Change Your Image
![](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjE3NzcyODg3Ml5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwOTk3MTYyNjE@._V1_SY100_SX100_.jpg)
herimesquida
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Stranizza d'amuri (2023)
sparks of love
The story takes place in 1982 in a Sicily full of prejudices and is inspired by a news item from the 1980s, the crime of "Giarre".
The film is dedicated to the two victims, "Giorgio Agatino Giammona" and "Antonio Galatola".
Nino is the eldest son of a family of fireworks manufacturers. He has just successfully completed high school and his loving family's gift to him is a moped on which he happily rides around the Sicilian countryside.
Gianni is a boy his age who returns from a reformatory and lives with his mother and stepfather, who gave him a job in her workshop and a roof over his head, but who treats him with constant contempt, going as far as 'to violence.
There are rumors in town that Gianni is gay and he is being harassed by the thugs who spend the day at the bar across the street.
Gianni and Nino meet following an accident. It's the spark that ignites a beautiful friendship that could lead to something much deeper
But when rumors spread, the two families will turn against them: the two boys decide to face intolerance with courage.
The filmmaker takes all the time necessary to tell the story of the birth of this first love, using a classic visual grammar that highlights looks, hesitations and the magmatic flow of gestures and shared moments. Nino and Gianni create a strong and spontaneous alchemy that effortlessly engages the viewer's gaze, a harmony that overflows beyond the limits of the scenes and permeates the entire tone of the film like an aura. This loving harmony that shines like a celestial body, a solitary star in a hostile firmament, something beautiful but ephemeral like fireworks ("Fireworks" is the English title of the film and it is metaphorically the work of the father of Nino (whom the two teenagers will take care of during his illness) who is destined to disappear at any moment and who nevertheless persists, cannot stop shining despite the constant refusal of a space in which to survive.
This love seeks a possibility of recognition within a society that is maternal and passionate towards what it knows, but merciless towards what it does not yet understand. Nino and Gianni do not have this possibility: perhaps because the moment had not yet come, perhaps because of the responsibility of those who should have known how to love them unconditionally.
The film constantly walks the risky edge of melodrama but always manages - and with grace, with tenderness - not to fall into rhetoric or pathos. At the same time, Stranizza d'amuri also lives in everything it allows the viewer to imagine: the love of Gianni and Nino is dazzling, very short like a summer night; everything else, we imagine. Fiorello leaves it to the viewer to imagine; the love of Gianni and Nino is dazzling, very short like a summer night; everything else, we imagine: Hence the choice of the last scene which may displease but which I personally found successful.
For his debut Giuseppe Fiorelleo offers an eminently moving and sincere film, sober and of incontestable social value which introduces us to two young actors, "Samuele Segreto" and "Gabrielle Pizzuro" who deliver a magnificent performance (which reminded me that of "Jérémy Gillet" and "Julien de saint Jean" in "stop with your lies).
Beautiful, very beautiful cinema.
Pumpkinhead (1988)
Finally a cult one worth seeing.
With a tiny budget, Stan Winston managed to create: a terrifying monster and a macabre B series, with a sorcerer-demonic context of great efficiency and agility. It is very likely that thanks (and not unfortunately) to these limitations,Pumpinghead is today the cult film that it is. Stan Winston was able to compensate for the lack of budget by giving the film elements which, even if they were not outrageously spectacular on the big screen, gave the film a surprisingly unhealthy, disturbing and dark air. This is the best thing about the film.
In any case, and although it is a second-rate horror film, the film also tells us a good story which revolves around repentance and sacrifice which is as captivating as it is depressing, among other things thanks to the incredible decor and decor. This is precisely the second most important element: its setting and photography worthy of any "great film" of the time.
Convincing "Lance" Henriksen added to a fantastic creature that deserves to be on the podium of the best monsters created by Stan Winston Studios for one of the best options that the vast catalog of the B series of the 80s can offer.
Mi mejor amigo (2018)
Much less is predictable from where it appears
With his first feature film, the young Argentinian director Martin Deus offers us a beautiful story of friendship between two teenagers. A priori everything contrasts these two young people with very different family backgrounds. One, "Lorenzo", is the archetype of the wise, reasonable and studious boy while "Caito" is dark, introverted and reluctant to accept the established order in his host family. Their chaotic journey from one to the other will gradually lead them to discover their own secrets and ultimately to grow together. The viewer is subtly taken into this story, filmed with great finesse and delicacy.
