Pecker 1998

Pecker is the story a modest boy who works at a sandwich join in the suburbs of Baltimore whose passion is photography. In an amateur manner, he begins to take his own photographs of everything around him and exhibits them in his fast food restaurant.

One day, an art expert from New York discovers his snapshots and is amazed by the freshness of his point of view, so she decides to take the young man to the Big Apple to start a new career as an artist and fulfill his dream. However, sometimes fame does not bring happiness and Pecker must decide between his life or his work. Success totally alters the life of the young man, whose family will be the focus of an unhealthy interest on the part of the pretentious intellectuals of New York. As fame begins to suffocate, his work will gradually lose the initial freshness.

At first glance, Pecker might look like a domesticated John Waters. This film starring an Edward Furlong who goes from being an amateur photographer of his friends and family in Baltimore to triumph in the most snobs artistic circles of New York is one of the best films of the last stage of the director of “Pink Flamingos”. He doesn't have the forced camp hooliganism of “Cecil D. Demented'” or the homemade black humor of “Serial Mom”. However, the director knows how to apply to his characters the same look with which the main photographer observes his loved ones: from the love of those who do not see the freak as someone different. So 'Pecker' works like an endearing comedy that claims that wonderful thing (of “art”) that is in the most unusual everyday people without any kind of caricaturist eagerness. Waters also season the film with some of his touches.

Pecker is an acid comedy about how the twisted circles dictated by artistic fashions can orchestrate the fame and subsequent decline of an artist. The irreverent director John Waters, responsible for other cynical and ironic visions of American society, this time had two young stars Edward Furlong ("Terminator 2" , “American History X”) and Christina Ricci (the macabre Wednesday of "The Addams Family" and “Buffalo 66”). The film is surrounded by the typical eccentric characters, but full of humanity, a redeeming quality in most of his films.

John Waters, the father of creatures as transgressive as the ones in Pink Flamingos or Polyester, however this particular film is one of his friendliest films in the late 1990s. Pecker, another rarity within his filmography full of bizarre examples, the film was received as the author's most mainstream work, a biased judgment because we are actually facing the most sincere and autobiographical of Waters’ movies. Lightened of the exaggerations 'brand of the house', but faithful to the bizarre spirit of its beginnings, Hairspray's father uses high doses of imagination and positive energy to tell us about the personal and artistic future of Pecker, a young photographer who captures his impromptu prints the crazy world around him. The protagonist, symbolic alter ego of Waters, knows success and failure as an artist almost at the same time, a premise that serves Waters to criticize the trends of cultural elites and public opinion, while defending the purity of 'neighborhood' life, devoid of the superficiality and cold sophistication attributed to the great New York. Pecker perhaps sins of a certain sense of being 'goody goody' and a narrative disorder, and at all times the feeling of being attending a private joke of very restrained repercussions weighs on it, but it is also a film with an almost contagious energy. To the usual interpreters of the Waters cinema, we must add a successful Edward Furlong and a grumpy Christina Ricci, at that time they were very popular faces and references of the American indie thanks to works such as American History X or Buffalo '66 respectively. Pecker is a sympathetic and counterculture film, so unique in its kind that it does not resemble any other. It is a harmless story in appearance, but with a lot of bad drool inside, a moral fable that surprises with its grim comedy but rejoicing with a positive spirit about existence.

Script and Direction: John waters

Music: Stewart Copeland

Photography: Robert Stevens

Cast: Edward Furlong, Christina Ricci, Mary Kay Place, Martha Plimpton, Lili Taylor, Bess Armstrong, Brendan Sexton III, Mink Stole, Patricia Hearst

The Rules of Attraction 2002

I have to confess I’m a huge fan of Brett Easton Ellis. His is not my favorite book but the movie is my second favorite after American Psycho.-----If we refer to physics, of course there are laws of attraction, you already know those that say that the opposite poles are attracted and the equal poles are rejected, but the laws of attraction that the story refers are the human ones. In full 2020, I think we have run out of these laws, I mean what does it take to like someone? Be beautiful? Have personality? Be intellectual? If you get someone who has a lot of money or is an influencer, no matter what else, it can attract you. Money is power, money is attraction. Men and women are governed by this absurd law, without discrimination. In human relations there are no laws, if you like someone, you will go for it, despite the lacking social statutes that bind us. The attraction is there and definitely does not need laws to exert its power.

The plot is told through the portrait of a young man who falls into the downward spiral, his relationships, his thoughts and the questions he will go through. The rules of attraction go beyond the understanding of a few people. The mythical American landscape is pure drugs, excesses, sex and alcohol.

Sean Bateman played by James Van Der Beek is a young man who lives in a sleepy state much of the time, when he wakes up he is not sure where he is. The only thing he cares about is his motorcycle, and being able to sell drugs to his rich acquaintances. The story is based on characters who fuck with everyone, who respect absolutely nothing, but who will hardly remember what they did the day before, be drowned in alcohol and feel nothing while having sex, but this is not exclusive to young Americans, but a faithful reflection of young people all over the world. The characters are quite American, a drug dealer, a homosexual, a girl who sleeps with everyone, an indecisive rich girl, and more that reflect what we have seen in a hundred books and movies. It is based on a book that serves as a reflection of a society that is still valid almost 30 years later.

The Rules of attraction, the second novel of the twentieth Bret Easton Ellis, after the famous Less than Zero, that was also made into a not very successful film. The story is an unusual document, elegant, ironic and stark, from the University of New Hampshire in the eighties. A gang of rich children revolves frantically in an obsessive round of sex, drugs and rock and roll, promiscuous and compulsive, trapped in a whirlwind and vertiginous whirlwind, in which hilarious moments are not lacking. It's the mocking story of A wants B, B wants C, C wants A; everyone ignores everyone's feelings, they give themselves to their persecutors and, closing their eyes, they dream of others. What are the laws of attraction to which these young people are subjected to? Is the desire of a body more intense than the desire to buy a designer suit? The kaleidoscopic narrative structure, in the form of monologues, it is bright and brutal, its style is surprisingly effective. The apathy, the despair and the anguish of living, the criticism of always divorced and absent parents, who just send money, the inability to communicate, except through music that sounds endless they barely camouflage themselves in the episodic mood and the consumption of drugs.

The writer-director is Roger Avary, who directed "Killing Zoe" and co-authored Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction." (Whether he casted James Van Der Beek as his lead because he looks more like Tarantino than any other working actor, we cannot guess.) In all of his work, Avary is fond of free movement up and down the timeline, and here he uses an ingenious approach to tell the stories of three main characters who are involved in, I don’t know, five or six pairings. He begins with an "End of the World" party at Camden College, the ultimate party school, follows a story thread, then rewinds and follows another. He also uses fast-forward brilliantly to summarize a European vacation in a few hilarious minutes.

