by Isabel Romero

Two new, but different movies to spend a little bit of time thinking. The first one, a documentary about the terrible consequences of the global warming; the second one about the illusions that we are able to believe or not, combined with a very romantic love story.

‘AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH’

Director: Davis Guggenheim (Gracie, The First Year, Gossip)

Producers: Laurie David, Lawrence Bender, Scott Z. Burns

Executive Producers: Jeff Skoll and Davis Guggenheim

Co-producers: Lesley Chilcott

Production year: 2006

Genre: Documentary

Country: USA

Official Site: www.climatecrisis.net

Get more involved: www.theclimateproject.org

TM and Copyright © 2006 Paramount Classics, a division of Paramount Pictures.

“An Incovenient Truth” is a hard and a wrecker documentary which objective is to reveal, with concrete data, the effects of the global warming and hit the sceptics in this issue, with undeniable brilliant figures presented. Maybe the bad point is that the movie is too focused in only one person, but however, the director, Davis Guggenheim, does not deny that his film is a little bit self-centred, since the camera follows the vice-president of the United States, Mr. Al Gore, in several environmental conferences around the world.

Anyway, it’s a documentary-movie that shows the damages caused by the climatic change, and a forceful and a worrying portrait of the situation of the planet, that is nowadays being threatened by the global warming and the enormous emissions of CO2 to the atmosphere.

Like A.O. Scott, from the New York Times, said: “this documentary means a great way to start and go on, it’s a process of making aware with the situation, that difficulty can be more urgent”.

No doubt it was an extremely necessary film. It’s a magisterial class, bored? Not at all! just if we find it hard to listen to the truth. Electioneer? Neither. Definitively it’s a contribution to think about if we have to act against this kind of risks and how we can do it.

 

‘THE ILLUSIONIST’

Cast: Edward Norton (The Italian Job, Frida, Kingdom or Heaven, The Score), Paul Giamatti ( Lady Water, Cinderella Man, American Splendor, Paycheck), Jessica Biel (Elizabethtown, Stealth, Blade Trinity, Cellular), Rufus Sewell (The Legend of Zorro, Extreme OPS, A Knight’s Tale)

Director: Neil Burger (Interview with the Vampire)

Producers: Brian Koppelman, David Levien, Michael London, Bob Yari, Cathy Schulman

Production year: 2006

Genre: Drama

Country: USA

Distributed by: Aurum Productions

Lenght: 01:50:00

Official Site: www.theillusionist.com

Copyright © 2006 Yari Film Group, Bob Yari Productions, Koppelman-Levien Productions, Michael London Productions, Contagious Entertainment y Bull’s Eye Entertainment.

Directed by Neil Burger, the movie is an adaptation from a story of Steven Millhauser, about a magician in the Vienna of the Victorian age. Mistery, magic and romance wrapped in a supernatural atmosphere, it’s what “The Illusionist” promises. The cast is also very attractive: Edward Norton, Jessica Biel and Paul Giamatti, stellar performances from the big three of cinema.

The film has an averagely interesting rate and story, but I don’t know how did the director decide to interfere in the stories he tells us, or which one of them was the reason to make the movie: on the one hand a love story, a romantic story made in Hollywood, between a poor boy and a rich girl; but on the other hand, the illusions and the human ability to believe.

The amusingness of the film is the capability it has to make us think in the fact that every and each human being knows that there is a trick behind each performance, but the incapacity to imagine how they do it, bring us, involuntary, to redemption.

I have to recognize the merit to keep alive the attention of the audience, and especially their formal and technical aspects, which give the movie a bigger personality.

It’s a film that in the beginning seems very obvious, but it keeps us expectant until the end, also making our fascination in the end, the way only magic does! As her motto says: “Nothing is what seems to be”…