With remarkable sensitivity this film shows us the relationship between two very different boys who collide, complement each other, become friends and where a feeling of love seems to emerge (at least in one of them).
Director Martín Deus approaches the story with sincerity, constructs dialogues that everyone could hear at home because they are credible and natural, and surrounds the adolescents with a cautious mother but with the openness necessary to understand the non-visible signs of all, and a father with the necessary presence in the house to support the growth of an adolescent son and that of the boy he takes in.
With small openings onto the exterior spaces that contrast with the interiors of the first part of the film and a choice of songs with lyrics that echo what is happening, "my best friend" grows as the screening progresses.
The Patagonian landscape perfectly complements the theme, which is also that of the transition from adolescence to young man (this universal theme), and that of coming out not necessarily from the closet but from the enormous set of prejudices (sometimes only outlined in the film) that society builds around us.
#henrimesquida #cinemaandliteraturegay.
Das Signal (2024)
Hello; remote signal.
The rather disappointing series has little to highlight.
The fairly flat whole can be looked at without pain or glory, without standing out in any way but without being a disaster in anything specific either.
A product that once consumed we forget it, with the same speed as we consumed it.
The first two episodes are clearly aimed at getting the most out of a family drama. The mystery spills out the data little by little and this general tone will be present throughout the series. It is a work that is not very energetic, sad, melancholic, almost "depressed", we feel it in the general rhythm of the editing: it seems heavy, sad, as if the characters were having difficulty lightening the burden of absence. This feeling, since it involves mourning, is appropriate. The lack of the loved one results in flashbacks that function as memories of the father and daughter and a parallel montage that goes back in time and where the adventures inside the special station take place.
In the last two episodes the mystery begins to take shape and we veer into science fiction. Science fiction but the priority always seems to be family drama. What happens inside the ship takes on a narrative validity that fits with what they discover in the present, even if the way the father puts the data together sometimes seems... too intuitive. The viewer must accept that everything is due to the love with which the three family members communicated with each other.
Unfortunately in its conspiratorial aspect, the series is very banal and is not developed sufficiently effectively.
As for the ending, it seemed to me to be a total failure, not very credible and almost laughable, even though it was all about forgetting science fiction...
I wonder what the intended target was: drama fans, science fiction fans? The mixture does not take and must have disappointed both.
All of Us Strangers (2023)
WHEN SADNESS AND LOVE COME TOGETHER ON A HIGHER LEVEL.
With this new film "Haigh" presents us with a sort of dreamlike extension of his rightly celebrated "Weekend" (2012).
It is a painful and relentless, romantic and thoughtful film which flourishes in the mysterious and the poetic, on the themes of mourning and love (family, sentimental, sexual).
It's a somewhat confusing and tangled emotional puzzle, but there are matters of the heart that reason doesn't understand: We can simply let go and enjoy it like a metaphysical hug. A refined cocktail of melancholy and romanticism with fantastic actors, washed down with the enveloping music of "Pet Shop Boys", "Frankie Goes To Hollywood", "The Housemartins", "Fine Young Cannibals", "Alison Moyet"...
I found it very beautiful... And I didn't need to rationalize and understand it (even if in the end I did). The great pleasure that this work gave me is due to the quality of the dialogues between the characters ("I know how easy it is to stop taking care of yourself"), to the music, to the images, to the looks (and what looks!) and the gestures that accompany them.
The film deals with the pain of loss, the relationship with parents, self-acceptance, the unresolved trauma of the threat of AIDS in sexual awakening and unhealed fears and wounds. But the most important theme addressed I believe is eternal love. A love that happens in the universe, when you are no longer there...
Thanks to moving cinematography and masterful performances from the star couple, Andrew Scott (Adam) and Paul Mescal (harry) as well as "Jamie Bell" and "Claire Foy" (Adam's parents), the film plunges us into a torrent of emotions, from joy to sorrow, leaving us to reflect on the fragility of existence and the importance of cultivating meaningful relationships. In the end, he leaves us a moving message: loneliness kills us, let us let ourselves be loved and fight for love, because it is in the embrace of the other that we find true fulfillment and happiness. Sense of belonging in this tumultuous world.
Veneciafrenia (2021)
Venice more red than blue
The Spanish director is very critical this time and he is fundamentally right: Venice, this jewel, has become an amusement park; it is the tragedy of mass tourism that is being targeted. Hence the idea of making Veneciafrenia, a slasher, this subgenre of horror in which the murderer, generally with well-founded reasons for having become one (or, at least, with some defense for his revenge), kills by the most savage methods young people who only think about having fun, fornicating, drinking and taking drugs, without looking for a moment at the environment in which they live or at the people or things that surround them. A slasher which, as the genre dictates, has the main aim of entertaining.
