movies | The Last Movie Guy

The Zone of Interest, Cinematic Perfection

Posted on February 23, 2024 by Hugo Pagan Soto

The Zone of Interest welcomes the audience with a black screen filled with an ominous sound that makes us anticipate the worst. We imagine that when that first image finally appears on the screen it will be terrifying. But director Jonathan Glazer’s intention is different. The first thing we see is a peaceful day in the countryside and a family enjoying themselves on river banks. Although what we see is not disturbing, the anticipation and the music have created in the audience the objective of disturbing and making the mind invent distressing scenarios.

Playing Chess Against Death

Posted on February 18, 2024 by Hugo Pagan Soto

In these days of uncertainty, panic, and apocalyptic speeches, I felt like returning to The Seventh Seal (1957). The story of the knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) and his squire Jöns (Gunnar Björnstrand) returning home from the Crusades to find the desolation caused by the Black Death is more than appropriate to me. In the middle of the 14th century, the world experienced its deadliest pandemic, and the population of the European continent was drastically reduced; some figures indicate more than 50 million deaths. The one also known as the black death is a worthy protagonist of any horror film. But for Bergman, the story of the deadly pandemic served as medicine to exorcise his own demons. Death was one of the many recurring themes in the filmmaker’s work, perhaps the one that obsessed him the most.

Read More

I Am Not Your Negro from Raoul Peck

Posted on November 6, 2023 by Hugo Pagan Soto

In 1979 an idea was born in the mind of James Baldwin. In a letter he explained to his agent that his next project, titled “Remember This House,” was going to encompass meetings with three of his closest friends: Medgar Evers (1925-1963), Malcolm X (1925-1965), and Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968). At the time of his death in 1987, Baldwin left behind an unfinished 30-page manuscript. With the documentary I Am Not Your Negro (2016), filmmaker Raoul Peck seeks a kind of closure for the unfinished work.

SLY: The Man, The Myth, The Legend

Posted on October 16, 2023 by Hugo Pagan Soto

I remember when I started writing about cinema. One of those first articles was about my action movie heroes. SLY (2023), the documentary that covers Sylvester Stallone’s film career, made me return to that moment and the motivation that generated that crude writing. Those celluloid heroes that Hollywood spawned were my favorite refuge for years and there I always ran into that Stallone. It is impossible to imagine the history of cinema without Rocky, without Rambo, without Cobra, without Tango, without John Spartan…

Oppenheimer The Destroyer of Worlds

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Hugo Pagan Soto

Oppenheimer is the twelfth feature film in the work of English director Christopher Nolan. A lot has changed since 1998 which saw his debut with Following, a work that has gained a cult status over the years. But Memento (2000) was the film that would put him on the radar of many moviegoers and would open the way for him to the Hollywood industry where Nolan has reaped all his successes ever since.