Alf Kuphal

After releasing his first album in a decade, he releases “Atlas”: his return to fantasy films, which he had abandoned since 2000.

Jennifer Lopez (or Lopez) is an actress (and/or singer), she is American (and/or Latina), she is a star (and/or producer), she is… “Why should there be only one thing? Honestly, I don’t think anyone should be happy with the label they get. The important thing is to do the things that excite you and make you feel alive. Yes, I’m a singer, an actress, a Latina… I don’t limit myself. I don’t limit myself,” she says, takes a second and adds, “I’ve always loved to dance and I immediately started making films. The success of Selena made me record my first album and that’s where it all started. I’m an artist and I think that’s enough.

The answer is her latest film, which comes just months after her latest album. And in their own way, in both cases, the aura of the event gathers around them. In February he released This Is Me… Now and there wasn’t a single review of the album that didn’t include two words inside: Ben Affleck. Not only was it his first collection of songs in a decade, but many of them (or was it all of them?) were dedicated to his girlfriend, who was and has been and has been. Now, the Netflix platform is about to release (on May 24) Atlas, a film in which he stars and for which he is also a producer. And, if you look closely, Jennifer Lopez reappears, whom we haven’t seen since she starred in Tarsem Singh’s 2000 film The Cell. The actress returns to physical, action films where sci-fi plays with fantasy. It’s all about rebirth.
“From the script, which I read in the pandant, I liked the fact that it looks at human relationships from a completely new angle. It’s a story of friendship between a human being, me, and a robot that is an artificial intelligence,” he explains, protocol to the point of wanting to leave his message: “It’s the machine that says to the human, ‘I’m here to help you. And why this return to action now? “I’ve always liked it. I consider myself a very physical actress, almost an athlete, and that has to do with my dancing background. It’s all part of me in a very organic way.” That much is clear.

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A zambra is a gypsy party, inspired by a wedding and unleashed at the gates of the rock houses in the Sacromonte district of Granada. Nowadays there are no zambras, and the ones advertised are in reality shams for tourists, mostly foreigners, who are still inclined to snort an orientalist alkaloid when they come to Granada. Zambra, moreover, is the title of Granada filmmaker José Sánchez-Montes’ latest film, a feature-length documentary produced by the Junta de Andalucía, Canal Sur and Granada City Hall, which is at least two things: an attempt to revive the memory of this celebration and a tribute to the people – singers, musicians and dancers, mainly – who were the protagonists of this fiesta. There is also a third reading: recognition of that neighbourhood, its landscape and its outstanding contribution to the history of Granada.

The film tells the story of everyday life in the Granada neighbourhood through two parallel threads. One of these threads is led by Curro Albaicín, a folkloric celebrity of the city, who is determined to recover the memory of Granada’s historic flamenco. The other thread features the French photographer Jacques Leonard, who in the middle of the last century photographed gypsy families, the protagonists of the real flamenco, and whose memory is recovered by his son Santi, who walks the streets of the neighbourhood with his Rolleiflex camera, pointing to the black and white photographs taken by his father and whose traces he is trying to find. Throughout the film, Paquita de la Chon, Jara Heredia and Angustias la Mona appear, some of them veteran dancers of a vanished era. Halfway through the film, Sánchez-Montes spiritualizes the streets of the neighborhood when, on the night of Holy Wednesday, Cristo de los Gitanos walks the streets of the neighborhood in search of the seclusion of the Sacromonte convent.

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The director of the Before trilogy and Boyhood has created a thriller black comedy that is as classic, as modern, as funny, as disturbing a masterpiece.

“Every pie is a good pie,” replies the protagonist of Hit Man whenever he’s asked about the pie he’s eating. It’s unclear whether this phrase will eventually become part of the requisite one-liners, like, say, “Nobody touches Jesus’ eggs” in The Big Lebowski. But it has attitude. Because it’s absurd, because it’s baffling, because it’s idiotic, and because it is. Definitely no one touches the balls of Gary Johnson, who is none other than the giant Glen Powell.

