Tag: Alejandro González Iñárritu

Monday night trailer time: “Biutiful”

I’ve been pretty negative about the prospect of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Biutiful” in the past — and it’s still not a movie I’m particularly excited about seeing, even with a supposedly amazing performance by Javiar Bardem — but this official trailer is extremely well done.

No doubt we’ll be hearing a bit about this movie at Oscar time at least in regards to Bardem, whether I like it or not. I just wish I could type “Iñárritu” without copying and pasting it from somewhere else.

Apple has the high definition version.

Another weekend trailer: “Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm…”

Also, sometimes “life is like a river.” I’ve heard that too.

Although I liked “Amores Perros” well enough, I was irked by “21 Grams” and downright irritated by “Babel.” From the sound of it, if I see it at all, I’m likely to really hate “Biutiful,” as it seems that the films of Alejandro González Iñárritu are increasingly pretentious slogs where he mistakes merely inflicting misery on his audience for art. The film really divided audiences at Cannes and considering my reactions to the past films, it’s not promising for me. Which is not to say I think his movies are all bad, and this trailer does an outstanding job of reminding you of the good, as well as the uselessly morose.

Some beautiful images. Really. Also, re: the annoying but well delivered narration, kudos to Javier Bardem for almost completely losing his Spanish accent so quickly in just a few years. As I recall, it took Antonio Banderas a couple of movies to even be understandable. Nevertheless, I’m not looking forward to this one.

H/t Anne Thompson.

Sunday morning movie left-overs

Think of this as the cinematic equivalent of cold pizza, which can be a surprisingly delicious breakfast. What follows, then are some trailers I’ve been meaning to run all week but haven’t had the opportunity as yet.

We’ll start with the latest trailer for Christopher Nolan’s much anticipated “Inception.” This Philip K. Dickish tale seems to be summer’s best hope for a quality megablockbuster and, if it fails to deliver, there are going to a lot of disappointed movie fans and film studio folks.

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More movie news and stuff

Cannes is in full swing and there’s plenty other stuff going on besides — way too much to cover completely. So, consider this just me hitting a very few of the highlights of the film world right this moment.

* The critical wars are going full strength at Cannes with the biggest love-it/hate-it proposition appearing to be Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Biutiful.” I haven’t seen the film, of course, but Iñárritu is most definitely my least favorite of “the three amigos” of Mexican/Spanish/U.S. cinema. (The other two being Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro) and not only because his name is the most impossible to type. I mostly liked “Amores Perros” but his “21 Grams” and “Babel” struck me as exercises in touchy-feely realism that was a lot less real than it seemed to fancy itself.

biutiful-inniratu

Still, he’s working with different writers now and everyone seems to agree that the always great Javier Bardem is especially fine in it, so I suppose I should keep an open mind. Still, reading about the film, it’s hard not to side with the anti-faction when much of the commentary echoes my feelings about past films and when the pro-side is being taken by Jeffrey Welles, who really doesn’t seem to respond well when other people don’t love his favorite films. It’s a conspiracy, I tells ya!

In any case, David Hudson does his usual amazing job summarizing the critical reaction from a wide swath of the press; John Horn at the L.A. Times focuses on the reactions of big name critics.

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