These are the movie premieres that hit the screens starting this April 5th.
By Jordi Batlle Caminal
Bennett Miller’s Moneyball was a movie about the world of baseball that took place not on the grass but in executive offices, something that could put off even the most devoted of the game. But two heavyweights such as Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian participated in the script, and this was evident in the plausibility of the situations, in the rigor of the dialogues. Something similar happens in Air, another sports-themed movie framed exclusively in offices, meetings and more meetings, discussions, strategies, economic risks, and so on. Ben Affleck, in his fifth feature film as a director, travels back to the eighties to tell us how the Nike brand managed to sign Michael Jordan playing at a disadvantage at first, since Converse and, above all, Adidas were also candidates and were better positioned. It would have to be a victory, that of Nike, which would mark a before and after in the field of advertising and marketing.
Air is, never better said, a well-shod film: it has brilliant dialogues, a very effective cast (everyone is perfect, but perhaps the one who stands out the most is the least known: Chris Messina, who plays Jordan’s representative), a sense of rhythm and of the narrative structure. Affleck has always been a well-written neoclassical filmmaker, and here he inscribes his story into the canon of epic cinema. Epic is the figure of Matt Damon, in the skin of the executive who achieved glory through his instinct and his perseverance; He does not carry weapons, but he is the hero macerated in the same sauce as the sheriff of the best western, the typical stubborn policeman a la Harry Callahan or the ordinary citizen of Frank Capra capable of launching a ‘speech’ of visionary optimism that silence the audience. The Holy Grail of these tie-wearing gentlemen is, here, obtaining the iconic sneakers that the star will wear. This feat is contemplated with a hyperbolic transcendence, as if it were as important for humanity as the discovery of America, the invention of electricity or the conquest of the Moon. And the perennial American dream accomplished (more with its feet than with its head) is extolled with an emphasis that can be irritating.
By Salvador Llopart
It’s been half a century since The Exorcist and its influence continues to be inescapable in the cinema of possessions. Especially when the devil becomes the source of all evil. The Pope’s Exorcist is no exception. What’s more: the appearance of Russell Crowe, his protagonist, clad in a long black coat under a wide-brimmed hat, refers directly to the iconic film by William Friedkin.
The Pope’s exorcist has -or claims to have- a real basis. It is based on the story, or stories, by Gabriele Amorth (Crowe). Late priest who held the position of the Vatican’s chief exorcist and who, it is said, performed more than a hundred thousand exorcisms in his long professional career. The character is so interesting that Friedkin himself made The Devil and Father Amorth (2017), a documentary about him.
Despite being based on a real character, the truth is that there is not even a hint of realism in The Exorcist of the Pope, beyond proposing, at the beginning, the need for evil to justify the very existence of the Church. This film by Julius Avery -whom we knew from Overlord (2018), where World War II met zombies- quickly turns towards the conspiracy genre. More along the lines of The Da Vinci Code, for example, than The Conjuring (2013) or The Possession (2012), to refer to two recent examples of films of the “possessive” genre.
The iconography of the film is, however, that of the horror genre. Even more exaggerated, more spectacular if possible. Bordering, at times, the circus of special effects, with its inevitable lacerated bodies and bloody explosions. But the real effect is Russell Crowe himself, who is briefly seen with the Coliseum behind him. Crowe has not returned to Rome for the new installment of Gladiator, no. But everything indicates that there will be more installments of the adventures of this Gabriele Amorth in the hands of him, Father Brown of exorcisms.
Por Philipp Engel
Not all remakes are absurd. After the failure of the 90s adaptation of its star game, with Bob Hoskins wearing a cap and dungarees, Nintendo had every right to try again, and even more so with a more logical animated version under the creative umbrella of Illumination Entertainment. This two-headed film shines for its fidelity to the game, it has very specific moments reminiscent of Pets and Sing!, and there is no shortage of nostalgic musical hangers (A-Ha, Kim Carnes, AC/DC…), but it is in danger of about stimulating the little ones and filling up those who haven’t played for decades.
By S. Llopart
We are dealing with leading actors -including the director himself, Louis Garrel- in dramatic situations, although, paradoxically, these situations have the obvious vocation of being funny right from Roschdy Zem’s initial monologue. A drama that wants to be comedy or vice versa: pure melancholy passed through the absurd. The proposal is surprising and worthy of praise. But the inconsistency is paid. The truth is that one cannot stop looking at those great performances, where Anouk Grinberg stands out, determined to make the impossible fit.
Por Ph. Obstacle
Grandinetti plays a former tango star and appears on screen as that friend from before the pandemic who has suddenly aged 100 years. This innocently black comedy, genuinely sentimental, takes the route of a road movie, from Buenos Aires to Mendoza, whose narrative twists, although clichés, cannot be revealed about long-delayed reunions. The sympathy of Mercedes Morán and the enormity of the landscapes stand out, especially when Federico Rivarés photographs the couple’s van in the distance like a forgotten toy in God’s garden.
By S. Llopart
Story(s) of a victim of feelings on his way to becoming a “man-eater”. The formula is simple: take it all by mouthful. Laughter: infallible remedy. Surely, in a monologue format -which is how the proposal written by Marta González de Vega, its protagonist, was born- things work. The problem is in the film translation. The misadventures of this amusing and contradictory woman, a bit neurotic too, remain in an amusing accumulation, but an accumulation after all, of anecdotes and occurrences about love and her misfortunes.
Por Ph. Obstacle
The debut of the British Georgia Oakley delves into what it meant to be a lesbian in the days of Margaret Thatcher and the so-called Section 28, a legal clause that encouraged schools and local authorities to repress the “dissemination” of homosexuality. Her point of view is that of a physical education teacher who, in contrast to her friends, LGTBI militants, lives her sexuality in total secrecy, hiding it at work and in any other place outside the homosexual environment. . A didactic pamphlet against homophobia in the form of an applied melodramatic telefilm.
