film festivals | The Last Movie Guy

Tár (2022)

Todd Field has a special talent for capturing the human soul. Tár (2022) comes sixteen years after his previous work Little Children (2006) and twenty-one years after his feature directorial debut, In the Bedroom (2001). The common factor in his work is the sharpness with which he displays in images the deepest feelings of the human being. His cinematographic rhythm settles in the vortex of emotions that are born in each of his characters. His work beats to the rhythm of its central characters and generally in that role we have women who are pressured by external elements. This was the case with the characters of Sissy Spacek and Kate Winslet in his previous films and he reaffirms it now with Cate Blanchett.

A Film About Couples (2021)

Posted on February 9, 2022 by Hugo Pagan Soto

Reality was revealed, and I collapsed. It’s like a dream. Anything can happen. Anything.
Through a Glass Darkly (1961)

When the camera is turned on and the lens absorbs what lands in front of it, it is impossible to separate fact from fiction. What we accept as reality is inevitably tinted by the glass of our preconceptions and prejudices. Bergman’s allusion in As in a Mirror (1961) goes down the same path and deepens how we understand reality by seeing our own lives reflected in the world around us. The new film by Natalia Cabral and Oriol Estrada (Miriam Miente, El Sitio de los Sitios) or should I say Oriol Estrada and Natalia Cabral? A Movie About Couples (2021) plays with narrative tones and satires the eagerness of filmmakers and viewers for pigeonholing cinematographic works.

Santo Domingo Waltz (2021)

Posted on January 28, 2022 by Hugo Pagan Soto

Lads do football… or boxing… or wrestling. Not friggin’ ballet.
Billy Elliot (2000)

Santo Domingo does not move, it dances. It’s a curse not to have the hip looseness or the rhythm to devour any melody that gets in the way. Worse still is being born with two left feet, a group in which I include myself, and for which I imagine there is a special place in purgatory. Before Santo Domingo Waltz (2021) shows the lines of the speech, it has already tanned us with music and folklore. It sets the stage perfectly; the frame of reference is powerful and sustains the narrative from start to finish.

The French Dispatch (2021)

Posted on December 17, 2021 by Hugo Pagan Soto

Maybe with good luck we’ll find what eluded us in the places we once called home.

Sometimes movies are love letters. Those frames become eulogies that acquire a narrative meaning within the story. While the director takes advantage of the resources of cinematographic language to unfold his story, each sequence becomes an apology to something or someone. With The French Dispatch (2021) Wes Anderson composes his love letter to journalists and to journalism. With the rigor that characterizes him, he reassembles a staging that fascinates, intrigues and surprises. In a way, his cinema has always been a reverence for art, and each project exudes his personal brand throughout. It is impossible not to recognize his work just by looking at a shot of one of his films.

The other Tom (2021) TIFF 2021

Posted on December 1, 2021 by Hugo Pagan Soto

He was not the model child of the place. The model boy he knew well enough and hated him with all his heart.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Director Rodrigo Plá cannot imagine Tom Sawyer living in this era. Twain would surely not have been able to capture his adventures because with a hasty diagnosis of hyperactivity or another syndrome they would have filled him with pills to calm him down. How good that Tom could live in another time and what a pity that the new Tom had to live in this one. The other Tom (2021) began to make noise with his nomination at the Venice Film Festival and from there he went on to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). It was at this stop where I was able to coincide with the film. Its circuit of festivals has not stopped and along the way it has been collecting various awards.