مدونة برامجي ::: الموسوعة الكترونية

The U.S. military makes a scarred bounty hunter with warrants on his own head an offer he cannot refuse: in exchange for his freedom, he must stop a terrorist who is ready to unleash Hell on Earth.

The movie is set in the Pacific Northwest; specifically, Washington state. We know this from a glimpse of a license plate, the craftsman architecture of the two houses, and the mature, rich landscapes in between. The setting, like the scrutiny of the four main character’s lives, is defined by the narrowness of the camera’s field-of view. The one commercial street in town is only seen in the reflection of a store window, a shot of a non-descript auto-yard, or the tunnel of a tree-lined suburban sidewalk. The lush, wooded landscape is understood as an immediate presence in the domestic and professional lives of the characters; a steep hill, railroad tracks, a rushing stream, and a path over an old steel bridge are revisited again and again by the characters in their capacities as lovers, parents and friends.

The end and beginning of the love of the French couple Marion and Gilles is disclosed backwards through five moments in their lives: 1st moment: They divorce and have one last brutal intercourse without love. 2nd moment: With their relationship shaken, they have a dinner party with Gilles’s gay brother Christophe and his younger mate, when an infidelity is disclosed at the dinner table. 3rd moment: The troubled pregnancy of Marion and the delivery of their premature son Nicolas, with the total absence of Gilles. 4th moment: Their wedding, when Marion commits adultery with an unknown guest of the hotel. 5th moment: When they meet each other in an Italian resort and begin their relationship.

It takes a tragedy to teach the young businessman Ian to put love ahead of work and open up to his musician girlfriend Samantha. After his impetuous musician girlfriend, Samantha, dies in an accident shortly after they had a fight (and nearly broke up), a grief-stricken British businessman, Ian Wyndham, living in London gets a chance to relive the day all over again, in the hope of changing the events that led up to her getting killed.

Adrien Brody and Penélope Cruz star as legendary Spanish matador Manolete and his tempestuous girlfriend Lupe Sino, respectively, in director/screenwriter Menno Meyjes’ tale of love and bullfighting. The film starts in the trip from Sevilla to Linares, where Manolete stops in Córdoba to see his mother. He will be remembering some passages of his life…

Sofia is a young Spanish girl who, after her mother’s death, develops an acute emotional crisis. An enigmatic letter falls into her hands, one that her mother sent to Chile when she was alive. The letter is returned by the post office when the recipient could not be found. The content of the letter raises stirring questions in Sofia, who then embarks on an adventure filled journey south of the world. The destination: An unknown and remote town called “Desierto Sur”.

An adventure drama that tells the story of Santiago, a 22-year old from Lima. Following his father’s suicide, haunted by his inner daemons and hatred for the world in general, Santiago decides to escape the crude Lima winter to take refuge in Mancora, a beach to the north of Peru where it is always summer. Upon his departure, Santiago receives the unexpected visit from his stepsister, Ximena, a young and beautiful photographer in her late twenties, accompanied by her husband Inigo, a young surgeon from Spain. The three take off on a journey escaping reality and in search of themselves. Santiago and Ximena find refuge in each other, which sparks off jealousies within Inigo, and a trip that was intended to be a simple escape turns out to be much more, when each of the three crosses limits and borders they should never have crossed. The three are placed face to face with their dreams and daemons. “Mancora” is a story of redemption, where a kid becomes a man and learns to forgive the world.

During the 1950s, Mexico suffers in the transition to modernity. Bonfilio leaves his family with his father to go north in search of better luck. The conflicts between them resolve when Bonfilio comes back to say his last goodbye. Lucía, a prostitute, and Demetrio, a gravedigger, find each other on a night where love can only be complete when Demetrio buries her. Don Julio, an old landowner, is consumed with remorse after the departure of Cleotilde, whom he married out of convenience.
At the turn of the 20th Century, the country of Mexico is experiencing growing pains when Bonfilio and his father venture north in search of a brighter future. Though the two men are constantly at odds, Bonfilio sets things right when he returns home to for one final visit with his family. Meanwhile, gravedigger Demetrio and prostitute Lucia realize that their love will never be true until Lucia is lying six feet underground, and aging landowner Don Julio becomes lost in a sea of despair after his marriage of convenience comes to a bitter end.

The story of a high-class hooker being rented to persuade a small town politician to approve a millionaire yet not so honest building project while being involved with one of the cops in charge of the investigation may not be the most original plot, for sure. Still, the movie is quite well done, it has pace, some action, characters are developed enough and of course, the lead actress shows a lot of flesh. This flesh thing, which may be one of the main reasons to attract the male crowd (and the movie is being advertised mostly based on that not so minor item), was an interesting surprise, at least for a female viewer: it’s not that gratuitous. Well, the girl is a hooker, and you should understand what “arguments” she has to drive men crazy as she’s supposed to (and she does have plenty of those), still, the sex scenes are not graphic at all, and in fact you never see any real (in a cinematic sense, of course) interaction between her and her partners: the most revealing scene is a one-woman-show. This said, the acting is very acceptable, with Nicolau Breyner (the Mayor who’s the Call Girl victim) standing from the crowd, a nice job from the other actors, and even the model-turned-actress Soraia Chaves defends her role. Particularly interesting are the dialogs (albeit all the swearing), which sound very natural and realistic for what Portuguese cinema has gotten us used to. For an American-style commercial movie, it stands its ground.