.Avary weaves his stories with zest and wicked energy, and finds a visual style that matches the emotional fragmentation. I have no complaints about the acting, and especially liked the way Sossamon kept a kind of impertinent distance from some of the excesses. But by the end, I felt a sad indifference. These characters are not from life and do not form into a useful fiction. Their excesses of sex and substance abuse are physically unwise, financially unlikely and emotionally impossible. I do not censor their behavior but lament the movie's fascination with it. They do not say and perhaps do not think anything interesting. The two other Bret Easton Ellis movies, "Less than Zero" and "American Psycho", offered characters who were considerably more intriguing. We had questions about them; they aroused our curiosity. The inhabitants of "The Rules of Attraction" are superficial and transparent. We know people like that, and hope they will get better.

Cast:

Shannyn Sossamon as Lauren

Ian Somerhalder as Paul

Jessica Biel as Lara

Kip Pardue as Victor

Kate Bosworth as Kelly

Written and Directed by Roger Avary

Based On The Novel by Bret Easton Ellis

Kicking and Screaming 1995

About Noah Baumbach:

Noah Baumbach is a screen writer and independent film director. Third of four brothers, he is the son of the novelist and literary critic Jonatan Baumbach and the Village Voice journalist Georgia Brown. He graduated from Midwood High School in 1987. For a season he worked as a messenger for The New Yorker magazine. His father is Jewish and his mother Protestant. Their divorce was a fact that marked him in his teens, as it is portrayed in his 2005 film “The Squid and the Whale”, a film for which he won two awards at Sundance, an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, six nominations for Independent Spirit Award, three for the Golden Globes, and several circles and associations voted him as the best script of the year.

Baumbach was married to actress Jennifer Jason Leigh from 2005 to 2010 and they have one child in common: Rohmer Emmanuel. He currently maintains a relationship with actress Greta Gerwig, who stars in his films Frances ha and Mistress America.

The Film:

Baumbach debuted as a screenwriter-director when he was 26, in 1995, with Kicking and Screaming.  I saw “Kicking and Screaming” in the theatre that year. I knew nothing about Noah Baumbach; he was new to all of us. The movie began with the opening notes of a Pixies song, “Cecilia Ann,” a phenomenon that shocked and thrilled me. A movie in a theatre was playing a Pixies song. This meant that my generation was making movies—taking what mattered to us and putting it onscreen, for all to see and hear and contemplate.

This ’90s film is essentially about disaffected youths and over-clever post-grads too afraid to grow-up, the film was easily labeled with the indolent “Gen-Xer” tag, Baumbach and his friends were anything but slackers, as evinced by the ambitious director making the movie at the ripe old age of 24. And while that Gen-X/slacker label may have helped the film from a marketing angle (sort of), Baumbach says it annoyed him while it was happening.

It is very easy to enjoy the movie, perhaps because I could identify with the characters: I like people who talk interestingly, who have read books, who appreciate verbal wit, who look dubiously at establishment assumptions. I like people who know what is meant by "the establishment," because to know it is to suspect it. I liked it that one of the film's characters writes a short story and another character describes him as "the bastard child of Raymond Chandler," and everyone knew what that meant.

Movies are said to be a great influence on audiences, but in most cases that doesn't happen because audiences choose movies that agree with what they already think. If your idea of a great time is sitting on the floor of a used bookstore, you are likely to enjoy "Kicking and Screaming." What struck me about "Kicking and Screaming" is that it captures so accurately the fact, dimly sensed by undergraduates even at the time, that the college years are the happiest in their lives.

One spends four years talking about ideas, concepts, art, theory, history, ideology and sex. Then one goes into the world and works like a dog until retirement.

In "Kicking and Screaming," one of the students, played by Eric Stoltz, has been hanging around the campus for 10 years, reluctant to leave. He's "working on his dissertation" and has a job as a bartender. Other students define themselves by the bars they drink in ("Going back to our old undergraduate bar," one says, "would be like going on "Hollywood Squares"). One student, named Jane (Olivia d'Abo) actually does have plans: She has accepted a fellowship in Prague. Her boyfriend Grover (Josh Hamilton) wonders, "So how will that work if you're living with me in Brooklyn?" "It'll be the same," she says, "except I'll be in Prague. They're obsessed with pop culture (one character hesitates before leaving a room to watch the rest of a TV commercial - "Wait, I wanna see if they get this stain out". Childhood is not a distant memory. Jane wears braces, and takes out her retainer when she talks, revealing an appealing overbite. Grover's father, well-played by Elliott Gould, attempts to communicate his needs and dreams to his son, only to hear, "Dad, I'm really not ready to accept you as a human being yet; thinking of you with Mother is disgusting enough, but you with another woman . . ." "Kicking and Screaming" doesn't have much of a plot, but of course it wouldn't; this is a movie about characters waiting for their plots to begin. What it does have is a good eye and a terrific ear; the dialogue by writer-director Noah Baumbach is not simply accurate, which would be a bore, but a distillation of reality elevating aimless brainy small-talk into a statement.

The movie has an amazing cast that includes all the cool and hip actors of the 90's and classic actors like Elliot Gould.

Josh Hamilton as Grover

Olivia d'Abo as Jane

Chris Eigeman as Max

Parker Posey as Miami

Jason Wiles as Skippy

Cara Buono as Kate

Carlos Jacott as Otis

Elliott Gould as Grover's Dad

Eric Stoltz as Chet

Marissa Ribisi as Charlotte

Dean Cameron as Zach

Perrey Reeves as Amy

Noah Baumbach as Danny

Life Aquatic 2004

About Wes Anderson:

After studying at the St. John's High School in Houston, the young Wes Anderson obtained a degree in philosophy from the University of Texas. Crazy about cinema, he made several short movies, filming with his Super 8 camera, which left him with an early learning of film editing.

After being denied entry to Columbia University to study film, he begins to write and make a small film of less than a quarter of an hour that will later become a feature film, that’s how Bottle Rocket (1996) is born, his first feature film, with Luke and Owen Wilson with whom Anderson is going to have an enduring relationship (Luke has acted in all his films, while Owen has also been his co-writer).

In 1998, his second film, Rushmore, co-written by Anderson and Owen, was well received by critics and its director was seen as one of the new hopes of American independent cinema. Starring Bill Murray, this film marks the debut of indie star Jason Schwartzman.

In 2001, Anderson made his third film, The Royal Tenenbaums, with a luxury casting made up of Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller and Gwyneth Paltrow.

In The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, 2004, he returns with his fetish actor, Bill Murray, turned into a sailor obsessed with capturing and killing a jaguar shark.

