margotvivanco Reviews

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

Good surprise

[7/10 · 10 July 2014]

I was expecting another presumptuous and predictable movie about decadence, love and fangs but, fortunately, it wasn't that typical.

It was presumptuous just within the limits of what's bearable in a wannabe cult movie. The movie is not about amazing and powerful creatures of the night, but explores what happens when you have lived for centuries: it shows just a short period in this couple's live and you get the feeling that it doesn't really matter what happens now because many things have happened before and will happen afterwards. Time is slow and meaningless for vampires.

It's beautifully shot and performed, the characters really act like they've been married for a long time, not like madly in love teenagers.

Timecrimes (2007)

Vigalondo or how to write a good script, direct a bad movie and do an awful performance

[5/10 · 17 October 2013]

Los Cronocrímenes shows how to do a bad movie out of a good script.

Nacho Vigalondo writes a pretty good time-travel script. Doc Brown would have killed this guy, the movie is like a guide "what you must NOT do if you ever get into a time machine and how the consequences of your actions may be serious". And we also have Terminator's conception of time traveling, like (spoiler) you're time traveling because you time traveled, which is always nice. Nevertheless, I find that Vigalondo fails to show the metamorphosis of the character, from normal guy to beast, through the consequences of his own actions and trough the mess in which he is involved because of his own stupidity. In the end everything looks unnatural, forced, and any dramatic effect that might have been developed, is gone.

As I was saying, Vigalondo writes a decent script, despite its flaws, and he himself directs a bad movie out of it. Mainly because of the AWFUL performance of the actors (being Vigalondo one of them). If there are just to characters in a movie, and you can't really tell who is the worst actor, any dramatic effect is replaced by a ridiculous effect. Maybe people who doesn't speak Spanish have not notice the hilarious dialogues, forced, rehearsed, with a total lack of authenticity... but everybody must have noticed that when the guy falls downs it takes him like 5 seconds to say "ouch!".

Furthermore, Vigalondo tries to use some cinematographic well-known techniques or topics (a chase in the woods, a face that appears suddenly trough the window, suspenseful music, etc.) that end up, once more, in a ridiculous effect given that they are, once more, too obvious, forced, rehearsed and unnatural.

To sum up, the movie is disappointing. Vigalondo just ruined his own good project. But, hey, it's an opera prima... and it looks exactly like that.

Prayer of the Rollerboys (1990)

Distopic commercial movie for teenagers

[7/10 · 23 September 2013]

Distopic future, Peter Pan's Lost Boys have skates and their own religious-like gang against adult world. Kids killing kids in parties full of naked girls. Kids kicking corpses, taking (and cooking) drugs and having sex. Nine Inch Nails and a really dark, kinky atmosphere reminding both movies from the 80's and other distopic movies such as Johnny Nmemonic or Strage Days.

Even though this movie has a predictable plot and a Hollywood "happy" ending, it is quite disturbing for a teen movie. Everything is explained when you see that there is a Japanese producer, that the art director is the one responsible for 12 Monkeys and, of course, when you remember that in 1990 teen movies could be nastier than now (even if these killer boys don't swear).

It's not a great movie, but it's much better than one might expect, and, mostly, shocking.

Velvet Goldmine (1998)

Metamusic and Ewan.

[6/10 · 3 September 2013]

A presumptuous movie that hasn't grown old well.

It could have been more bold or daring, but it is just sentimental and nostalgic in a strange way: I got the impression that the movie doesn't fully respect it's characters or their actions, which is not a problem if it creates a feeling of objective distance, but such detachment is broken by the sentimentalism: should we miss glam rock or laugh at it? The movie is about glam rock as a musical and a social movement, as an attitude, but the general tone is closer to an elegy than to a defense without actually being neither.

I liked the movie, though, specially Ewan McGregor and the performances by bands highly influenced by glam rock.

Jurassic Park (1993)

20 years old? Not at all.

[7/10 · 3 September 2013]

Thanks to the 3D release I could watch this movie on a big screen again.

A good movie should resist the passing of time, as in this case. It's visual effects still work, but the important thing is that the suspense still works.

Spielberg's movies are always done by the book, and the fact that in this one he doesn't takes advantage of sentimentalism as shamelessly as usual improves the result.

The only flaw (or the most significant) is the hilarious ending with the "heroic" T-Rex's appearance as a deus est machina and the falling flag.

The best thing is the treatment of the "villain(s)", also by the book: we are told about the velociraptor since the beginning of the movie and it becomes a threatening presence that doesn't reveal itself until the second half of the movie. As in Jaws, things that we don't see are much more scary.