terça-feira, 16 de setembro de 2008
THE HAPPENING
Nem sempre o M. Night Shyamalan é bem interpretado. Nem sei se esse filme já chegou por aqui.
DAZED AND CONFUSED (1993)
É do Richard Linklate (Antes do amanhecer). Só pra conferir se vale a pena.
ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: LIFE THROUGH A LENS
É um documentário sobre uma das mais conceituadas fotógrafas de moda dos EUA.
segunda-feira, 15 de setembro de 2008
sexta-feira, 5 de setembro de 2008
HARD EIGHT (1996)
Before his commercial breakthrough with Boogie Nights (1997), writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson made this low-key drama. John (John C. Reilly), a half-bright loser stranded in Reno, is down to his last few bucks when Sydney (Phillip Baker Hall), taking pity on him, buys him breakfast and offers him a few tips on making money in the casinos. Two years later, John has become Sydney's partner, but his lack of common sense goes from problematic to dangerous when he falls in love with Clementine (Gwyneth Paltrow), a cocktail waitress who isn't above turning a few tricks when she needs to make money — and isn't any brighter than John. Hall and Reilly, both first-rate character actors, are cast in rare leading roles, and Paltrow is cast strongly against type as a part-time prostitute with a serious lack of street smarts.
MARGOT AND THE WEDDING
Margot at the Wedding, writer/director Noah Baumbach's follow-up to his Oscar-nominated The Squid and the Whale, stars Nicole Kidman as Margot, a woman who travels with her son to the wedding of her sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh). The relationship between the two siblings has never been harmonious, a situation that is exacerbated when Margot discovers she cares very little for her sister's fiancé (Jack Black). Soon the high-strung Margot escalates a feud between her sister and the neighbors, and family secrets come to light, forcing everyone to rethink their various feelings toward each other.
WHEN HARRY MET SALLY (1989)
Rob Reiner's romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally stars Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan as the title pair. The film opens with the two strangers, both newly graduated from the University of Chicago, share a car trip from Chicago to New York, where they are both going to make their way. During the trip, they discuss aspects of their characters and their lives, eventually deciding it is impossible for men and women to be "just friends." They arrive in New York and go their separate ways. They meet a few years later on an airplane and Harry reveals he is married. They meet again at a bookstore a few years after that where Harry reveals he is now divorced. From that point on, the two form a friendship. Eventually their closeness results in their respective best friends (played by Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby) meeting and falling in love with each other. At a New Year's Eve party Harry and Sally confront the complex tangle of emotions they feel for each other. The soundtrack consists primarily of Harry Connick Jr. crooning standards like "It Had to Be You."
MYSTERY TRAIN (1989)
Written and directed by the ever-unpredictable Jim Jarmusch, Mystery Train is comprised of three short anecdotes involving foreign tourists in Tennessee. Each story is set in a fleabag Memphis hotel which has been redressed as a "tribute" to Elvis Presley. Story #1 involves two Japanese tourists whose devotion to Elvis blinds them of everything around them. Story #2 finds eternal victim Nicoletta Braschi sharing a room with stone-broke Elizabeth Bracco and having her problems solved by a spectral vision of The King. And story #3 offers the further misadventures of Bracco, her no-good boyfriend and her dysfunctional family. Any film that features Screamin' Jay Hawkins as a hotel clerk has us squarely in its pocket.
COCAINE COWBOYS (2006)
In the early '80s, a new business emerged in Miami, FL, that changed the face of the city forever. That business was cocaine smuggling; as America developed a growing appetite for the drug, Colombian suppliers found that Miami was a good place to bring it into the United States, and a new breed of outlaws were more than happy to face the risks of importing cocaine in exchange for the massive profits to be made. At one time, cocaine runners were making so much money that the city's banks were running out of room to store the cash, and smugglers were developing new ways to move the product, from floating tanks with radio tracking devices dropped into the ocean to cars stashed with drugs so well-connected drivers with tow trucks could haul them away and abandon them if necessary. The profits from Miami's cocaine explosion helped to transform the city into a major American playground, but it also brought a criminal element interested in more than just dealing drugs, as bloody reprisals between competing gangs of smugglers became commonplace, and hitmen began working overtime to keep up with the demand for revenge. Billy Corben and Alfred Spellman are a pair of Miami-based filmmakers who were able persuade a number of key figures from Miami's '80s cocaine trade to speak on-camera about their exploits, as well as law enforcement officials who struggled to keep up with them. The result was Cocaine Cowboys, a true-life thriller about the underworld culture that helped spawn the film Scarface and the television series Miami Vice. Jan Hammer, who composed the Miami Vice theme song, created a like-minded score for the documentary.
