Look, it's unpleasant that the year starts on a Monday, it's an impressive lack of tact (it's a shame that in heaven they don't accept complaint forms). I suppose that's why we have begun the journey through 2024 with caution, doing coastal navigation and with the only concert we see in pajamas.
It sounds obvious to say that the first premiere of the new season, 'Those Who Stay', is also one of the best films of the year, but it's true. Film as Christmassy as Cristina Pedroche's dress and with a pleasant flavor despite telling serious things. She does it through the story of a grumpy teacher who is left at that time in charge of a student at the boarding school where he works, a task that she shares with a caustic and saia cook.
Alexander Payne creates, with the help of the excellent actor Paul Giamatti, a work as simple as it is superb, one of those that ends up with a 99% on Rotten Tomatoes. He is intelligent, and that air of 'Club of Five' (1985) does him a lot of good. It makes us contemplate, through the filter of bitter humor and overflowing humanism, the characters in that kind of terrarium with seventies aesthetics that the school where the action takes place becomes (by the way, the fact that it takes place in 1970 is not a kitsch whim). The world is a bitter and complicated place, and this film tells us what happens when the world thinks the same about you.
The painful transit of two sub-Saharan immigrants through Africa to reach European Arcadia is what we see in the excellent and awareness-raising Italian feature film 'I Captain', a transalpine Oscar candidate. Matteo Garrone, the director of 'Gomorrah' (2008) once again shows his social realism but with fantastic touches as if something from his failed 'Pinocchio' (2020) will penetrate into a work with few concessions. He reminds us of the mythical journey of Ulysses, although his protagonists undergo the twelve labors of Hercules. The only bad thing is that we will feel sorry for those kids for the two hours of the movie, but when we leave we will pass by immigrants like them without looking at them, giving it the importance of a 'Cachitos' subtitle.
Aaron Eckhart is a wasted actor who aged out of being a district attorney. Renny Harlin (you have to take advantage of this little) directs him in 'Agent X. Last Mission'. Harlin has always favored B-action films, seeking to make money with minimal investment. A retired agent must save the CIA (celebrated NGO) from an international conspiracy. Eckhart is competing to take over the already worn-out Liam Neeson's position as middle-class antihero. If you find something original in it, let me know.
Another 'thriller' on sale (suitable for January) is 'Accused'. The British bring us the typical story of the false culprit. A boy is marked as the author of an attack with no other evidence than the Internet, and the media lynching makes him as beloved as Milei among Peronists. This is in case you thought that in today's movies the technological bad guy was always going to be Artificial Intelligence.
Director's Cut
Queen Margaret of Denmark abdicates. For those of you who think that this small country only has Hamlet, metal cookie boxes and 'Borgen', I remind you that one of the best directors in the history of cinema (probably the best in the use of light, the Vermeer of cinema) is from there. The teacher Carl Theodor Dreyer. Essential.
Have a week, and a Three Kings Day, of movies.
#good #debut #year #39Those #stay39
