Mirage (Original Title: Durante La Tormenta)~ A nagging little voice keeps telling me the best films aren’t coming out of Californica anymore, they’re coming from the Old World, like this Spanish import. I’m starting to listen to that voice. To sit entranced for over 2 hours with a subtitled foreign movie (which in itself requires effort so you don’t miss any of this film’s nuances and infinite emotional shades) is such a rare experience that you realize you’d forgotten that movie-making can be more than the sex/violence/profanity/pyrotechnics formula that has constipated Hollywood.
A film that explores the supernatural and crimes of passion while unashamedly recognizing motherhood, family and the level of devotion that requires, is so un-P.C. out of the gate that the suits in Culver City would never green-light it. Adriana Ugarte has beauty and talent, whereas her West Coast counterparts have only hype and hashtags. Oriol Paulo just became a household word where I live. Grade: A+.
Onto some other recent viewings:
- The Standoff At Sparrow Creek ~ Spawns a new film category: survivalist noir. Seven “patriots” — as rendered in the pejorative left-liberal bias — convene at a warehouse ’round midnight following an outbreak of anti-government assaults on police stations around the country. One of them is an undercover informant. Paranoia sets in (which one of us is the traitor?), like an earwig worming its way through your skull. James Badge Dale as “Gannon” is the Grand Inquisitor, the expert in psychologically breaking a suspect into confessing his complicity. Dark and mesmerizing. Grade: A-.