Two Prosecutors begins with the gate of a prison opening and ends with another closing. This circular trajectory delimits the hero's adventure, Kornev, a young prosecutor in Stalin's Russia, who, upon discovering the torture and forced confessions to which the survivors of the old guard of the Communist Party in his region are subjected, wants to bring this scandal to the attention of the Soviet leadership. The problem, however, is that his idealistic view (that of someone who "is still a virgin," as some characters who see themselves in his path slyly insinuate) is the only one that doesn't realize the corrupt world he moves in.

French cinema maintains a particularly close relationship with its musical stars. From Juliette Gréco to Benjamin Biolay, many musicians have stepped in front of the camera in projects that don't appear to be mere promotional vehicles, but rather natural extensions of their artistic aspirations. One of the most recent additions to this tradition is Juliette Armanet, a singer who seems to have developed a taste for acting in recent years, and who finds in Choosing my life The intersection of their talents.

Maybe The bride! (The bride!) has as its starting point The Bride of FrankensteinBut it's neither a sequel, nor a remakenot one reboot nor any other label affiliated with Hollywood's franchise logic. Maggie Gyllenhaal, an actress who has never shied away from risk (she revealed herself with the sadomasochistic romance of Secretary) and that in The Dark DaughterHer directorial debut, while acknowledging influences like Claire Denis and Lucrecia Martel, presents the film as a fiercely autonomous manifesto of pop feminism. This is clear from the opening scene, in which Mary Shelley confesses that in Frankenstein She was only able to capture a fragment of what she wanted to tell. Then, the writer's specter cracks the diegesis and literally possesses the body of a prostitute who will become the protagonist of a feverish fiction.

Hamnet It is no longer the only film currently showing that revolves around Hamlet. In Scarlet, Mamoru Hosoda It draws inspiration from Shakespeare's immortal text, although it takes considerable liberties, such as changing the name and gender of the main character to transform her into a medieval princess who travels through time and space in a purgatory to bring to justice those who murdered her and her father. Unlike its literary model, Scarlet She doesn't need any specter to drive her to revenge; she alone possesses a rage of epic proportions, as befits the emotions that characterize adolescence, which is precisely the territory most frequently explored by the director of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and The Boy and the Beast.

If one of the factors that allows us to gauge the value of an artistic text is its ability to establish a personal and unique dialogue with everyone around it, there is no doubt that Wuthering Heights It is a masterpiece. Further proof is that this novel by Emily Brontë has inspired such diverse film adaptations as those by Luis Buñuel during his Mexican period, Jacques Rivette, and Yoshishige Yoshida, who took the British joke to feudal Japan.

Two decades ago, Hellboy He burst onto the Hollywood scene with two blockbusters Eccentric and baroque, directed by Guillermo del Toro, and with Ron Perlman exuding charisma beneath the prosthetics and red skin of the infernal anti(super)hero born from Mike Mignola's comics. After the failure that was the character's revival under Neil Marshall's direction in 2019, Hellboy: The Crooked Man It returns to the screen with the coordinates of a modest production made on the fringes of the industry.

I'm not sure if, as Paul Schrader states, Marty Supreme and The mastermind by Kelly Reichardt They are the same film played at different speeds. But it does seem clear that their protagonists are cut from the same cloth: two sociopaths who wander the world convinced they are destined for a greatness incompatible with everyday life, and who embark on selfish crusades with catastrophic consequences. This psychological profile is not at all coincidental with the fact that the Marty Mauser embodied by Timothée Chalamet—with glasses, a little mustache, and electric gestures—is also a clear exponent of American exceptionalism; he demonstrates this every time he tries to convince his interlocutors that he deserves special treatment and that his presence as an American elevates the world ping-pong championships.

