Paterson (2016)

Directed by Jim Jarmusch
Country: USA

If you haven’t had your good doses of weird reality and gratifying laughter for the day, “Paterson”, the sensational new comedy-drama from the hip American writer-director Jim Jarmusch, can assure you both. 
The quality of his work is patented in cult films such as “Ghost Dog”, “Broken Flowers”, “Dead Man”, “Only Lovers Left Alive”, “Mystery Train”, and the black-and-white classics “Stranger Than Paradise” and “Down By Law”.

Jarmusch takes you to the city of Paterson, New Jersey, and introduces you to… Paterson, a local bus driver and poet, brilliantly played by Adam Driver, who experiences the same routine every day.
The amiable and often-lost-in-thought Paterson, who hates cell phones and is able to write a mind-blowing poem just by looking at a simple box of matches, lives with his girlfriend, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), and her jealous English bulldog, Marvin.

Every evening he takes Marvin for a walk and stops at the local pub to have a beer with the owner, Doc (Barry Shabaka Henley), his best friend and a chess aficionado. 
Despite the casual conversation, the bar always reserves exceptional surprises. Firstly, he has a sort of encounter of the third kind when he meets two twins, Sam & Dave (alluding to the soul/R&B duo); then it’s Everett (William Jackson Harper) who pulls a gun from his pocket to claim love from Marie (Chasten Harmon); finally it’s Doc, censured by his angry wife whose saving money vanished from the cookie jar.

Surprises also happen at work and home.
Laura, a sensitive night dreamer, is trying to earn some extra by baking cupcakes to sell, a business with strong probabilities of success. However, she just found out she wants to become a singer and guitarist. Her plan is to buy a Harlequin guitar and learn how to play it. The price is not cheap but she counts on Paterson to help her financially.
Paterson's good nature reflects a passive calmness that is never shaken. Not even when Marvin tears his poem notebook into pieces or when his bus suddenly breaks down in the middle of the street due to an electrical problem.
For the finale, Jarmusch reserved us a hilarious encounter between the title character and a visiting Japanese poet. The scene still makes me laugh whenever it pops up into my mind.

Relying on the amazing editing of Affonso Gonçalves, the director has planned everything smartly with a languid composure, controlled pace, and refreshing sincerity. He has this very peculiar sense of filmmaking – nonchalant, highly artistic, and still unpretentious – that makes him one of the most cherished indie filmmakers from our times. 
I love the fact that he always assures room to breathe while the story keeps flowing in a naturalistic way. 
Chaining simplicity to irony is part of the secret.

A Man Called Ove (2016)

Directed by Hannes Holm
Country: Sweden

It doesn’t surprise me that “A Man Called Ove”, a Swedish comedy-drama written and directed by Hannes Holm and based on the novel of the same name by Fredrik Backman, has successfully targeted the audiences. The director has found this upbeat facility in conquering them with a story simultaneously touching, funny, and heartwarming.
 
It’s almost impossible not to be intrigued by Ove – a bossy, grumpy, obsessively righteous, and deliberately offensive widower who fights anyone disobeying the rules created for the neighborhood he lives in. The more we know about his past, the more we get fond of him, excusing his rude conducts and understanding his reluctance to help others.

When we take a quick glance at the 56-year-old Ove, immaculately played by Rolf Lassgard (“Under the Sun”, “After the Wedding”), he reminds us Michael Caine. With him, honesty, responsibility, and duty come always first, no matter what. We follow him on his morning rounds, learning he doesn’t tolerate pets, children’s toys left in the playground, and especially cars circulating on the pathway.
After being fired from the railroad company where he worked for 43 years, Ove seems madder and grumpier than ever. He can’t stand anybody and nobody can stand him.

With no more plans for life and willing to join his beloved wife in heaven, Ove, dressed up in a blue suit, decides to hang himself in his living room. However, in every attempt, he ends up reverting the decision. Firstly, the one to blame is Parvaneh (Bahar Pars), an Iranian mother who moved into the house across the street with her husband Patrick (Tobias Almborg) and their two daughters. Then it was a journalist who wanted to write about him, and after that, his wife’s former student. 

With the time, Ove’s heart gradually softens in every sense. He starts considering Pervaneh and her daughters as his own family and even adopts a stray cat that was dying of cold outside.
It’s gratifying to see how his lonely eyes sparkle when Parvaneh is around, how he obeys her when she calls him to reason, or how he’s disarmed with a smile of his adoptive granddaughters.

Cleverly mixing drama and comedy, and heavily relying on attractive visuals and competent performances, the film is a balm in terms of tolerance, a lacking virtue nowadays.
It’s undeniable that everything in the feel-good “A Man Called Ove” was neatly arranged to please. However, its charm and message make us forget the originality it wasn’t capable of showing.

The Unknown Girl (2016)

Directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Country: Belgium / France

The work of the Belgian brothers, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, is known for their technical rigor, narrative consistency, strong social vision, and impressive realism. With a career that spans more than 30 years, the directors gave us enough reasons to smile while staring at the screen. “Rosetta”, “L’enfant”, “The Son”, "The Promise”, and more recently, “The Kid with a Bike” and “Two Days, One Night”, brought something valuable and genuine to the world of cinema, focusing on themes like unemployment, troubled childhood, delinquency, immigration, exploitation, and many more.

