Breaking the Waves

Breaking the Waves (1996)
a film by Lars Von Trier

What is it?
A bold, defiant and devastating story of love and sacrifice. Lars Von Trier, one of the creators of the realist Dogma 95 movement composes a story where he dares to go to the limits of sacrifice for love in a castrating society that smashes sensitivity. This is the story of Bess, who finds Jan, the love she has longed for so long, a boundless and unlimited love beyond the tragedy and the isolation.

Memorable scene
The expression of Emily Watson makes this movie transcend and linger in memory. Her face and her eyes are memorable, beautiful and bright in such a gray world.

Gossip
Helena Bonham Carter refused to play the role of Bess due to the amount of nudity and sexuality that it involved.
Why is it worth watching this movie?
There is nothing like a Lars Von Trier movie to feel angry and devastated at the same time. In this movie the camera dives into the depths of the human soul, and everything from the impressive and gray Scotish landscape to Dodo's wedding speech show love and isolation in such a crude way that is difficult to scape untouched.

The Leopard

Il Gattopardo (1963)
a film by Luchino Visconti

What is it?
The chronicles of a Sicilian noble man in the time of the Italian Unification (Risorgimento). A greatly casted portrait of an epoch that is coming to an end. A film about the individual in the change of the times.
Memorable scene
The 45 minutes ballroom is a great piece of cinema. Everything happens, the camera goes everywhere: dance scenes, close-ups, hovering over the crowd. In this scene, history comes to life in the costumes and the settings but also in the faces and the souls of the characters.
Favourite quote
"If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change" - Tancredi
Why is it worth watching this movie?
If you like history and you want to see a portrait of a time already gone, this is movie offers a thoughtful and melancholic fresco, full of visually moving scenes, talented and beautiful actors and memorable characters.

The Godfather Part II

The Godfather Part II (1974)
a film by Francis Ford Coppola

What is it?
The movie where everything comes together. You walk the streets of the old New York, see the mafia slicing Cuba on the verge of the Revolucion, watch Vito and Michael becoming the Godfather
Memorable scene
A young Vito Corleone walks over the roofs of the buildings while on the street a religious parade is taking place. Many characters all of them doing their things, while on a technically amazing traveling take the camera follows Vito to his appointment with destiny.
Favourite quote
"I don't feel I have to wipe everybody out, Tom. Just my enemies." - Michael Corleone
Why is it worth watching this movie?
Because it is great film. It has all the elements that make movies memorable and rich, it is emotional, historical, lyric and cruel at the same time. It is a movie to enjoy and feel. So many great things have been told about this movie but they are all mere shadows of the great experience that is enjoying this film.

The Godfather

The Godfather (1972)

a film by Francis Ford Coppola

What is it?
The first episode of the Godfather saga, one of the most highly regarded films in history of cinema. A powerful history of family, of traditions and honor in crime.
Memorable scene
A couple of fishes arrive wrapped in newspaper and nobody knows what it means. Somebody sleeps with the fishes.
Favourite quote
"In Sicily, women are more dangerous than shotguns"
Why is it worth watching this movie?
There is not need to mention why. This movie is up to its legend, it is a rich and vibrant film, where the action doesn't come from the shooting of the guns but from the faces of the characters.

Army Of Shadows (Bonus Track)

Army Of Shadows (1969)

a film by Jean-Pierre

What is it?
The dark story of a group of members of the French resistance during World War II. Visually impressive and moving film about the meaning of life in clandestinity.
Memorable scene
The first minutes of the film summarize in sound and images the fear and despair that came with the advent of the World War II. The sight of German soldiers goose-stepping past the Arc de Triomphe is more powerful than any explanation.
Favourite quote
"She said five minutes, but she'll wait a lifetime" - Jean-Francoise Jardie
Gossip
This film was attacked by the critics of Cahier du Cinema for seeming pro-de Gaulle just in the middle of the spirit brought by May of 68. The film was later restored and released in North America in 1996 and became a popular as a classic misunderstood on its time.
Why is it worth watching this movie?
Because this is a blunt and dark historical portrait, it is greatly casted and tells with great care of aesthetics the story of this shadows that live anonymously in history.

Gone With The Wind

Gone With The Wind (1939)

a film by Victor Fleming

What is it?
The chronicles of a family in the South of the United States before, during and after the Civil War embodied in the strong character of a woman decided to do anything to scape from the misery that came with the change of times. A masterpiece of the Hollywood studio system.
Memorable scene
Right at the end of the first part, in a beautiful scene with natural light in the shadow of twilight Scarlett swears that he family won't ever be hungry again.
Favourite quote
"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" - Rhett Butler
Interesting
The wood structures burned to recreate the fire of Atlanta were the walls of Babylon in D.W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916) and the ruins in King Kong (1933).
Why is it worth watching this movie?
To watch the film that has produced so many scenes embedded in popular culture and understand what is it all about. See a portrait of the American history in the tormented and passionate life of Scarlett O'Hara and her family. Because is great to hear Rhett Butler.

Before The Rain

Before The Rain (1994)

a film by Milcho Manchevski

I can't stop being surprised by the contradictory feelings and ideas that this movie produced me. For being a good movie I was surprised to see so many beautiful landscapes contrasted with tacky image treatment, so many memorable moments followed by weak acting, and so many emotional peaks in the middle of superfluous takes. The power of this story, transmitted in a brilliant way by most of the images, by the music and by the emotional load of its content was almost spoiled by stereotypical melodrama.

This movie is composed of three -tragic- stories. In the first one an Albanian girl looks for refuge at a monastery in the middle of vendetta that aims to her as the assassin of a man in a Macedonian village. In the second one a British photographer has to decide between her husband, a boring wealthy man and her lover, a war photographer decided to return to his home town in Macedonia. And the third story is the story of the war photographer returning to his village after a successful career and seventeen out of his homeland.

This movie is valuable as a testimony of the brutal and irrational nature of violence. It was release in the advent of the war in the Balkans and it was quite a surprise coming from a new country with no tradition in cinema. The director certainly uses very powerful resources as the music and the beautiful landscapes to emphasize the already powerful story of violence and division lived in the Balkans.

This film has been praised by its originality and its treatment of interrelated story lines, and it is certainly original, but the quality of the story lines was too inhomogeneous to keep the unity of the narrative. Particularly I found very poor the scenes in London and in a common feature with Beautiful People, the desire of bringing the drama of the conflict and irrational violence in the form of unexpected tragedy in another country -the scene of the restaurant shooting- seems detached from the main story and was hardly complementing the rest of the film. I take the great casting and the untouched landscapes as a souvenir from this movie, I keep the emotions that the irrational violence shown in the screen produces, but I fear what I'm going to remember are the parts of the film that seem as weakly composed as a collage of newspaper cuts only glued with water.