Biutiful. Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2010.
The fourth film by "El Negro" González-Iñárritu is also his first one without screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga. In many interviews, González-Iñárritu has declared that he got sick of the multi-story fragmented narrative style. Well... you certainly can't say that just by watching Biutiful: a wannabe-Ikiru film, González-Iñárritu has to learn that sometimes less is more. Do we really need that storyline with the gay chinese couple? Why does Uxbal, the main character (Javier Bardem) has the gift of talking to dead people? This doesn't really add up anything to the story, or to the character. It is undeniable that González-Iñárritu has talent, there are many memorable images in this film. Unfortunately, they end up being diluted in a 2 1/2 hours film that never really finds its focus. At times, Biutiful is a great film. But most of the time it is busy with being a great movie, with being really profound and... bah. Let's hope González-Iñarritu's next movie doesn't have a script written by himself, or Guillermo Arriaga.


Another Year. Directed by Mike Leigh, 2010.
A perfect companion film to Leigh's previous film Happy-Go-Lucky, Another Year follows a married couple, Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen) during the course of... well, a year. Lovely structured (roughly four scenes, one for each season of the year) the movie is less concerned with the happy couple than it is with their friend, the troubled Mary (Leslie Manville). A sort of antipode to Sally Hawkin's Poppy (the main character in Happy-Go-Lucky), Manville's Mary is always either neurotic or depressed. This doesn't prevent the film from having its joys, most of them through really delicious dialogue (it is said that most of the dialogue in Leigh's films is improvised) and, ultimately, the big question is: what's about Tom and Gerri that they seem to have no problem at all? Is there a secret? Of course, nobody seems to have the answer, and that's just one of the high points in this greatly-enjoyable, not so easy to watch, film.



Hausu (aka House). Directed by Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, 1977.
Ha! Do you really think Zack Snyder and his Sucker Punch deserves to be regarded as innovative? This, ladies and gentlemen, is the stuff cult movies are made of. A fantasy-childish-horror movie, it tells the story of 7 girls that go on vacation to the house of the aunt of one of them... from here on, the movie just keeps getting more and more bizarre. The great problem I have with this film is that it seems too self-conscious, as if it wants to be a cult film so badly. Anyway, the film has its charms, it is fun, it has lots of blood and Kung Fu (yes, one of the characters is named Kung Fu) is really pretty. I can definitely see why this is highly regarded as a cult movie.

Sisters. Directed by Brian DePalma, 1973.
DePalma's first horror film tells the story of a young reporter who is investigating a murder in which a pretty girl may have killed a man... but, why does she has the same ugly scar as the pretty girl? Very Hitchcockian in its humor and its suspense, Sisters prove that, very early in his career, DePalma already was a master in split-screen (something that Tarantino, for example, still has to work in) and in enjoyable horror. The movie is no much more than a small homage to Hitchcok, but still, it is a very good one.