Just take a look at the clear-line characters that inhabit Bow His universe, besieged by climate catastrophe, hints that Ugo Bienvenu has honed his sensitivity and awareness to the point of reminiscent of Moebius's comics and Hayao Miyazaki's films. But, although the director doesn't hide his influences, it would be unfair to view the film as a mere homage or a replica of others' achievements. Among other things, because Bienvenu has been cultivating this style for years in comics that explore similar themes to those in his first feature film (Ponent Mon has published his works in Spain). In fact, the author had received several offers to adapt his comics for film, but he preferred to develop a new story for the screen, imagining the encounter between two children from different times: Iris, who lives in the world of the day after tomorrow, amidst long-distance parent-child relationships and domes that serve as shelters from torrential rains, destined for a time-traveling journey for which he may not yet be ready. The film's elegant design does not forgo spectacle or a sense of wonder, but where it truly shines is in the human scale of a narrative freed from Manichaeism and clear antagonists, and in its desire to seek heartbreaking lyricism in unexpected places such as, for example, the agonizing memory of a...

The fable which give its name to the latest film of Daniel Sánchez Arévalo These are not fanciful tales told by the fireside, but rather traditional music groups rooted in the Pontevedra region, participating in competitions that can lead to spectacular choreographies that go far beyond folklore. This is how the director ofDark blue almost black upon seeing the recording of a group attacking with bagpipes, tambourines and timpani the Thunderstruck from AC/DC. This was the spark that inspired RondallasA dramedy where music is the mortar that reunites a town touched by the tragedy of a fishing boat shipwreck.

It has been difficult, but it seems that a certain consensus has been reached in considering that the so-called delinquency cinema It is one of the most reliable references for examining where Spain stood during the transition. That stark decline of the noir genre, narrated almost entirely in the first person by juvenile delinquents who blurred the lines between themselves and the alter ego that they embodied on screen, is the point of reference of Blows, the first feature film directed by Rafael Cobos, a regular screenwriter for Alberto Rodríguez.

I don't know if Blue moon It's the best film of the year, but I would venture to say it's the most heartwarming. This is no small feat, given that it begins by announcing the death of its protagonist, Lorenz Hart, the lyricist who forged a memorable collaboration with composer Richard Rodgers, to whom we owe milestones of musical theater such as My funny Valentine or the song that gives the film its title. But Hart, who in the film has the features of a shrunken Ethan Hawke with a prosthetic bald head, possesses enough charisma to make us forget the mournful anticipation and gladly accompany him to the bar where he takes refuge from the premiere ofOklahoma!, a show that his colleague Rodgers performed with Oscar Hammerstein. To the spite of that infidelity is added the nervousness of the imminent encounter with the young woman who has fascinated the homosexual Hart, who projects onto her a naive romantic ideal.

Stephen King wrote The running man (published in Spanish as the wantedIn the early seventies (a decade before publishing it under the pseudonym Richard Bachman), he wrote the novel, setting it in the year 2025 in a dystopia where the underprivileged participate in risky television game shows hoping to escape poverty. The most extreme (and lucrative) of these is the one that gives the book its title, turning participants into fugitives who must survive the pursuit of relentless hunters and all the viewers hoping to earn a reward by reporting them. Now that the present has caught up with the chronology of the fiction, the prediction of a society absorbed by a harmful audiovisual culture seems accurate, but not particularly shocking.

The bulk of Francis Lawrence's filmography is monopolized by the franchise of The Hunger GamesAt first glance, no one would think of him as an author with recurring obsessions, but there is a certain poetic logic to his interest in bringing his work to the screen. The Great WalkPublished in Catalan by Males Herbes, an early Stephen King novel, also presents a dystopian scenario where young people are offered as sacrifices. However, in this case, we are not in a fantastical realm, but in an alternate version of the United States (to which the current context lends an undisguised Trumpian air), where an annual competition is held in which 50 young people (one from each state) are chosen for an endurance test meant to serve as an example and moral elevation. It consists of a march with rules as simple as they are merciless: the moment they falter or stop, a soldier will shoot them in the head. Only one walker can remain, who will receive a monetary reward and the granting of a wish.

