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Reviews
The Sleep of Reason (2007)
Ten-minute thrillers at full blast - if you can find them
Is "The Sleep of Reason" a television series, a news report for mobile phones or both? After watching it all in one go on Universal's channel, I found out you could download another previously unreleased (and apparently unrelated) episode from the internet. So I did. Same characters, but this time a totally different story. In the beginning it seemed disorienting, but then I realized there is a carefully thought over mechanism in the way all of these segments, disseminated at one time both on the web and on television, interconnect with each other. Even though in order to follow the thread you've got to get used to jumping from one platform to the other. And what I liked about it is that although it goes on breaking every possible rule of dramatic narration, it emulates the structure of a typical, full length television episode with prologue, teaser and cliffhanger, compressing in less than ten minutes what usually takes almost sixty. So who cares about where the story's actually going or if it's based on true facts: you've got a few dense minutes to digest at full blast here before you have the time to wonder if it's real or all fake after all.
Heroes (2006)
It only keeps getting better
Although we're still only halfway the second season, and even though I've read somewhere that it is under performing compared to the first one, I found the sequel of this fantastic series even more interesting and coherent than before. It must have been difficult for the writers to come up with a smart way to (a) identify a new common goal for the characters that could match the catastrophe anticipated by Isaac Mendez and (b) save Peter and Nathan, whom someone may have thought they'd never see being back. Characters show a depth in this season that did not, and perhaps could not, have before and the motivations are so much stronger which makes the issue of what "the Company" is actually planning to do somehow irrelevant in the face of the many subplots that animate each individual episode. After "24" and "Prison Break", "Heroes" remains at the top of the "strongest hooking" series charts.
Chris & Don: A Love Story (2007)
A beautiful movie
Presented at the Telluride Film Festival, this is one of the most touching, romantic and cinematically innovative movies I've seen in a long time. First of all, let's not forget this is a documentary, with all the visual and narrative difficulties associated with the genre. Second, it's the love story between two men. Yet, it is more emotionally involving than if it was a fictionalized version, and this is because as you watch it you are aware all that is told is absolutely true. Notwithstanding this, the movie never indulges on the aspect of homosexuality, but it looks at this as just an extraordinary story of passion between two persons bound both emotionally and artistically. Never boring, not even for one second, "Chris and Don", produced and directed by Guido Santi and Tina Mascara, is an original way to tell a love story by mixing current footage with archive material and cartoons that results in a coherent and compelling storytelling. Reminiscent in style of "The Kid Stays in the Picture" and similar documentaries centering on real personalities, it has a beautiful musical score and benefits from a rhythmic, involving editing.
24 (2001)
Fantastic, but a weaker season 6
I watched the first five seasons of 24 on DVD back to back, literally one after another, and it has been one of the most incredible experiences I have ever had. The first season is very entertaining and compelling, but it doesn't yet have that gripping, relentless pace and intensity that this series has with the following season, n. 2. As new characters step in, we fall in love with them and we see them killed we slowly begin to realize that the only one we can (perhaps) get somehow attached to is our somehow old hero Mr. Jack Bauer, and no one else. I found seasons 4 and 5 absolutely amazing, one of the most unforgettable cinematic experiences, far better than any movie of this genre I had ever seen before. This is why I was somehow disappointed that season 6 didn't quite live up to expectations: I found it more claustrophobic (the President in the bunker for most of the series), lacking the romantic undertone the other seasons had (and Audrey not quite herself didn't help) and less credible now that with Jack Bauer has set aside his skills as a torturer to please network censorship rules. So, I guess we're all waiting to see what Season 7 will be bring, hoping that the writers' strike will not bring to a situation where in order to catch up with the delay the series will have to be written too fast. Season 6 clearly suffered from underdevelopment, while every detail of the previous 5 appeared to have been conceived with the utmost accuracy.
28 Weeks Later (2007)
Could have been a contender
I watched the two "28s", original and sequel, back to back in one go. I enjoyed them both, but I realized something I hadn't quite figured out when I first watched this movie in cinema theaters: this second one doesn't scare me half as much as the original. There was something unique in the first movie that made it so incredibly compelling even when nothing was happening and zombies were at rest. Here, except for the incredibly well shot beginning sequence, there's an overload of violence that is predominantly graphic but not quite able to hit you viscerally as the first one did. Even Robert Carlyle, usually an excellent actor, is unconvincing where Cillian Murphy was so effective in his portrait of the survivor. Too many special effects, too many unresolved characters on the side we are never quite sure whether we should get attached to or not, like the soldier. In the original, even characters who got terminated halfway like Brendan Gleeson's Frank became full functional to the story and its emotional angles. Overall, it would have been more interesting to follow up on Jim's predicament in the first one than tell the tale of a rather unbelievable repopulating program at such short distance from the outbreak. could have been a contender...