In his films, Anderson has established a point of view full of humor and at the same time deeply human about modern life and relationships. Each of his widely popular comedies has undertaken the recurring themes of aspirations, misfits, family, love and fatality. His fourth film takes these same themes to a whole new territory when Anderson simultaneously embarks on a marine adventure with abundant chases, shootings, lurking sharks and underwater wonders.

Anderson's scripts always arise from an intimate personal experience and in the center of Aquatic Life there is another character very dear to Anderson: Steve Zissou, a world famous oceanographer who is both comically familiar and totally unique.

For a long time fascinated by aquatic films and underwater life in general, Anderson had always wanted to make a film staged on a ship in the world of film adventures. "This is a movie I've been thinking about for fourteen years," he says. "I was always fascinated by this strange and amazing character that creates a kind of eccentric family in the middle of the sea"

Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) is an oceanographer and documentary filmmaker whose films about the aquatic world had some success in the past, but have now lost popularity, plunging Sizzou into a serious depression. However, the death of a close friend between the jaws of the mythical "Jaguar Shark", gives new strength to Sizzou, who decides to mount a final expedition to locate and destroy the jaguar shark, and in this way avenging the death of his friend. And so, aboard the ship "Belafonte", he embarks on the adventure along with his strange crew, which includes Jane (Cate Blanchett), a bitter reporter, and Ned (Owen Wilson), who could be Zissou's son. On the way, of course, strange adventures await them, ranging from a pirate attack to the rescue of an eternal rival and perhaps a confrontation with the fierce jaguar shark.

Wes Anderson is such a rare guy - as well as his cinema - that he really requires a certain and positive mood. In this particular film I understood once and for all his sense of humor. That inhuman coldness with which his characters face the majority of the absurd situations of the plot, something that brutally enhances those very few moments in which the shell is removed and reveals their emotions. I have laughed openly with Bill Murray facing shots with the most bungling pirates that I remember seeing on the screen with the diver's helmet and built-in music. I love the wonderful character of Willem Dafoe with some simply different and hilarious gags ("the scientific motive to kill the animal?"; "... revenge").

Bill Murray is perfect in his role. Again, it's Bill Murray. Only he can do this. The ensemble cast is, in addition to varied, very rich: the confident and imposing Anjelica Houston, that dawned Jeff Goldblum, the sporadic but priceless Michael Gambon or a Cate Blanchett that transmits all the nervous fragility of her character in a very precise way. It is also one of the few characters that never hide their emotions, and this brings the audience closer.

Visually I love the look Anderson gets; from their usual camera sweeps, fast and accurate, to their arrogant colors, going through those sea creatures as artificial as they are delicious, who find their climax in the beautiful final sequence, with the commented jaguar shark.

Everything is happening along the way, including the death of Wilson's character, filmed in a way as different and surprising as effective. It is, first and foremost, something new, such a different way of explaining what is happening through images.

Finally, Anderson has conquered me. I already liked The Tenenbaums, although I was not as excited. But Life aquatic goes further; It is freer, has more flight, and is totally irreverent.

Note: One of my favorite moments of the film is when Zissou ask his intern:

Zissou: Intern give me a Campari.

Intern: On the rocks?

Zissou makes the hand gesture you see on the image above.

About the Production

In the script by Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach, Steve Zissou's ship, the Belafonte, essentially becomes another character in the film. From its colorful laboratory and equipped kitchen, to its research library, edition room and dream “observation bubble”, the ship seems to reflect the original spirit of the whole day. Production began looking for a boat with an original shape and style. "It was almost like a cast selection," says production designer Mark Friedberg. “The search for the ship was an adventure. Wes was very specific about the type of ship he wanted — it had to be from the time of World War II, it had to be a minesweeper, it had to be 50 meters long, and to some extent, it had to remind us of Cousteau's “Calypso."

After months of tracking the seas, the production found a 50-year-old minesweeper in South Africa, which with lots of difficulty took the production from Capetown to Rome. That ship remained intact for many of the outdoor sequences but was equipped to turn it into an oceanographic research ship, complete with towers, an observation deck and a very bright paint. Meanwhile, a very similar second ship was acquired to be dismantled and used to dress the stage.

"As for the interior of the ship, we wanted it to reflect Zissou, an insecure man about the direction of his life at this time, so that everything in this world is built and merged," says Friedberg. “When we started, we were wondering, if this story is about a real man facing his son or is it a fable, a cheerful comedy — and the answer was that it is all this, and it had to be reflected in the design.

From the beginning, Anderson knew that he wanted the public to see the Belafonte for the first time with the view of a cross section of a model, open to reveal all its program inside. So the design team built half a ship longitudinally so that the camera and the technical team could move in a straight line from room to room.

"Since the real ship is built of metal, we couldn't move walls easily, so we rebuilt what we saw inside the ship on stage," Friedberg explains. “Wes wanted to film the ship in its entirety simply by moving a crane around the first room for the first scene the ship is introduced. He wanted to use only real stages and very little of digital compounds or effects. There is a great sense of humor and fluidity, and Wes had everything planned with great precision.”

“Filming the scene was a lot of fun,” says Anderson. “We had all the actors walking around like a colony of ants and the lights are changing and the cameras are moving, and it was very exciting because none of us had done something similar. The stage was more like a museum piece than a recording stage— people continually went to see it. ”

The stage in the middle of the Belafonte, three stories high, it was built, like most stages, on the lot of the legendary Cinecitta Studios in Italy, with its famous artists and craftsmen. “We chose Italy because it had everything we were looking for — it is on the water, it has Cinecitta where all the Fellini films have been made, and it is the Mediterranean, so it has that island sensibility,” says Friedberg.

Barry Mendel adds: "Filming in Italy has a very specific flavor, and I think that some of that European sensitivity of handmade crafts has become part of the unique structure of the film."

The stages were one thing, but the cast and the technical team took a lot of getting used to the real ship used as the Belafonte. For many, the day of its presentation came on a one-day visit in which Wes Anderson hoped to film some scenes from the Team Zissou documentary. “We went to this small volcanic island, and the sea was very rough and almost everyone got dizzy - and we still had a great time,” he recalls. “We had the opportunity to meet each other, and when you are on a ship like that, it becomes very intimate. There are no barriers anymore. And what I find very interesting is that people become very emotional about the Belafonte, they feel a great loyalty. ”

The production designer also created Zissou's house on Pescespada Island in Italy, complete with a 12th-century castle, a pool with a killer whale (the whale is added through a rear projection), a landing platform for the seaplane and a very important ping pong table. "The theme for the Zissou enclosure was that we should have a feeling of 'I don't want to grow up,'" says Friedberg. “Pescespada Island was an extraordinary setting, very different from everything I've ever seen,” summarizes Mendel.

