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After Life (2019)
All about love
Reading the description of this series one could think that it is about depression, or how to survive the death of a loved one. Really, it is not.
All about this series is about love. It's full of love stories: Matt and Jill, Lenny and June, Pat and Roxy, Tony's father and mother, Anne and Stan, Kath and Kevin Hart and above all Tony and Lisa.
And each love story has its own peculiarities, it's own lesson.
Ricky Gervais is wonderful, no matter if angry, sad or tender, he nails every single line.
Also the sketches about the newspaper stories are really well-written. Paradoxical, but never randomly thrown in the episode, there is always a deeper meaning for the appearance of their strange characters.
I really enjoyed this series, and I strongly recommend it to whoever wants to be moved by true love.
Jupiter Ascending (2015)
The worst cinematographic delusion of my life
I've been waiting for this film for ages, wondering what wonderful new universes the Wachowskis had created this time. I've been imaging breath-taking stories, like the Cloud Atlas ones, epic characters, like V and astonishing universes, such as in Matrix.
All I got was great special effects. Really great ones, I have to admit that, like when a whole planet is going to catch fire and it seems you can reach the flames. This is the only reason I would save the setting. And also the action scenes are worth to be remembered, even if sometimes they are just taken for granted.
Despite this, I think this is going to be the worst cinematographic delusion of my life for a very long time.
Let's start from the plot: a good idea, there are no doubts about it. What if human life didn't start on Earth but on another planet and developed to the point that it has conquered the universe and uses other planets as living factories? And what if an inhabitant of the Earth, that has never hoped for anything better than selling her ovules to buy a telescope, finds out that she is going to inherit a couple of planets? But once you have a good idea, you have to vehicle it in the right way, and above all, make people feel emotionally involved in it. In this case nothing of this has happened. The great emotional potential of Jupiter's and Caine's stories is wasted because of lame dialogs and a bit too many action scenes. And it's better to forget some quotes that led me to consider this the worst-built love-story I have ever seen. Moreover, what should probably be the main theme, the importance of time and how humans should deal with it, is not showed in an original way. All the movie is focused on the action so there is no space to develop the message properly, as it has been done in many other Wachowskis' films.
The lack of depth of the characters is a direct consequence of how the story is told. You just don't grow fond of them because you are not involved in their personal stories when you find them out. They are played on interesting feelings but badly conveyed. Maybe characters just don't have enough space in the whole movie to develop their personalities, but I would rather say that the space they are given is badly used.
In conclusion, if you are hoping to see great special effects you will probably be completely satisfied with this film. If you are expecting anything else just forget it.
Manhattan (1979)
A generation's portrait
I'm nineteen years old and I've watched this film through the eyes of a girl of the 2015. I can honestly say that I've been very impressed by the detached and ingenious sarcasm with which Allen depicts a generation, his generation.
In Manhattan I've seen first of all the portrait of a generation, the generation of those who lived their forties in Manhattan, the symbol of everything that could be achieved in the 80s. And the portrait depicted is not softened at all, since every single adult in this movie is a neurotic mess. There are adults afraid of cancer, adults that plan to write books they will never end, adults that put their life in the hands of LSD-addicted analysts, adults that talk about orgasms, adults devastated by dull, mediocre men imagined as "gods", adults that waver between homo, bi and heterosexuality, adults that pretend to be intellectuals and try to judge Mozart, Bergman and Scott Fitzgerald, adults whose relationships are stable just as the weather is, adults that act like they believe in the highest values but that in the end need a seventeen-year-old girl to find their balance. And those are the same adults that despise the generation brought up by the TV and the pill.
This show of absurdities is well hosted by Isaac Davis, Woody Allen himself, that unprejudiced as always, hides all these paradoxical situations behind a good amount of irony. If I had to make a comparison with a more recent movie, I would say that what Allen did with his generation has been done by Tony Servillo with the current fifty-year-old Roman VIPs, in his latest work La Grande Bellezza.
Irony, good acting and a good soundtrack always make a movie worth watching. And this movie can boast the best of everything.
One Day (2011)
Another love-story we're going to love
Let's face it: this is another sad love-story full of predictable facts (a perfect girl, too perfect to stay alive until the end of the film; best friends in love since they first met...seriously, do you really wonder how that is going to end?! And these are just the main ones) and prototype characters (the perfect girl, as mentioned before, overlooking the beautiful and damned main character, the type of man that every woman would like to redeem).
BUT you will want to watch a story like this sooner or later, especially if you are a sentimental spirit looking for a sweet and nice love-story with that bitter-sweet flavor that only Paris-set movies have. In that case, you should absolutely go for this film: watch it, love it, cry over it, and then recognize all its flaws, but be too carried away by the story to really care about them. And I think this is what a good film should really do.
So my advice is just: enjoy it, and do not forget the soundtrack!