film critic journal | by ares

As this is the last day of the year I decided to post the movies I liked the most this year. As I'm not from the US, there are certain movies I haven't seen, so I can't include them. These are the first movies that pop into my mind when I think of 2013, probably there are some more I would have loved to include. I also want to say that they aren't ordered by any criteria, it is just a list. Here they are:  - 12 years a slave  - Gravity  - Rush  - La vie d'Adèle/Blue is the Warmest Colour - Blue Jasmine  - Frozen  - Spring Breakers  - Lee Daniel's The Butler - Prisoners  - Captain Phillips - About time - Fruitvale Station  - 42  - The Great Gatsby - The Hunger Games: Catching fire  - Only god forgives - Now you see me Would like to increase this list by the time the Academy Oscars are given. 

A dreamer, Walter Mitty is a contemporaneous dreamer that wants to say that to escape from the world we're living in, we don't need, if we would like to change it, to fight, we need to dream. With this motto Walter Mitty starts to change his life and live the dream.  When the Life magazine is about to close it's doors to become a digital source of information Mitty is the person who needs to provide the photography that will be the 5th essence and last cover of the publication. The problem is, he does not find it. The movie, then becomes a journey, sometimes ponderous and boring, where the best thing is the photography. The original story was simple, but this one starts being also simple and changes to be complex and more awkward than it should be.  Very promising, but the result hasn't been as good as it could and should have been. The moral could have been a good point for this movie, but the idea of dreaming to escape from the problems is not convi...

Every year since 2008 my family and I, as a Christmas tradition, watch this movie. This is a musical, about love, family, sadness, passion... it may not be the best movie ever, but it is a movie that makes your day.  As the musical did, the aim of the movie is making a tribute to ABBA by putting all their hits together in one story, so this one does not necessarily need to be credible, you must sit and enjoy the music and the actors because Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and  Stellan Skarsgård are amazing but the actresses - Meryl Streep, Julie Waters and Christine Baranski - are outstanding.  A movie, as I tried to say, to sit and enjoy one time and another, and again....

This is one of that kind of films that you catch up with and you cannot stand not seeing it. It happened to be online and I started watching it for the 6 or 7th time and couldn't stop. The story of Oliver Twist, written by Charles Dickens, provides us a look into the society of the 19th century. As nowadays, there was rich and poor people and the city of London was an example of that. There were rich parts of the city but also poor ones. As for the story itself it is not what we could say hard to imagine but Dickens really knew how to relate the events with reality. The two main actors of the movie Oliver (Barney Clark) and Fagin (Sir Ben Kingsley) nail their characters. Really enjoyable, two hours of entertainment - a familiar movie.

Movies like this one make you realize that police officers are human and that even though they should act some way, sometimes they are driven by their thoughts and detriment and do what they shouldn't do.  Based on real facts, Fruitvale Station tells us the story of Oscar - a black man that had been a drug dealer, - but that has taken the determination, as a new year's resolution, of being a legal person and of not doing ilegal things again. As he is trying to change that, the film show how's his live doing while he is with his loved ones - family and friends. The thing is, he becomes a victim of an accident.  The target of the movie is simple - the director, Ryan Coogler, wants us to make us see and to be conscious of acts made by the authorities that aren't just or have a valid explanation. The police officers acted driven by their racism and not listening to what the victims had to tell them.  As for the movie it self, it count with amazing pe...

12 years a slave surprised me. As I had read lots of reviews that said that this was a very hard film, I thought I would see explicit violence everywhere, and in fact I did but not in the way I imagined. You don't cry, I could say that when you finish the movie you could think it wasn't as dramatic as I thought but when afterwards you start to think carefully of what you've seen, you know that this is a brilliant movie that it's going to stay with you for some time, at least, and that you're going to remember.  This film is a masterpiece full of amazing performances starting by Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Fassbender and ending with the supporting actors. They do masterly performances. The cinematography is stunning as well, the photography, the script... the entire movie. As for the story, it is not very complicated or original, despite the fact is based on real events; a free, cult, black man is captured and sold as a slave. As he has never been a slav...

