Archive for tag 'portugal'

  • Tabu

    Such a great melodrama split in two parts, but I preferred the first one. The second is tinged with colonial disgust in every scene, always there in the background, you can never ignore it.

  • O Melhor dos Mundos

    The first third of The Day After Tomorrow or even Don’t Look Up, but with no budget, and good actors speaking technobabble. What a weird animal.

  • Há-de Haver Uma lei

    Os Maias meets Rashomon, with an heavy dose of Lolita. The ingénue was the mastermind all along!

  • Cândido - O Espião que Veio do Futebol

    That’s a joke with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Fitting, for a middle-of-the-road spy flick.

  • Soares é Fixe

    Technically impressive biopic with incredible makeup and acting, in service of a crappy hagiography and bland story. The political equivalent of the effects driven extravaganza.

  • A Semente do Mal

    Fuck yeah, a proper horror film made in Portugal. Just a bit on the nose, as our boy is called Edward Ipus. Ed Ipus, geddit?

  • A Sibila

    Autobiographical story of the life of an aunt of the author, from what I can tell. Freaking ruthless female Scrooge, hiding her avarice with “charity”, piety, and religious adherence. This feels like a gender-swapped The Fountainhead, with less ideological ranting, but keeping the long stretches of voiceover reading the book.

  • Pátria

    Was that a Werner Herzog picture as the ersatz Hitler figure?

  • Pôr do Sol: O Mistério do Colar de São Cajó

    Like a 100 minutes long TV episode. Fairly packed with jokes, a lower budget Airplane! or Top Secret!.

  • Delírio em Las Vedras

    Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with less drugs and more cheap beer.

  • Restos do Vento

    Violence begets violence, silence continues the suffering, vengeful catharsis only delays the problem. In this case, for the next generation.

  • Cartas da Guerra

    Epistolary look into the commissioned officer experience in the Portuguese Colonial War. A more mainstream affair, compared to Hotel Império.

  • Salgueiro Maia: O Implicado

    The missing biopic of a forgotten hero. Many civil wars were avoided by his charisma, calm and quietude.

  • Veneno Cura

    What’s this, I don’t even… That cold opening sets the tone, but it gets progressively weirder and weirder. Goes to very dark places, but never raises above voyeurism and gratuitous shock value.

  • A Metamorfose dos Pássaros

    Poetry that let itself be filmed. A very personal and fine arts take on familial loss. “Every frame is a painting” is rarely such an apt description, it is literally true in this film.

  • Sombra

    Boyhood, without the boy. Burn my shadow away…

  • O Frágil Som do Meu Motor

    Cronenbergian body horror, Aronofsky-ish weirdness, and Halloween twisty serial killers, in a single esoteric package. It packs a noir atmosphere, with the requisite police procedural.

  • Era Uma Vez um Arrastão

    How to spin nothingness into a far-right nativist rallying cry against foreigners, courtesy of a pliant press on a summer weekend.

  • O Leão da Estrela

    Ah, the good old forties, when two foot-ball teams could all do roman salutes before the match. Heil, Füsball!

  • Como Desenhar um Círculo Perfeito

    This title resembling a YouTube tutorial hides a muddled bunch of nothing with some French music as soundtrack. That imagined osmosis could make up for the lack of everything else.

  • Mutant Blast

    Troma still exists? Wow. This is right up their alley, but spoken in Portuguese. A much better output than Linhas de Sangue, against all odds (budget, ensemble cast).

  • Um Jantar Muito Original

    A modest proposal to serve man. This is an adaptation of a story by Fernando Pessoa, in his Alexander Search heteronyms.

  • O Ego de Egas

    Ironically an hagiography, considering the title. It’s a condensed part of his life, mostly exposition, a rookie TV movie.

  • Coisa Ruim

    Man is the real monster, and moving from the big city to bumfuck reveals the seething problems lurking beneath the veneer of respectability.

  • O Fantasma

    The protagonist is fucking in heaven. Fucking, and fucking, and fucking in heaven. I want to fuck more, I want to fuck more…. Beware of the unsimulated fellatios…

  • Pedro e Inês

    Cloudier Atlas. The same story, slightly tweaked through the ages, entwined between themselves.

  • Listen

    Nem mau nem bom, antes pelo contrário. How does this win so many awards?

  • Ordem Moral

    How to steal a newspaper from your wife between World Wars: force abortions in excess of 5 maids and assorted visitors, then accuse her of hysteria when she absconds with the driver.

  • Famel Top Secret

    What the fuck is this? What the fuuu… No, life is too short.

  • Bairro

    Oh my. The pretend edgy stuff. The pseudo-Robin Hood shtick. The cars wrecking cardboard boxes. The fade to black, oh god, so many fades to black.