However, the film only half succeeds. The contrast between the classic Venice of the carnival, baroque, colorful and disproportionately brilliant, and the vulgar attitude of this gang of thirty-something Spaniards, three women and two men with youthful pretensions and adolescent stupidities, who stumble upon the worst journey of their lives, is too strong for us to believe it. Giallo's notes in the treatment of colors and the nuances of certain characters, confer a certain welcome ghostly vision to the whole with the obvious reference to the great "Don't turn around" by "Nicolas Roeg" from 1973, as a model to follow to present not a beautiful, sublime city, but a city that is frightening, because it is old, ugly and decadent.
"Veneciafrenia" ends up failing on both fronts: that of the rejoicing of terror, and that of the critical vision of the fact of society which was nevertheless an excellent starting point. This does not prevent some beautiful flashes like the opening credits, truly magnificent. The terror based on Opera with the excuse of the character of Rigoletto was also seen well. The black humor works at times but is poorly balanced with the terror of the Giallo. All of this lacks relevance and ambiguity: the general tone is strange due to the different parts that never really stick together (between the half-funny gore slasher and the satire-criticism with a certain message) and a disappointing ending.
It's well filmed, we recognize the touch of "De la Iglesia", but the film lacks a little this frenzy which, ironically, sometimes blurs certain works of this author. The protagonists are walking clichés. The villains much more interesting.
Barely an amusing film where we feel that "Veneciafrenia" is missing out on something that could have been memorable.
Out of Darkness (2022)
prehistoric survival
A monster film 45,000 years BC shot with three francs six cents but which ultimately holds up rather well, the filmmaker knowing how to exploit semi-desert landscapes, disturbing forests and dark caves. Excellent work of the soundtrack since until the revelation of the "beast" 20 minutes it is the only element indicating its presence. Therefore this journey through the highlands is credible and relatively tense.
In reality it's almost a survival story with an unexpected final twist (and which allows you not to strain the budget...), but which poorly explains the injury of the destroyed body, the only special effect in the whole film..
It is anthropology, not violence, that provides the final touch, a thought-provoking climax:
The inevitable lessons learned in this mossy, frigid wilderness continue to have modern resonances: about fear, intolerance, superstition, survival;
He has a lot to say about the slow, steady evolution of man, reflecting all the myriad divisions of the world today, from Brexit to Biden's America.
A Resilient Man (2024)
A sublime ode to self-reconstruction of a talented artist
At the height of his fame, Steven McRae, a brilliant principal dancer at the Royal Ballet in London, injured his Achilles tendon and collapsed on stage. His career seems over. However, after 2 years of absence, accompanied by his coaches and the company's medical team, he is following a special program to return to his highest level. Despite adversity, Steven McRae intends to return to the stage and dance the most prestigious roles in the repertoire again.
Unknown in France STEVEN MCRAE is a star in England.
He grew up in Australia, in the suburbs of Sydney. His parents are mechanics and his father is a drag racing fan.
He is a little red-haired boy, puny, shy. It evolves in this
world of cars, car races, oil smells,
of roaring engines... He even imagines becoming
pilot one day as he loves speed. But, by going to look
her sister in a dance class, it's a revelation. Like a
call. He wants to dance!
"It was the first time I felt that way. It was extraordinary and I didn't want it to stop. Ever. Dancing was freedom."
10 years later, at 17, he won the Lausanne prize, the most
big dance competition for young dancers. At the end of
competition, the director of the prestigious Royal Ballet school
from London asked him to become his student...He moved to London where he worked hard until he became the star dancer of the "Royal Ballet".
The filmmaker met him for the first time somewhat by chance in 2011 and the project of making a film about the dancer had been on his mind for a long time...
The right moment arrives when Steven gets injured, a taboo subject in dance circles. The idea for the documentary is there and Steven agrees. They exchange, get to know each other, sympathize.
The filming without embarrassment and without modesty goes deep into Steven's intimacy and sensitivity without ever sinking into voyeurism.
Steven Carrell shows and tells the fragility of life, the vulnerability of a man but also his ability to get back up with this strong story, with powerful narrative forces and dramatic issues worthy of fiction:
"I want to make a particularly beautiful film, print the body and mind of Steven McRae on film. I want to follow him as closely as possible when he dances. Feel him breathe. Experience every emotion with him. Dare to use framing that borrows heavily from photography."
