The Lodger (1927)

The Lodger -from Aperitiff 2009 on a a special live music projection 

În The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), Londra e terorizată de un misterios

asasin în serie, numit Răzbunătorul (The Avenger), care ucide blonde în plină şi perpetuă

ceaţă. În acelaşi timp un individ misterios se cazeză în pensiunea familiei Bunting, care

începe să-l suspecteze pe chiriaş că este asasinul mult temut. Protagonistul titular este

Ivor Novello, renumit compozitor, actor şi cîntăreţ în epocă, care şi-a reluat rolul din

acest film mut într-un remake sonor, din 1932 (regia Maurice Elvey). Temele

caracteristice lui Alfred Hitchcock, suspiciune şi vionovăţie, care vor reveni obsedant,

sunt prezente în primul său thriller, cu tuşe expresioniste, care se inspiră din povestea lui

Jack Spintecătorul. Este şi primul film de Hitchcock care se păstrează integral (copia

nouă are 105 minute) şi în care regizorul are un cameo, apariţie devenită apoi trademark.

Versiunea clujeană are 75 de minute şi e acompaniată live de muzica DJ Dubase &

Leizaboy.

Alin Ludu Dumbravă

The Fortune (1975)

The Fortune was then back in 1975 at the time not so fortunate...a good time to revisit now on Jack's 89th BB (Birthday Bash-I hope so...)

For Jack and Warren one of their most obscure films and the only one they did together except Beatty's own REDS...This was Beatty's film trying to greenlit Shampoo (1975) and the studio, Columbia Pictures, made that film in order to get this made and guess which film flopped bigtime...

Directed by Mike Nichols, (shot in summer 1974), it was a huge flop at the time of the relase, the guyz had a lot of fun tho but not also Nichols (!) and the film has way more fun values today !

Plot synopsis: Two bumbling hustlers in the 1920s attempt to gain the fortune of an heiress. Nothing will stop them, not even murder.

via my post from 2007, `You Don't know Jack! on DVD/ updated and in English now:

In The Fortune /Averea in Romanian/1975, Jack joins his buddiest friend Warren Beatty. What they thought they would reissue Some Like it Hot, became Beavis and Butt-head avant la lettre. Or Stan and Bran dadaists. Abbot and Costello meet the Stooges. Without Iggy. With Stockard Channing (nominated for a Golden Globe as a newcomer), who did not become the new Marilyn Monroe. Compared to something like Wedding Crashers, B & B (i.e. Nicholson and Beatty), are rocket scientists. Jack as Oscar plays as madcap as it gets,  Beatty as Nicky keeps it dandy,. It's an all-mus-go cynical farce, tango featured, bonus the moustaches. Plus the sexiest movie star chick since Chicken Little the cartoon. Director Mike Nichols had previously made, in 1970, with Jack and Art Garfunkel, Carnal Knowledge and would direct Jack again in Heartburn and Wolf. Nichols had such a bad experience that he didn't make another film for 8 years...:( 

Maybe Billy Wilder would've made it better and less chaotic ? Or Blake Edwards' more succesful ?

Written by Carole Eastman, Jack's buddy (wrote 4 films for him and Jerry Schatzberg's Puzzle of a Downfall Child), under the pen name Adrien Joyce. 

Shot by master John A. Alonzo (working with Jack after Chinatown, Black Sunday, Scarface). Widescreen 2.35.1, ANAMORPHIC. 

Exceptional production design by Richard Sylbert in his last film with Nichols, and with Jack via Chinatown. The villa apartment is the same as in Day of the Locust , 'cos it's the same set, Schlesinger's film is also 1975). 

Merry period music and adaptations by David Shire.  I Must Be Dreaming is sung by Stockard Channing. 

Jack's buddy, Scatman Crothers has a cameo as a fisherman, one of his many in Jack's films (The King of Marvin Gardens, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Shining). 

Another Nicholson great buddy, Harry Dean Stanton has a silent and uncredited cameo at 1h21. 

More trivia from wikipedia:

Because the start of principal photography on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was delayed, Jack Nicholson, who had worked with Nichols on Carnal Knowledge, was available for the role of Oscar Sullivan. During filming, the actor was forced to deal with two events that impacted his personal life. First, a fact checker working on a biographical piece for Time discovered that the woman Nicholson believed was his sister was actually his mother, and the woman who raised him was his grandmother. Then his close friend Cass Elliot (mama Cass!) died in her sleep, and rumors about the cause of her death circulated in the media. These two events, linked with the film's eventual failure, made The Fortune a subject that Nicholson never discussed in interviews and biographies.

