This one’s a movie about the Spanish Civil War, a subject I’m quite interested in because both sides had some absolute shockers on their side.
Higinio and Rosa are living in Andalusia, near Cadiz, at the start of the war in 1936 when Franco’s army comes up from Morocco and the Canaries. Higinio was a town councillor on the Republican side, which at that time espoused women’s rights and other liberties, opposed to the rigid influences of the church and the Nationalists under Franco.
When Franco arrives, the right take over and start hunting down and executing people who’d opposed them. Higinio bolts with a number of others, and the others are killed. He gets back to his house and hides, later going to a secret hiding place in his father’s place. Rosa has to leave no evidence that anyone is living there, because they’re still searching for him and he’s to be executed if found. Rosa wants a child, which would be awkward.
They hang on, thinking the Allies will overthrow Franco when they win the war, but of course, the US sees Spain as the European bastion against communism.
Film is called The Endless Trench on Netflix, starring Antonio de la Torre (Abracadabra) and Belén Cuesta (Manila in Money Heist).
A couple of weeks ago I re-watched Paris, Texas on the Criterion channel. I remember when I watched it in the 80s when it first came out in the 80s I was absolutely knocked out by it, and it’s a film I’ve never forgotten. The second time around it was just as good. I got a lot out of it that I’d forgotten or maybe even hadn’t properly noticed in the first place. I don’t think it could have been made by an American; it was made by Wim Wenders, and a large part of its power comes from his outsider’s eye. The performances by Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski and Hunter Carson as a little boy are mesmerising and there’s excellent support from Dean Stockwell; there’s not a single cliché in the dialogue or in the plot (the screenplay is by Sam Shepard); the cinematography is stunning; the music by Ry Cooder is perfect. It’s a truly great film.
On SBS World Movies at the moment is Heroic Losers.
Same time frame as Nine Queens, the Argentinian movie based in the early 2000’s when previous Argentinian economic issues had the peso replaced by the US dollar. Major swindle with pre-eminent Argentinian actor, Ricardo Darín.
Well, this one is founded when a group of locals are swindled by their local banker and devise a scheme to get their money back. Surprisingly Ricardo Darín stars again, this time with his son, Chino.
I agree it’s a strange movie, and I started to watch it several times, but I’ve never made it to the end. I just lost patience with the weirdness and the questions that were asked and never answered.
The only Lynch movie I’ve liked is Mulholland Drive, because it at least has a beginning, a middle and an end, even though the facts that we’re shown really don’t add up to anything that makes much sense. It’s stunning visually, and there are several amazing scenes (my favourite being the cowboy talking to the hotshot film director.
Read the book a long time ago, very much looking forward to Glazer’s take on Amis’ Zone of Interest. All reports it’s a bit of horrifying genius. Shame MA clocked off before it was done
I watched a movie called Rendezvous-Vous on MUBI the other night. Very early Juliette Binoche; it was her breakout film at Cannes in 1985 when she was only 21. Directed by Andre Téchine, one of the darlings of French cinema.
As a film, it’s a bit of a mess and I have no idea what the point of it was. Juliette plays an aspiring actress who’s mixed up with two actual or potential lovers. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays a theatre director who casts her as Juliet.
Heaps of pretty explicit nudity and sex, for those whose interests tend that way.
Having a few issues with my modem installation so I’m hitting a few DVDs I haven’t watched, or haven’t watched for years.
First one up was Bunuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Very 60s Western European with a group of snooty friends plus the ambassador of a fictional South American republic. They make plans to have dinner but the best laid plans aft gang agley. It’s an odd one.
Now onto the Spanish ensemble film A Gun in Each Hand. Mainly men talking about their problems.
Finished that. Now onto the box set of François Truffaut, starting with Jules et Jim. Never seen Truffaut before.
Jules et Jim is vastly overrated IMHO. Best of Truffaut would be 400 Blows, Last Metro, Day for Night, Soft Skin, Stolen Kisses and Les Deux Anglaises et le Continent (it has several English titles including Anne and Muriel and Two English Girls). I like that last one a lot. Last Metro has Depardieu and Deneuve at their very best. Stolen Kisses is a favourite because it’s the first of his that I saw.
Yeah…with New Wave cinema, you get more out of it at the beginning of the wave…otherwise it’s all passé.
Struggled to get much out of Jules et Jim.
Onto The Last Metro now. Gérard Depardieu has stacked on the kg’s since then. I watched his recent version of Maigret the other night.
Edit: and The Last Métro was really good.
Left the cricket when the rain came and saw 2 Tickets to Greece with Laure Calamy, Olivia Côte and Kristin Scott-Thomas. LC and OC are BFF’s as teens but the last F comes unstuck and they drift apart. 30 years later and OC is depressed after divorce and 20-ish son discovers that she was mates with the other and gets in touch with her. He gives Magalie (LC) the ticket to Greece he’d been going to use with his mum, Blandine, but one is a boring depressive and the other a feckless freeloader. Still a very enjoyable romp.
Definitely an arthouse film, story of a lifelong friendship.
“ Two young Italian boys spend their childhoods together in a secluded alpine village roaming the surrounding peaks and valleys before their paths diverge.”
On each day at 10:40 ish.
Park underneath the cinema and get a carpark ticket with your movie tickets.
One was a bit of fun…Stroke of Luck…everything’s going wrong at a Spanish spa town, but they find they’ve won 4 million euros in the lottery….50 shares at 80k each, but the drawback is the tickets were sold by the local brothel…and to claim the prize is to admit you visit said establishment. The womenfolk threaten dreadful punishment, even forgoing the prize.
The second one was a Chilean film, 1976, where the wife of a Santiago doctor is vacationing down the coast. This is 2 years after El Golpe, the CIA-engineered coup ousting and murdering the first democratically elected Marxist government of Salvador Allende and putting the dictator, Augusto Pinochet, in charge. Anyone even vaguely left wing was hunted down, tortured and maybe taken out skydiving sans parachute.
Anyway, the priest asks her to tend to a wounded dissident, and she changes her opinions. Powerful film.
Just binged on a series of 3 Spanish/Basque movies. The Baztan trilogy is based on novels by Dolores Redondo. The Invisible Guardian, The Legacy of the Bones, and Offering of the Storm. The Invisible Guardian is a mystery thriller about murders of young women. The series starts out investigating a serial killer who targets young girls, and then gets considerably darker from there. For anyone wondering it in no way resembles The Millenium trilogy. 8/10
