Watching The Seventh Seal invokes a cruel image of time: the shadow of man waiting outside the gates of the unexpected, just sitting around until knowledge, an epiphany or death tears away this meaningless shade and replaces it with a purposeful existence. To those who think that death coming out of that threshold is not purpose, should think that it’s the goal we’re all unwillingly reaching for. Never had an artist raised so intelligently the questions about existence and its final destination since Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot until Ingmar Bergman did it with a premise that sounds as simple and complex as -yet different from- Beckett’s play: a knight coming back from the Crusades plays chess with death in an existential gamble that could mean his salvation and a few more years of life -using the adjective happy would be worthy of a fairy tale. Like the story of Beckett’s two characters who wait for Godot -who could be divinity, death, life, a change, and basically anything unknown-, The Seventh Seal deals with the theme of life as a one way ticket to something we all know is coming but accept it or reject it in many different ways. In the film, Max von Sydow stars as the reflexive Antonius Block who is accompanied by an often over-the- top cast through a journey to return home like a medieval Odysseus across the villages of Black Death-infested Sweden. From the moment the character is born -his first on-screen appearance, that is-, he is seen around with a chess set, a feature that tells us about the game we play with death since the very moment we’re conceived. Later, as the Grim Reaper appears and tells the knight of his bodily decay leading to one and only fatal path, the wonderful images of a sinister looking coast are left behind and Bergman’s essay on death, God and afterlife is set in motion. Antonius’ party, made up of his squire, a group of actors, a young mysterious mute woman and a blacksmith and his wife, represents humanity in its many different faces: the heroes whose exhaustion brought by war and killing make them question or mock the Christian faith; the optimistic visionaries who trust God and are able to see visions of His emissaries; the sinners who enjoy the hedonistic aspects of life. Each kind has a philosophy and behavior: the characters who question the existence of God are very critical of the Christian fatalism around them; they reminisce of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Antichrist, specifically in a passage in which the German philosopher criticizes the fear of pain in Hell as a means to attract followers. On the other hand the innocent believers are united as a family and seem to receive continuously the divine grace, which makes them obedient and happy. Finally, the sinners who know their ways don’t think much but fear the end, and this is what links them all, the end of days. The Judgment Day permeates the atmosphere within the film; wherever they go, the characters find a fatalistic world on the verge of extinction due to the bubonic plague. Every inhabitant of these cursed lands seems to be chained to their fatal hour, and so are their thoughts, which escape their mouths in mockery when one of the actors is humiliated, revealing the cause of the fear of these people: they know they are sinners, they know their time will come the worst way possible. In this stark world, the simple diversions are ruined by the visions of illness and decay and by the sounds of rotten choirs and knife-like ocean waves. Existence is heavy, it is a burden, yet the fear of the unknown makes the inhabitants of this scenario fearful of what might come after the heart stops. The flow of the film is fantastic, and although it seems rather theatrical due to the dialogue and the performances, it never ends up seeming silly, but rather introspective, profound and sinister, and so is every scene, in which a situation tends to fire away the discussions and reactions towards the central themes like the one in which the party meets a witch about to be burned and Antonius asks her to let him meet the Devil in order to ask him about God. More a compendium of scenes that incite thoughtful reflection than a straightforward narrative -even though it is one-, The Seventh Seal is a film that invites -and requires- viewers to participate through meditation along with its characters; it extends itself way beyond the movie theater or the screen, and dives into the mind, bringing an existential crisis that Woody Allen seems to have understood well for his character in his wonderful family tragicomedy, Hannah and Her Sisters.

Whenever a character breaks the so called fourth wall by looking into the camera and thus, into the audience of a film, its purpose varies from either being a direct confrontation or a kind of siding with the people that’s watching. This involutory contrivance that makes the watcher either uneasy or an accomplice, is essential in The Silence of the Lambs due to the fact that American audiences are looking into a mirror that can show them their frightening reality or the will to stop it. The Silence of the Lambs is a story defined by the traumas and memories that can frighten one enough to become either a monster or a hero, and though in the end anyone can choose, the violent history of the enigmatic America has given birth to some of the most savage and cruel serial murders in history. Fortunately enough many heroes like Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling have emerged too. When coming out of the traumatic visions of her father’s coffin, the female student to become FBI agent is an individual determined to put an end to the suffering of her country, the screaming of the lambs she tells about to Anthony Hopkins’ flawless and frightening Dr. Hannibal Lecter whose help is required when a transsexual-like serial killer nicknamed Buffalo Bill is on the loose. Clarice’s psychological depth thrills Lecter and to a certain extent enamors him and starts a quid pro quo game in which she gives the brilliant psychologist-turned-cannibal bits of her memories and receives in turn pieces of the puzzle of Buffalo Bill’s head in order to apprehend him before he kills a senator’s daughter. Hannibal, as he is commonly known, is arguably the most important character in the story, as well as a kind of artifact that reveals throughout the vivid and exciting flow of the film the causes for the main protagonist and antagonist to become what they are: Clarice is the daughter of a dead police officer who seeks to drown the sorrows and pains of the innocent, while Buffalo Bill is a rejected sociopath whose life makes him think he will be accepted after becoming into a woman. Both of these characters are the children of pain in different circumstances and both have taken different paths, but both are part of the same organism: America. The political comment in the film is not a mere interpretation of the film’s characters but also of the fantastic production design, which shows American flags within many of the sets that represent its character’s minds, whether it be Clarice’s institutional FBI HQ, a madman’s warehouse or Buffalo Bill’s “laboratory” or whatever it might be called, an American flag is always part of the scenario, avoiding us from making any mistake: this is an American tale. An extension of the political theme comes when the senator whose daughter’s been captured by Buffalo Bill, accepts to make a deal with Hannibal in order to get solid information that leads to the killer before he harms his latest victim -an “American girl”, according to the song by Tom Petty that sounds right before being captured. Though the pact doesn’t allow him to go completely free since he’s too dangerous, it highlights the fact that Bill’s other victims couldn’t have had this chance and so, the powerful remain virtually untouchable by disrespecting the very institutions they’ve sworn to protect. In terms of realism, the film is fantastic and highly true to its depiction of FBI proceedings to capture serial killers, something that should be thanked to agent John Douglas who helped Jonathan Demme and his crew by supervising every detail and even helping the actors to prepare for their roles. This sensation of watching a tale that’s real enough to be disregarded as just a film, is also created by the wonderful acting. Clarice’s troubled internal world is easily seen through Jodie Foster’s stare, a trademark highlighted by the excellent cinematography, which also aides Anthony Hopkins’ perfect role that can’t be described without any other adjective and needs to be seen to be believed. Charged with a political comment that doesn’t deviate the audience from its main plot, The Silence of the Lambs is a rich psychological gender bender that doesn’t need too much explanation and that grips you even after it ends, for it goes beyond the film theater and sticks in your head like a trauma. Fortunately enough this one is highly enjoyable.