In their new drama, “The Unknown Girl”, the brothers carry out some modifications, not in terms of visuals or filmmaking style, but attempting to squeeze a sort of character study within a crime thriller.
If the character was built with sufficient honesty to deserve my approval, the thriller was never more than a bland triviality, lacking true mystery and decent suspenseful moments.  

The central character, Jenny Davin (Adèle Haenel), a sensitive, attentive, and respected young medical doctor living and working in Liége, Belgium, shows deep concerns about her intern, Julien (Olivier Bonnaud), who can’t put his emotions away in stressful situations. While he gets paralyzed in the worst emergencies, she insists on the importance of a good diagnosis. Whenever she admonishes him, Julien admits his faults but gets a bit sore. After all, medicine had been his true passion.

On a very busy day, someone rings Jenny’s office’s doorbell after closing time. Tired, she doesn’t open. Slightly after that, Julien runs down the stairs in such a way he seems he won’t go back there anymore. In truth, he gives up the internship and medicine, and Jenny becomes devastated by thinking she had something to do with his decision.
To worsen her state of guilt, two inspectors arrive to examine the cameras because the woman who had come after-hours was found dead by the river. The cause of her death is unknown and she couldn't be identified either. Mysteries the obsessed Jenny tries to find out by herself.
This doctor turned into fearless investigator faces some serious threats when she starts digging in the mud and learns that the culprit is closer than she ever thought.

Despite setting up with the habitual naturalistic and artistic contours, the film drags aimlessly for large periods of time in its recycled wave of ideas. Most of the dangerous situations that Jenny experiences feel fabricated and very similar one to another.
The directors, who love to shoot resorting to the available light, forgot to use some glow in their story, never going beyond the simple and often boring formalities. 
“The Unknown Girl” is a minor Dardennes and, probably, their flattest work. 

Lion (2016)

Directed by Garth Davis
Country: Australia / USA / UK

I can’t deny it’s remarkable that Garth Davis’ directorial debut feature, “Lion”, has been nominated for six Academy awards - best film, best actor and actress in a supporting role, cinematography, original score, and adapted screenplay.
Regardless the substance of the story itself, this fact-based drama, written by Luke Davies and adapted from the non-fiction book “A Long Way Home” by Saroo Brierley, didn’t work for me. 
The main reason for that comes from the fact that Davis’ approach, more gimmicky than influential, veers the drama into syrupy territory.

Saroo (Sunny Pawar) is a 5-year-old who follows his brother Guddu (Abhishek Bharate) everywhere. 
Living in the ancient city of Khandwa, India, they seem to take huge pleasure in roaming aimlessly through the city, riding dangerously on top of trains, and collecting coal to sell. They rejoice to see their mother (Priyanka Bose) happily smiling. She's a caring, hard-working woman who carries rocks on the parched mountains.
A certain day, Saroo insists on accompanying his brother to the work. They take a train and leave at a packed station. Once at the destiny, too sleepy to walk, he stays at the station waiting for Guddu to come back. The latter never returned and Saroo takes a wrong train home, ending up in the highly populated Calcutta, 1600 km away from his village.

Despite lost and hungry, he’s smart enough to escape a few dangerous situations until being conducted to an orphanage. Several attempts to know the name of his hometown and communicate with the family fail and Saroo is sent to Hobart, Australia, where he’s welcomed by his new foster parents, Sue (Nicole Kidman) and John Brierley (David Wenham). The couple, not content with just one, adopts a second child, far more troublesome than Saroo.

20 years later, we find our central character (now played by Dev Patel), with a graduation in hotel management and surrounded by friends and a beautiful girlfriend (Rooney Mara). However, he's more and more engulfed by this urgent necessity of discovering his roots, his family, and where he came from. 
Because miracles exist, he manages to find the place, Ganesh Talai, which he mispronounced in his childhood, and reconnect with his biological mother and sister through Google Earth.

Unexciting, the film was never too deep and as a consequence, I became indifferent along the way.
Mr. Davis didn’t spend enough time building the supporting characters and his big bet, the dramatic side, was uninspired and often staged with a tedious sweetness.
If expertly handled instead of manipulative, this amazing true story would have given a magical film.

Hidden Figures (2016)

Directed by Theodore Melfi
Country: USA

In “Hidden Figures”, emergent American director Theodore Melfi is so motivated to compensate the three forgotten African-American female mathematicians who played major roles in NASA missions, that he almost mismanages.

Melfi had shown directorial potentialities in 2014 when he released “St. Vincent”, a comedy-drama starring Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy, and Naomi Watts. Still, the film ended up taking a vulnerable sentimental path in its development.
Although based on a true story, “Hidden Figures”, which clearly suffers from comparable issues, renounces to the realism of the facts to become a polished crowd-pleaser.
The director teamed up with Allison Schroeder to write the script, which was based on the book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly.

Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monáe star as Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, respectively, three brains working for the NASA’s segregated West Area Computing Unit in 1961, Virginia.

Facing harsh times, these three unappreciated employees gradually earn the respect of chiefs and engineers by proving their outstanding capabilities. Katherine, unbeatable with numbers and complex calculations, becomes the right hand of Al Harrison (Kevin Costner), director of the Space Task Group, who's under pressure to send an American astronaut into space. However, she has to overcome the hostility of Paul Stafford (Jim Parsons), a well-positioned engineer with limited vision and extended ego. Not to mention the half-mile walk to go to a colored bathroom!