3 1/2 stars out of 5 / 7 out of 10 !!! (raised it a half-star after that viewing in 2007).

LMA Jack Nicholson -Jack is 89 !!!

The one and only Jack Nicholson is Today 89 !!!

my Blog series on him here 

Retired from acting in 2013 though his Last Film was How Do You Know (2010), where he played a supporting role.

Sae him last on the big screen in the special screening of The Shining in IMAX in Porto. Planning for a long time a screening of Chinatown, now it might be the best time ;)

Happy Birthday Jack !!! Stay Healthy !!!

We finally re-saw an obscure slapstick comedy that was infamous at the time of its release, The Fortune (1975), Jack's only film with his buddy, Warren Beatty. 

The Passion of Anna / En Passion (1969)

 Tagline: Man is the king of beasts

Uncanny but I watched this because of Kristoffer Borgli's The Drama that features the poster for this specific film. Was curious to see any influences and realised I haven't actully seen this Bergman famous piece from 1969. It's actually better titled originally, as A Passion / En passion.

His first 'real' film in color, brilliantly shot by Sven Nykvist (did I say Brilliantly? ;), masterfully restored in 2016 by the Sweedish Film Institute and thus issued on the Criterion collection, the copy I saw. Third part of "the island trilogy" (Fårö island that is), following Hour of the Wolf and Shamem and shots in the same sets, in only 45 days.

Tough, dark, cruel, bitter to the core, includes these postmodern interviews of actors -Von Sydow, Andersson, Ullmann and Josephson, all four brilliant, all four Bergman ensemble troopers to the core-, that cut into the narrative, no music score, an aloof narrator voiceover (Bergman himself), and I see even an influence on Tarkovski's The Sacrifice. 

As character Elis Vergérus (erland Jospehson) observes: ’I don’t imagine that I reach into the soul with this photography. I can only register an interplay of forces, large and small. You look at this picture and imagine things. All is nonsense All play, all poetry. You can’t read another person being with any claim of certainty. Not even pain gives a reaction.’

it can be exactly what the Auteur direktor says.

"This time he was Andreas Winkelman."

Bergman's own notes on the film and more on Bergman's site here. 

9 out of 10 / 4 1/2 out of 5 !!!

RIP Mario Adorf

Mario Adorf, the Swiss cult actor that died on April 8th 2026 was 95. His father was an Italian surgeon, his mother a German nurse.

He acted in over 200 films, played grand theatre, wrote bestsellers. La Piovra's Acidduzzu (for the Romanians), spaghetti westerns (Gli Specialisti/The Specialists), giallos  (L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo), polizioteschi (Milano Calibro 9), but also Alfred Matzerath in Die Blechtrommel for the arthouse and posterity. Winner of the Leopard Career Award in 2016.

Cultiest movie: Deadlock (1970)

met him briefly in Cannes in 2013 after the screening of Billy Wilder's Fedora. 

https://aldmovieland.blogspot.com/2013/05/c66-mario.html

RIP Chuck Norris

 ...Missing in Action....

Chuck Norris became legendary through the jokes about him, that he is invincible and imortal. He was Not. But gone now at 86, he was an inspiration to many, especially in the 80's Romania.

A Force of One, a man who knew Good Guys Wore Black and An Eye for an Eye he was a Lone Wolf Mc Quade -the inspiration for the later series Walker, Texas Ranger.

I first saw him in the cinema in Breaker ! Breaker !, translated as Orasul fantoma -Ghost town (1977), which I tremember cleartly they had a print in Black and white. Re-saw that on video later on.  The battle with the broken bottle stayed vividly in my mind. He had no moustache at the time. Then on video fisrt films I saw was The Way of the Dragon, his first part in the 1972 Bruce Lee film (also directed by Lee), where he battles Lee in the Colosseum. The Colosseum would never be the same again. Oh, yes, for a bit, in Double Team where JCVD, a huge Norris and Lee fan, battles Mickey Rourke again in the Rome Arena. 

He was a Karate champion and he became Steve Mc Queen's instructor and McQueen adviced him to go into acting. 

Here's some Chuck Norris jokes:

Chuck Norris didn't die, God called him for backup!

