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Juror # 2 , which rumours suggest may be Clint Eastwood's final directed film, expresses discontent with how justice is carried out in the United States. In Jonathan A. Abrams' sometimes cynical screenplay, the judicial system itself is judged for the way personal interests take precedence. This trial involves juror Justin (Nicholas Hoult), who wants to return home quickly because his wife Allison (Zoey Deutch) is about to have a baby, and prosecutor Faith (Toni Collette), who intends to "close" the case promptly because she's campaigning for election. Upon arriving at the courthouse in Savannah, Georgia, Justin is worried about his wife, who previously experienced a miscarriage. He focuses and hopes for unanimity in the jury until he realizes that he himself might be guilty of running over the victim . Recovering from alcoholism, Justin was at the bar where the defendant, James (Gabriel Basso), had a serious argument with his girlfriend Kendell (Francesca Eastwood, the director's daughter) on a rainy night. She left alone to return home, he followed her in his truck; and sometime later, she was found dead. Eastwood does everything to "delay" the verdict The incident is reconstructed through the versions of prosecutor Faith and defence attorney Eric (Chris Messina). At the same time, Justin deals with his own fragmented flashbacks from the night of the alleged homicide. When the jurors are called to deliberate, it becomes clear that both sides have weak arguments: although the defendant is clearly suspicious, the autopsy is inconclusive, and the only witness proves unreliable. Eastwood does everything to "delay" the jury's consensus, where retired police officer Harold (J.K. Simmons) begins to doubt the prosecutor's version. At the same time, juror Marcus (Yarbrough) is certain of the defendant's guilt. Tormented by his memories, Justin opposes a quick conviction, but without exposing himself, as he knows no one would believe he wasn't drinking that night . After the trial concludes and life returns to normal for everyone, Faith goes to Justin's house. He answers the door and the two stand face to face in silence.

Jojo Rabbit (Roman Griffin Davis) is a ten-year-old boy who lives in Germany in the late years of World War II. Therefore, it is understandable and very normal that his role model is a character considered heroic by the German nation of the time: Adolf Hitler (Taika Waititi), who is even his imaginary friend. Of course, creating a caricature view of the Führer can be problematic within a current film. Still, director Taika Waititi conducts the narrative to superimpose fantastic and funny scenes with painful moments and extreme violence. Accustomed to a conscious and enlightened view of the barbarities of the Third Reich, we tend to call banality the treatment given to the pathetic Hitler. Actually, the apparent innocence of the German leader generates his strength, both for children and for infantilized crowds who idolize him as a good companion. Thus, Johannes tries to insert himself into the Nazi youth. Still, his pure and innocent nature does not adapt naturally to the culture of the destruction of the enemy that characterizes the ideology of the dominant culture at the time. However, bullying is mitigated by the ambiguity of the training camp commander, Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell), who is sometimes ruthless and sensitive. When, after an accident with a grenade, Jojo is forced to stay at home, he makes a discovery that is the great twist of the film: his mother, Rosie (Scarlett Johansson), hides a Jew, the young Elsa ((Thomasin McKenzie), in an attic bedroom closet. The character's introduction creates tough questions for the kid, and liking the clandestine resident is the least of them. Suddenly, the aspiring Nazi becomes intimate in real life with a girl he thinks is a monster and begins to walk away from a monster he thinks is a friend. And what's worse, not being able to report her so as not to put your mother at risk. Naturally, history follows its course and everything that has to happen happens. The movie's end is somewhat melancholy without the contradictions that move it.

