These are the premieres that hit the theaters this March 15:
By Jordi Batlle Caminal
Wrestling, beyond the pleasures that Santo the Silver Masked One gave us in abundance in the golden age of the long-awaited neighborhood cinemas, has offered few stimuli on the big screen. More than the interesting The Wrestler, by Darren Aronofsky, we fondly remember Hooked Girls (women’s wrestling), the final film by a small giant of the seventh art, Robert Aldrich, with the memorable Vicki Frederick and Laurene Landon (what happened to them?) and the always admirable Peter Falk. And little else. The Iron Clan comes to repair this shortage for the public who wants to see kilos of muscled meat in the ring.
Those who live outside the wrestling universe will probably be unaware of the existence of the Von Erich family, from Texas, who stars in The Iron Clan. The father was a former wrestler who, obsessed with the sport, pushed his five living children (four in the film, who also remembers that there was another son who died as a child) to follow in his footsteps, to fulfill his dreams. .
While the mother dedicated herself almost exclusively to praying to God, father and children devoted themselves body and soul to the championships. But, and here we must remain silent, something similar to a biblical curse had spread its wings over the Von Erichs. The action takes place in the eighties of the last century, but the mentality that governs the family, apparently fed on corn on the cob, seems anchored in the times of Judge Roy Bean, a century before.
We are faced with the portrait of a very traditional America and a prototypical family cell. Although he lacks visual invention, Sean Durkin, the author of the appreciable Martha Marcy May Marlene, films with applied correction, good taste for temporal ellipses and exposes the dramatic conflicts, alternating ring and home, in a very credible way, supported by a cast of impeccable actors.
At the head of the cast, Zac Efron, dressed as the Hulk, breaks with his syrupy image in a performance that deserves applause. And Holt McCallany (Mindhunter’s agent Bill Tench) is perfect in the role of the father, one of those authoritarian, rude and inflexible but good-hearted patriarchs that Donald Crisp had embodied eighty years ago.
Por Philipp Engel
It is not at all strange that Molly Manning Walker’s first film has sparked an online dialogue between the British actress and Elena Martín: How to have sex and Creatura address the taboo of the not-so-unusual sexual block, and both evoke those long, warm summers in the beach that, in the traditional narrative of adolescent coming-of-age films, were the perfect setting for a loss of virginity wrapped in postcard romanticism (if the point of view is female), when not overflowing with dubious ribald humor (if It’s masculine).
If the Catalan deconstructs the problem into three vital stages, and intelligently delves into the causes, How to have sex takes them for granted and presents us with Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), a girl who feels like an anomaly for not having experienced never sex, very unlike the two friends, one heterosexual, the other not, with whom she disembarks in Crete for a week of crazy partying.
Who says Crete, says Punta Ballena in Magaluf, because the three girls will not come across any locals on that street, flanked by cheap hotels, swimming pools and discos that, at dawn, wake up like a battlefield of cans and plastic cups. Who says drama could say pure terror. In the tradition of the toughest British social cinema, the director takes us into a world without horizon with shots as soon as we wake up and no food other than trays of chips.
Endless nights, strobe lights, beach entertainers. The hyperrealistic immersion is extreme, claustrophobic and puts us in the skin of the heroine, and her hidden aversion to sex, especially when she ends up, inevitably, on the beach, to go through an unromantic moment in the hands of a boy who doesn’t know what It’s about consent and it seems born to justify your phobia. A psychologically knockout film, without concessions, but not too terrifying or explanatory. Quite similar to the bitter taste of a hangover.
By Salvador Llopart
In a judicial drama, like this one, the word is essential. The case on which it is based shook France during the seventies. Golman, in the hands of Wortheler, his protagonist, appears fatuous, arrogant and stuffy.
Like the whole movie actually. The director forgets to build the characters and focuses on ideology; He similarly forgets the facts in favor of pre-judgments. Once again a “French-style” trial, where what is judged, ultimately, is the inability to know the truth.
Por P. Engel
Eugenio Derbez, the motivated teacher of the Oscar-winning Coda, now brings the new pedagogies to a Mexican border town, miserable and devastated by drug violence. In order to get them to think for themselves, he wins over students by evacuating desks, abolishing grades, and putting a sock on the bell.
Although some are not saved, in front of the landfill lives a gifted girl who will be on the news. A very sentimental ode to meritocracy based on an exemplary true story.
By S. Llopart
Two girls in a lost Australian village. Two young girls start working as waitresses in the only bar for a thousand kilometers around. They both want to escape from everything. But, of course, they cannot escape the male gaze. Topical? Of course.
Another case of harassed femininity. You would yell at them: “don’t go, run away.” But when what had to happen, the foreseeable, doesn’t happen, you scratch your head in intrigue and wait. And you wait. And you wait. The guys are the threat. The two of them, the best thing about the film, the dilemma.
Por P. Engel
Finally, a feel good movie that deserves to be taken seriously. François Berléand plays the widower who joins the contemporary dance company directed by La Ribot to fulfill a promise made to his beloved and longed-for wife.
A tender and light comedy, but not superficial; positive, but not naive, which speaks with tact and intelligence about life after the death of the loved one, about the limited capacity of children to understand their parents and the intergenerational complicity of grandchildren.
By S. Llopart
So much drama for a movie. Paula Beer, as Stella, is the best of a film that disperses and branches into the pain of the time. We are in Berlin, the forties. Nazism dyes everything with hate. Stella is a young Jewish girl who wants to sing swing and be happy. But the circumstances, obviously. They don’t let her.
The topic is fascinating: given the choice, what would you choose? Torture and Auschwitz? Or collaborate? Stella starts from innocence until she reaches corruption and, on that long and winding path, she raises questions that are difficult to answer. Riedhof’s film, effective, nervous, sometimes too much, does not help to solve them.