Meanwhile, in contrast to the Belafonte is Hennessey's ship, the super rival of Steve Zissou, forged as one of the most modern research ships in the world, in which no expense has been repaired. For this ship, the production used a NATO research ship, The Elite, which proved to be the antithesis of the Belafonte. “It was totally the opposite of what we created for Steve Zissou — extremely clean, very structured and high-tech,” says Mark Friedberg. "It was a totally different world."

Another key element of the Belafonte is the concept of submersible Deep Search — previously having received the name of one of Steve Zissou's former loves — in which the team finally heads to the depths of the sea in search of the jaguar shark. The mini submarine was built of iron and fiberglass by an Italian team, with propellers and lights that actually worked.

“The taking of the submarine was really an incredible scene of filming because we had the entire cast, with the exception of Owen, locked in the back of this tiny stage. It was designed so that they could enter quickly and could not leave, which really sets the mood for the scene, says Anderson. "There was a terrifying feeling of going into the unknown."

Best Films of 2019

1. Parasites

1. Parasites

The Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho recovers the talented narrative pulse of his beginnings with an extraordinary black comedy. Loaded with tension, surprises and violence, it catches and does not take a breath until the end, supported by a murky and extreme portrait of social differences. It is a lesson in film making. The brand new winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival is, in fact, the best film of the year. Not surprisingly, it is signed by South Korean Bong Joon-ho, author of films like Snowpiercer or Okja, with this film, Parasites, he shares a look at the class struggle and social inequality. A rich family and a poor family will unite their ties in the most delusional way possible until the secrets explode through the air and all that remains is the certainty that this is one of the most lucid and vindictive filmmakers of today.

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2. Marriage Story

2. Marriage Story

I have to confess I have a very soft spot for Baumbach’s films, I love his work!! This film comes to prove that he is reaching his best years he is delivering this masterpiece.

Inspired “The Meyerowitz Stories”, Baumbach returns to Netflix with one of the best movies of the year. The story of a divorce, of a love tragedy, with that tone between drama and comedy that characterizes the film maker, with a combination of great direction and a great script we learn how to digest such a really raw movie. The movie is a contemporary version of films like Kramer vs. Kramer. He stresses the elegant staging but above all, again, his skillful direction of actors. The two stars, Johansson and Driver, take advantage of the space that Baumbach gives them to show off and confirm their great talent. This film represents American author cinema at its best. Noah Baumbach creates his most adult film yet that gradually crumble between lawyers and bureaucracy.

 This movie is absolutely heartbreaking and real, with great performances and moments that will remain recorded for a long time (from her monologue in front of the lawyer to the Sondheim song that he sings, and from there to a final sublime and subtle scene). This is an essential film.

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta ...

3. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

3. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

By now we should know that Quentin Tarantino always finds a way to reach our hearts. This time, he has done it especially for moviegoers, those who dream of the classic Hollywood of the “cowboys” of the West and the crazy comedies that are shot in artificial settings between cameras, specialists and a director shouting 'Action!' . He is so in love with that bubble, that not even the real murders of Cielo Drive, which claimed the life of a pregnant Sharon Tate, can ruin his function. Portrait of a time of changes in American society, and a somewhat constipated male friendship (that of Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt) that still moves mountains, Once upon a time in Hollywood is an unquestionable masterpiece.

4. The Irishman

4. The Irishman

This is perhaps a formula we have seen before from Scorcese. Robert de Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci are once again (possibly the last) under his direction in a film that returns to the gangster tradition of films like Casino to close a circle in the filmography of the director. A film so unbeatable (not only because it lasts three and a half hours, but because of the amount of layers and complexity it has on it) but dazzling as well. It discusses the idea of a goodbye, but a very glorious one. This bombshell is a serious Oscar contender.

5. Long Day's Journey into Night

5. Long Day's Journey into Night

One of the most fascinating films that have been released this year is this poetic romantic dark drama that has a striking particularity: the last act is shot to be seen in 3D. The experience is surprising and sweeping. Far from the conventional narrative, I advise being carried away by the elegant staging and talent of Bi Gan to create deep, ingenious and beautiful images. It may be slow; but its impact remains.

The argument of ‘Long Journey to the Night”, like that of any film that is more a sensory experience than a narrative proposal, it can transpire a certain banality: Luo Hongwu (Jue Huang) returns to the city of Kaili, where he was born, in search of a woman he fell in love in the past and who only retains a name, who knows if it is true. The views are exchanged, the time lines merge and, when he finds a definite clue about his whereabouts, the protagonist enters a cinema that transports him to an unreal area, perhaps from the subconscious, perhaps more reliable than the first half of the movie, and will continue searching while time finally falls apart.

6. The Joker

6. The Joker

Joaquin Phoenix is beyond normal. And what he does in this movie, one of the best of the year, is a wild one. The film about the origins of the most famous villain of Batman shines with its own light as a portrait of a time of social unrest where we are willing to throw ourselves into chaos in order to change the situation. The class struggle, the lack of help from the most vulnerable and the mockery of those who are different are present in this film. Todd Phillips (Hangover Las Vegas) signs a character study so subjective, poetic and controversial that it will resonate from here to the 2020 Oscars (and beyond).

7. Pain and Glory

7. Pain and Glory

I have always been a huge fan of Pedro Almodóvar, I am positive he is irrefutably one of the great directors not only in Spanish but of world cinema. This new movie has made us drop more than one tear, too. Pain and Glory is a reflection on his own career, on his legacy, on everything he has lived from his relationship with his mother in childhood to his passion for cinema in adulthood. It is an exciting journey that constantly mixes reality and fiction, with an absolutely fantastic Antonio Banderas, which by the way Almodovar is the only the director who can make Banderas really shine, I don’t like most of his acting jobs except the ones with Pedro. This film you get nominations for the 2020 Oscars, no doubt.

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8. Knives Out

8. Knives Out

What's new in Rian Johnson? (Star Wars: The Last Jedi) Well, this film which is a kind of amazingly fun detective story with a political moral. A murder, a family full of suspects (and celebrities: Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Toni Collette, Christopher Plummer, Don Johnson,  Ana de Armas ...) and a French detective (a delusional parody of Hercules Poirot from the novels of Agatha Christie, with a Daniel Craig having a great time, who aspires to solve the mystery that has been created in the mansion. Who will be the murderer? Possibly the most ingenious and fun movie of the year. It stands out above all the extraordinary script of Johnson, who plays with the expectations of the public and the topics of this type of detective stories to offer something original, however much it smells like classic. A production full of small but delicious details with a striking and impeccable casting, orchestrated with the usual skill of the filmmaker, which brings out the best of each performer. An exquisite film, in short, that you want to see again.