Chuck actually died about 15 years ago. Death was too afraid to tell him

Chuck Norris went to Heaven to Judge God for his sins

RIP to the man who can put out a fire with a gallon of gasoline

The man who can beat the sun in a staring contest

The man whose diary is called the Guinness Book of World Records

RIP Tom Noonan

Tom Noonan, most famously known as  Francis Dollarhyde/ The Toothfairy in Michael Mann's Manhunter, the first Hannibal Lecter (spelled Lektor) film in 1986, is gone at 74. I re saw the film last year...It's the best Lecter / Thomas Harris film for me still. And Noonan is pretty scary. 

Great character actor , he was also iFrankenstein's monster in The Monster Squad, the baddie in Robocop 2. He returned for Michael Mann in Heat. 

In his youth, Noonan was a guitarist and a composer and a theatre actor. He directed 2  indie feature films, a play and some shorts.

Terribly sad about Tom Noonan passing. In casting Manhunter I auditioned about 10-15 actors in New York when Tom walked in the door and said, “I don’t want to talk. I just want to read.” He read and it was magical. We worked closely. I based Dollarhyde less on the novel’s character and more on a convicted killer whom I met and with whom I corresponded who was doing life in Vacaville. I took Tom into that world and he made it his own. It was an automatic to cast Tom in a wheelchair as Kelso in Heat. He did so much more fine work, but it was as the battered child become a killer adult - both alive in the same bottle - that projected the range and deep soul of this so acute and committed artist. Rest in peace, Tom.

(Michael Mann)

RIP Robert Duvall

 ...when in Rome...just landed and in the taxi I hear the news, celelbrissimo attore Robert Duvall, etc..surely I get it. Gone. I mean he was 95, lived a great and long life and his films are immortal.

But why everytime I go somewhere this kind of news get heavier and harder?

Last year was just tough and brutal: Gene Hackman in Barcelona (also at 95, also in February), Brian Wilson when we were at night in the middle of nowhere in Ireland, Michael Madsen when I was to see Iron Maiden in Belfort, Remo Girone in Tramonti, Rob Reiner in Porto...Just when Ozzy left I was in Brasov...

Duvall was one of the Greatest, like Hackman. As as kid I knew him first by name, my father showed me, he was in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most versatile actor of the '70's. Opposed to Hackman he was the quintesential Character Actor. Capital A. 

He was in over 100 films and television series.

He got an Academy Award (for the forgotten Tender Mercies-1983), a BAFTA Award, four Golden Globe Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

His film debut was as Boo Radley in the book adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). 

His shot at Movie Mythology came with Consigliere Tom Hagen in The Godfather and more for Coppola, a bit part in The Conversation-uncredited-where I saw him last-last year, as a Gene Hackman homage series of films), lt. Kilgore "love Napalm in the morning" in Apocalypse Now. He refused to reprise his part in The Hodfather III doe to a salary quarrel. 

Loved his parts in Lucas' debut THX 1138, Jesse James in The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, the gangster in The Outfit, based on the Donald E. Westlake  book, the German colonel in The Eagle has Landed, the baddie in Sam Peckinpah's Killer Elite, a TV producer in Sidney Lumet's Network, Dr. Watson in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, the cop in True Confessions, another cop in Dennis Hopper's Colors, then later on Tony Scott's Days of Thunder, written by Robert Towne, Joel Schumacher's Falling Down, Kevin Costner's Open Range. Also Sling Blade, Get Low, the part of the Old man in the adpatation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, The Judge in 2014, last bit in 2022 Scott Cooper's Netflix flick The Pale Blue Eye.

He directed five films films, most notably The Apostle in 1997 and in 2002 in Argentina, Assassination Tango. I gotta catch-up with that last one, never saw it.

He lived in his ranch in Virginia, surrounded by his family. Never will be gone, just left this stage and sets...

"Somebody once said that the best life in the world is the life of a second leading man. You travel, you get a per diem, and you’ve probably got a better part anyway. And you don’t have the weight of the entire movie on your shoulders.” 

Robert "Bob" Duvall (1931-2026)

Spider-Noir (2026)

"With No Power Comes No Resposibility"

The Nicolas Cage is back with something cool in black and white (and color) but I'd rather see it Noir as in the title. Premieres May 24th on Amazon Prime as in in collaboration with Sony, who's only Marvel character they got rights too...

From the looks it's more of a Sin City / Frank Miller, The Spirit / Will Eisner. 

Breendan Gleeson is the villain.

