of its victims, a leader of the opposition to the government, puts the protagonist in a limit situation, so that, when seeking to kill himself, he invalidates the official chemical treatment. By force of destiny, Alex leaves alive, although with many fractures, of the opposition attempt. Realizing his importance as a media pawn in the power game, Alex finally discovers the place where he can exercise his psychopathy in an institutionalized and liberating way: politics. #kubrick #review

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is an obligatory film in all aspects. And this is because the concept of the "bourgeoisie" has been changing through the ages. However, whatever the occasion, some features, all of them very clear in the film, will prevail: hypocrisy, narcissism, selfishness, and a certain amount of stupidity. As described by the Brazilian singer Cazuza after stating that "the bourgeoisie stinks," Buñuel makes clear with his characters that the bourgeoisie wants to be rich. They are people who stand above the hungry crowd but well below the elite: advisors to politicians, bishops, colonels, diplomats. Today we would all be the ones who posted photos on Facebook showing our barbecues and a boat tour at San Antonio. At this point, the most striking feature of the film appears: although characters are ALWAYS at dinners, where the recurring subject is food itself, they can NEVER eat, either because they miss the date or because the chef is being veiled in a coffin next to the kitchen or even interrupted by military maneuvers (great!). It is as if, through cynical humor, the director condemned the bourgeoisie to never participate in the great capitalist banquet. In this context, the concept of bourgeoisie ceases to appear in political or economic significations. Here the bourgeoisie is a pure fetish, as, indeed, disseminated in social media today. Fetish is another trademark of the director. In this work, it appears in multiple tones: the couple who decide to have sex in the garden at the same time that the guests arrive for dinner, the bishop who becomes excited when dressing as a gardener (and ends up expelled from the house, until returning with his clerical dress and have his ring kissed), and in a scene worthy of Marx (the brothers), Don Rafael Acosta, ambassador of a fictitious Latin country, escapes from a firing that hits all the guests hiding under the table, but ends up betrayed when trying to get a piece of ham Bourgeoisie, in 1972, were the others. Today, maybe we are all of us. #buñuel #review

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a movie that surpasses the shallow concept of animation and launches (webs?) in a well-elaborated plot that ends up being an autonomous work, far beyond the kitsch universe of the minor heroes of Hollywood and with artistic pretensions unimaginable. The story subverts what you have become used to see in movies born of comic books. To begin with, the hero, Miles Morales, is a Brooklyn boy of black-Spanish descent. At the outset, the great drama of the boy's life is the difficulty of getting in touch with the staff of his new private school, where he was taken by his father (sometimes literally by car), a tough cop who vehemently disapproves the work of the vigilante Spider-Man who (calm!) either exists and is not yet our main character. The plot is elaborated within the notion of multiple universes, but these concepts do not weigh the development of the scenes, always executed with much precision and beauty. In fact, what strikes the Aranha-Verse is the force of images, which occur naturally without being attached to any specific style. At no point does the movie try to convince viewers that it is not an animation itself. On the contrary, the colors explode on the screen, in psychedelia that superimposes the textures of old comics with the modern features of live action. The amazing thing is that everything is done at the same time, overlapping rough elements with a highly evolved design. When the various spidermen begin to emerge, as a side effect of a particle accelerator capable of fusing multiple multiverses, the visual impact is accentuated because there is a mix of styles, including the bizarre 2D pig Spider-Ham or the Spider-Man Noir in black and white. However, the art direction is perfect, the dialogues remain consistent and, what is the great quality of the film, the good mood is contagious. Even though the fight with the King of Crime is over and the conflict with his father is resolved, the new Spider-Man of this universe remains connected with parallel universes, culminating in a sensational scene in post-credits. #ramsey #persichetti #rothman #review

Last Year at Marienbad is a movie unlike anything seen in the movies. Many call it a cinematic experience, and it is not known if it is an experience of the public in the search for new languages, ​​or an experience of filmmakers, director Alain Resnais and screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet, to test the resilience of viewers. Not that the film is toxic. On the contrary, Last Year is beautiful, with impeccable cinematography, a perfect art direction, and an absolutely revolutionary edition. But what makes the work controversial is his refusal to provide any kind of gratification to the audience. Starting with the characters who are not even named. We have characters identified in the script by the letters A, X and M. What do these letters mean? Would they be initials? No one knows. The plot, at first simplistic, will prove to be much more confusing than it seems. In a baroque castle, which could also be a hotel or a mansion, X is a man who seeks to retake a possible romance begun the previous year with A, a beautiful woman. However, she does not remember the affair and not even X, although he claims there was a promise that they would both run away together. To counteract this insistence, easily classified as harassment nowadays, we have M, an enigmatic man, an inveterate player, who can be both A's husband and some kind of protector. The action (if so-called) is all staged, with many characters remaining motionless and others moving, the few dialogues most often refer to fortuitous, totally irrelevant events that, when they reach a deadlock, are "checked" in the library. Scenes are repeated endlessly, often described in off, the settings do not match what is narrated and the characters get involved and move away. There seems to be a tragedy or an accident, but in the end, X reports to the audience that A has agreed to leave with him, although we are not sure whether it is a matter of reality or pure illusion. As often occurs in movies. #resnais #review