The Phantom Carriage is a 1921 silent movie that impresses with its consistency, soundtrack, regular use of flashbacks - a technique still recent in films - and special effects. Taken in double exposure, expertly recorded by the cinematography of Julius Jaenzon and director Victor Sjöström, they portray spirits detaching from the bodies. The story begins on New Year’s Eve with the kind SalvationArmy nurse Sister Edit (Astrid Holm) on her deathbed with pneumonia. Even in her last moments, she insists that she needs to see David Holm (Sjöström himself) because she wants to make sure she saved her soul. In the city cemetery, David, an evil man who abandoned his family for alcohol, drinks with two friends and speaks of his companion Georges (Tore Svennberg), who disappeared on December 31 of the previous year. We discover later that he actually died that day and that this occurrence subjects people to a curse. Whoever dies on the last day of the year must drive the chariot of death for the next twelve months. David discovers this in the worst possible way. When arguing with friends, he ends up murdered, and it is Georges himself, as the driver of the sinister vehicle, who transfers the curse to him. But before that, the former companion takes David on tour for all the mistakes made in the past. In a series of flashbacks, we witness all the drunkard’s torments to his family, to the point that his wife (Hilda Borgström) did not want to continue living. We also see all the suffering of Edit, who committed for a year to save the soul of the alcoholic, even getting infected by him with the disease that is taking his life. At the last moment, face to face with the spectre that will lead her to the world of the dead, the salvationist still tries one last miracle. The macabre film was watched by a child named Ingmar Bergman who, years later, would invite Sjöström to his film Wild Strawberries , coincidentally about death.

Uncut Gems is an asphyxiating movie with a quick narrative, overlapping dialogues and always surprising approach. There is no way to predict movements, and actors act as if there is no script, hardly listening to each other precisely as we do in our natural world. Most of the scenes go from the perspective of Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler). Soon we are introduced to this explosive protagonist from the inside out: the initial scene is a colonoscopy. Continuing action, Howard is on the streets of New York on his way to his jewelry store, bumping into and interacting with all sorts of crooks, thieves and abusive pawnshop owners. The arrival at his store reveals more chaotic situations. Among the customers, there are two thugs hired by his brother-in-law Arno (Eric Bogosian), with whom Howard has a debt he never pays because he is always betting on the money he can earn. Dividing his life between his wife (in the separation phase) Dinah (Idina Menzel), and his mistress Julia (Julia Fox), the Jewish businessman seems to be constantly at the bottom and digging. His last hope is the last McGuffin: a piece of rock encrusted by multicoloured opals that we see at the film's beginning has come out of a mine in Ethiopia. Taken by business partner Demany (LaKeith Stanfield), basketball star Kevin Garnett (himself) is enchanted by the jewel and asks to take it to the Celtics game as an amulet; he leaves his NBA championship ring in escrow. Howard has no doubts: he pawns the ring and bets everything on the play where Garnett will act. When Howard expects to receive the ring back, to take it to the alleged millionaire auction, the athlete does not return. With this, the jeweller can not recover the ring, and the reprisals of Arno's collectors are becoming increasingly personal and violent. The result is the characteristic humour of the Safdies brothers, who direct the film. Although captivating, it is not an aesthetic that provokes laughter but only anguish. If the end was more or less expected, it still seems uncut.

Watching the release of a cinematic masterpiece is an indescribable thrill, and when a director like Martin Scorsese signs it, it's like diving into an unknown yet intoxicating landscape. 'Killers of the Flower Moon' is simultaneously a romance, western, drama, crime film, and even a mystery.   All these genres flow and intertwine in the 3 hours and 26 minutes of screening, from the moment war veteran but still young Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) disembarks at the Fairfax, Oklahoma train station in search of a new life.   Soon, he'll be greeted by Uncle William Hale (the always fantastic Robert De Niro), a prosperous cattle rancher known as 'the King of the Osage Hills,' an indigenous tribe expelled from Kansas who, ironically, discovered oil in that region, making the ethnic group the wealthiest in the world in the early 20th century.   Hale's concern is to know if his nephew is healthy and fond of women and money. Upon confirmation, he states that the Osage are 'the most refined, richest, and most beautiful people on God's earth.' Love and Death on Flower Moon Following this advice, but also out of mutual enchantment, Ernest meets and marries Mollie Kyle (the excellent Lily Gladstone), an Osage woman living in his house with her ailing mother, Lizzie Q (Tantoo Cardinal). With this, the young man enters the line of succession of the wealthy girl's property.   The multifaceted romance between them never hints at any sinister motives. However, Mollie's sisters have all died under violent and inexplicable circumstances, leaving their husbands as heirs to a great fortune.   This succession of supposed crimes eventually leads to a significant federal investigation involving the powerful J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the FBI, who sends Agent Tom White (Jesse Plemons) to Oklahoma.   The outcome of the investigations, evident in the book of the same name on which the film is based, becomes somewhat controversial for the viewer, not because it's unexpected, but because Scorsese's ability to defy conventions leaves us utterly perplexed. "

