A direct and visceral of the forces at work in a favela, from drug trafficking to the police. One of the biggest successes in national cinema, one of the few to achieve a truly popular status, in the original sense of the term, with its characters’ lines repeated ad nauseam by Brazilians - and also with international repercussions, receiving the Golden Bear of the Berlin Festival.
After directing a documentary about Brazilian diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello, filmmaker Greg Barker decided to take the story to fiction in this exclusive Netflix drama. And it's not an easy task: after all, the high-ranking UN diplomat lived many lives. He pacified wars, stopped conflicts, made global agreements. In private, he had problems, loved, suffered. And although Barker got the tone of this mosaic of feelings right, it is Wagner Moura who steals the show in 'Sergio'. The actor, who has good chemistry with Ana de Armas on screen, brings confidence to the role. He speaks English, French, Spanish, Portuguese. He gets emotional, leverages the sensitivity of the situation. Thus showing that he is one of the great actors of our time. It's a shame that the movie gets lost in some moments, losing rhythm and emotion. If it were more consistent, especially in of script, it would be Wagner Moura's great career film. But the essentials are here: good plot, exemplary performance and the story of a Brazilian reaching the world.
"Marighella" follows the last days of the life of Carlos Marighella (brilliantly portrayed by Seu Jorge), a Brazilian Marxist-Leninist communist politician, writer and guerrilla fighter who fought against two dictatorships: that of Getúlio Vargas and the civil-military one initiated in 1964. Wagner Moura makes his debut here as a feature film director and faces a difficult task of bringing to the screen an extremely important figure in Brazil's history. And he did a good job. It's not a movie that will please everyone, as it really leaves you restless, outraged and completely frustrated with the direction the country has taken. So many lives were sacrificed during the military dictatorship, and still are today, but it seems nothing has changed.
After a successful career as a screenwriter in films like 28 Days Later'and Never Let Me Go, Alex Garland has built a reputation as a director with movies such as Ex -Machina, Annihilation, and Men, each seeking to raise questions about identity, oppression, and power dynamics in their own way. Civil War takes these reflections not so much to the battlefield (as its title might suggest) but to the field of journalism. The plot, in the form of a road movie, is set in a near-future dystopia where political polarization in the United States has divided the country into warring factions under a corrupt and authoritarian government. With the president (Nick Offerman) nearing defeat, a group of veteran journalists (Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, and Stephen McKinley Henderson), along with a young photographer (Priscilla's Cailee Spaeny), decide to embark on a dangerous journey to secure an exclusive interview and document the progress of the war. Rather than reflecting on political polarization in the United States, Garland's approach is more of a reflection of the role played by journalism and the media in this regard. Perhaps it doesn't say anything truly new or profound on the subject, and its fascination with the political deterioration of the American nation is almost exploitative. But as entertainment, it's a truly absorbing movie, and the entire cast is phenomenal.
