Neighboring Sounds is my favourite. It's the only movie I've ever watched that captures the psychology of living in a violent city: the mental load of constantly being in fear that something might happen to you, likely not today, but probably someday.
Bacurau is one of the best movies I’ve seen in recent memory and Pictures of Ghosts tells an amazing story about the history of Recife’s relationship to cinema.
The Secret Agent was not an easy movie for the average movie watcher. It had an unorthodox ending, graphic violence, and it's in a different language. With that said, it's too bad it wasn't able to come out with any Oscars. I can see why OBAA won quite a few awards.
OBAA wouldn't have been my choice for best picture, either, but it had some beautiful pieces of film-making. The long shot while running through the Sensei's safe house was great, and the car chase at the end was a) gorgeous, and b) visually not quite like anything I'd ever seen before. I can see what Academy voters liked about it, in addition to the "this director has been nominated so many times without winning, so maybe he finally deserves one" angle, which I think maybe had as much to do with it as anything.
Academy members aren't always good at picking "good" movies. I'd argue they're actually pretty bad at it. Every once in a while they guess correctly. At least my 2 cents.
OBAA was technically well executed but, to me, pretty fucking soulless.
I haven't seen all the nominees, but the ones I did see -- Train Dreams and Sinners -- were, to our eyes, profoundly better films than OBAA. I'm in particular interested in seeing Hamnet soon; everything I read about it puts it in the same category as TD and S.
OBAA was the safe Academy pick, and so that's what they picked.
The visuals weren't terrible, I thought, but the writing, dialog, acting (except for Moura), and narrative arc were terrible.
It's one of those movies where almost everyone looks like they just really love being on stage ("isn't cinema lovely?") and where the writers have an idea of what cliches they're trying to work with but can't land them into an actual story, even a story made out of cliches.
The whole single A, triple A thing comes from league baseball. Single A was the lower leagues and AAA is the top of the heap pro ball. AAA denotes big budget tent pole productions. So big a studio could go bankrupt if it doesn't do well.
Decent film but to me 'I'm Still Here' (Ainda Estou Aqui) was still a too fresh experience from last year to have a similar film again from Brazil set in the 70s covering the military dictatorship. I also think that I'm Still Here is a much better film.
I definitely like that film, especially the acting and the music, but I think that, as with most material that covers that era (arts, history, journalism), it focuses on the middle and the upper classes.
The poor get a footnote: what happened to Zezé? But the poor were the biggest losers of the dictatorship. It was at the precise moment that the country needed to modernise that the coup made everything stop and the favelas grew along with violence in the periphery. Maybe City of God is a better depiction of what the dictatorship meant.
The immersion into the time and place was fantastic, the surreal elements being bold , outlandish, and unexpected were great. The time jump at the end was interesting. a great piece of work that some felt divided over as a general audience but overall memorable and ambitious
If you haven't seen either, highly recommended. Don't watch Sirat if you're wanting a "good time," but I honestly can't think of the last time a film made me feel the way it did, especially the final minutes of it.
The Secret Agent is maybe as good though. Makes you want to say "they don't make them like this anymore.." It feels like a good long novel; every character, however minor, is rich, full of life, in some way beautiful. It's something about how the past has these pockets of clarity, bookended by loose ends and uncertainty. The mix of myth and anecdote. Pieces of life we can remember, those we can't... Five bags of popcorn.
Another movie that kind of slid under the radar but is very watchable (and mainstream) is Nuremberg. It's just entertaining without trying to be too much. It's not "great" but it's not bad, either.
27 comments:
Having grown up in Brazil in the 70s, I thought the cinematography of "The Secret Agent" absolutely nailed the aesthetics of that era.
Kleber Mendonça Filho's other films are great at analysing modern Brazil.
Neighboring Sounds is my favourite. It's the only movie I've ever watched that captures the psychology of living in a violent city: the mental load of constantly being in fear that something might happen to you, likely not today, but probably someday.
Bacurau was quite a trip. I left that one pleasingly befuddled.
Bacurau is one of the best movies I’ve seen in recent memory and Pictures of Ghosts tells an amazing story about the history of Recife’s relationship to cinema.