9. Midsommar

9. Midsommar

This is one of the most amazing, stimulating and fun movies of the year. Yes, fun, because despite being sold as a horror film, the truth is that the new Aster film is a personal cocktail that plays with elements of terror but where there are moments of comedy and drama, as well as a reflection on the couple. It is confirmed that 'Hereditary' was not an accident. The only "but" that can give to 'Midsommar' is the excessive 147 minutes; 

That said, I am looking forward to discovering what is in that extended three-hour version (perhaps small details that help digest the footage with more pleasure).

This new Ari Aster movie may not reach the hereditary malrollism and terror quotas, one of the best horror movies of the past year (and probably of the decade), but it doesn't matter: his hallucinogenic journey into the bowels of a Swedish spring sect is such an appealing mix of comedy and suspense that we can only fall for it.

10. Ad Astra

10. Ad Astra

The new film from James Gray (Z The Lost City) is a mixture between Apocalypse Now and 2001: Space Odyssey that exchanges the father figure for that of God to confront the human being with the vast uncertainty of outer space.

Brad Pitt is one of the few true movie stars left in Hollywood and this film certainly proves that, the camera loves him. He does a great job as well. This film is an impressive space odyssey that curiously fails when it focuses on the trauma of its protagonist.

Pitt plays "Ad Astra" to Roy, an astronaut who receives a mission of the most particular: locate his father in space, who has been missing for several decades but who suspects that he is behind a threat that could end up destroying the Earth. This film, in classic forms and grandiloquent messages, is a science fiction prodigy, with some memorable sequences that we will be remembering for a long time.

Art School Confidential 2006

I love how cynical this film is, the embodiment of a narcissistic artist persona with a craving for fame and ultimate glorification through pretentious absurdity. You can't expect a movie about art school to be accurate. It has to have all the usual clichés about what it is to be an artist. One thing it definitely gets right is how students take criticism personally. To anyone who has ever studied in a Fine Art School, this film is for you!! You will recognize all the classic characters in this story.  

The film is directed by Terry Zwigoff who is one of the most original and funny filmmakers of all time. Zwigoff is quite familiar with the independent Clowes comic. He was the director of the fantastic and essential documentary Crumb (1994) about the independent and underground artist Robert Crumb and, more important in regard to this film, he adapted the graphic novel of Daniel Clowes Ghostly World to the big screen, resulting in the movie Ghost World (2001) with Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson.

While the cinematic adaptation of the superb graphic novel Ghostly World paled in comparison to the original work, resulting in a correct but not very interesting film, this time the result is excellent, possibly because the story on which it is based does not have the entity and the weight that Ghostly World has.

The film has the problem that much of it was already done much better in Enid’s summer art class in Ghost World (the cheap feminist “tampon-in-a-teacup trick” was taken from Clowes’s original “Art School Confidential” strip). Indeed, one suspects that had Ghost World not been so lauded, Art School Confidential would never have been conceived, let alone made. It has all the failings of a sequel without actually being a sequel.

Art School Confidential is a four-page story in which Clowes satirizes and ruthlessly mocks the elitist, pedantic and snobbish atmosphere of an art school, based on his own experience at the Pratt art school in New York. This short story is expanded by Daniel Clowes himself and becomes a mixture of suspense, satire and black comedy: Jerome (Minghella) arrives as a student at Strathmore art school with the dream of becoming an artist. However, it clashes with the pedantry and bad taste of a series of quirky teachers and students. In addition, poor Jerome falls in love with Audrey (Sophia Myles), a model of the school and persecuted by other students. To finish complicating Jerome's existence, a mysterious murderer is dedicated to strangling people related to the school.

The strong point of the film is found in the portrait of the school and its inhabitants. The most negative aspects of pedantry and snobbery are mercilessly satirized and make up the funniest part of the movie. Thanks also to the great secondary work like John Malkovich who plays one of the most ridiculous teachers in the academy. The subtext of strangulation is entertaining, although it really doesn't matter until the end. The dramatic aspects around the sentimental story between Jerome and Sophia are correct. It is nothing we have not seen before, but it is carried in a smart enough way to interest us.

The film manages to make us laugh, but it is its reflections on art (be it painting, cinema or clothing design) that make it stand out. It is also a reminder that not all comics or all comic book adaptations are starring muscular men with tights. This one is an ensemble of hilarity with a thriller twist, pure comedy gold!

Direction: Terry Zwigoff

Script: Daniel Clowes (Comic: Daniel Clowes)

Music: David Kitay

Photography: Jamie Anderson

Cast:

Max Minghella, Sophia Myles, John Malkovich, Jim Broadbent, Anjelica Huston, Ethan Suplee, Matt Keeslar, Joel David Moore, Scoot McNairy

Party Girl 1995

Parker Posey was the queen of indie films in the 90's, her attitude and line delivery mad her a indie cool new directors a favorite. Party Girl was made in New York in 1995 by a first time filmmaker, starring an actress who, except for a notable supporting turn in a Richard Linklater comedy, had had only small character parts in independent films. Party Girl was accepted into Sundance that year and garnered only a limited theatrical run. But over the years through word of mouth, it has become a beloved cult hit, quoted ad nauseam by its devotees, whose ranks multiply yearly. The film was nominated for Grand Jury Prize for best drama.

The plot seems at first utterly conventional, straying between nominally feminist chick flick to slacker comedy. Downtown It girl Mary is unemployed, on the verge of eviction, and “fabulous,” which in movie parlance means she wears quirky outfits and uses her acerbic wit against her friends. When she gets arrested for turning her apartment into a makeshift nightclub, Mary is bailed out by her godmother, Judy, a librarian. In order to pay Judy back and to prove herself to as capable and trustworthy, Mary becomes a clerk at Judy’s library. Gaining her good opinion is complicated by Judy’s constant panting that she can’t trust Mary because she reminds her so much of her mother, an irrational grousing that is the movie’s only major flaw. Mary’s mother may have been quite the party-goer, but many young women are, and one can’t hold young people accountable for doing the same things that their parents did when they were the same age. I would be extremely frustrated if my grandparents always said, “Gillian, you’re such a bleeding heart liberal, just like your mother was when she was your age. I won’t be surprised if you end up getting divorced, too.”

In most movies of this genre, Mary would prove her responsibility and intelligence by harnessing her femininity to her advantage by translating her party-loving sociability into entrepreneurial skills. Movies where female protagonists use stereotypically female frivolous traits like shopping or beautification to gain respect and enter positions of authority reinforce false perceptions among women that clinging to traditional gender roles can still benefit them in modern society. Unlike Troop Beverly Hills or Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, in Party Girl Mary recognizes the detrimental effects of her superficiality on her friends and on herself. Rather than giving her enemies makeovers and introducing them to the insecurity and vacuity of the world of fashion, Mary realizes her vocation in the library sciences and resolves to gain the confidence of Judy and her peers. Party Girl is a fun film with a positive message powered by Parker Posey’s truly sassy and engaging performance. Certain scenes suffer from tired comedy clichés like gay sidekicks or male strippers, but Posey’s consummate delivery, timing, and body language pull the film’s weaker elements into her comically perfect orbit. And luckily she’s in almost every scene.

