Julieta (2016)

Directed by Pedro Almodovar
Country: Spain

After watching the gloomy drama “Julieta”, we come to the conclusion that Pedro Almodovar, perhaps the most emblematic film director of the current Spain, continues very far from the artistry of his early works but fairly ahead of the ridiculousness of "I’m So Excited!", his previous film.

The 20th feature film of Almodovar’s directorial career was inspired by three short stories, “Chance”, “Soon” and “Silence”, by Alice Munro, a Canadian Nobel Prize winner.
Adopting the same strategy of the writer, Almodovar sets the story back and forth in time, relying on Alberto Iglesias’s dismal musical score and well-planned close-ups to extend its dramatic perimeter.

Julieta (Emma Suárez) has almost everything prepared to finally leave Madrid and move to Portugal with her boyfriend Lorenzo (Darío Grandinetti). However, she decides to cancel this longtime planned trip after bumping into Beatriz (Michelle Jenner), a childhood friend of her estranged daughter, Antia, who left home when she was 18 to a spiritual retreat and never came back or contacted her again. 
While vacationing in Lake Cuomo, Beatriz saw Antia with her three children and the latter’s reaction wasn’t the best.

Even without an address, Julieta, decides to write a final letter to Antia, where she unravels more about her daughter’s father, Xoan (Daniel Grao), a humble fisherman who had been unfaithful to her with Ava (Inma Cuesta), an artist friend from his hometown.
The story winds back to the moment when a young and bold Julieta (Adriana Ugarte), in her early twenties, meets Xoan on a train and makes love to him in one of the cars. Months later, after a successful first experience as a classic literature teacher, she abdicates from work in order to live near the sea with Xoan, whose wife had recently died. Already pregnant, she was welcomed by Marian (Rossy de Palma), a moody maid who tried to warn her about Xoan’s weaknesses.

Almodovar urges us to immerse ourselves into a complex emotional entanglement that only gave half of what was promised in a first instance. 
The tragedy, cooked with lugubrious tones, failed to reach the depth intended and leaves a bitter taste in the mouth after the credits roll. 

The dazzling cinematography by Jean-Claude Larrieu was the only outstanding feature since Almodovar lacked the ability to explore his own script in a way to escape the conventional. Even with some interesting moments, this is a modest pic from a talented director from whom we expect more and better.

Aquarius (2016)

Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho
Country: Brazil / France

With only two feature films, Brazilian writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho has gained a certain cult status, becoming a powerful voice in the alternative world cinema and a keen observer of today’s Brazil.
If “Neighboring Sounds” (2012) had stricken me with its irreverent tones, the recent “Aquarius”, a character-driven drama, completely enthralled me for nearly two hours and a half.
At the time the film was exhibited at Cannes Film Festival, the film’s cast organized a pacific demonstration where they showed discontentment about the impeachment of Brazil’s president Dilma Roussef and the disgraceful political situation lived in the country.

The story is centered on Clara, a retired upper-class music writer and former journalist who refuses to sell her beautifully renewed apartment to a greedy construction company that is eagerly planning to make some more millions by replacing the decayed Aquarius building. 
The narrative, divided into three chapters, begins in 1980 Recife, where we find a young shorthaired Clara (Barbara Colen really looks like Elis Regina) fairly recovered from a traumatic breast cancer and celebrating the anniversary of her aunt Lucia (Thaia Perez), a former political activist, in the company of her family – husband, three children, and brother.

Many years after, we find Clara (Sonia Braga), now a 65-year-old widow, visibly annoyed in the course of an interview for a local journal. The frivolous questions were not focused on her new book but rather if she could cope with digital music as well as her old vinyl collection. She’s living exactly in the same apartment she lived in the 80’s, cherishing every family memory and determined not to open hand of her patrimony despite the venomous persistence of Diego (Humberto Carrão), the unscrupulous new manager of the construction company. 
There’s a spellbinding eeriness associated with the ghostly apartment building since Clara, now the only dweller, keeps tracing lots of noises and suspicious activities, especially in the apartments above hers.
Activities may include cleaning and security inspections but also unimaginable things like orgies and religious gatherings.

It seems everyone is against her decision of staying in the building. Even her own daughter, who’s divorced and faces a delicate financial situation, doesn’t understand why she doesn’t accept the large sum of money that has been offered to her and move into a more secure apartment. 
The visionary director also takes the time to show us how Clara manages to live by herself, brilliantly exposing her sexual life, uncanny premonitory dreams, and social life in the company of her friends, some of them gossip adepts.

Sonia Braga’s tour-de-force performance, likely the best of her long career, bolsters a film that functions as a stirring contemporary eye-opener with a precise focal point.
I’m thinking of a comparable case in NYC: the famous, now-degrading Chelsea Hotel where people are still living in and nobody can throw them away.