Hopefully this will rock, as gamebased Fallout TV series did, or DC / HBO recently two interesting spinoffs, The Penguin and The Peacemaker and Marvel/ Disney did mega meta Wonder Man.

Cliff Booth is back !!!

Cliff Booth aka Brad Pitt, the stuntman from Once Upon a Time in...Hollywood is back in the new Netflix film  The Adventures of Cliff Booth, written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by David Fincher !!!

Timothy Olyphant is also back as western TV actor James Stacy (Lancer).

Here's the teaser trailer. Coming soon this year !!!

Top films of 2025

Tough cookie, lost count of how many films I've seen. Less than probably any year. Over 200, less than 300 ? More ? I started to put them on Letterboxed starting late October but still didn't catch up with the rest.

***

Top of the series is here and films from 2024 are again a problem, The Brutalist and The Substance should've make the 2025 list, as there still are some of 2025 which I haven't seen yet (Hamnet,-saw it,. did not like at all- Resurrection, Sound of Falling ?). Marty Supreme would make Top 5 but I've seen it in Januaray 2026. 

Top Ten  soundtracks here. 

Just caught up with Park Chan-Wook's No Other Choice that makes the list. It's limited in Romanian Cinemas now, so try to see it on the big screen, it's worthy.

Kinda disappointed with Romanian Cinema this year too. I liked Kontinental '25 and that's it. Could 've been also Jude's Dracula but he made it such an intentional mess and duration wise a whole calvary...

But disappointments of the year: the new Running Man by Edgar Wright. And the last Mission: Impossible. Hopefully...Oy...

Top 5 -alphabetically:

all that's clickable as links are my "reviews"

Eddington -Ari Aster

O agente secreto-Kleber Mendonça Filho

One Battle After Another -Paul Thomas Anderson

Sinners -Ryan Cooglar

Sirat -Oliver Laxe

new entry on Jan. 2th 2026:   No Other Choice

Marty Supreme -also in Jan. 2026

Almost Famous ;) -also alphabetically:

Ballad of a Small Player -Edward Berger

Bugonia -Yorgos Lanthimos

Caught Stealing -Darren Aronofsky

Father Mother Sister Brother -Jim Jarmusch

Frankenstein -Guillermo del Toro

In the Hand of Dante -Julian Schnabel 

Nouvelle Vague -Richard Linklater

Nuremberg -James Vanderbilt

The Materialist -Kelly Reichardt

The Phoenician Scheme-Wes Anderson

Tornado - John McLean

Train Dreams- Clint Bentley

Warfare -Alex Garland & Ray Mendoza

Nicolas Cage Award of the Year:  The Surfer  (d. by Lorcan Finnegan) 2024 !

Horror:

28 years Later-Danny Boyle 

Together -Michael Shanks

Weapons -Zach Cregger

Good Boy- Ben Leonberg

The Monkey-Osgood Perkins

Dangerous Animals -Sean Byrne

The Gorge -Scott Derrickson

The Long Walk -Francis Lawrence

The Substance -2024, Coralie Fargeat

Keeper -Osgood Perkins

Comedy:

even weaker as it is, still good fun !!!

This is Spinal Tap 2:  The End Continues by the late Rob Reiner....

Bunny -Ben Jacobsen 

an indie, punkish NY film in the best way, kinetic, quirky, funny, dark comedy, punkimprovised, irreverent. Cool punk songs too.

Documentary:

Soundtrack for a coup d'etat -2024-Johan Grimonprez

the doors -When You're Strange- - Tom DiCillo, from 2009 but remastered in Cinema limited

pink floyd at pompei -1972. Adrian Mabel, remastered in Cinema limited

Devo -2024, Chris Smith   -netflix

Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius) 2025/ Questlove   -netflix

Catch-Up -Four Aces:

Pale Flower- Masashiro Shinoda-1964 

La Traque -1975 Serge Leroy

The Childhood of a Leader -2015 Brady Corbet

Finalmente l'alba - Saverio Costanzo -2023, on which I wrote: 

Rome and Cinecitta 1953. More like a drreamlike story, a false thriller, homage to Fellini and La Dolce Vita, Notti di Cabiria, and linked to a real muder cold case known as the Italian Black Dahlia. Interesting slow film, in the Venice Competition in 2023. Modern beat score, strange and eerie. Song Last Nite by The Stokes (2011) on the end credits. 