Hit Man. Murder by Chance, Richard Linklater’s latest marvel, is a comedy. And it is it with the arrogant, enlightened attitude of one who claims that any comedy (with a tempo) is a good comedy. Even if it doesn’t seem that way. In reality and on paper, no one would say it’s a farce. Neither because of its starting point (the story of a would-be assassin) nor because of the direction it soon takes as a reflection on the labyrinths of identity and the very meaning of representation in cinema. As it is. But it is, and with a precision that thrills. To say that it takes time to realise; to say that its devilish pace defies the very measure of time; to say that few films are such faithful images of their time. Indeed, it is time.

The film tells the story of a philosophy professor (Glen Powell) who, to augment his salary, moonlights for the city’s police department as a hit man. Or almost. In reality, what this shy and highly intelligent man does is pose as one of these killers to catch anyone who wants to hire him red-handed. Sort of like an advance crime detector.

What happens, as anyone will soon have deduced, is that it’s very easy to get a taste for the mask if it allows you to be taller, better looking and, more importantly, happier. If we think for a second about what’s happening on every other social network X, we’re on the right track: who are we really, that would be the question. And the cinema screen would be the very mirror in which any reflection becomes the best substitute for reality. The arguments are already woven.

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The daughter of the director of The Sixth Sense makes her feature debut with an elegant and disturbing (in the broadest sense of the word) potpourri of her father’s many obsessions.

According to Article 155 of the Civil Code, children must obey their parents as long as they remain under their authority. This is in addition to always respecting them. If the latter seems a bit far-fetched to you, consider the following: offspring must “contribute fairly, according to their means, to the expenses of the family while they live with it”. Definitely, there are laws that have not touched reality. It is unclear whether Ishana, whose surname is Shyamalan, is aware of current Spanish law on the matter. What no one can deny her, judging by her directorial debut, is her undying admiration for her father. One might say that respect goes as far as enthusiasm. Even devotion. Or perhaps, why not, even cannibalism. Shyamalan, in fact, eats Shyamalan. And this, in the unsettling absurdity of both the gesture and the bite, is extraordinarily Shyamalan. I don’t know if we’ve made our point.

‘The Watchmen’ is not just a film that replicates in its own way many of the obsessions that have followed the director of ‘The Sixth Sense’ throughout his very fruitful filmography, always dedicated to making the shadows from the other side (from myth, dream, legend, space, the occult, death…) destabilise the clear light of reality. In fact, and leaving aside his more risky and failed excesses (“Airbender” or “After Earth”), if the ever-controversial filmmaker from India or Pennsylvania excites by anything, it is by his ability to make the extraordinary, or just the absurd, seem everyday. For that and for his continuous and permanent reflection on the value, meaning and reality even of fiction, of the universe of fable.

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The Texas filmmaker opens the doors to the world of his latest creation, Hit Man. A mix of genres as fresh as it is philosophical.

Richard Linklater is from Texas. But he’s not your typical Texan, with a Stetson, a grim face and a National Rifle Association membership card: “Joe Biden has experience, I like that,” he says, “especially when I look at the alternative. And I live on a farm outside of Austin, in a very rural setting. That’s where Donald Trump tends to win, because big cities tend to be Democratic. It’s true that here, as in other states, abortion is banned. I probably live in one of the worst states – he laughs – but it’s actually very mixed: Georgia, for example, is also a very conservative state, but Atlanta is one of the most liberal cities in the United States. I’m very cautious about the next presidential election, I don’t think anyone can be very optimistic at this point.

Austin is like a progressive island in the middle of Texas. It’s home to SXSW, a festival that’s of paramount importance to both music and independent film. And it’s where Linklater shot many of the films, not least the independent ones, that have made him famous since the early 1990s. For example, Movida del 76 (1993), his high school comedy; Todos queremos algo (2016), his college comedy; or Boyhood (2014), for which he spent 12 years filming how Ellan Coltrane transformed from a child into a teenager.

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