DVD/Stream of the Week: THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES – see the real Oscar winner before the Hollywood version

Ricardo Darin in THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES
Ricardo Darin in THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES

The superb The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos) won the 2010 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Picture. The Hollywood remake is coming out this fall, but you should first see the original. The Secret in Their Eyes is a police procedural set in Argentina with two breathtaking plot twists, original characters, a mature romance and one breathtaking, “how did they do it?” shot. The story centers on a murder in Argentina’s politically turbulent 1970s, but most of the story takes place twenty years later when a retired cop revisits the murder.

Veteran Argentine actor Ricardo Darin shines once again in a Joe Mantegna-type role. Darin leads an excellent cast, including Guillermo Francella, who brings alive the character of Darin’s drunk assistant. Darin’s detective is a solitary guy who retracts into his lair to bang away at a novel. He has feelings for his boss, a tough judge played by Soledad Villamil. Her career and her personal life can’t wait for the detective to get his own stuff together. All three characters throw themselves into solving the murder and, when stymied, are all scarred by the lack of resolution.

The movie is titled after one element that I hadn’t seen before in a crime movie.  And then there are the major plot twists.  The final one is a jaw-dropper.

Director Juan Jose Campanella received justifiable praise for the amazing shot of a police search in a filled and frenzied soccer stadium. It ranks as one of the great single shots of extremely long duration, right up there with the opening sequence of Touch of Evil, the kitchen entrance in Goodfellas and the battle scene in Children of Men. This shot alone makes watching the movie worthwhile.

Filmmaker Billy Ray has remade the Argentine film as Secret in Their Eyes, to be released October 23 starring Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts and Chiwetelu Ejiofor. Ray is no hack – he’s adapted the screenplays for Shattered Glass (which he also directed), Captain Phillips and the first The Hunger Games. The plot has been turned into a story about thee US federal law enforcement officials and the murder of one of their children; unfortunately, the trailer looks more like a plot-driven Law & Order, with none of the characters as singular or as memorable as in the Argentine original. We shall see.

The Secret in Their Eyes is high on my Best Movies of 2010. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

DVD/Stream of the Week: WILD TALES

WILD TALES
WILD TALES

Okay, here’s the first Must See of 2015 – the hilariously dark Argentine comedy Wild Tales. Writer-director Damián Szifron presents a series of individual stories about revenge. It’s now topping my list of Best Movies of 2015 – So Far.

We all feel aggrieved, and Wild Tales explores what happens when rage overcomes the restraints of social order. Think about how instantly angry you can become when some driver cuts you off on the highway – and then how you might fantasize avenging the slight. Indeed, there is story that has the most severe case road rage since Spielberg’s Duel in 1971. Now Wild Tales is dark, and you gotta go with it. The humor comes from the EXTREMES that someone’s resentment can lead to.

One key to the success of Wild Tales is that it is an anthology. In a very wise move, Szifron resisted any impulse to stretch one of the stories into a feature-length movie. Each of the stories is just the right length to extract every laugh and pack a punch. The funniest stories are the opening one set on an airplane and the final one about a wedding.

The acting is uniformly superb. In one story, Oscar Martínez plays a wealthy man in a desperate jam, who buys the help of his shady lawyer fixer (Osmar Núñez) and his longtime household retainer (Germán de Silva) – until their prices get just a little too high. The three actors take what looks like it’s going to a thriller and morph into a (very funny) psychological comedy with a very cynical view of human nature.

One of the middle episodes stars one of my favorite film actors, Ricardo Darín, who I see as the Argentine Joe Mantegna. I suggest that you watch Darín in the brilliant police procedural The Secrets in Their Eyes (on my top ten for 2010), the steamy and seamy Carancho and the wonderful con artist movie Nine Queens.

Wild Tales has been a festival hit (Cannes, Telluride, Toronto and Sundance) around the world and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Picture Oscar. I saw Wild Tales at Cinequest 2015. It’s now available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.

THE FILM CRITIC: when a cynic’s life becomes corny

Rafael Spregelburd (center, with glasses) in THE FILM CRITIC
Rafael Spregelburd (center, with glasses) in THE FILM CRITIC

In the enjoyable Argentine comedy The Film Critic (El Critico), we meet a glum and judgmental movie critic (Rafael Spregelburd).  He’s proud of having not written a rave review in the past two decades and he’s so pretentious that he thinks is French (very nice touch).  He lives to pile snark on romantic comedies, a genre that he despises.  His editor says, “You are a terrorist of taste!”.  He is so negative through-and-through, that he is a pretty miserable person to be around.