3 1/2 out of 5

Hold Back the Dawn (1941)

Hold Back the Dawn (1941)

Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett wrote it at the time of their legendary partnership. Ketti Frings wrote the novel on which story, the dynamic duo have much improved it. Boyer tries to make it his own, especially as a Foreigner with a lovely accent (his own, which he kept all his life !). For Romanians it's a blast, cos' he is a crook / gigolo from Bucharest named George(s) Iscovescu !!! 

Studio man Mitchell Leisen directed it professionally. The year was 1941 and immigration was at its WW2 boom. Iscovescu wants to get in the USA and he needs a passport and a citizenship and in order to get those he needs to marry an American. The film premiered on September 11th 1941, just three months before Pearl Harbor !

The two women in the film are opposites, each with its role, Paulette Goddard as the femme fatalish Anita and Olivia de Havilland the innocent Ingenue Mrs. Brown. 

Supporting characters, from Curt Bois as Bonbois, to Walter Abel's  Inspector Hammock, Victor Francen as Vander Lucken and Nestor Faiva as hotellier Flores, the story is told in a flashback from the stage / set of a film at Paramount, on which Iscovescu/ Boyer went to see to director Dwight Saxon, played by none other than director Mitchell Leisen in order to see this story (maybe the most modern aspect of the film, predicting Sunset Boulevard ?) !!!

Very long for those day's standards (116 mins.) and heavilly plotted, it has a bleaker tone for a romantic  melodrama and a downbeat immigration angle. And a small dose of film noir (esp. for the self-person narration). The dialogue is sharp and some witty and cynical one-liners are already trademark Wilder.  Brackett and Wilder were very dissapointed with the result and Boyer's refusal do do a dialogue with a cockroach, they cut off most of his lines, giving them to Paulette Goddard. Also  I read this was the last film Wilder wrote without directing it (even though Ball of Fire for Hawks opened in December 1941...).

Hold Back the Dawn was nominated for 6 Oscars back in 1941, including best film, best screenplay and best cinematography (in Black&White, Leo Tovar). 

3 1/2 out of 5 ! 7 out of 10 !!! (loses steam due to the duration, otherwise would've been an Eight!)

Pale Flower (1964)

Pale Flower /Kawaita hana is a one-of-a-kind Noir pschedelic by Masahiro Shinoda, New Wave of Japonese cinema director. Closer to Le Samourai by Melville, or something by Antonioni, than the Japonese cinema of the era. Also keener to Kitano's earlier films. Spellbinding black and white tale of obsession, gambling and yakuza, nihillistic, downbeat existentialism. Ryô Ikebe is great as gangster Muraki, a quintesential film noir icon and Mariko Kaga as unaproachable Saeki a real pale flower indeed. The car race at night seems more appropiate in a French or Italian new vague film. Here is just hypnotic. 

Atmospeheric score by Toru Takemitsu. 

Also, this is one of Top Ten films of Michael Mann, "for the opening scenes alone". 

4 1/2 out of 5 / 9 out of 10 !!!

Father Mother Sister Brother (2025)

Father Mother Sister Brother  might be the last Jim Jarmusch hilm (*he said it). He is also 72 now, which is somehow incredible, cos he kinda looks the same.

Three vignettes (New Jersey, Dublin, Paris), out of which the 1st one is the best, Father, because it has Tom Waits in it. Nice to see Charlotte Rampling as Mother and Vicky Krieps with pink hair is cool too. It's Jarmusch's introspective reflective film after 6 years of pause and the uberdisapointing The Dead don't Die (see here in Romanian).

FMSB is not a lot of fun, some coffeee, no cigarettes, the same shots from above tho, on Mother some cakes, some tea (no alcohol) some skating, Rolexes, a nice Paris flat, a lot of Reds in the costumes (YSL;), but the whole thing is out of breath, man...sort of Mid day on Earth...

that FMSB won Best film on Venice film fest this year, beats me. This was a film that was not accepted in competition in Cannes, the festival that made JJ a star !

Jim Jarmusch made also the music, on guitar, together with singer Annika (Henderson), one of the songs is Jackson Browne's These Days, 1st sung by Nico in 1967.  

3 stars out of 5 / 6 out of 10 !

RIP Brigitte Bardot

 Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot, aka B.B. , once the most famous French incons, died at age 91. She was one of the most beautiful women on screen, bringin g a certain modern quality to feminity in the 60's. 

She was married four times, most famously to Roger Vadim and Gunther Sachs. Also a singer, involved with Serge Gainsbourg (Bonnie & Clyde).