None of the films Halyna Hutchins worked on will go down in history, but in all the ones this critic has had the opportunity to see, the Ukrainian cinematographer's work gives lyrical expressiveness and dignity to the digital textures of tiny productions. Two holes This is no exception, but in this case his name will forever be linked to the film because of a tragic event: during the filming of a scene, The lead actor, Alec Baldwin, fired an improperly loaded gun. which fatally wounded Hutchins. The incident reopened the debate about safety in Hollywood, and even inspired a documentary about the events and the resumption of production against all odds. The show must go on, we know, but despite knowing of other titles touched by tragedy – from the film version of The Twilight Zone to The crow—, it's impossible not to feel uneasy watching the film.

Today, when it seems that cinema can talk about everything and show everything, it is at least significant that the place most films don't dare to go is the world of work, precisely what determines the daily lives of most of the population. It is one of capitalism's great triumphs: turning work into a kind of dramatic taboo, a residue where fictions don't bother to linger, lest we begin to question the meaning or the fairness of the activity that occupies our routines. Fortunately, there are still some filmmakers committed to making clear what their antiheroes live (and die) by, as is the case with Alberto Rodríguez.

Guillermo del Toro He is an accidental Prometheus. A filmmaker who loves the fantastic unconditionally, but who has achieved a prestige and access to budgets that his B-movie masters didn't even dare dream of, turning his own labors of love in definitive manifestos that, without intending to, challenge the memory of their references. It is logical, then, that the Mexican director has materialized a version of Frankenstein Longer, more romantic, and more bombastic than any previous adaptation of Mary Shelley's book… But with a sense of wonder dwarfed by the industrial logic of Netflix, entirely uninterested in iconic posterity.

In the first scene of Foul play A crazed robber and a thousand-man back down upon learning that his interlocutor answers to the name "Parker." This notion of familiarity drives Shane Black's film at all levels. On the one hand, he trusts that some of the audience will know the central character, the expeditious robber with a strict professional (and, in a way, moral) code created by Donald E. Westlake under the pseudonym of Richard Stark, who had already appeared on screen with the features of Mel Gibson and Jason Statham, and who is now still on the path of stoicism. On the other hand, the film attempts to capture the essence of Parker by taking motifs from the various books in which he stars, and turns the story into a great reunion with enemies and allies.

Batting and smoking marijuana while nursing a terrible hangover. That's how Bob Ferguson, the crackpot activist played by Leonardo DiCaprio, learns he must flee because the demented soldier with whom he shares an unexpected romantic triangle is after his boss and his teenage daughter. It's not exactly the most opportune time to receive the call to arms of the revolution, but nothing is ideal in the landscape it paints. One battle after another, neither the father-son ties nor the coordination between the cells of a countercultural guerrilla whose members are too brain-broken to remember a password.

A great, daring and wonderful journey It's a grandiloquent title, but not all the adjectives it contains reflect the film's reality. Let's take it one step at a time: it's a €50 million production led by two stars like Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie, so objectively we can define it as big; especially for a director, Kogonada, who until now had worked on a human scale. On the other hand, it's a romantic fantasy where the protagonists experience a date that literally plunges them into a journey through several crucial moments of their existence, trying to make peace with their past while considering whether it's worth falling in love again. There's no doubt that in the current Hollywood franchise landscape, such a proposal is daring.

With four films and two spin-offs (those dedicated to the Annabelle doll already The nun) which, in turn, have generated multiple sequels, The Warren File has become the dominant franchise in horror cinema of the last decade. A success underpinned by the artisanal craftsmanship of its scares, and also by a classic conception of horror, which presents an Absolute Evil with diabolical roots facing the forces of Christian good. This conservatism is the result of the debt the films owe to their source of inspiration: the couple formed by Lorraine and Ed Warren, pioneering researchers of the paranormal and practicing Catholics.