There is something sad and unsettling about Aftersun, Charlotte Wells' simple debut movie. The presence of a camcorder and the absence of cell phones indicate that the story takes place in the past, a record made by a father and daughter on vacation in Turkey. At the beginning, the young girl Sophie (Frankie Corio) reveals that she has just turned 11, while her father, Calum (Paul Mescal), will be "131" in two days .  From the scrambled images, we notice that someone is rewinding the VHS tape from the two's goodbye at the end of the film to the beginning. It is a moment of pure happiness between the young father, who no longer lives with Sophie and her mother. So, where does the sadness come from? The movie makes us sad for no apparent reason. Days pass between lazy lounging by the pool (not forgetting the sunscreen), snorkelling, and dinners with old music. The only exception is "Losing My Religion," sung by Sophie at a karaoke. Upset because Calum refuses to sing with her, Sophie spends the night with a group of English teenagers and ends up with a friend her age, with whom she usually plays arcade games. Alone, Calum walks towards the waves. Last Dance We think something serious might happen that night. Sophie, on the verge of adolescence, feels grown up and independent. Calum, who confesses to being surprised to have reached 30 in a conversation with a diving instructor, exudes calmness but practices Tai Chi Chuan (a Chinese stress-relieving technique) and reads self-help books. We often see scenes in a rave with strobe lights where a woman (later identified as the adult Sophie, played by Celia Rowlson-Hall) tries to hug Calum in the dark, but he runs away. In the final scene of the trip, Calum convinces Sophie to dance with him to the song Under Pressure , with emphasis on the verses repeated by David Bowie and Fred Mercury: "This is our last dance."

I’m Still Here  is not an easy film to watch, given the anguish it evokes and the helplessness it exposes. However, it is mandatory, especially for nostalgic individuals of an era they never lived, who boast that it was "good" for Brazil. It was not. From the very first moment, when housewife Eunice (Fernanda Torres) swims in the calm waters of Leblon beach in Rio de Janeiro, a military helicopter, flying low, darkens the previously tranquil landscape with the noise of its rotor, like a metaphor. The script is based on a true story, from the film's namesake book , written by Eunice's son, Marcelo Rubens Paiva, and recounts the last moments of his father, former federal deputy Rubens Beyrodt Paiva. A jolly father (Selton Mello physically resembles him), from the upper-middle class, Rubens has a peaceful life, economically stable and many ongoing real estate projects. The house is always full of festivities, with many friends, dances, drinks, good cigars, and international travels. Within this happy setting, Eunice intuits that something is happening and fears every time Rubens receives mysterious phone calls. The threat materializes On January 20, 1971, the threat materializes in the form of a group of armed men who appear out of nowhere, invade the house, manipulate the couple's records and books, and "invite" Rubens to give a statement at the Army barracks. Adrian Tejido's nuanced and nervous photography becomes static and somber. Eunice and her 15-year-old daughter Eliana (Luiza Kosovski) are taken to DOI-CODI, where we are literally left in the dark , until the protagonist returns home, without her husband. From that point on, Fernanda Torres becomes Maria Lucrécia Eunice Facciolla, one of the many women who faced the military dictatorship and led the fight against information manipulations to conceal the fate of prisoners, tortured and murdered. Eunice's struggle only finds closure 25 years later , when in 1996, she obtained a death certificate and acknowledgment of her husband's death by the dictatorship.

