Make Way For Tomorrow (1937) - Leo McCarey

Amazing film from the Great Depression era, relentlessly dissecting the treatment of old parents by their middle class children in the United States. As Orson Welles put it "it can make a stone cry", indeed.
There is not too much that I can add to the experience of watching this film, but to admire how it takes you from one point of view to another, from understanding the childrens´ motives to despise them. It contains several genial moments, subtle interactions, an acknowledgement of the viewer, some silently spoken lines that are suppossed to be too strong to be heard, and an ending that puts anybody in tears (5/5).

Sherlock Holmes (Guy Ritchie), 2009

One of the most boring blockbusters ever, "Sherlock Holmes" cannot find a balance between sneering and spectacle.  There is no danger for anyone involved nor special mystery, or wonderment.  The London of this Holmes is dead as bad CGI can be, and it is not possible to ask something better for slick director Ritchie.  To make things worst, it seems that the powers in control decided to put all the "deleted scenes" in the theatrical version, thus running forever.  As an historical note, this movie was the counter-program to James Cameron's "Avatar". (2/5)

Daybreakers (Peter Spierig, Michael Spierig), 2009

A couple of interesting ideas about life as a vampire society doesn't make this film worthy of watching.  With the same budget a lot of us could have come with more interesting things to do or say about the subject.  Hollywood people doesn't seem to look for the best, but simply how to maintain their own jobs.  This kind of films need script doctors right away. (2/5)

L'heure d'été (Summer Hours) (Olivier Assayas, 2008)

This movie by Olivier Assayas has everything to make your blood boil: it is talky, presumptuous, and about an upper-middle class family. However, it is involving and meaningful in a surprising way.  It is not my task to review films resumed in other thousand sites and blogs, so I only will let some thoughts on it for you.  It is about the value of perdurable objects, not the everyday disposable things related to fashionable technology, but those little trinkets that used to be made to make the journey of a lifetime next to us, in our living rooms, kitchens, bathrooms and sleeping quarters.
Assayas mixes this personal question with broader issues: how to kept cultural objects and the national heritage, how to show them and what happens and the same time with people (which are personified forms of this heritage). Globalized capitalism does not forgive, not even to those that seems to be the winners of the system.  It is not a perfect movie, in the end we still ask ourselves why we should care about the inheritance of the bourgeois: Maybe if we consider them as the guardians of what is left of a thriving society the danger of loss will be touching also for us. (4/5)

A Perfect Getaway (David Twohy, 2009)

I always liked Twohy movies.  The guy is pretty good at making genre films with little idiosyncratic touches.  Again, this "whodunit" is one of them.  You cannot ask from "A Perfect Getaway" more than it can offer, so I recommend you to follow the scriptwriting clues and enjoy the "twists" as they unravel.  If you discover the secret before it is explained it is possible to enjoy the same, simply in a different track from other members of the audience. (3/5)

A Serious Man (Cohen Bros.), 2009

This film is a waste of my time. Broad characterizations to mock people, to show how idiotic an human being can be, and call it "normal". The Cohen Bros. hate people, they don't seem to consider the rest of us part of their own "race" of post-modern pseudo-intellectuals. They have been doing it for decades now, but this is their pinnacle. All their empty philosophy will not obscure the fact that they do not respect their audience, they think of us as fools. The truth is that simply they do not seem to understand humanity.

Movies Seen 1st Week of October

October 3rd: "Trouble the Water", Carl Deal & Tia Lessin (2008).
Powerful documentary about the first-hand experience of a black family of the 9nth Ward in New Orleans before, during and after the Katrina hurricane landfall in 2005.

Ocotber 4th: "Black Narcissus", Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburguer (1947).
Superb Technicolor dream about morality, lust and power in a convent in the high mountains of India. The convent is the stuff of which old colonial adventures are made, the matte paintings are art, the last 20 minutes are chilling, everything is exact, beautiful and meaningful.