Direction: Daisy von Scherler Mayer

Screenplay: Daisy von Scherler Mayer, Harry Birckmayer

Music: Anton Sanko

Photography: Michael Slovis

Cast:

Parker Posey, Anthony DeSando, Guillermo Diaz, Donna Mitchell, Liev Schreiber, Omar Townsend, Sasha von Scherler

Surviving Desire 1991

Sophie won't tell anyone she's sleeping with her professor. He's young, handsome, and passionate - perfect for Sophie, who just wants to write about love. When they hook up, he drops everything and her notebook begins to fill with poetry. But while he's head-over-heels, she's about to write two important words: The End. Surviving Desire captures that dizzy feeling of love in one's twenties, an off-beat comic romance classic.

In regards to Surviving Desire, knowing Dostoevsky's biography, and having read his works, helps place the emotive trials and trails in this comedy. I've now seen all Hal Hartley’s films, and this is my favorite, I really think that Hart Hartley was one of the best indie directors, unfortunately he has remained unknown and underappreciated.  The gazes of the actors, their static quality, is more nuanced here than in meanwhile or trust. This film is compassionate to its characters in a way that is inspiring. The dance scene is captivating and goofy at the same time it is inspired on Godard’s Band of Outsiders famous dance scene. The period stage sets, and costumes were all very chummy. The dialogue's complexity made it a fun film. 

Surviving Desire is, on paper, an underwhelming prospect; a mere 53-minutes long, it began life as a made-for-TV special. However, don’t let its brevity and inauspicious origins put you off. Whether you view it as a televisual gem, a substantial short or masterful mini feature it is worth your time and money – being as it is a key work of the formidably talented Hal Hartley.

Surviving Desire opens brilliantly on an under siege professor, Jude (Hartley regular Martin Donovan), as he reads to his class from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “I believe you are sincere and good at heart. If you do not attain happiness, always remember that you are on the right road, and try not to leave it…” A rebellious, swaggering electric guitar score accompanies his lecture. A book flies at Jude, thrown by an unseen hand.

Quick as a flash, he turns on his heel and hurls his chalk back, the soundtrack has the unlikely missile whipping through the air with audibly improbable ferocity; nailing the perpetrator with an almighty thwack. It comically transpires that his braying, seditious class have been infuriatingly stuck on this same paragraph for over a month – they implore him to teach them something, anything. The classroom scene climaxes with Jude flinging a disruptive student aside before being assaulted from the wings -- violence which is explicitly played for laughs. So far, so bizarre. Welcome to the Hartleyville USA.

Before 1991, the year in which Surviving Desire appeared, Hal Hartley had directed several shorts and two excellent idiosyncratic features, The Unbelievable Truth (1989) and Trust (1990). Right from the off, Hartley presented a signature style and themes which would then reoccur throughout his work. Surviving Desire, as with the features that came before, is a star-crossed lovers’ drama with an overt absurdist streak. In it Jude attempts to woo his only committed student Sophie (Mary Ward), whilst, as is again characteristic for Hartley heroes, grappling with career dissatisfaction and a larger existential crisis. At one point he frustratingly comments, “shouldn’t knowledge provide solace?”

Those familiar with Hartley’s oeuvre will recognize the familiar traits: the impossibly smart-arse characters, both central and peripheral. Be they academics, those in the service industry or tramps they are, to a man or woman, prone to gnomic philosophizing and self- and peer analysis; almost as if speaking with one subversive voice. A coolly existential brand of wisdom pervades every scene and springs from the mouth of every character. In Surviving Desire, after hearing about Jude’s infatuation with Sophie, a barman proffers, “that’s the trouble with us Americans, we always want a tragedy with a happy ending.”

This shtick means his work exudes both a swaggering air of hipster cool whilst proudly displaying, like a peacock, his considerable smarts. Characters are self-aware enough to mock themselves as they pontificate and there is a deadpan melodrama to the romance. When told that he’ll never survive the liaison with his student Jude answers, “I don’t know I want to.”

Hartley has an almost theatrical rejection of naturalism both in terms of dialogue and narrative. As mentioned above, violence is played for humour and events often take a surreal turn -- as when Jude wanders past a band (The Great Outdoors) who have ‘set up shop’ in the street and are playing to a woman, stands giggling while looking at a window above the band. Also, inspired by the first flushes of romantic excitement, Jude performs a West Side Story-esque dance with two random men joining him in absurdly perfect synchronicity.

With regards to his actors and the laconic, too-cool-for-school performances he coaxes from them, Hartley traditionally reminds them less is more. Martin Donovan is perhaps the ultimate Hal Hartley hero -- and he is superb here -- but Mary Ward, as impish and charming as she is, lacks the edge of some of his other female collaborators. Although Sophia is a typical early Hartley heroine -- young, rebellious, beautiful and on a quest to prove herself intellectually – his first major heroine, the late Adrienne Shelly (the radiant star of The Unbelievable Truth and Trust) left a long shadow over all his subsequent collaborations with actresses.

Hal Hartley specializes in an inspired marriage of the ordinary and the extraordinary; the sublime falling from the mouths of slackers. His films may be an acquired taste but it’s one I’d urge you to indulge because ultimately you’ll find yourself, like his hopelessly romantic characters, tumbling head over heels.

is a deadpan melodrama to the romance. When told that he’ll never survive the liaison with his student Jude answers, “I don’t know I want to.”

Characters talk about tedious tasks with the same dreamy intensity that characterizes their discussions of love, literature and philosophy. The mundane and the highbrow are hilariously intertwined within strands of dialogue, as when Jude tells his friend Henry, “You can’t walk in, use my toaster, and start spouting universal truths without qualification.” When Jude (no coincidence of course that his name in itself carries considerable dramatic weight) lies down in the gutter in abject despair, he is interrupted by a man asking for directions. The result is both dryly comic and gives Hartley’s films an intensely soulful, totally unique character.

