An education

This is an interesting story that takes you to the London of the Sixties. It has a nice British touch and it’s really a story with moral at the end that transmits the importance of a good education in the real life; very interesting to show to your “nephews”, if you have.

The performance of the first actress Carey Mulligan is brilliant, especially because she is very young and almost a beginner, but she supports almost the full film. She looks lovely and very realist. And her father in the movie, Alfred Molina, makes also a great work, in particular when he speaks with her daughter.

The atmosphere of the sixties is amazing, very well done, both London and Paris, and you can even feel in some characters some details that you can see in classic movies like “La dolce vita” by Fellini. It is the first work in England of the Dogma director Lone Scherfig, the author of “Italian for Beginners” and the result is great.

My score: 8 (out of 10)

The Hurt Locker

I saw this film a few days ago and I enjoyed the entire movie from the first minute until the end. The director Kathryn Bigelow made an awesome work because she shows a very good story but with a format almost like a documentary most of the time. The cast work is fantastic and you can feel the tension in every operation of the specialist soldiers to try to deactivate the terrorist bombs. It’s a great movie about the Iraq war without any political interpretation: only the war and the day by day of the soldiers, like other classical war movies, like Apocalypse now or Full metal jacket.

I agree with the Academy. Without a doubt it is the best film of this year.

My score: 9 (out of 10)

Up in the Air

This is a film that makes you think about life carefully... about the professional life and about personal life. It incites you to think about maturity, about work and its importance in our life, about the disappointment (personal and professional), about the loneliness (sometimes chosen), about the track to be on (the right or the wrong one), about the election of a right person to share life... about lots of things. The dialogs are great and the cast as well. Clooney works here very well and the young and fresh Anna Kendrick matches up to him and to Vera Farmiga. Good movie to converse in front of a coffee or a glass of wine, after the movie.

My score: 9 (out of 10)

Shutter Island

This is a new collaboration between the fantastic Scorsese and DiCaprio after "The Departed" and "The Aviator". This time they made a very good thriller with a brilliant atmosphere of the fifties. The story full of tension plays very well among the reality and the images of possible madness, and you enter in the story very comfortably, although the final result is strange... when the movie finished I had the idea that it was an "already saw" film. Anyway, the performance of DiCaprio is awesome (as usual lately), and the appearance of actors like the genius Ben Kingsley or the big Max von Sydow fills the movie. I liked it.

My score: 8 (out of 10)

Looking for Eric

Nice movie by Ken Loach. The story about a depressed English postman, his friends and an imaginary Eric Cantona as his particular psychologist, is touching. Well, you can feel that Cantona was one of the writers because the story praises him too much (he looked like a kind of semi-god of football) but I entered in the story and I liked it. A comedy, with some dramatic details.

My score: 7 (out of 10)

Sherlock Holmes

A really fun movie by the great Guy Ritchie, very different from his last fantastic "RocknRolla", but cool. I loved to see a very yob and uncouth Sherlock Holmes that shows some interesting and dirty details that really appeared in the original stories by Conan Doyle. The relationship between Holmes and Watson has some interesting details, the environment of the XIX century is very well done... and it's really delicious to see that awesome Victorian London so fantastically recreated. Simply amazing! So it's a "classic" but different and full of action and comedy. I really enjoyed the film.

My score: 8 (out of 10)

A Serious Man

This is not the best film of the Cohens, but anyway it's a very interesting story, mixing comedy and drama, that pays tribute to themselves and have some autobiographical touches, because it shows a life of a Jewish family during the sixties. The story leaves some loose ends but the full story is great and the cast (full of almost unknown actors) made a really good work. It's an honest and very recommendable film.

My score: 9 (out of 10)