REVIEW: Bardo, falsa crónica de unas cuantas verdades [Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths] [2022]

Slivers all knotted together. Our minds have a funny way of protecting us when events outside our control threaten to derail objectivity, comprehension, and even sanity. In the case of Silverio (Daniel Giménez Cacho) and Lucia Gacho (Griselda Siciliani) losing their first-born child Mateo thirty hours after his birth, the inability to let him go manifests as farce. They obviously know he’s gone—a metal urn in the shape of an egg holds his ashes. But the pain of that loss and the desire to watch him grow weaves a fantastical…

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REVIEW: Zama [2017]

Europe is best remembered by those who were never there. A man speaks about a fish rejected by the water it needs to breathe, swimming back and forth to fight that current of repulsion and stay alive in the hopes of earning an opportunity to be desired, valued, and worthy of the life God has given to it. He could very well be talking about the titular put-upon protagonist of Lucrecia Martel‘s Zama. The character’s name is Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho) and he’s desperate for validation whether…

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REVIEW: Blancanieves [2012]

“Never take your eyes off the bull” It appears Pablo Berger‘s silent, black and white interpretation of the Brothers’ Grimm‘s Snow White has become a casualty of its subject’s overexposure outside its home country of Spain. Nowhere more than America was Blancanieves pushed to the fringes after a 2012 Toronto International Film Festival debut and subsequent failure to win a spot in this year’s Oscars. One might have seen its parallels to The Artist as a glimpse of future success and yet here it is finally getting released after the…

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