As I watched it for the second time, I can say that I had time to enjoy the movie but also to observe a little bit more. Leo (Channing Tatum) has a theory, we're what we remember, everything we have in our minds is what makes us as we are. The problem in this film is, what if we don't remember part of the things that made us be like we were?  Paige (Rachel McAdams) has this problem after suffering a car accident with his husband, Leo. When she wakes up she does not remember his husband or anything that happened in the last four years of her life. She just remembers the things she did before a big impact on her life changed everything, and changed her a lot too. This is a love story about a girl that has to try to fall in love again in a world that she does not know barely anything about and about a boy that needs a girl to fall in love again with him in totally different circumstances of the ones she fell in love with him. As not so long ago Richard Curtis ma...

Winner of the Palme d'Or in the Cannes film festival, this movie which is three hours long shows a sad and moving story about a girl, Adèle that discovers herself. As said the film is about the early life of a girl that is trying to discover her, her feelings, her sexuality. She experiments and tries to not be depressed as she is with a boy, but then she falls in love with a girl... that is going to change her life. Even though she loves that girl, she still feels lonely and kind of depressed, let's say she isn't totally happy.  This is a journey of discovering, falling in love, crying, experimenting... a masterpiece that shows all the stages of a relationship and all the struggles of a girl that does not know, clearly, what she wants in life. It has explicit sex scenes, the blue color is present in nearly every scene, explicit or implicit, but it is. Both Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos offer sensational perfomances that really make you believe and s...

The Hobbit; one more movie for the Lord of the Rings fans. People who like the "typical hollywood stories" (even though these were made by Tolkien) that now seem to be repeated. The Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit sequel have something magic  (maybe it's fans) that provokes people to go massively, or at least, more than other days, to the cinema. The Hobbit, as said, does not explain a story that you could not predict but, instead, it has the power to keep you on the edge of your seat.  Peter Jackson has done a good work with the adaptation of the books and has also demonstrated he is a good director because que really nows how to make a transition and when he has to make it. Overall the movie is enjoyable and the end, quite unpredictable, in a sense that you are waiting for something that does not come. Even though, it is known that three movies were filmed to adapt this book, you are really expecting to see something when, suddenly, the movie ends... you g...

Today, I recieved as a Nikolaus gift, a German tradition [even though I'm not german] the book from Pau Gasol.  I've been a supporter from Pau since I remember, I like him a lot, as a basketball player and as a person. With this book I've learned lots of things I didn't knew Pau liked or did, and I also learned more from the things I knew about.  With this book, Pau, as the title says, tries to do a quick summary with photos and text of what's his life about, from childhood to now, and from a basketball player to a normal guy from Barcelona who lives in the USA.  He shows both his american fans what's like living and the culture in Barcelona, Catalonia and Spain and to the catalan and spanish people how he deals with living and working in the USA.  He talks about the past, but also about the future and what does he want to be, become or do. He also talks about the present, and how he relate with friends, colleagues, family, fame....  ...

Before Frozen there was a short clip made by the disney production company called 'Get a Horse' featuring Walt Disney's voice. It combines an old disney cartoon with a modern one and the 2D and 3D. For fans, like me, of Disney this is a mix of history, of  the old with the new and the past and future of Mickey and it's friends, that everyday are much more friends. 

Pure disney. With Christmas around the corner this movie pretends to remind us, once again, that love can change everything and that everybody deserves to be loved, but not in the traditional way... As always with songs and stories, castles... Disney knows how to make compatible different love stories with comedy. It is different from 'our' disney classics like Toy Story or The Beauty and the Beast because this one is much more modern in every aspect (except the story, of course). The princesses are 'sexier,  talk more 'modernly' and want to have fun like us even if they are in a medieval time. Disney has really made am effort to make of this movie a classic for this generation that may have not seen Bambi for example but that are going to see Frozen.The soundtrack is amazing as well, maybe not so taking like other movies, but really good.

I had never watched this movie entierly. I had watched parts of it. The fact is that I knew it was a good film, 'cause it has the essence of the disney-pixar movies. Ratatouille it's a story about appearance and being who you want to be no matter what. It is also funny, lovely and it shows the values that disney films always try to show. The value of love, friends and the intendance to show to everybody that we can be whoever we are and we cannot give up. Ratatouille it's quite a long movie, but it really seems that it only lasts an hour. I really like from time to time watching this kind of movies. Because a part from the story they also transport you to your childhood.

Grease. A classic. When we still watch it now and see, at least, part of your teenage years [that you lived or you're leaving]. The problems you have, boyfriends, girlfriends, leaving school or not... Grease shows all that using music... so it makes all the story a great and loving one. The music became the music of an epoque and even nowadays teenagers whatch this movie and sing the songs. You never get tired of watching this film.