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Reviews
Law Abiding Citizen (2009)
What the...?!
I'd like to begin by saying I LOVED this movie...until the last few minutes. Someone please tell the writers and/or producers to STEP AWAY from the crack pipe when doing a movie's ending.
To be perfectly honest, I should take away more stars but I LOVED this movie. Were the ending what the movie deserved and NOT something out of an acid trip I'd have given this film a 10! But the ending...aaaaaaah!
Why can't they make endings that follow the narrative of the film?! Is it really that difficult?
REALLY?! Foxx's character watching his daughter at the recital after having killed someone. And it was premeditated! He was the reason for the succession of events in the movie! Once again, WHAT THE...?!
Aparecidos (2007)
Risky and different
Let me start out by saying that I gave it a 7/10 due to the misleading "horror" movie this film is supposed to be(?). I don't know if the horror genre with this movie is the way to go. Another review calls it a "horror with a supernatural twist/thriller within a mystery", I'd leave out the horror part and say it describes it perfectly. That being said, I enjoyed it for the most part, as it was entertaining and had unexpected twists (with some old horror movie ingredients).
It's a different way to tackle some social-political issues that have been left unresolved in Argentina. Very BOLD in terms of how the subject matter was dealt with (one of the other reasons I gave it a fairly high rating).
I feel I need to clarify points, misunderstandings the movie may've caused others who've seen it:
1. There is NO mention of any political affiliation of the parents in the film. There is only a blatant assumption that they're communist by the doctor. You must take into account that in the 1976-1982 dictatorship, the communists weren't the only ones targeted. There were socialists, Christian-democrats, Peronists, unionists, liberals, activists (in general) etc. And anyone who had significant ties or any ties for that matter, or simply questioned the regime would be considered suspicious, not to mention a potential target.
2. Where is there in the film any hint of a communist vanguard and what lack of evidence? If you refer to the woman telling the Malena about her experiences and the fact that one of her friends disappeared because he went to a "marcha" (protest-march), please refer to point Nº1.
3.The movie was filmed in Argentina: The City of Buenos Aires and in the Patagonia. The Castilian "dialect" is rioplatense (spoken in Uruguay and Argentina).
The end was the part that most impacted (me, at least) as the siblings were now able to see all the ghosts of the people who were "missing" (keep in mind in Spanish "missing" and "disappeared" in this case are the same word=desaparecido/s). Aparecidos= (the) Appeared. For this reason I felt the title was perfect and the ending not only appropriate, but surprising, non-conventional, in a very good way.