Midnight in Paris

After exploring the inability to be happy with what you have and the costant need, never satisfied, of desiring something else in "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger", Woody Allen gives us now a beautiful fable about the importance of knowing each other and finding happiness in the present.

Gil (Owen Wilson), a screenplay writer who works for Hollywood, has arrived to Paris wih and his fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams), for a holiday before their wedding. Having been always captivated by the literary legend of the city of light, Gil believes that in its streets he will find the inspiration he needs to finish a novel he is writing.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Employing, again, the ironic tone of his previous works, director Anderson tells the story of oceanographer Steve Zissou (Bill Murray), shaped, no doubt about it, by the figure of Jacques Cousteau.

Zissou and his team's documentaries have lost the interest oftheir public, hence the attempt to regain their glory days with a new project: a sort of personal vendetta against a murderer shark that ate one of Steve's most intimate work collaborators.

Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di Biciclette)

There is an overwhelming sadness in this movie, all so much sadder because the sense of loss is linked to something so aperently meaningless as a bike.

In this masterpiece from the 40's by director De Sica, we follow three days in the life of Antonio and his family, in post-war Rome. Antonio was just lucky enough to find a job, after months of disoccupation, one among hundreds of jobless people waiting in the streets to hear their name. His family could not be happier, but he needs a bike for his job and his bike gets stolen minutes after he starts working. It is a downward spiral of search and loss from that moment on.

Rudy

When you love football since childhood more than anything else, when you don't have the desired body for this sport and you play with team mates who are a body and half taller.

When your family, friends and everyone laugh when they hear you talk about dreams and goals, when they say and repeat that you are not worth what you want and you're a fool... When this happens, you will find yourself faced with the same story and life of Daniel E. Ruettiger,aka "Rudy".

Men in Black...and 3!

Men in Black is the absolute trash that turns into cult. This is not a critic, first of all because I personally like it a lot and, second, because such an ability deserves a Bravo!

This third and probably last part hits the theaters 15 years after the first one and 10 after the second part. This trilogy has all the ingredients of a successful trash/cult.

The Edukators (Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei)

This movie has elements that art should have: it shows you, it does not seek to prove an absolute point, it conveys. For me, being able to identify myself with 3 German guys and share their feeling of alienation of the modern world is a breath of fresh air.

I think the message is this: al long as young people feel the need to rebel against the mediocrity imposed by the systems created by previous generations, the continuity of the world is assured.

The Candidate (Kandidaten)

Jonas seems distant since the death of his father, who was once a successful lawyer and died under mysterious circumstances. The protagonist, convinced that his father was the victim of a plot, takes advantage of his status as a promising young lawyer to uncover the truth. Until, one day, he wakes up in a hotel room next to the corpse of a woman.

The Lovely Bones

Susie Salmon is 14 and with a lifetime ahead, but one day she is brutally murdered. From her heaven, Susie will observe how the pain gradually destroys little by little her family, while the murderer goes unpunished and ready to act again. Susie must choose between her thirst for revenge and the recovering of her family.

I've Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t'aime)

Scott Thomas plays Juliette, a woman who is reunited after fifteen years with her ​​younger sister Léa (Elsa Zylberstein) and her family, her husband, two adopted daughters and a silent father who is addicted to books.

Those years of absence were due to the older sister been imprisoned for murder, so that the distance between the two was marked by isolation, denial and secrecy.

Shrek: to franchise or not to franchise?

When it came out in 2001, Shrek was one of the very first movies that played with dissacrating the ordinary fairy-tail. The result was funny, fresh and original. Many productions have been following this style ever since, including the sequels to Shrek themselves.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

"Fantastic Mr. Fox" tells the adventures of Mr. Fox, an elegant middle-aged clever fox who works as a columnist in a local newspaper. His youth dedicated to poaching chicken seems to be over; or at least so is implied by the first scene, when trapped in a chicken coop he promises his future wife to give up his wild animal attitude if they manage to escape from the trap.

Soul Kitchen

"Soul Kitchen" is a restaurant in Hamburg, in what seems to be a poor area , with a quite bohemian, varied clientele and a warm and unpretentious decoration.

The owner Zinos, a young man of Greek origins, sometimes is the chef. Although he is neither good at business nor at the culinary arts, he is a noble guy, who takes care of his stuff and cares for his people. It is also the central character in the film, and it won’t be difficult to appreciate him and adopt his point of view with which he faces the troubles he will have to overcome.