  • Um Amor de Perdição

    The Cliff’s Notes version. Über-depressing, almost makes you weep for idle rich aristocrats.

  • Operação Outono

    Fucking hell, anotherEstado Novo“-adjacent film with main characters who do no speak Portuguese? Dubbing a General who had such charisma that he forced the regime to rig elections against him, and then bury him in a shallow grave? Enough with the dubs already!

  • A Hora da Liberdade

    One of those alleged faithful recreation betrayed by amateurish production values. There’s way too many boom mics appearing on the shot.

  • Capitães de Abril

    The French version of Carnation Revolution. The director is Portuguese, but it’s completely French. The main characters are played by foreign actors and dubbed by Portuguese actors, without lip sync. That’s just folly.

  • Sleepwalk

    Filipe Melo does an Americana short. It deals with the fact that the death penalty is as American as apple pie.

  • Refrigerantes e Canções de Amor

    Meh, overplays its hand for such formulaic script.

  • Até Que o Porno nos Separe

    A crazy premise leads to a massive tear jerker. Nuts! No cockups here, I was unable to maintain a stiff upper lip.

  • A Herdade

    The fictional biography of Ricardo Salgado, by way of Os Maias. Direct political answer to Raiva. Visually, it’s almost 3 hours of people chain smoking and gobbling litters of whisky.

  • Hotel Império

    Über hipster tale of real estate speculation, smoky clubs where not-hookers hook up, and massage parlous, with requisite happy endings. Fuggedaboutit, it’s Macao.

  • Diamantino

    Shaolin Soccer meets Bourne, featuring Mediterranean refugees. Never thought that last sentence could ever make sense.

  • Call Girl

    The bog standard story of a high-class prostitute who hoodwinks her clients and the cop to run away with a suitcase full of cash to Brazil. Her real name is Mary, surname had to be Sue.

  • Eclipse em Portugal

    A failed attempt to make a sort of remake of Braindead, without the budget or the script. It has heart, but no guts.

  • Balas & Bolinhos

    A crappy no-budget The Hangover years before that. Just like that popular “film” devoid of content, it spawned a franchise. Yet another proof that there is no God.

  • Os Maias: Cenas da Vida Romântica

    A faithful adaptation of the seminal XIX century story, but poor in production values and plot. The important plot beats are presented in a matter-of-fact way, for such emotionally powerful moments.

  • Raiva

    Cinema veritè, in 1930’s Alentejo. Structured like a revenge plot, mostly against metaphoric leeches represented by literal landowners.

  • Jorge

    Standard “drugs are bad” flick. Despite being about heroin addiction, everybody is happy, and after a brief “Kum ba yah” all is good.

  • Videovigilância

    An ultra depressing film about lowlife Blockbuster Clerks / drug dealers that bite more than they can chew and get their lives kicked down a notch.

  • Malapata

    A demo reel for Hot Jesus. A box ticking enterprise. Not even worth it to finish the

  • A Mulher que Acreditava ser Presidente dos Estados Unidos da América

    The superior crazy people film. All female cast in which some poor woman deals with mental illness by pretending her neighbourhood in Washington Street is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

  • Linhas de Sangue

    Ensemble parody of action films in general. Low budget doesn’t mean low quality, but in this case that is not completely off the mark.

  • Balada da Praia dos Cães

    Simple investigation into a murder that might have political connotations. Turns out it was a crime of passion and the political police are clutching at straws trying to extract meaning where it doesn’t exist.

  • Leviano

    Hipster bullcrap. A low rent Spring Breakers.

  • Síndrome de Estocolmo

    A scathing satire of Portuguese society. The script writer was a classy troll, and the fact that this was greenlit by the biggest broadcast network only makes it even funnier.

  • Monsanto

    PTSD-ridden ex-soldier goes insane after a partner kills himself.

  • Peregrinação

    A road movie set in the Age of Discoveries. The main character travels through Asia in search of wealth and prestige and ends up shunned by the royalty.

  • A Noiva

    Made for TV simplistic take on the colonial war.

  • O Pai Tirano

    One of the representatives of golden age of Portuguese cinema, it’s still hilarious. There’s an overarching plot of silliness and hilarious smaller bits which betrays its origin as vaudeville-esque popular theatre (known as revista).

  • Perdidos

    This is a remake of Open Water 2: Adrift. It’s better than it sounds, but I haven’t seen the original.

  • Tarde Demais

    This is a story about a group of fisherman from the outskirts of Lisbon that sink their boat in the mud in viewing distance from the shore, but since some are weak, old and/or injured, can’t get to safety before tragedy happens.

  • São Jorge

    Boxing is life, and so is debt collection.