As if it were a documentary of the time, Argentina, 1985 brings a reconstruction of the country’s scenario in photography with an aspect ratio of 1.66:1, with which the experienced cinematographer Javier Juliá manages to print a claustrophobic sensation (not by chance) in the internal scenes. In the external ones, the natural and indirect lighting prints a realistic atmosphere. Released in a period where several groups of fascist orientation have assumed positions of power, Santiago Mitre’s work portrays the suffocating situation of the Argentine population, recently out of a seven-year dictatorship. The return to democratic normality was still threatened by the fear of a resistant wing of the army. A watershed moment in this dark moment of Argentine history, the trial made by a civil court has a challenging mission: to prosecute the military chiefs who ruled the country during the so-called years of terror in which people disappeared from their homes, to be tortured or killed. The chief prosecutor, Carlos Enrique Strassera, played in the film by Ricardo Darín, was chosen to play the role of accuser. Not at all heroic, the public servant lives in a modest apartment with his wife Silvia (Alejandra Flechner, fantastic) and his children Veronica (Gina Mastronicola) and Javier (Santiago Armas Estevaren). In forming his team, Strassera soon realizes that most of the existing lawyers fall into the categories “dead,” “fascist,” or “super fascist.” After appointing as co-counselor the young idealist Luis Moreno Ocampo (played by the great Peter Lanzani), the accuser opts for a true “Brancaleone’s army” formed by young newly graduated lawyers. After this intro, which mixes family scenes and behind-the-scenes team formation, the film reaches its dramatic point during the trial, bringing to light the devastating reports of kidnapping, torture, and murder. One of the most impactful - made by Adriana Calvo de Laborde (Laura Paredes) - tells how she was tortured during her labor.

The Whale is a disturbing, suffocating film set in a dimly lit environment. One of the reasons for this invitation to anguish is the camera work of director of photography Matthew Libatique who, guided by the famously self-destructive hand of Darren Aronofsky, avoids any outdoor scene at all costs. The journey of protagonist Charlie (Brendan Fraser) goes, at most, as far as the balcony but never leaves it. Most of the time, the director remains faithful to Samuel D. Hunter's play, not only in terms of the set design but also in terms of the stage style, as if we were watching a live performance. Therefore, the feeling experienced by the professor of being trapped at home and, ultimately, in his body is shared by all of us in the cinema. Charlie teaches online writing classes for university assignments, and none of the students can see him because he turns off the camera on his laptop. We soon discover that the man has always been corpulent, but after his lover's suicide, his relationship with food "got out of control." The consequences are high blood pressure, heart arrhythmia, and severe mobility difficulties. The film becomes an exercise in complicity where we share Charlie's corporeality, from his muffled breathing and tender, sad eyes to details of his anatomy deformed by obesity, which can be repugnant. The story of The Whale takes place in a decisive week, in which several visits occur to try to change the character's fate: his friend and caregiver Liz (Hong Chau), a boring young missionary named Thomas (Ty Simpkins), and his daughter Ellie - from whom Charlie has distanced himself - played with pre-adolescent ferocity by Sadie Sink. "Whale" is not just a metaphor for Charlie's oversized body but refers to a school assignment about Moby Dick, which the professor keeps as a talisman. The way the person who wrote the text, only revealed at the end of the film, talks about the novel's main character Ishmael's problems, as if describing Charlie's own life.

"No good movie is too long," said Roger Ebert, the greatest film critic ever. And this can be proven in The Irishman, Martin Scorsese's latest masterpiece, which, in its three-a-half hours of runtime, enchants, surprises, and provides the kind of experience that only great works of art deliver. Based on the book I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt, the script tells the story of "the Irishman" Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), known for his involvement in the promiscuous relationship between American unions of the 1960s and 1970s and organized crime. In the literary work, Sheeran claims to have killed Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), the most outstanding union leader in the United States. With the freedom granted by Netflix, one of the film's producers, Scorsese weaves a collage of Sheeran's memories with slow scenes that serve as a guiding thread for the narrative: a long car trip with his friend Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) and their wives, between Philadelphia and Detroit, for the wedding of Bufalino's niece. Lawyer Bufalino is a kind of mentor to Sheeran and was responsible for introducing him to the main bosses of the city's mafia, Felix DiTullio (Bobby Cannavale) and the "Gentle Don," Angelo Bruno (Harvey Keitel). Each character is introduced with a caption informing how their death will be. The narrative is a journey that begins in the 1940s and presents most of the episodes in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Although the critical element of the book is the death of the iconic president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union, the film focuses on the relationship between Sheeran, Hoffa (who disappeared and was never found), and Bufalino. At the film's end, the story returns to the nursing home corridor where the once-powerful "painter of walls" (a code used by the mafia to define professional killers) has just prayed with a young priest. Sheeran asks the religious man to leave the door ajar when he leaves, perhaps hoping for forgiveness from his daughters.