Like a beautiful girl whose voluptuous figure turns out to be an empire of silicon, this visual fest is an invitation to disappointment and reflection on the recent misdemeanors that are piercing the heart and soul of an art that’s becoming a machine. Although, to most audiences, James Cameron’s Avatar might represent an exciting trip to a land of hovering mountains raped by the greed of corporate evil-doers, to some others it ends up feeling like the plastic surgery that protest films have recently gone through in order to reach a wider audience. The attacks on current American policies are quite open for a film of this kind, but they soon become, too obviously, the whole axis on which the moon Pandora -where the film is set- spins on, which actually makes one wonder if this could be a response to J.R.R. Tolkien’s despise of allegory. It’s not wrong that a sci-fi film intends to criticize the realities of the world that watches the screen, but it is if it’s actually a fantasy that doesn’t transport you to another world full of new traditions, history, costumes, and beings that you’ve never heard of. Cameron’s script has a huge flaw: it only starts to explain the relationship of the Na’vi -the blue indigenous species that inhabits Pandora- with its home until the ending of the film -like a prologue printed by the final pages of a novel- and avoids building a mythology like the one the master of fantasy sci-fi, George Lucas, created. The story -to make this whole rant clear- is about a vicious human corporation led by an evil Giovanni Ribisi that wants to take over the mines of the moon Pandora, which contain a precious mineral worth millions. This starts an experiment to try to nicely get the Na’vi out of the way: using Na’vi bodies controlled by humans -avatars- to get close to them. In the end, the experiment works as a deviated reference to the failed humanitarian missions in African countries that end up in violent confrontations, but this is just one of many references to the actual world. The destruction of ecological environments, interventionism, the futility of diplomacy when greed’s in the way, and the corporate culture in the US that demands for more resources no matter what, are some of these criticisms that fall flat while the audience is diverted by the visuals and the expectation of seeing some battle scenes, which, must I warn to blood-seeking movie goers: there are just a few of them. There’s another problem with Cameron’s script: his abuse of ellipsis and his use of epically long scenes that don’t share any information and end up being weak attempts at creating visual poetry, keeps the story of the moon’s inhabitants form being richer or more profound. Realism also becomes challenged by fantasy because of the way the script was written. It is hard to believe that such evil characters as the main antagonists actually exist and, also, Pandora continuously defies Darwin with its strange flora and fauna, as well as the laws of physics, but that’s OK unless you’re too concerned about such matters. With truly awesome CGI effects that haven’t actually achieved confusing the audience on what is real and what isn’t, but still do a great job; a flat clichéd story that only moves when fire devours innocence -but in the end, who isn’t touched by people running form their flaming homes besides CNN junkies?- and a coward attempt at criticizing the real world and the possible consequences of our metallic lust for industrial development, Avatar is a sci-fi fantasy that plays out like a symphony of plastic bottles.

A big joke on Marshall McLuhan's ideas, so if you don't really get what "the medium is the message" means, you might hav a hard time understanding this film, and might end up disregarding it as a surreal horror film, but this is actually science fiction satire/horror at its most intelligent and wonderfully executed -especially as far as special effects goes- way... Long live the new flesh.

A beautiful protrayal of what it is to be a samurai, that means, a man of honor, heroism, and loyalty. At the same time, the film portrays these dead qualities (in a time when people tend to believe they still existed) as something that is no longer needed in the world, until anti-values appear, killing everything in their path. Not only is this a great adventure, but also a wonderful life lesson.

At first, it seems like the story of a boy dealing with neorealism itself, a new reality brought by war and its end, but the film brilliantly turns out to be a metaphor of the last remnants of nazism sacrificing themselves to let the vision of a new world commence.