Dorothy is promoted to supervisor of the Programming Department, after learning Fortran and fix an IBM 7090. She had to struggle before starting being treated as an equal by her superior, Vivian Mitchell (Kirsten Dunst).
Mary was the luckiest of the three. The mission specialist Karl Zielinski (Olek Krupa) immediately praised her brilliant work, encouraging her to pursue an engineering degree.

Not every scene works here, yet the unquestionable importance of these women gets the desirable visibility and is not easily forgotten.
An agreeable surprise was to see Kevin Costner returning to first-class acting.
“Hidden Figures” is watchable and only partially satisfying.

Toni Erdmann (2016)

Directed by Maren Ade
Country: Germany / Austria

With the farcical comedy-drama “Toni Erdmann”, German director Maren Ade enriches her narrow yet impressive filmography. This is her third feature and an excellent follow-up to “Everyone Else”, a laid-back examination of a couple’s relationship within a peculiar environment, which got accolades in 2009’s Berlin and Buenos Aires Film Festivals.
Despite distinct in nature, “Erdmann” sticks to the topic of human relationships, only this time focusing on father and daughter.

Peter Simonischek and Sandra Hüller play with all their hearts Winfried and Ines Conradi, respectively father and daughter. 
Winfried is a spirited music teacher with a compulsive tendency for off-the-wall pranks. To better succeed in them and fulfill his harmless bizarreness, he often disguises himself of various freakish kinds. Being divorced and with his only daughter living abroad, Winfried’s regular company for some time now has been Willy, an old dog that, with no suffering, ends up dying in the front yard.
This happening marks a transition point in his miserable existence. It makes him apprehensive, not plaintive, though.

The sensations of loss and loneliness get deeper when he thinks of Ines, an ambitious workaholic who hardly has time to talk to his father, not even when she visits him on his birthday. Currently working in the oil industry field in Bucharest, Romania, Ines shows great anxiety and urgency of returning to her work.

Without further notice, Winfried decides to go to Romania to stay a month with Ines, who welcomes him more with respect than enthusiasm. Disappointed and worried with the lamentable life Ines is living, Winfried decides to help her by creating an outlandish persona called Toni Erdmann. He wants to get the horrible taste of the filthy world of business by becoming a cynical insider.

Even distinctive, Ms. Ade’s very-European approach introduces fractions of Michael Haneke’s mordant vision on alienation, Ulrich Seidl’s in-your-face provocations, and Roy Andersson’s half-dark half-absurdist humor in order to proclaim her strong social criticism.
Sometimes there’s only a very thin line separating pretense and honesty, artificiality and authenticity, happiness and sadness…

“Toni Erdmann” is corrosively biting, surprisingly human, gloriously hardcore, and extremely liberating. 
After two hours and forty minutes, it leaves us with one simple question: what’s worth of living?

Manchester By The Sea (2016)

Directed by Kenneth Lonergan
Country: USA

Kenneth Lonergan, 54, is a NY writer-director of exceptional class. Having directed only three movies during his career, Lonergan, a graduate of NYU’s Playwriting Program, has gained wide reputation through distinguishable dramas: “You Can Count on Me” (already a classic), “Margaret”, and now his latest “Manchester by the Sea”.

This story centers in Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck), an emotionally devastated man who struggles with guilt, after the death of his three children in a home fire. Lee used to hang out with friends until late night, consuming alcohol and drugs, visibly lacking responsibility regarding the household. 
His wife, Randi (Michelle Williams), disapproving of his conduct, left him without hesitation after the incident.
We find Lee currently living semi-isolated in Boston, where he works as a building superintendent and occasionally picks fights when drinking at pubs.

After receiving a phone call informing that his older brother, Joe (Kyle Chandler), had a heart attack, Lee is forced to return to his little hometown of Manchester-by-the-sea. 
He’ll have the chance to better know his 16-year-old nephew, Patrick (Lucas Hedges), a smart and sensitive kid who attempts to reconnect with his long-gone former-alcoholic mother (Gretchen Mol), after his father’s death.
Lee is surprised as he learns that Joe pointed him as Patrick’s guardian in his will. 
For him, this is a major decision and obstacle since he doesn’t want to return to a place that brings awful memories. Everything gets more complicated when Randi, now re-married, asks to attend Joe’s funeral.

Cleverly conceived and incredibly acted, "Manchester by the Sea" is a compelling examination of painful lives portrayed with a striking sense of truthfulness.
I experienced sympathy, hope, agitation, and then frustration. 
A few humorous moments are brought by Patrick and his girlfriends, contrasting with the grievous state of his uncle and the messy life he seems unable to escape.
The overmuch melodramatic music by Lesley Barber is a minor quibble that doesn’t remove a hair of competence from a heartbreaking tale that's also one of the most inspired dramas of 2016.

Hacksaw Ridge (2016)

Directed by Mel Gibson
Country: USA

Mel Gibson is automatically associated with acting and not directing. However, his directorial career has been oriented to movies that get immediate attention, not because of their mood or the way they are done, but mostly due to the nature of their topics. It happened with "The Passion of the Christ", "Braveheart", and "Apocalypto", and the story repeats again in the biographical war drama, "Hacksaw Ridge".