Turtles Can Fly (Lakposhtha parvaz mikonand)

Some Kurdish orphan teens and children struggle to survive amid the war in a refugee camp at the Iraqi border with Turkey, days before the fall of Saddam Hussein and the U.S. invasion.

Open your Eyes "Abre los Ojos"

When a filmmaker debuts with a great movie, shooting the second one becomes a dilemma: there is always the temptation to play it safe and emulate the formula that proved successful.

But there is also the option to evolve in the search for a personal language and style. This last one is the path Alejandro Amenabar, director of the hit "Tesis", has chosen to follow with this new film, "Abre los Ojos". And the result is somehow bittersweet.

The Avengers

I do not read american comic-books, but I usually enjoy the super hero movies (yes, I even liked Green Lantern). This one tops them all.

Sure, you need to remember what kind of movie this is: it is not going to win any palm or bear or lion or oscar. It is a mean of entertainment, meant to entertain. With this in mind, this movie gets a 10 for goal achievement.

Goodbye Lenin!

It's true: real socialism was a failure. But an economic and thinking system that divided and made the entire planet discuss for two centuries deserves better than a lame burial. "Good bye Lenin" is somehow, to put it simply, a respectful funeral that socialism deserved.

Like every well-made film, "Good Bye Lenin" has many successes. Alex Kerner, the protagonist, tells us the story of East Germany and its decline while he tells us the story of his life and his family.

American Psycho

From the opening scenes, the director Mary Harron presents the world of this New York yuppie from the 80's. A pretentious man who likes attending expensive restaurants to be seen in and that he can show off, with the obsession of his appearance that makes everyone surrounding Bateman look identical to each other.

Titanic

"I am the king of the woooorld". "Do you trust me?". "I'll never let go".

I was 10ish when Titanic came out firts, in 1997. The frenzy around this movie was so high: the actors, the director, the technical innovations, the soundtrack, everything was everywhere and everyone was quoting it (and still is). 3D version has been out for a while now and the hype has been quite high again.

I was very young, maybe too young, to catch the intensity of this love and the purpose of this movie. Yet, I never changed my mind over the years: to me, this movie sucks. A lot.

Halloween

If anyone could recapture the vitality of this "slasher movie", it had to be Rob Zombie. That is something we suspected all along, even before Rob Zombie announced his interest in film-making.

Rob Zombie is the best musician that got the message (not sure if that's the right word) implicit in the psychokiller films that flourished in the seventies and reached their decadent glory during the eighties with the advent of a bunch of sequels of fundamental importance for anyone with an interest in mythology and supernatural aspects of serial murders, "Nightmare on Elm Street", "Friday the 13th" and "Halloween".

What...Wait...WHAT?

The other day I was watching Air Force One (yes, I like that kind of "stuff") while building up a particularly complicated piece of IKEA furniture and I found myself thinking about those typical movie scenes where you think "yes, sure" and "what on earth" and "this again?" and "why? just why?".

2046

"Love is a matter of chance," says the protagonist of "2046". He is a man who has left the love of his life and reflects on his loss in a hotel in Hong Kong.

Why is it a matter of chance? Because sometimes you want to love and the other person does not and vice versa. Exceptionally, the two desires coincide, but the rest of love is to search without finding.

Analyze This

Laughing is one of the best things in life. For some, the secret of this blessing lies in the effects laughter has on the human body. Scientists tell us about the dozens of muscles that are exercised and the many stimulating substances that are released in the brain when we laugh.

This is what happens when watching "Analyze This", the film starring Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal, who exudes wit, sarcasm and good humor throughout most of the projection. The film shows the extraordinary meeting of two men whose lives are like water and oil.

Mirror Mirror & Co.

Everyone knows it, everyone talks about it: Hollywood newest trend is making fairy-tales inspired movies. This buzz is contagious to TV shows as well, so that there goes ABC's Once Upon a Time. However, is it really a new trend? In fact, it looks to me like it has been out for some years now: what's new is the concentration of Snow White adaptations that has made everyone talk about it. Let's take it from the start...or from what I think is the start. 

The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen)

Real communism collapsed with the fall of the Berlin wall, but there are still  many stories to tell, like "The Life of the Others", the unforgettable and moving film by Florian Henckel von Donnersmack. And yes, if there was a higher status than excellent and an exclusive club of a superior category, this first film by the German director would belong to it.