The Secret Agent was not an easy movie for the average movie watcher. It had an unorthodox ending, graphic violence, and it's in a different language. With that said, it's too bad it wasn't able to come out with any Oscars. I can see why OBAA won quite a few awards.
> I can see why OBAA won quite a few awards
how can you see it? one of the worst AAA films in a decade, on every level including narrative and visual
Lemme guess… you didn’t like how “political” it was.
OBAA wouldn't have been my choice for best picture, either, but it had some beautiful pieces of film-making. The long shot while running through the Sensei's safe house was great, and the car chase at the end was a) gorgeous, and b) visually not quite like anything I'd ever seen before. I can see what Academy voters liked about it, in addition to the "this director has been nominated so many times without winning, so maybe he finally deserves one" angle, which I think maybe had as much to do with it as anything.
Academy members aren't always good at picking "good" movies. I'd argue they're actually pretty bad at it. Every once in a while they guess correctly. At least my 2 cents.
Well I think there are some people that disagree.
It's very pretty, but the book is much better
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vineland
I had no idea about this! Thank you, I quite enjoy Pynchon’s novels.
Bravo, palmas! etc.
OBAA was technically well executed but, to me, pretty fucking soulless.
I haven't seen all the nominees, but the ones I did see -- Train Dreams and Sinners -- were, to our eyes, profoundly better films than OBAA. I'm in particular interested in seeing Hamnet soon; everything I read about it puts it in the same category as TD and S.
OBAA was the safe Academy pick, and so that's what they picked.
The visuals weren't terrible, I thought, but the writing, dialog, acting (except for Moura), and narrative arc were terrible.
It's one of those movies where almost everyone looks like they just really love being on stage ("isn't cinema lovely?") and where the writers have an idea of what cliches they're trying to work with but can't land them into an actual story, even a story made out of cliches.
What on earth is a AAA film?
There's no such thing (parent likely borrowed this term from the video game industry)
The whole single A, triple A thing comes from league baseball. Single A was the lower leagues and AAA is the top of the heap pro ball. AAA denotes big budget tent pole productions. So big a studio could go bankrupt if it doesn't do well.
Ah so the OP thinks OBAA was designed as a big budget popcorn flick? No wonder they didn't like it.
Paul Thomas Anderson will tell anyone who will listen that he doesn't make commercially sound films. It's kind of his thing...
They did throw some serious money at this film, though, so I can see where people would have strange expectations.
Decent film but to me 'I'm Still Here' (Ainda Estou Aqui) was still a too fresh experience from last year to have a similar film again from Brazil set in the 70s covering the military dictatorship. I also think that I'm Still Here is a much better film.
I definitely like that film, especially the acting and the music, but I think that, as with most material that covers that era (arts, history, journalism), it focuses on the middle and the upper classes.
The poor get a footnote: what happened to Zezé? But the poor were the biggest losers of the dictatorship. It was at the precise moment that the country needed to modernise that the coup made everything stop and the favelas grew along with violence in the periphery. Maybe City of God is a better depiction of what the dictatorship meant.
One of the strongest movie start sequences in a while, it immediately sets the vibe.
The immersion into the time and place was fantastic, the surreal elements being bold , outlandish, and unexpected were great. The time jump at the end was interesting. a great piece of work that some felt divided over as a general audience but overall memorable and ambitious
One thing I noticed is that both this and another incredible film this year, Sirāt, were, at least in part, funded by a grants and state institutions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir%C4%81t
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Agent_(2025_film)
If you haven't seen either, highly recommended. Don't watch Sirat if you're wanting a "good time," but I honestly can't think of the last time a film made me feel the way it did, especially the final minutes of it.
The Secret Agent is maybe as good though. Makes you want to say "they don't make them like this anymore.." It feels like a good long novel; every character, however minor, is rich, full of life, in some way beautiful. It's something about how the past has these pockets of clarity, bookended by loose ends and uncertainty. The mix of myth and anecdote. Pieces of life we can remember, those we can't... Five bags of popcorn.
Another movie that kind of slid under the radar but is very watchable (and mainstream) is Nuremberg. It's just entertaining without trying to be too much. It's not "great" but it's not bad, either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_(2025_film)