Robert Schenkkan and Andrew Knight wrote the script of a film that stars Andrew Garfield as private Desmond Doss, a brave combat medic who served in 1945 Japan without touching a single gun.
Far from being great, this is also far from being a flop.

Gibson’s first film in a decade starts to shape Desmond’s character at a very young age in his hometown, Lynchburg, Virginia. By then, he was already growing a solid consciousness about what’s right and what’s wrong. 
After hitting his older brother with a brick and send him to the hospital, Desmond realizes he could have killed him. This causes him to be terrified since it goes against his pacific nature and Christian principles.
For only once he went off the marks. It happened much later on, during a sad occurrence that involved his war-traumatized father (Hugo Weaving).

Even madly in love with Dorothy Schutte (Teresa Palmer), a local hospital nurse who would become his wife, Desmond believes it’s his duty to serve the country and decides to enlist himself. He goes to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, just to shock the present by informing he won’t touch a weapon to kill people or work on Saturdays, as an exemplary Seventh-day Adventist.

Humiliated, beaten up by his tough colleagues, and treated like a criminal by his superiors, the skinny Desmond ends up going to Martial Court for disobeying orders. Still, he manages to get rid of the accusation, following his unit toward the Battle of Okinawa, Japan.
Under intense fire, he proves to be the bravest man of the platoon, gaining everyone's respect. Faith is his strength and the Bible his talisman. This was enough to make him rescue 75 wounded infantrymen from the perilous battlefields. 
‘God, help me to get one more!’ he kept saying. 
Doss was the first conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor for his exceptional bravery and determination in the face of extremely dangerous conditions.

The war scenes, depicted with ‘commercial’ exaggeration, are typically Hollywood and include massive stabs, grenade explosions, shots in the head, legs ripped off, flamethrowers, and many more strategies to impress through violence. What the frames show us is often disgusting, yet Simon Duggan’s cinematography has a strange spell.
It's an acceptable Hollywood reviving an incredible WWII story and making us understand that courage is much beyond pulling a trigger.

Silence (2016)

Directed by Martin Scorsese
Country: USA

Widely respected American director Martin Scorsese, who gave us gems like “Taxi Driver”, “Raging Bull” and “The Last Temptation of Christ”, didn’t quite succeed in passing to the screen all the power of the account he depicts in “Silence”, an epic historical drama he wrote with Jay Cooks based upon the Shusaku Endo’s 1966 novel of the same name.

The film, set in 17th-century Japan and focusing on the predicaments of a shaky Christianity, stars Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver as two missionary Jesuit priests, Father Sebastião Rodrigues and Father Francisco Garupe, respectively, who set foot in Nagasaki to find the missing Father Cristóvão Ferreira (Liam Neeson). The rumors are that Ferreira, verged by torture, ended up abdicating of his faith.
For the trip, they rely on the guidance of Kichijiro (Yosuke Kubozuka), a tormented alcoholic fisherman whose disguised faith doesn’t make him less tricky.

Once in Japan, the two men are welcomed by a secluded group of local Christians who live hidden in underground caves. They try to escape the ‘inquisitors’ and their torture. 
Eventually, the resistant priests are caught, learning that coexistence between Christians and Japanese are impracticable. Their faith is put to test as they observe brothers and sisters being mercilessly burnt, drawn, humiliated, and both tortured and executed through dreadful methods.
Even when Ferreira finally shows his face, revealing new ideals, the film couldn’t leave behind its long-drawn-out development.

Religious faith topic was never better depicted as it was with Bergman, Bresson and Dreyer. Unfortunately, “Silence” didn’t allow Scorsese to be among them since faith doesn't live in it.
Even vulnerable in regard to flow and pace, he was able to create a minimally decent whole with the uneven parts. He achieved that by taking well advantage from the stunning cinematography by Denis Prieto as well as the strong acting.

I, Daniel Blake (2016)

Directed by Ken Loach
Country: UK / France / Belgium

“I, Daniel Blake” is another urgent work from the brilliant British director Ken Loach. This title now becomes an integral part of the filmmaker’s mandatory ‘social realism’ film list, which also includes “Riff Raff”, “Ladybird Ladybird”, “My Name is Joe”, “Sweet Sixteen”, and “The Wind That Shakes The Barley”.

Loach bites, leaving a bubbly red mark in our consciences as he keenly addresses the social problems inherent to a technological modern world. 
The film, written by Loach’s habitual associate Paul Laverty, got wider reputation after winning the Palme D’Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and the Audience Award at Locarno, Stockholm and San Sebastian Festivals.

Dave Johns is Daniel Blake, a hard-working 59-year-old joiner from Newcastle who is aware he can’t work no more after having suffered a major heart attack. Now facing a serious heart condition, Daniel needs the help of the State. However, applying for the sickness benefit program becomes a nightmare populated by frustrating phone calls, moronic obligations, and difficult form fill-outs. 
Despite facing eviction and poverty, Daniel still finds the time to help Katie Morgan (Hayley Squires), a single mother he met at the Job Centre. She has just arrived in town and struggles to feed her children.

“I, Daniel Blake” is a tragic, moving, not to mention infuriating portrait of a decaying society. Its account, warmly humane on one side and embarrassingly sad on the other, has the ultimate goal of emphasizing the importance of solidarity, justice, human rights, and community support.