Supported by a set of international producers, including Walter Salles (“Central Station”, “The Motorcycle Diaries”) as an executive, Mendonça Filho holds an unflinching filmmaking style reinforced by a haunting narrative fluency. 
A bow to his new masterwork!
 

Nocturama (2016)

Directed by Bertrand Bonello
Country: France / Germany / Belgium

Drawing a persistent curiosity during its puzzling first half, but losing a great part of the grip in its last, “Nocturama”, an imperfect thriller directed by Bertrand Bonello (“House of Tolerance”, “Saint Laurent”), displays a contrived conjecture as a response to the uncertainty about the multiple terrorist attacks that France was recently subjected to.

In addition to directing, Bonello also wrote the script, co-produced, and composed the music for the film whose talented young cast made it look slightly better than really was.
With a structure that winds back and forth in time, the story is centered on a group of young individuals who inexplicably decide to embark on a malicious bombing plan, rounded with a couple of killings, in the center of Paris.

The plot was carried out with a tenacious conviction but didn’t go exactly as intended. Greg (Vincent Rottiers) and Fred (Robin Goldbronn), both headers of the operation, had the same fate during the mission: death. The former even makes a ghostly appearance after his death to explain what had happened to him. This was a clearly failed incursion in the supernatural.
The rest of the criminals, 10 in total, meet overnight at a downtown mall where Omar (Rabah Nait Oufella), an accomplice who works there, had prepared everything for a bizarre celebration.

Infusing a good amount of alienation in a shockingly quiet way, Bonello imagined a group of local terrorists with a variety of backgrounds. The middle-class is represented through David (Finnegan Oldfield) and Sarah (Laure Valentinelli), the lower classes through the aimless Mika (Jamil McCraven) or the ostentatious Yacine (Hamza Meziani), the upper class through the bright and well-connected Andre (Martin Petit-Guyot), and the Muslim community through Samir (Ilias Le Doré) who dreams with the promises of an illusory paradise. 

Not so profuse in ideas, Bonello sets up a few musical scenes to entertain the audiences – Omar listening to loud music, Yacine theatrically singing Paul Anka’s version of “My Way”, and Sabrina (Manal Issa) dancing “Call Me” by Blondie – and also squeezes two intruders inside the mall to join the freaky fellowship.
The celebration is turned into a nightmare when a police squad enters the building to shoot at everything that moves. No appeals to surrender, no questions, no requests, no mercy. Just erase the invaders and clean up the building.

Although leaving the motivations of the characters to our imagination and fabricating a couple of strained situations that aim to be cool, “Nocturama” has acceptable moments of suspense and exhales estrangement all around.

13th (2016)

Directed by Ava DuVernay
Country: USA

“13th” is a powerful Netflix documentary centered on the racial bias lived in the American criminal justice system. The film was directed by the acclaimed Ava DuVernay, a true specialist who makes us aware of this spreading cancer called racial discrimination that feels brutally active in the US. She was the first black female director to be nominated for a Golden Globe and an Academy Award. It happened in 2015 with the top-notch historical drama “Selma”.
Also nominated for an Oscar (best documentary) is the awesome “13th”, whose title refers to the 13th amendment to the US Constitution. It was filmed in secrecy and had its premiere last year, opening the New York Film Festival.

The film starts with a curious statement about the US. It’s said the country has 5% of the world population and 25% of the world prisoners. The world’s highest rate of incarceration becomes even more shocking when you learn that a huge percentage of these incarcerations are with African-Americans.
Here’s what the 13th amendment reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.”
Thus, it’s easy to imagine what white supremacists and racist hypocrites, especially those in a position of power such as policemen and prison guards, can do to the colored people and Latinos. What this feature is trying to prove is that mass incarceration inevitably leads to modern slavery.

DuVernay dexterously intercalates archival footage with a variety of testimonials from selected personalities, eventually addressing the flagrant cases that have shocked the world lately.
Moreover, she discloses how much the US presidents contributed to widening this civil rights gap with their supposedly well-intentioned measures – the war on drugs during the Nixon and Reagan administrations and Clinton’s 1994 crime bill.
Another individual to be rebuked is D.W. Griffith due to his erroneous portrayal of the African-American in his controversial 1915 epic film “The Birth of a Nation”.

Fearlessly, and boosted by the activist songs of Nina Simone and Public Enemy, the director points the finger to a rotten system that needs urgent revision in order to give a true meaning to the word ‘justice’. 
She does it with clarity and objectivity, but also indignation, almost in a desperate supplication, in a cry of hope for changing a country, called the land of the free, for better.

Observant, insightful, and necessary, “13th” reaffirms Ava DuVernay as the powerful voice of the oppressed, as well as a world-class filmmaker.