KIDS (1995)
Kids offers a bleak, unblinking view of a group of vacuous, thoughtless New York City teens in their ceaseless quest for sex, drugs, and trouble. The film primarily follows Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick), who, having just realized the conquest of his latest virgin, brags that by day's end he will claim one more. While he and his friends brag to each other about their sexual exploits, Jenny (Chloë Sevigny) describes her own less-than-romantic encounter with Telly. Soon after the conversation, she learns that Telly, the only boy with whom she has slept, has infected her with the AIDS virus. Devastated, she sets out to find him and share the news. Meanwhile, Telly has set his sights on Darcy (Yakira Peguero), a lovely young girl whom he invites for a skinny dip at the local pool. Together with his friends, Telly drags Darcy along, and the entire crew jump the fence after hours. There he presents his now-familiar spiel which Darcy naïvely accepts, and the scene is set for disaster as the group heads back to a vacant apartment for an evening of sex, booze, drugs, and debauchery. Jenny finally locates Telly at the impromptu party and rushes to confront him, although she may be too late to save the next virgin in line from sharing her fate.
MEETING PEOPLE IS EASY (1999)
The British rock band Radiohead are an unusually introspective and downbeat group of musicians, which would make them unlikely candidates for international pop stardom. But against all odds, that's what happened to them in the wake of a hit single, "Creep," and press notices that have made them one of the most talked about English groups of the 1990s. In Meeting People Is Easy, director Grant Gee watches the band as they record their third album, the highly acclaimed OK Computer, then head out for an international tour, playing concerts and promoting the record in Europe, Japan, and the United States. Anyone expecting high-spirited hijinks in the manner of This Is Spinal Tap will be quickly disappointed (though anyone expecting high spirits from Radiohead has probably never heard their music). Meeting People Is Easy focuses on the downside of life on the road, as the band is booked into a long series of non-descript arenas, invited to perform on award shows where they clearly feel out of place, and repeatedly answer the same questions from an endless parade of journalists, with lead singer Thom Yorke often seeming to buckle under the strain. Meeting People Is Easy received a brief theatrical release in the United States prior to its bow on home video through the band's American record label, Capitol.
ANNIE HALL (1977)
Woody Allen's romantic comedy of the Me Decade follows the up and down relationship of two mismatched New York neurotics. Jewish comedy writer Alvy Singer (Allen) ponders the modern quest for love and his past romance with tightly-wound WASP singer Annie Hall (Diane Keaton, née Diane Hall). The twice-divorced Alvy knows that it's not easy to find a mate when the options include pretentious New York intellectuals and lifestyle-obsessed Rolling Stone writers, but la-di-dah-ing Annie seems different. Along the rocky road of their coupling, Allen/Alvy weigh in on such topics as endless therapy, movies vs. TV, the absurdity of dating rituals, anti-Semitism, drugs, and, in one of the best set pieces, repressed Midwestern WASP insanity vs. crazy Brooklyn Jewish boisterousness. Annie wants to move to Los Angeles to find that fame that finally does in the relationship — but not before Alvy gets in a few digs at vacuous, mantra-fixated California. Originally entitled Anhedonia (the inability to enjoy oneself), Annie Hall blended the slapstick and fantasy from such earlier Allen films as Sleeper (1973) and Bananas (1971) with the more autobiographical musings of his stand-up and written comedy, using an array of such movie techniques as talking heads, splitscreens, and subtitles. Within these gleeful formal experiments and sight gags, Allen and co-writer Marshall Brickman skewered 1970s solipsism, reversing the happy marriage of opposites found in classic screwball comedies. Hailed as Allen's most mature and personal film, Annie Hall beat out Star Wars for Best Picture and also won Oscars for Allen as director and writer and for Keaton as Best Actress; audiences enthusiastically responded to Allen's take on contemporary love and turned Keaton's rumpled menswear into a fashion trend.
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