In Hartley’s films repetition is a mechanism, it’s fear, it’s pleasure — is the essence of his work. Aggressively, a father will challenge his son to "repeat what he just said", the characters quote each other, in and out of context, there are fragments of phrases taken from books that appear and disappear throughout the narration. Often, repetition has a spiral effect: it helps a protagonist to define his thoughts (that is, for Hartley, his relationship with the world), either in a context of friendly ties between men (as in Theory of Achievement, when two friends finally write the sentence that best describes them, having tried multiple variants by adding a new adjective every time: “young, middle class, white, university graduate, unqualified, no money, drunk… I think now we achieve ”) or through direct confrontation (Jude, the professor of literature in Surviving Desire, is violently attacked by a male student for having been a month and a half with the same paragraph of the Karamazov brothers by Dostoyevsky). Something even more disturbing is that the man feels bewildered by a phrase pronounced by a woman and begins to repeat it, with the vain hope of discovering her secret. On the part of the women, the repetition - although threatening at the beginning - finally dissipates to reveal, underneath it all, a more bitter truth.

The repetition to convince oneself of the truth (incredible or not) or to get the "trust" of others: Hartley's films show the effects of language on life, the psyche, the body of its protagonists. His characters constantly carry books and read them aloud, like Anna Karina in Alphaville, from Godard. However the compulsion to read as well as the failed mechanism of repetition has another origin: an unpaid debt. The murder of a father, the death of a mother in giving birth to her son, the frustrated hopes that parents place in their children, the failures of the lives of adults who pass from one generation to the next — the films of Hartley are full of rebellious teenagers, brutal parents, psychopaths or cowards, incompetent adults, young people angered by the stupidity of the ruling class, frustrated ambitions, intelligent people who suffer in the narrowness of degrading jobs.

Beyond the horrors that are hidden in the ideal world of a family and the suffocating boredom of the suburbs, one must give an account of something else: for being young, prosperous, American; in other words, someone whose lifestyle is, in some way, responsible, for example, of an impending nuclear holocaust.

The vagueness of the debt makes everything even more unbearable. Did Mary really kill her father? Is Matthew's father a tyrant who exploits his son, or is Matthew a taciturn young man, difficult and ungrateful? Is it true that "we should never be afraid of our pusillanimity to find love," as Jude asserts when quoting Dostoyevsky? And why does the adjective "drunk" appear immediately after the two friends, in Theory of Achievement, agree with the word "white"? It is not possible to be accountable for being young, being bored in the suburbs, furious in New York, angry with your parents and more than anything, for not being able to love.

Hartley's cinema is relentlessly dynamic. It never succumbs to the fascination of the beauty of its images, impeccable symmetry, perfect resolutions — which, as film theory states, "stop the narration" to replace it with aesthetic contemplation. His stories constantly ride on a difficult balance, so they continue to capture our attention.

Hartley's love stories cannot be interpreted in a vacuum: Jude makes Sophie uncomfortable by insisting that her relationship must be "accepted" by the outside world: the gaze of the Other is what sanctions the validity of what happens. In other words, the lives of the characters are determined, sutured, "framed" by what lurks off the screen: the hidden mechanism of fate, the crazy machinery of the bachelor who blames irregularly, the sins attributed not only to the father, but to a society on the verge of bankruptcy.

Hartley's protagonists are a type of modern Oedipus who fight to face love, social responsibility, the crisis of faith, while a giant shadow of catastrophe looms over them. Women, also caught in the conflict, are partly victims, sexual objects, and sphinxes; their very presence questions, disrupts the complacent development of male discourse. While they are no less "lost" than their male partners, they appear to have access to a different level of knowledge. Swinging gracefully between irony, urban despair and romanticism, Hartley's films are rigorous, elegant, and fascinating stories about pure impossibility and the absolute necessity of love.

immediately after the two friends, in Theory of Achievement, agree with the word "white"? It is not possible to be accountable for being young, being bored in the suburbs, furious in New York, angry with your parents and more than anything, for not being able to love.

Directed by Hal Hartley

Produced by Jerome Brownstein, Ted Hope

Written by Hal Hartley

Starring: Martin Donovan, Julie Kessler, Matt Malloy, Merritt Nelson, Mary B. Ward

Music by The Great Outdoors, Hal Hartley (as Ned Rifle)

Cinematography Michael Spiller

Edited by Hal Hartley

Brick 2005

Brendan Frye (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is an extremely intelligent young man who is not afraid to support his claims with actions. Brendan is a high-school student at the Southern California high school. However, he prefers to stay out of everything.  He prefers to go unnoticed, but the only thing that makes him change is his ex-girlfriend Emily, that changes when Emily unexpectedly reappears to disappear without a trace. His feelings for her are still deep, so he will try to find her with the help of his only friend, this makes Brendan embark on a quest full of dangerous challenges.

The Brain played by Matt O’Leary provides him with the dark secrets of the students in his school and Brendan will come into conflict with strange characters like Laura (Nora Zehetner), a sophisticated rich girl, the thug Tugger (Noah Fleiss), the junkie Dode (Noah Segan), and the seductive Kara (Meagan Good).

For several years now, mixing genres has been fashionable, mixing them using all kinds of tricks, telling the same story that navigates between these genres, giving it a different touch of style, changing a typical argument of one of those genres and placing it in another context, etc. Everything has already been told, we just need to find a new original way to retell that story that we have already seen again and again. Sometimes they get it, sometimes they don't and sometimes they stay halfway. “Brick” belongs to this last group of movies. We could say that it tells the classic story of film noir, but set in an institute, so the characters are much younger than those who used to play these thrillers. This is the particular case of Brick, by adding a few drops to the mix, it produced a new kind of independent cinema that became so popular almost 2 decades ago, that is the reason why Brick won awards at festivals as prestigious as Sundance.

It is almost impossible not to sympathize from the beginning with Brick, the director’s debut of Rian Jonson, a genuine freak in the best of senses, who had previously worked as an editor in other teenage weird movies. How not to be hypnotized by a movie of teenagers in which they speak as the hard types of Hammett's novels and Bogart films? ---Brick is almost always fortunate in its attempt to recreate the lyrics and spirit of the classic film noir and the criminal pulp fiction of the 1920s, in the unusual and unexpected high school setting. But Johnson, who has been soaked by Lynch and the Coen brothers, inspired by Tarantino and American Film Noir, recreates a surreal and eerily timeless high school, a fantastic and referential world, where there are hardly any adults. And as always happens in the most sophisticated artificial universe as well as a kind of artificial cinematography, the characters work and carry the story, sometimes in an incredible and perhaps impossible manner. It is precisely because of this difficult balance between humor, postmodern self-referentiality, surrealism and adolescent intrigue drama that it seems to work well for Johnson as naturally as a rabbit appears from a wizard's hat. The film is intended for really cool viewers.  We can say that the best thing about is its visual atmosphere. The worst is the fact that sometimes it gets a little out of hand.

The somewhat messy argument as in any good film noir begins when our protagonist discovers that his ex-girlfriend, which has tried to contact him, has disappeared. In a web of events where nothing is what it seems, Brendan (the protagonist) will face increasingly tough guys without giving a single inch to discover what is hidden behind the disappearance of what was the woman of his life.