Loach’s raw and ultra-realistic approach, always loaded with strong messages, remains a fundamental weapon to denounce the sicknesses of our world. He doesn’t need special effects to create a powerful film. He just focuses on simple characters, which we can easily identify ourselves with, exposing their plausible problems with heart and emotion.

Jackie (2016)

Directed by Pablo Larraín
Country: USA / Chile / France

The filmmaking competence of the acclaimed Chilean director Pablo Larraín ("Tony Manero", "Post Mortem", "No", "The Club") is not at stake in his latest feature, “Jackie”, a stylized biopic with a few aspects to admire.

The film, written by Noah Oppenheim (“The Maze Runner”, “Allegiance”) and co-produced by Darren Aronofsky ("Requiem for a Dream", "The Wrestler", "Black Swan"), is centered on the former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, emulating her emotional states in the aftermath of President John F. Kennedy’s shocking assassination in 1963. 
Natalie Portman flawlessly embodies the title character and delivers an enlightened, Oscar-worthy performance. She got strong back up from Billy Crudup, Peter Sarsgaard, and John Hurt.

On a cold winter day, an apparently self-confident Jackie welcomes a curious journalist (Crudrup) into her house. He just wants to know the truth about what really happened in the days immediately following the tragic occurrence.
Alternating between serious and playful, Jackie goes through that grieving period in an unsentimental way. She brings up all the turmoil around the case - the devastating affliction caused by the loss, the scary autopsy and funeral, the last day in the White House, and a few relevant moments spent in the company of Bob Kennedy (Sarsgaard), her protective brother-in-law, Nancy Tuckerman (Greta Gerwig), the caring White House social secretary, and an understanding priest (Hurt) who helped her to regain balance.

The settings are decorated with gusto and an encouraging luminosity is present even in the darkest scenes. All these aspects enhance the absorbing production values.
With frequent close-ups that attempt to lock us inside the character's psyche and drawing a completely different tension, the first English-language feature from Larraín is occasionally blurred by a deviant narrative. However, it’s still a solid and interesting watch. 
It became obvious to me that without Portman, “Jackie” would be at risk.

Arrival (2016)

Directed by Denis Villeneuve
Country: USA

Canadian Dennis Villeneuve created enough stimulating movies in his career to be considered one of the most important filmmakers of our times. One can easily reach this conclusion when analyzing gems like “Incendies”, “Polytechnique”, "Prisoners", “Enemy”, and “Sicario”.
His latest gift, “Arrival”, is a puzzling, and somewhat opaque sci-fi thriller, starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner as a linguist and a theoretical physicist, respectively, who are recruited by the U.S. military to deal with an inscrutable extraterrestrial visit to Earth.
Villeneuve directed from a script by Eric Heisserer whose source material was Ted Chiang's 1998 short story "Story of Your Life".

The film is given a lyrical treatment in the first minutes when focusing on the ‘visions’ of Louise Banks (Adams), an exceptional linguist whose mind seems to recreate moments spent with her little daughter who died from cancer. The airy imagery and imposing chamber music soon give place to a tense atmosphere and disturbing sounds associated with the arrival of 12 unexpected alien spacecrafts spread across the globe.
Louise is immediately summoned by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) and taken to Montana, where one of the spacecrafts is stationed. 
She’s seen as a fundamental key in the discovering of what are the invaders' purposes on Earth, but the progress in the communication with two of the apparently friendly octopus-like aliens are suddenly compromised when China’s General Shang (Tzi Ma) threats to retaliate if the strange creatures don’t abandon his country.

Louise reveals extra sensorial abilities, communicating with the aliens through written and gestural language. However, the responses come in the form of complex circular symbols that are hard to decipher. Obstinate to know more about them, Louise also concludes that her strange visions are not related to the past but rather to the future.

“Arrival” is a balanced confluence of “Signs” and “Enemy”. From the former, Villeneuve absorbs the expectation associated with the visits, and from the latter, he withdraws the ruminative and enigmatic tones.
The pace is never raised and the screen doesn't catch fire in any circumstance. However, what Villeneuve puts on the table is enough to hold our attention and keep us alert.
This understated, communicative endeavor is a blast of creativity.

Moonlight (2016)

Directed by Barry Jenkins
Country: USA

Barry Jenkins’s sophomore feature, “Moonlight”, is an honest, poignant account of the tumultuous youth of a boy as he struggles to find himself until an adult age.
The film is divided into three chapters, each of them addressing a crucial phase in the miserable existence of Chiron, a solitary soul who has to deal with the everyday bullying at school, a drug-addicted mother, and the fact of being questioning his sexuality.

The first chapter portrays Chiron’s young adolescence. At this point, he responds by the name Little (Alex Hibbert) and finds protection from his pursuers in Juan (Mahershala Ali), the crack dealer that supplies his mom (Naomie Harris). He gets an important support from Teresa (Janelle Monáe), Juan’s girlfriend, who becomes the supportive mother figure he lacks. Brief moments of happiness come from the occasional hang outs with his schoolmate, Kevin.