Then, he meets (cute) a vital and captivating woman (Dolores Fonzi).  To his discomfort, he is pulled into every cliché of a movie romantic comedy (when they kiss for the first time, fireworks even go off in the sky above), and he starts becoming uncharacteristically happy, even giddy.

Writer-director Hernán Gerschuny has created a winning, character-driven comedy.  His protagonist’s entire identity is to be unsatisfied by anything and everything.  Yet it turns out that he can be hooked by the same joys that he thinks he is above.

The Film Critic is full of references that will delight movie fans – and especially cinephiles,  movie critics and movie bloggers!  The critic holds forth with a hilarious recounting of rom com conventions (“why are they always running?”).  And, of course, the woman that HE meets looks uber cute in a beret, and he races to the airport at the end.

Gerschuny delivers great comic timing.  One of the protagonist’s colleagues watches an “experimental short film” (ba dum) “by a Taiwanese director” (ba dum) and then NAMES the director.  And THEN he says, “I think he’s got something to say” as it becomes apparent that the “short” is a security video.

All in all, The Film Critic is a satisfying hoot, now available for streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

WILD TALES: the first Must See of 2015

WILD TALES
WILD TALES

Okay, here’s the first Must See of 2015 – the hilariously dark Argentine comedy Wild Tales. Writer-director Damián Szifron presents a series of individual stories about revenge.

We all feel aggrieved, and Wild Tales explores what happens when rage overcomes the restraints of social order. Think about how instantly angry you can become when some driver cuts you off on the highway – and then how you might fantasize avenging the slight. Indeed, there is story that has the most severe case road rage since Spielberg’s Duel in 1971.  Now Wild Tales is dark, and you gotta go with it. The humor comes from the EXTREMES that someone’s resentment can lead to.

One key to the success of Wild Tales is that it is an anthology.  In a very wise move,  Szifron resisted any impulse to stretch one of the stories into a feature-length movie.  Each of the stories is just the right length to extract every laugh and pack a punch.  The funniest stories are the opening one set on an airplane and the final one about a wedding.

The acting is uniformly superb. In one story, Oscar Martínez plays a wealthy man in a desperate jam, who buys the help of his shady lawyer fixer (Osmar Núñez) and his longtime household retainer (Germán de Silva) – until their prices get just a little too high. The three actors take what looks like it’s going to a thriller and morph into a (very funny) psychological comedy with a very cynical view of human nature.

One of the middle episodes stars one of my favorite film actors, Ricardo Darín, who I see as the Argentine Joe Mantegna. I suggest that you watch Darín in the brilliant police procedural The Secrets in Their Eyes (on my top ten for 2010), the steamy and seamy Carancho and the wonderful con artist movie Nine Queens.

Wild Tales has been a festival hit (Cannes, Telluride, Toronto and Sundance) around the world and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Picture Oscar. I saw Wild Tales at Cinequest 2015.

Cinequest: The Dead Man and Being Happy

THE DEAD MAN AND BEING HAPPY

The first thing you notice about The Dead Man and Being Happy (El muerto y ser feliz) is the narration.  Breaking every film school precept, the narrator describes what we are seeing for ourselves.  Then he confides a fact that we can’t see, but with the caveat, “But you aren’t supposed to know that yet”.  As the movie goes on, it’s clear to us that some of the narration is patently false.

And then there’s the sound design: all the sound in the film is abruptly silenced every time the narrator is about to hold forth.  The effect of the narration and the sound design is to let us know that The Dead Man and Being Happy is pretty wacky and doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Give credit to director and co-writer Javier Rebollo for creating a decidedly offbeat and completely entertaining Argentine road movie.  A professional hit man in his sixties (Jose Sancristan) is dying of cancer, loads up with pain medication and goes on a final road trip.  He picks up a woman in her mid thirties (Roxana Blanco) with her own demons, and they, seemingly randomly, drive around and across Argentina.  We’re not talking tourist Argentina here.  The prickly pair drives around way out in the boonies, stopping at shabby roadside cafes and inns, even visiting a lake that belongs in an apocalyptic sci-fi movie.  Of course, we all know how the hit man’s trip must end.

The whole ride is funny and curious and intoxicating.