Making reference to the Film Noir canons, here we have the typical character; lost in love with a woman who no longer kisses or hugs him, and that lost, impossible love, marked by that type of “fire” is what makes him continue forward, despite of the word "loser" written on his forehead. In the same fashion, the protagonists of this type of stories are usually losers as well. Certainly with a certain charm, and almost always with nothing to lose, because what they wanted most they have already lost it.

Rian Johnson is assertive in the creation of an atmosphere very suitable for the story, an atmosphere of pure film noir. And also in the development of the argument, which is gradually becoming complicated, although in the final third part it gets confusing. Johnson had very few elements at his disposal to shoot this film, the budget must have been very poor, and yet he saved the film as few directors would have been able to do. Despite its obvious lack of means, the film distills a certain class, and that shortage is not a problem at all.

An aspect of the film that has been criticized is that it is very cold, and distant. Film noir is not like that, no matter how much they wanted to give it a twist here. This idea rested on nothing at all, thus this coldness plays against the film alarmingly. Many viewers will take time to enter the story or simply will not. Absolutely all the characters are so depressed that it seems from one moment to another they will make a collective suicide. This touch so characteristic of independent films does nothing but spoil much of the story. They could have saved it and the film would have worked better.

Regarding the acting; Joseph Gordon-Levitt who takes over the main character by filling it with carefully studied nuances. The rest of the cast is not honestly up to par. Nora Zehetner plays the typical femme fatale a classic in this type of story and the truth is that she baffles as much as she likes loosing the character’s control. On the one hand her strange beauty makes it suitable for the role, causing a certain fascination especially when she moves,  but on the other at certain times, she seems  too young to carry a role of these characteristics.

Today this film is destined to become a cult film if it isn’t one already, it collected several good reviews at the time of its release, although it is important to have these; the film also suffered from some failures that could have been easy to avoid.

Directed by Rian Johnson

Produced by Ram Bergman and Mark G. Mathis

Written by Rian Johnson

 Starring:

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Nora Zehetner

Noah Fleiss

Matt O'Leary

Noah Segan

Meagan Good

Emilie de Ravin

Richard Roundtree

Lukas Haas

Music by Nathan Johnson

Cinematography Steve Yedlin

Edited by Rian Johnson

Production company: Bergman Lustig Productions

Distributed by Focus Features

Release date:

January 2005 (Sundance Film Festival)

April 7, 2006 (United States)

Tadpole 2002

I have to admit I have seen this movie more than a dozen times. It was a favorite of mine and a dear friend. Oscar Grubman, a fifteen-year-old student who speaks French and quotes Voltaire, believes that girls of his age have neither lived nor know enough to be interesting. So, when he returns to his home in Manhattan to spend Thanksgiving vacation with his father, who has remarried, he will try to seduce his mature stepmother. The film is set in that Manhattan, a type of New York that Woody Allen has shown us so well. This story is about as close to a contemporary descendant of J. D. Salinger's beloved preppie misfit, Holden Caulfield, as has ever been brought to the screen.

At its most endearing, the film conveys the same intense identification with Oscar's thoughts and mood swings that Mr. Salinger brought to his legendary character, and its adolescent-eyed view of Manhattan's Upper East Side as a glowing, mysterious wonderland is deeply Salinger-esque. This was Aaron Stanford, first his feature-film debut in the movie, Oscar might have emerged as an insufferably pretentious hothouse flower. But the actor (23 when the movie was made) flawlessly captures his character's aching, doe-eyed sincerity and yearning goodness.

Oscar has little tolerance for his fellow teenagers' tastes in pop culture, and on the train into Manhattan, he appears oblivious to the flirtatious signals flashing from an attractive schoolmate (Kate Mara) whom he dismisses as too immature to be girlfriend material because she has “babylike” hands. He also imagines himself a connoisseur of women: older women, to be precise. But that taste proves the source of Oscar's heartache. Of all the older women in the world to covet, the one for whom he has developed a consuming passion is his attractive stepmother, Eve (Sigourney Weaver). A medical researcher whose marriage to Oscar's father, Stanley played by the great comedian, the late John Ritter, an academic, has drifted into stagnation, Eve is beautiful, cultivated, self-possessed and 40-something. And as the camera studies her through Oscar's adoring eyes, you understand exactly why he would prefer her to someone his own age. For one thing, she doesn't have hands like a baby's.

The film's chief pleasures derive from the delicate interactions of Oscar, Eve and Diane (Bebe Neuwirth), a chiropractor who is Eve's mischievously sexy best friend. The core of a story, which suggests a refined French farce about intergenerational sex and lies (but no videotape), this dinner scene full of intrigue and comedy represents the core entire movie, finally we find Oscar sleeping with Diane but feeling terrible about it afterward because he has betrayed his true love.  Bebe Neuwirth, whose leggy, smirking bravado recalls the younger Anjelica Huston, more or less steals the movie. Her portrayal of Diane, a sexy, self-assured single woman with a rebellious streak, gives ''Tadpole'' its erotic snap. Diane's juicy reminiscences of the wild rock 'n' roll adventures she shared with Eve 25 years earlier now make her friend uncomfortable. A critical scene is when Sigourney Weaver, displaying the greatness of her craft, deals with the teenage masturbation; all kinds of emotions go through her head and you can feel them. Within this genre which I consider topped by The Graduate, however I will rank Tadpole in the top five of that list along with Midnight Cowboy, Sunset Boulevard and The 80’s cheesy fun movie “Class”.

''Tadpole” comes from a screenplay by Niels Mueller and Heather McGowan, was an audience favorite when it was shown earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. The performances are precise with a sweet and kind Sigourney Weaver in this simple story that is told where the only interruptions are to show some phrases of Voltaire, part of Oscar’s obsessions; true axis of this film. The film's soundtrack includes a version of the Simon and Garfunkel song"The Only Living Boy in New York" interpreted by one of my favorite duo of all times "Everything But The Girl."  

Tadpole won the prize for the best director of a drama at Sundance in 2002, which went to Gary Winick. This movie was shot in just two weeks with a hand-held digital camera and was one of the many that during the eleven days of the festival found a distributor and buyer.

Directed by Gary Winick; written by Niels Mueller and Heather McGowan; director of photography, Hubert Taczanowski; edited by Susan Littenberg; production designer, Anthony Gasparro; produced by Mr. Winick, Dolly Hall and Alexis Alexanian; released by Miramax Films.

Cast: Sigourney Weaver (Eve), Aaron Stanford (Oscar), John Ritter (Stanley), Bebe Neuwirth (Diane) and Robert Iler (Charlie).