In the second chapter, Chiron (Ashton Sanders) grew up into a shy mid-teen who doesn’t have any motivation to study. Besides constantly annoyed by Terrel (Patrick Decile), a vile classmate and gang leader, he’s often forced to pay for his mother’s crack. His friend Kevin (Jharrel Jerome), becomes a crucial figure here since it’s with him that Chiron has his first homosexual experience. Despite the strong feelings they nurture to each other, Kevin and Chiron split up after an incident that sends the latter to jail.

The final part shows us an adult Chiron (Trevante Rhodes), now a drug dealer who adopted the nickname Black, the one that Kevin used to call him. After so many years, he will contact Kevin (André Holland) in an affectional re-encounter.

Crafted with spontaneity and solid performances, and eschewing any type of fireworks or gimmicks, “Moonlight” unequivocally interweaves the simplicity of the filmmaking with the complexity of the story. 
Its social perception and human observations are of great significance for it to be considered a rewarding viewing.

La La Land (2016)

Directed by Damien Chazelle
Country: USA

Everyone who loves movies knows the value of Damien Chazelle, the writer/director of “Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench” and the three-Oscar-winning “Whiplash”. His passion for music is no secret, thus, it is not a surprise that his third feature film, “La La Land”, falls into a musical/comedy/romance that overflows with warmth and grace.

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, teaming up for the third time (“Crazy Stupid Love” and “Gangster Squad”) in their careers, make an interesting couple that struggles in LA to follow their dreams. Gosling is Sebastian, a jazz pianist whose intention is to open his own club; Stone is Mia, a part-time barista and actress-wannabe who deserves more luck than she has in the castings.

A set of unexpected encounters will bring their lives together, and they’ll keep running after the right opportunity that could bring them success in their careers. With love and understanding spanning the four seasons of the year, Sebastian and Mia seem to be destined for each other.
However, life takes many turns, and disappointment makes part of it.
The film’s last section is an agreeable surprise that smartly reawakened the curiosity that had gradually lost.  

Lightly funny and imbued of a vital swinging jazz (the orchestration comes from Chazelle’s former classmate and regular collaborator, Justin Hurwitz), “La La Land” is a charming and entertaining romance that auspiciously borrows the looks and mood of Jacques Demy’s movies. It is not Chazelle’s best film because it doesn’t have the vibrancy of “Whiplash”. Notwithstanding, the film is nicely staged, musically exciting, and technically stainless.

Elle (2016)

Directed by Paul Verhoeven
Country: France / Germany / Belgium

In glory, Paul Verhoeven returns to film direction with “Elle”, a French-Belgian-German psychological drama of great intensity, featuring Isabelle Huppert at her best.
The Dutch filmmaker, who gave us the relevant “Soldier of Orange” and celebrated Hollywood pics such as “Robocop” and “Basic Instinct”, had his career’s peak in the late 80’s and beginning of 90’s, but can’t be considered prolific. From 2000 on, he directed only four films, which abruptly oscillates in quality. “Hollow Man” and “Tricked” were too flimsy to deserve a recommendation. Yet, “Black Book” and “Elle” lit the fire of hope in the hearts of his fans, especially the latter, which marks a radical change in style, vision, and posture.
Verhoeven directed from a script by David Baker, who in turn, based himself on the Interallié Prize novel “Oh...” by Philippe Djian.

The film opens bluntly with a violent rape. The man is dressed in black and has his face covered with a baklava. The woman is Michéle Leblanc (Huppert), a successful video-game entrepreneur who was able to rebuild her life respectfully over the years, apparently recovering from the trauma of being associated with 27 evil slays perpetrated by her psychopath father. 
Her life may look much tranquil now, but Michéle keeps struggling with life, the ones around her - including family and people at work, and her own inner demons. Is it some sort of karma? 
She has a very cold relationship with her mother (Judith Magre) who wants to marry a younger opportunistic man (Raphaël Lenglet). Her immature son, Vincent (Jonas Bloquet), is moving to a new apartment with his pregnant girlfriend and needs money. Despite separated from Richard (Charles Berling), a struggling writer and Vincent’s father, she gets jealous when he starts a relationship with a younger student. At work, very few employees like her and she’s subjected to an offensive prank. To make all this harder, she’s sleeping with Robert (Christian Berkel), the cynical husband of her best friend and co-partner (Anne Consigny) in the company.

And now she gets raped! Terrified, she takes the proper measures to defend herself. Still, she refuses to go to the police regardless the threatening anonymous messages she constantly gets from the man who spanked her and forced her to the act. Michéle, a cerebral survivor who boasts a shocking frankness, no matter the situation, firstly opts to ignore the case, but that can’t continue any longer for several reasons.
Besides professional success, the only positive aspect of her life is Patrick (Laurent Lafitte), a married neighbor whom she has a crush on and signals proximity.
With so many ambiguities and complexity, will Michéle be able to cleanse her complicated world?

Michéle’s existence is so rich in details that one may feel overwhelmed. This happens because those same details are far from being constructive or hopeful. The emotional weight she carries arises sympathy. It’s a burdened life that Huppert depicts flawlessly. She couldn’t have been a better choice. She was nearly as perfect as she was in Haneke’s “The Piano Teacher”.
Verhoeven, always inclined to dark twists, has to be congratulated for the cinematic version of this compelling character study and encouraged to follow his career with works of this caliber. Hollywood for what?