I like to frame at shoulder height, or leave the frame empty around a character. Filming very graphic lines to give breadth to the image, to question, and above all to accentuate the idea that we don't tell one story like any other."
Some training or dancing scenes or "Steven Mcrae is alone" are incredibly beautiful and nothing to envy of "Black Swan".
By the way, if you thought like me that classical dancers are all skinny, you will be surprised, "Mcrae" looks more like a Rugby player all in muscle and power.
Obviously the soundtrack of the film is essential and it magnifies the emotions (There is music, symphonic music obviously but also string quartet and electronics)
It's a favorite that I highly recommend even if you know nothing about classical dance, which is my case.
Venus (2022)
COSMIC SLEEP
An argument that doesn't seem to be where it's going, and in fact it doesn't know where it's going.
It's the first, bad version of a script that a teenage film student would write in a weekend.
Of course, the ending is not at all predictable, but if it is not at all it is unfortunately for the wrong reason: It is without a doubt the worst part of the film.
It's a bad student scenario.
From the start it doesn't work: a gogo dancer from the "Fabrik" nightclub in Madrid decides to steal pills (the only motive of the film is perhaps to allow the fashionable actress to be sexy while time) in the nightclub where she works and abandoning her car and her cell phone about three meters from the room... to walk to a building from where, inexplicably, she never leaves. Well, after waiting a long time for something exciting to happen, more than three-quarters of the way through the movie, it looks like something is going to happen...
There's satanic cultism in the air, a full moon looks like it's about to trigger an alien invasion, a goddess of evil approaches, and then finally poops, pretty much nothing.
Nothing works, nothing is even correct, it's not horror, it's no longer a thriller, the bad guys seem to come from teletubbies, who are surely smarter!
Ten minutes before the end the heroine, a badass, exclaims: And now we're going to dance; We tell ourselves that at least these last ten minutes will turn into an effective settling of scores against the bad guys, the witches, the monstrous servant, the goddess of evil...
We are treated to a minimalist fight with one of the bad guys, and a shotgun blast at an old woman!
And the ending, yes I'll come back to it again, is so stupid that I felt embarrassed for the director. Because it's hard to believe that the director of Rec could have made such an empty film. Sometimes it's better to retire on time. With such a poorly constructed storyline, it's hard to come up with something decent that can't even be described as cheap teen gore. Another great failure of Spanish cinema which pretends to make horror cinema and puts people to shame.
Don't waste your time on this.
Saltburn (2023)
A top-notch perverse psychosexual thriller
Emerald Fennell steps up her cinematic style with a flawed but delightfully strange and quite daring drama
Saltburn is wickedly twisted, seductive and soberly satirical
"It has strength, dynamism and style, even if the scenario is classic and quite predictable. When we see it, we think of a mixture of "Return to Brideshead" by "Evelyn Waugh" (see the review of the book in this group) and the adventures of "Ripley" by "Patricia Highsmith". The film is explosive, and the result is a captivating and narratively impactful adventure.
Saltburn is a fairly long film but it's still entertaining. Fennell makes some bold decisions over the course of these two hours: in particular, a quick narrative cut at the end feels cruel but, when the sacrifice leads to the final dance sequence all can be forgiven. And certain scenes are strong enough to become unforgettable (the bathtub, the scene on the grave) which I think transcends the overly classic scenario.
Much of the key to the film's success lies in the elasticity of "Barry Keoghan": his face and eyes can move with a shadow, and it is impossible to imagine that any other young actor would look as dangerous as that. .t We are also far from the "high-class film in the English countryside (James Ivory) or films about Oxford"'), "that's not what interests the filmmaker.
Félix can point the finger at the Rembrandts and the Holsteins but the visit to the manor castle is done in 5 minutes (dizzying) and this is how the film shows the wealth of the place as it is more interested in the water of the bath of Félix in the gardens or at English picnics. What Fennell wants to dissect are these characters, "Keoghan" and "Pike" especially.
"Saltburn" doesn't have a truly original storyline, but it's the way the story is told that makes this work deliciously irresistible.
A top-notch perverse psychosexual thriller, transgressive tone and scenes about wealth, class divide and perverse desire.
#henrimesquida #cinemaandliteraturegay.
There's Something in the Barn (2023)
Finally a horror film with garden gnomes!