Things To Come (2016)

Directed by Mia Hansen-Love
Country: France / Germany

“Things to Come” is a pungent drama that links together Mia Hansen-Love and Isabelle Huppert, acclaimed French director and actress, respectively.
Last year, the latter was the protagonist in Paul Verhoeven’s “Elle”, receiving well-deserved accolades around the world for her brilliant performance. This year, she can only expect further praise since she reteamed with directors Hong Sang-soo in “Claire’s Camera” and Michael Haneke in “Happy End”.
Huppert excels once again under the direction of Hansen-Love, winner of a Silver Berlin Bear, who wrote the script with the actress in mind. Her previous film, “Eden”, was on my favorite list of 2014.

Her new film follows Nathalie Chazeaux (Huppert), a qualified high school philosophy teacher whose emotional strength is tested when her husband, Heinz (André Marcon), also a teacher, leaves her for another woman after 25 years of marriage. It was their children, Chloe (Sarah Le Picard) and Johann (Solal Forte), who forced him to choose between staying and departing when they found out he was seeing someone else.

The situation becomes even more stressful because Nathalie’s mother, Yvette (Edith Scob), is losing the battle against a severe depression and constantly attempting to kill herself. It’s kind of a relief when she finally accepts to dwell in a well-prepared, if costly, nursing home. 
And because bad things always come in threes, she is fired from the school she's been teaching for years.

All these setbacks would totally destroy a weak person, but Nathalie is something else. To quote her own words: ‘I’m fulfilled intellectually’; ‘I found my total freedom’. She suffers in silence as she seems to fully accept the unfamiliar situation she is in. There are no dramas. The only person she relies on to talk about her personal life is Fabien (Roman Kolinka), a former student who invites her for a farm he bought in the mountains. Although he considers her a bourgeois and pretends to be more radical than he really is, they are genuinely fond of each other.
Trying not to lose face, her eyes were soaked in tears with a painful ‘au revoir’ to Heinz’s beautiful beach house, where she used to spend her summers. 

By taking a good look at its narrative, one may think this is a heavy dark film, but it doesn’t work like that. After all, family is still there. One fundamental question arises, though. What would be of this woman if she had no children?

Even deserving all the praise for eschewing clichés and dramatic trifles, Hansen-Love could have suppressed a couple of scenes that felt contrived and unnecessary, like when a man harasses Nathalie at the movies. 
As for the rest, this character-driven accomplishment is powerful, portraying life’s contingencies with class, honesty, and an extraordinary sensibility.

Fences (2016)

Directed by Denzel Washington
Country: USA

Denzel Washington has a much busier acting career than directorial. Nearly a decade has passed since he directed “The Great Debaters”, and fourteen since his directorial debut “Antwone Fisher”. On “Fences”, a wonderfully acted drama written by the late August Wilson and adapted from his own play, Washington maintains the tradition of taking over the leading role in every film he directs. He not only demonstrates his steady guidance with this challenging project but also delivers a great performance as Troy Maxson, an intransigent garbage collector who’s finally enjoying some stability in the aftermath of a complicated past. The film is set in 1950, Pittsburgh, where he owns a good house purchased with the compensation money consigned to his older brother, Gabriel (Mykelti Williamson), who returned impaired from the war.

An orphan since the age of 14, Troy remained incarcerated for several years after killing a man in a robbery. He was around 40 when he got out of the prison, and baseball became his life and passion. However, he never left the Negro Leagues, not because of the color of his skin but because of his age. Now in his early fifties, Troy still believes he was a victim of racial discrimination in that matter. Besides drinking, he loves to chat with his longtime workmate Jim Bono (Stephen Henderson), who praises their friendship, just like he does. They have a good reason to celebrate when Troy is promoted and becomes the first colored man in Pittsburgh driving a garbage truck, even with no driver’s license.

The main character also boasts a solid 18-year marriage with the kind-hearted Rose (Viola Davis), who accepts him with all his frailties. They have a 17-year-old son, Cory (Jovan Adepo), who intends to quit his job to play football but doesn’t have the permission of his father. Besides sabotaging all his dreams of becoming a professional footballer, Troy also makes him feel diminished and unloved with his resentful and authoritarian personality. 
Troy surely acts in a different way with Lyons (Russell Hornsby), his estranged son from a previous relationship, who invariably stops by the house on his dad’s payday in order to borrow some money. He keeps trying to live as a musician, despite Troy’s opposition.
If the drama was already fierce, shoveling us into the wrangling between father and son, it becomes even more incisive after the disclosure that Troy has a mistress who is pregnant.

Well-calibrated in terms of emotions, “Fences” was able to create tension and trigger apprehension with a bitter story that above all, urges us to meditate on family, love, prejudice, selfishness, and the general earthly nature of the human being.
The human 'fences' portrayed here are deeply cutting and easy to connect with, thanks to the gigantic performances by Washington and Viola Davis.
It’s very unlikely that “Fences” win Oscars for best film or best adapted screenplay, its other two nominations, since the concurrence is ferocious. However, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the actors become victorious for their flawless work.

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.