Until Amarcord, the adjective Fellinian used to be defined as "burlesque," "allegorical," and "imagistic." Amarcord, who would be a corruption of mi recordo (I remember) in the dialect of Rimini, the director's hometown, introduced scenes inspired by Federico Fellini's adolescence which, he said, were NOT memories, at least conscious, palpable. And those things that cannot be touched, like le manine at the beginning of the movie (small flakes that fall from the trees and dissolve in the hands of the people), are contents symbolized but not expressed, as if it were possible to capture on screen the dreams, jokes and Freudian slips of a psychoanalysis session. Magnificent, this movie is perhaps one of the most exciting expressions of male perplexity toward women. In a magical enchantment that borders the dread, we see these strange beings that, at first glance, cause excitement and promises, convert into natural threats, explosive estrogen deposits. Some say that under mass repression of the Catholic Church and of fascism at the time, all men regressed to a pubertal stage, which may explain the ambiguity of Titta (the boy who may be Fellini, portrayed by Bruno Zanin) who, in contact with the giant breasts of the owner of the tobacconist (Maria Antonietta Beluzzi), more resembles a choking baby than a happy lover. What happened in that little town of the 1930s is that men expressed themselves through phallic symbols (the communist anthem in the church tower, the mural of flowers composing the face of the Duce, the peacock in the snow), challenging nature, whereas women WERE (are always) nature itself. Gradisca (Magali Noël), the great object of desire of the ragazzi, was only given (literally) to the powerful. The prostitute Volpina (Josiane Tanzilli), the only unrestrained person in the village, was frightened and disgusted and walked alone on the beach. The movie ends the way it started. During the marriage of Gradisca with a fascist officer, le manini return to announce the beginning of the new spring. Titta (Fellini?) has been gone for some time, they say. Without realizing the end of the ceremony, the blind accordionist continues to play the unforgettable music of Nino Rota. , #fellini #review

The Worst Person in the World is a dramedy directed with brilliance and extreme sensitivity by the Norwegian Joachim Trier. In the opening scene, Julie (Renate Reinsve) smokes and fingers her cell phone at an anticipated time in Chapter 2 (there are 12 chapters plus a prologue and an epilogue). As in most of the movie, the protagonist is out of place. "I feel like a spectator of my own life," she says. After studying - and then becoming uninterested - in Medicine, Psychology and Photography, Julie becomes a bookstore clerk. At the age of thirty, all the expectations of youth suddenly turn into relentless imperatives of adult life: having a fixed job, children, stable relationship among other standards of the status quo. In this sea of uncertainty (is there any absolute certainty?), she meets Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie), a famous cartoonist who created a politically incorrect character. Ten years older than Julie, he soon proposes that the two not be together because their life priorities will always be mismatched. She agrees to leave, and he falls in love. The couple stays together. Aksel proves to be a good enough, understanding and fun partner, but there is something in the relationship that doesn't work, not for what they do, but for what they both are. This fact sometimes leaves Julie on the fringes of what happens, and she has enough courage to be ravishingly reckless and abandon the situation in search of personal happiness, which she doubts. In one of those moments when Julie is "out of context" (that initial scene), she walks through the streets and, entering a wedding party where she does not know anyone, meets Eivind (Herbert Nordrum). With the commitment not to betray their partners, they go beyond the moment's passion in a hilarious ritual of "allowed" intimacies. The chapters follow each other as a sometimes chaotic set of beginnings and endings, small victories and unexpected tragedies that, like any human life, is full of disappointments for the plans that, inevitably, are never fulfilled.