Knowing that the formidable "Gremlins" is going to be 40 years old, it was not a good idea to try to remake certain iconic scenes a thousand times worse and it is only when they move away from them that certain gags hit the mark .
Furthermore, it's another one of those films that doesn't know how to choose which audience to address: too violent for its very young target audience and too childish for an older audience. So it's not stupid enough (it's an adjective that is not at all pejorative when it comes to "Gremlins") and not scary enough.
The cultural gap between the American family and the Norwegians is the funniest thing in this good-natured entertainment.
Fellow Travelers (2023)
An erotic romance and a thrilling epic story
Providing a superb portrait of American society in the final decades of the 20th century, the series explores what has been called the "Lavender Terror" that shook the United States at the same time as "McCarthyism" (and closely linked to this one), who under the cover of anti-communist struggle had attacked all the "deviants" (golden opportunity to get rid of all the people who did not conform to American dogmas and conformism). McCarthy and the terrible Roy Cohn (to learn more about this sinister character see also "Angels in America" who in its 2003 miniseries version is played by Al Pacino) therefore launched a witch hunt which attacked thousands homosexuals, among others.
The survival of homosexuals during this hypocritical and disastrous period for her, when a simple look could ruin your existence, is very well covered here. It is in this detestable and dangerous atmosphere that Hawk and Tim, two men for whom it is impossible to express what they feel, but who know, accept and end up taking responsibility (for one of them it will take 30 years...) that they are the great love of each other's lives, regardless of whether circumstances separate them, sometimes for many years.
The storyline is very solid, with well-constructed characters (including secondary characters) and the perfect rhythm. Sex between men, rarely shown with as much realism as here, will shock the most prudish and in fact reveals the author's unwavering courage.
It is a pleasure to discover the work, individually and as a duo, of "Matt Bomer" and "Jonathan Bailey":
"Hawk" and "Tim" work at different levels in politics, and therefore must pay extra attention: Hawk has an official partner (Lucy), daughter of a senator for whom he works, and is quite old - and cynical - to know how to move and escape surveillance. His relationship with Tim becomes stronger and stronger, but his double life imposes limits and makes him very cruel and sometimes even hateful.
"Tim", younger, innocent and in love, doesn't know how to protect himself at all; he is noble, upright and shy but honest in his feelings and implacable in his social commitment (when he has lost his political blinders) and if he does not lead a double life, he still works for the senator "McCarthy" who he admires the bridge of being blinded.
Proof if any were needed of the intelligence of the scenario which does not hesitate to show these men with all their contradictions, which makes them not fictional puppets but beautiful, deeply human characters.
Bomer, for his part, adds an unforgettable character to his collection (just as a reminder of the excellence of his interpretation in 'the normal heart' by "Ryan Murphy"; moreover more or less halfway the series plunges into a another period just as disastrous and more focused if possible on the LGBT community: the condemnation and stigmatization of which it was victim during the epidemic of the AIDS virus.
"Fellow Travelers" with its historical dramatic context, its complex story of passion and its high-tension sex scenes is a remarkable, sensitive series, full of history and activist commitment. For demanding viewers it is proof that television can, when it wants, entertain by offering strong and potentially artistic works.
The Night Agent (2023)
A series that doesn't pretend to be more than what it is.
Good performances, murders galore, and a gripping plot about an FBI agent; you can hardly ask for more from an American spy series. It's not always very subtle and there are big clogs here and there, but it's simple, engaging and at times very effective. There's not much better in the action thriller genre. The format is very recognizable and we have already seen it in films and other series, made according to the same model, but from reading the synopsis we know where we are going to set foot and if the subject FBI - political intrigues - secret service - White House is not your thing, well, you can always choose to devote yourself to something else, but the series is what it is: action, intrigue, espionage, betrayals, chases... and in In this sense, it largely keeps its promises. No, the secondary characters are not particularly in-depth, but stop there, it's a series of actions and political intrigues and, as such, it's good, but it doesn't feel like Macbeth .
In short, a well-calibrated action thriller which will entertain fans of this genre and which will hook you if you are part of it from start to finish.
Afterwards we can find better, as entertaining and a little finer if we leave the U. S. A. I am thinking of England and in particular of the formidable "Bodyguard" by "Jed Mercutio" which with which "the night agent" seems to me to have more a common point. Suffice it to note the choice of hero, not at all calibrated with big muscles or triumphant virility: the excellent and very cute "Richard Madden" for "Bodyguard", the small and cute "Gabriel Basso", barely out of these child star roles for this "Night agent"