film critic journal | by ares

The Jungle Book is the "real" version of the Disney movie from 1967. It is a fable about animals and the balance between them. However, Mowgly is a human that lives with them and combines the human intelligence with the animal instinct.  This story shows us that we can be whatever we want to be and we just have to believe and work in order to achieve it. Mowgly is a human and the law of the jungle does not accept a human. Despite that, Mowgly proves that he is different and that this fact doesn't have to be a barrier in order to live with the animals.  On one hand, he just loves being with the animals and learns from all of the creatures. On the other they comprehend that there has to be no fear of Shere Khan (the tiger) because if they stay united there's nothing to worry about.  The film does not draw on the music of the original animated version but it still has the magic of the tales that Rudyard Kipling wrote and it's essence, that it doe...

"Julieta", by Pedro Almodóvar is a movie that I didn't plan to watch and I think that, as it has happened to me with the few last movies I've watched, it gave me a valuable lesson about life,  family, friends, in fact about us, humans.  Julieta is a humanist, she teaches ancient greek culture (literature and mythology) when, in a train,  she meets "prónos" a man named Xoan, who is a fisherman from the north of Spain that will change her hole life. They become a family when Artía, their daughter, is born and their story seems to be perfect.  Nevertheless one day, everything changes, because Julieta discovers that his husband, Xoan has been always seeing her previous wife best friend and spending some days with her when Julieta was visting her parents. That day, Xoan leaves forever and Julieta has to deal with her daughter and the guilt of the situation.  Even though Artía seems to understand and help out her mother in everything with no c...

Barcelona nit d'hivern , the sequel of Barcelona nit d'estiu, captures de spirit of Christmas, when everything is possible. The film follows the life of various couples, families, friends  and people that spend the Christmas night in Barcelona. Some of them fall in love, others try new things, and some others share a secret they were hiding for a long time...  In the movie everyone learns something about life, family or love... in fact, the magic of Christmas is always present. It is romantic, but you also real and magic and you laugh a lot as well.  A perfect film for these holidays

The movie starts as it does the book, with the same words that F.Scott Fitzgerald wrote in the beginning of The Great Gatsby.  Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) keeps his low profile as it does in the novel. He is an observer of all the actions around him, but he does nothing; so he is the narrator of another person story, Jay Gatsby’s story ( Leonardo DiCaprio). In the movie it seems, though, that everything is a flashback that Carraway does every day in different moments. This fact, though, does not appear in the book. In fact, Baz Luhrman uses Nick as a narrator from a different point of view of Fitzgerald’s narrator.  The director of Moulin Rouge shows us a crazy Carraway in a shelter as if the roaring twenties and the non-love story between his Jay Gatsby and Daisy had been the cause of his craziness. The rest of the film is similar to the book and Luhrman emphasizes two aspects. The first one is the roaring twenties. This decade was, precisely, one of t...

Nowadays, that in almost every job experience is required, we wouldn't be thinking of a senior doing the typical tasks an intern does.  Well, this film shows us that besides young people seeking for experience to find decent job there's also seniors who don't know what to do with their life when they're done working and family, friends and trips aren't enough to fill the days.  Ben (Robert De Niro) is one of those seniors who needs to work and do something in order to find sense to his life after having traveled around the world and being widower. He finds an intern workplace at About the fit, a company founded by a young passionate entrepreneur, Jules (Anne Hathaway) who didn't even knew this posts were offered.  When Cameron (Andrew Rannells) tells Jules that she's going to have an intern that is 70 years old, she isn't really convinced but as the movie goes on, the viewer is going to see that sometimes we need someone to support and ...

A masterpiece. Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke are outstanding in the performance of their characters and Richard Linklater has done a work of art. A must see, the story of a boy who becomes and adult does not comprehend just him but his family and friends. The story of a mother that fights for his family, a father that wants to be a part of them and a soul that wants to find his place on earth. 

If you like music, you'll like this film because it is a story about love for music, there's also time for other love, yes, but the main purpose of the film is showing the love people have for music and how this thing can help you overcome things and change your live. I've heard some critics say that this movie "has a soundtrack for every love story" and "a movie for those who live life as if it was a playlist" and I also would define it like this. If you don't like music, or it is not one of your most loved interests, this film makes you appreciate it. The places where the music is made captivate the viewer and the songs make you spend some good time watching the movie.  As for the story itself, the base, I wouldn't define it as groundbreaking story because if it wasn't for the music component, it could have been entertaining - because it is not a film about how a music star is born- but it wouldn't have been that good. As said...

The idea that Luc Besson tried to develop in this film is great. However, the film isn't that good. It is about a young woman, whom we don't know barely anything, - she's just an american woman living in Taiwan that speaks a little bit of french and it's not very good looking- that ends up being caught in a dark deal where she has to transport a bag of drug, inside her body, to a certain part of the planet earth and there she'd be free when they extract the bag.   Lucy ends up drugged after a beat of one of the captors, and from this point on, the film becomes very interesting because the drug increases the brain capacity progressively from 10% - the average of humans - to 100%. Meanwhile, another character is presented. Morgan Freeman becomes a Professor, named Norman, that is working on a theory where he wants to discover what could happen if a human could use more brain capacity than the average.  If the film would have centered the attention in...

The James Gunn film is set in a galaxy where the heroes haven't got the superhero profile. Peter Quill is a bounty hunt er that was taken away from his planet, the Earth, when he was just a boy. From his planet he only has a walkman with a cassette that has multiple songs.  It is noteworthy to say that the nostalgic songs and the reference to the movie Footloose (1984) where Kevin Bacon becomes a hero changing a situation by dancing makes this film different.  As said at the beginning, the characters have all a different profile that you wouldn't identify with a hero. They are selfish, they only look for themselves... When Peter steals something capable of destroying the galaxy from Ronan - the tyrant of the film  - Gamora (Zoe Saldana) has the duty to bring it back to Ronan, but she's planning her betrayal. Besides that, the Groot and Rocket want to capture Peter to earn money. This persecution finishes when they all go to jail and have to ally in order to get ...

This summer hasn't been memorable at all when it comes to films. I've had no time to review the ones I've seen but I think that any has been very interesting.  Probably, the best I've seen is Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, which combined the reflexion of what differences us from the apes (or viceversa) and the action. Andy Serkis showed that he is a master when it comes to perform those kinds of characters. Another one that was quite good was How to train your dragon 2, for kids this is a very entertaining film and for the adults as well; of course, it is not a classic but could be classified as remarkable film for families.  Other films I've seen are The Purge: Anarchy which did had a good story, it could have been a very interesting film because it talked about politics and the social differences but despite and the horror, and dark atmosphere that was noteworthy, it ended up being foreseeable and had no incentive - when it came to horror or actio...