Certain Women (2016)

Directed by Kelly Reichardt
Country: USA

Kelly Reichardt’s quirky filmmaking always has this distinctive ability to keep us alert, even when the pace is unchangeable and the stories apparent to be lukewarm at the first sight.
Masterworks of the independent cinema like “Old Joy”, “Wendy and Lucy”, “Meek’s Cutoff”, and “Night Moves”, turned her into one of the most well-regarded filmmakers of our times. 
“Certain Women”, is another realistic and profound drama that tells the story of four American women whose destinies come across. Its sturdy foundation comprises elements such as human sincerity, emotional sensitivity, and stunning frames whose powerful cinematography enhances the immaculate performances of Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, Lily Gladstone, and Kristen Stewart.
For this work, Ms. Reichardt sought inspiration on short stories from Maile Meloy's collection “Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It”.

Set in Montana, all the stories in some way deal with loneliness, relationships, work, and limitation, exhibiting precious subtleties that stimulate our minds and spike our curiosity. It’s remarkable how the movie grabs our intellect without resorting to any action scene, agitated dialogue, or sudden events. This aspect results from intelligence in the approach and a winning confidence behind the camera.

During the first story, we find Laura Wells (Dern), a confident and independent lawyer who has been getting repeated visits from a disconsolate client, Fuller (Jared Harris), after he has lost his job. Facing the impossibility of suing his company, Fuller falls into a deeper emotional crisis when his wife decides to leave him. The anguish makes him confess his frightful intentions.
The second story follows a hard-working woman, Gina (Williams), who lives a solitary life in a secluded place, despite sharing her life with a lazy husband (James Le Gros) and a teen daughter. The couple decides to pay a visit to Albert (René Auberjonois), an elderly and lonely man, and persuade him to sell the sandstones on his property. The material would serve to build up their new house. Yet, Gina’s approach lacks honesty.
The third story tells us the struggle of Jamie (Gladstone), who works on a farm as a horse taker, to avoid isolation during wintertime. Unexpectedly, after following people into a classroom, she befriends with a law teacher, Elizabeth Travis (Stewart), another solitary soul looking for a better and more comfortable life.

“Certain Women” possesses a disconcerting exquisiteness when addressing the sadness associated with the lives of its characters. The silences intensify their emotional states and speak volumes, producing a bittersweet effect that remains for a long time after the final credits.
The sturdy hand of a magnificent film architect, who expresses herself with original sculpting techniques, shapes ordinary people with all their strengths and weaknesses. Ms. Reichardt’s cinema is more meditative than rousing, elusively beautiful in its conception, and constructed further beyond artistic superficiality. 
I’m eagerly waiting for her next move.

The Magnificent Seven (2016)

Directed by Antoine Fuqua
Country: USA

If we take a look at Antoine Fuqua’s directorial career, it’s obvious to conclude that action-packed blockbusters are the dishes he loves to cook and serve. A few examples are: “Training Day”, “The Equalizer”, “Southpaw” and “Olympus Has Fallen”, all of them seeking for that urgent action, sometimes meritorious sometimes wearisome.

His latest creation and first Western is a free adaptation of John Sturges’ 1960 classic “The Magnificent Seven”, which in turn had been adapted from Kurosawa’s 1954 Japanese masterpiece “The Seven Samurai”. 
The filmmaker, relying on the screenwriters Nic Pizzolatto and Richard Wenk, decided to preserve some important elements and scenes from the prior version at the same time that he attempts to build up something appealingly new.

Denzel Washington, Fuqua’s frequent star and collaborator, is Sam Chisolm, a warrant officer from Wichita, Kansas, who agrees to gather a group of men to hunt the unscrupulous industrialist Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard). The latter, moved by a limitless greed, turned Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett) into a widow when he besieged the little mining town of Rose Creek. Without wasting time, Emma and her friend Tommy Q. (Luke Grimes), set out to ask for help in the nearest town.
The tenacious Chisolm starts his recruitment process after he realizes that it’s Bogue who’s behind the evildoing. 
The ones chosen to reinstate the order and make justice are the following: Josh Faraday (Chris Pratt), an inveterate gambler; Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke), a precise gunman; Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee), a knife-addicted assassin; Jack Horne (Vincent D'Onofrio), a veteran master tracker; Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier), an alert Comanche; and Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), a Mexican outlaw.

Fuqua’s modern version of the Sevens, besides lacking humor and a focal point, is too long and stereotyped, requiring patience from those viewers who care for something more than just wild action in its forms of shootouts, explosions, machine-gun sweeps, head-to-head duels, and Indian meticulous strikes. In this particular case, my advice is to stick to the classics because not even the great cast saved the film from mediocrity.

The Neon Demon (2016)

Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
Country: USA / France / Denmark

Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn is capable of the best and the worst. His latest film “The Neon Demon”, which he also co-wrote, confirms his recent lack of inspiration and an increasing necessity of shocking us through stories with no substance. The strategy is somehow related to that one used in his nauseating previous work, “Only God Forgives”, his second association with Ryan Gosling after the well-accepted “Drive”.
As expected, the story is soaked in blood and wrapped in darkness and mystery, however, it fails roundly to bring something original, interesting, or even entertaining to our contemporary cinematic universe.