Films: Vadim's  Et Dieu... créa la femme, Louis Malle's Viva Maria, Henri Clousot's La Vérité, Godard's Le Mépris. Last film in 1973. She became a Grand Animal Activist, and that was her main activity and her legacy. 

Obit in The Guradian here.

And here's the great  Tom Zé, with his song BB (1973). 

RIP Chris Rea

Sad news before Xmas...

Chris Rea is no longer Driving Home for Christmas...

The English blues player and singer was 74. 

Rea recorded 25 studio albums, two of which topped the UK Albums Chart, The Road to Hell in 1989 and its follow-up, Auberge, in 1991.

He did the music for La Passione in 1996, film he wrote and produced about racing cars and Ferrari, Rea being a racing driver himself.

He also had the lead in the pythonesque black comedy Parting Shots (1998, directed by Michael Winner), next to Ben Kingsley, Oliver Reed and John Cleese. The film can been on youtube, here.

He had an Italian father and Irish mother - his family were in the ice cream business. 

Chris Rea had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at age 33, a lot of other health issues folllowing it, but he lived and played, album after album, gig after gig, until a stroke in 2016...

He played Bucharest's Sala Palatului, on February 6th 2010 -my memories and review here.

His last album was a compilation, The Christmas Album, released on October 17, 2025....

Obit on BBC here 

RIP Marty DiBergi

 took a while to process, and but it's not processed yet..:(

Mr. Marty DiBergi who just a had a comeback with Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues had left the showbiz...Dec. 14th 2025. He was 78. More about Rob Reiner in another later post...

The End Continues 

Sirat (2025)

The Sirat Bridge, in Islamic belief, is a narrow and perilous bridge that every person must cross on the Day of Judgment to enter Paradise (Jannah). It is described as being thinner than a hair and sharper than a sword, with the faithful crossing it swiftly, while sinners may fall into Hell below.

(from imdb trivia)

SIRAT is one of the best films of 2025, and definitely the most interesting, visually and thematically. Jury Prize in Cannes and Golden Globe nominated for best foreign film (Spain's entry) and surely Oscar nod in the same category. Sergi Lopez leads a cast of unknown and unprofessional actors into the Morrocan -here unanmed-desert in a Jodorowskian take on Sorcerer (Friedkin's best !!!) in Burning Man territory. Existentialism follows upwards and downwards spiral ;)

Director and co-writer Oliver Laxe says Sirat it's a mix of Mad Max, Easy Rider and Stalker.  

Also there are one armless man, one legless man (Freak show, /Freaks t shirt), another hint at some Jodorowski. And a pun on a Boris Vian poem and song, more existentialism and surrealism mix.

Stellar Techno electronic soundtrack by French artist Kangding Ray. Would deserve the Oscar and the Globe for best score.It won Cannes Soundtrack Award.

Kudos also for Laia Casanova’s sound design, that turns the "rumors of the wind" and the noises of the desert into their own Rave.

 Also as I was sure, it's the Winner of 2025 Palm Dog - Jury Prize For Pipa the Jack Russell, and Lupita the Podenco mix.

9 out of Ten / 4 1/2 out of 5 !!!

*To be seen in a cinema with powerful speakers and good sound design. And about that, it's a real shame the film runs in Romania only a few shows, in some cities (see here on the distributor's site Transilvania Film), and not at all in Brasov :((( shameful...

A review in Hollywood Reporter here

The Secret Agent /O Agente Secreto (2025)

Kleber Mendonça Filho's follow-up to Bacurau is O Agente secreto. 2025's Cannes award winner for best actor -Walter Moura !and best director, Golden Globe nominated and soon Oscar nominated-Brazil's entry for best foreign film.

Also Udo Kier's last part as Hans, a great on screen goodbye.

2h38 of complicated narrative, non-liniar, Brazilian politics and 1970's history, plus a lot of love for the cinema, ecclectic soundtrack, one of the most interesting and best films of the year. 

**** out of *****

8 out of 10 !

RIP Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard was one of the greatest playwrights of the last century, screenwiter and script doctor and author of the play Rosenkrantz and Guilderstern are Dead (1966). In 1990 he directed also a film based on his play, the film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival as well as the Fantasporto Directors' Week Award. He co-wrote Brazil with Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown, for which he was nominated for an Oscar. He won the Oscar (and Golden Globe) for a lesser film,  Shakespeare in Love, in 1998. His forte were the adpatations.