TIFF19 REVIEW: Mientras dure la guerra [While at War] [2019]

But we’re Christians. Director Alejandro Amenábar spoke very briefly before the screening of his latest film Mientras dure la guerra [While at War] and the main sentiment was this: “It could happen anywhere.” He doesn’t, however, just mean rebellion or uprising. He doesn’t mean a coup or military dictatorship either. What he and co-writer Alejandro Hernández share via the parallel journeys of Don Miguel de Unamuno (Karra Elejalde) and General Franco (Santi Prego) is that just fights always run the risk of becoming unjust very fast. This truth is ultimately…

Read More

REVIEW: Los cronocrímenes [Timecrimes] [2008]

“No one knows our phone number” All he had to do was stay hidden for an hour, biding time away from sight as his impossible doppelganger went through the same motions of an hour earlier. The ramifications of time travel would have been erased; the insane crippling fear of seeing another man identical to him kissing his wife goodbye a distant memory. But curiosity proves too much as the strangeness leading him to the time portal in the first place was too odd to simply hope it would happen again.…

Read More