The film is as vulgar as the world of fashion it depicts, and follows Jesse (Elle Fanning), an ambitious and attractive 16-year-old orphan who signs a contract with an established modeling agency from L.A. with the condition to tell everyone she’s 19. She befriends Ruby (Jena Malone), a make-up artist who seems worried about her well-being, offering prompt help for anything she might need. 
Not only Jesse’s naivety is misleading, but also everything else around her. From photographers to models, everyone seems to have something to grasp and take advantage of, or something to envy in regard to the young and inexperienced Jesse, a sad and lonely rising star in a field of delusions. The only character with a minimum of decency is Dean (Karl Glusman), a young man who nurtures some true feelings for Jesse, but is quickly put aside due to his reluctance to play dishonest games.
In parallel to Jesse’s career account, there’s an uninteresting mystery story regarding the cheap motel where Jesse is installed.

With the music and visuals playing a vital role, Mr. Refn sets up a depressingly macabre scenario where lust and blood intertwine in a surreal way.
His characters are clearly sick in the mind, the tones are morbid, and the posture is tendentiously abhorrent, despite the little moments of curiosity it might arise.
The contrived “The Neon Demon” showcases beautiful women whose intellectual emptiness makes them repellent.
Mr. Refn gets lost in pretentious trivialities and unintelligent strategies that frustrate more than captivate.

Deepwater Horizon (2016)

Directed by Peter Berg
Country: USA

“Deepwater Horizon” is the title of Peter Berg’s new action thriller. It was based on true events and stars Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, and John Malkovich.
The screenplay, written by Matthew Sand and Matthew Michael Carnahan, chronicles the tragic events occurred on April 20, 2010, aboard the Deepwater Horizon, an offshore drilling rig explored by BP and located in the Gulf of Mexico. An unexpected blowout led to several explosions, conducting the rig to the bottom of the sea two days later, causing 11 deaths and the largest oil spill in U.S. waters.

Mike Williams (Wahlberg), a family man and a savvy chief electrical engineer at the oil rig, prepares to leave the comfort of his home and spend another 21 days working on the sea. Jimmy Harrell (Russell) is an old friend and a very experienced supervisor at the same platform, who joins him to work.
A few abnormal signs initially indicate that something might be wrong with some mechanical parts of the rig. As competent professionals, Mike and Jimmy feel more tranquil if specific pressure tests can be run.
However, the BP executives, Donald Vidrine (Malkovich) and Robert Kaluza (Brad Leland), moved by greediness and recklessness, disregard the warnings and signs, ordering the discontinuance of subsequent safety operations that would avoid disastrous consequences.
Sadly, the blowout preventer didn’t work either, and the battle for survival becomes an agonizing reality.

The film doesn’t stand out in terms of storytelling, which is pure routine, relying more on the afflictive situations lived by the crew, overwhelming images of devastating fires and explosions, and also introducing the expected drama lived by Mike’s wife (Kate Hudson).
Director Peter Berg (“Hancock”, “Battleship”, “Lone Survivor”) is known for resorting to fireworks in his approaches, and “Deepwater Horizon” is no exception. He knows how to capture panicking moments with accuracy, yet we have the clear notion that he dramatizes as much as he accentuates the heroic moments. By the end, the scene that shows a disconsolate father asking for his missing son with an aggressive posture seemed totally contrived and unnecessary to me.

As the finale comes near, we’re taken to more and more shaky camera movements toward an unsurprising conclusion.
Wahlberg and Russell’s performances are part of the thrills, assuring the steadiness that Berg’s approach failed to hit.
Fair entertainment is assured, though.

Morris From America (2016)

Directed by Chad Hartigan
Country: USA / Germany

“Morris From America” is a sympathetic coming-of-age comedy-drama written and directed by Chad Hartigan, and starred by Markees Christmas, Craig Robinson, Carla Juri, and Lina Keller.

The film has an auspicious start but ultimately fails to maintain a steady beat and rhyme as it addresses the story of a 13-year-old American kid, Morris (Christmas), who dreams of becoming a rapper while living in Heidelberg, Germany, where his attentive father, Curtis (Robinson), works as a soccer coach.
Morris has funny discussions with his father about rap and the American hip-hop scene, which occasionally lead him to be grounded in a sweet way. Besides his dad and a caring tutor (Juri) who gives him private German lessons, Morris doesn’t talk to anyone else, having trouble in making new friends and adapting to the German culture and the music style that dominates the school – techno and electro-swing.
Despite neglected by the majority of his schoolmates, Morris, who sees himself as an outcast ‘gangsta’, is approached by the 15-year-old Katrin (Keller), a rebellious girl with no preconceptions, who dared to invite him to a private party. There was nothing positive about that, but the two become good friends, embarking later on a road trip adventure.
Along the way, Morris will have the opportunity to put his rhymes in practice and show them publicly, thanks to Katrin’s boyfriend who is an emerging DJ. Jealousy ends up betraying him, bringing more confusion and disappointment into this challenging phase of his life. All of these aspects are part of his growing-up process, though.

So many smart moves during the first half of the film become gradually annihilated by the crescent naivety of a few scenes during the second half. It’s a shame that Mr. Hartigan, who had brilliantly conceived “This is Martin Bonner” in 2013, ended up pushing the limits of a story that had potentialities to become something more than just watchable.
The docile “Morris from America”, a Sundance big hit, managed to spread some charm while showcasing heartfelt performances. However, it failed to become truly memorable due to its eventual decline into treacherous territory.