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All articles by Jose Solís
10 December 2009
“Al fin de la batalla, y muerto el combatiente, vino hacia él un hombre y le dijo: ‘No mueras, te amo tanto!’ Pero el cadáver ¡ay! siguió muriendo.” “La Masa”, César Vallejo, 1937 A man enters a room while another man lies inside a tanning bed. They have an exchange about how their company is downsizing and the troubles it will bring to the employees. The man on the tanning bed tells the other...
22 July 2009
In 1986 Philippines’ President Ferdinand Marcos went into exile after two decades of rule, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated on his way home by a dissenter, the Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated seconds into flight. What’s more, the Cold War was still going on, while an earthquake in El Salvador killed over 1,500 people and a nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine exploded...
23 June 2009
The silence of God has never been more strident than in Cries and Whispers, Ingmar Bergman’s 1972 masterpiece. In fact it is so loud that it keeps the inhabitants of an old manor awake all the time. They are four women; Agnes (Harriet Andersson) who is dying of womb cancer, her sisters Maria (Liv Ullmann) and Karin (Ingrid Thulin) who have come to be by her side while awaiting her death, and the...
06 June 2009
The year 1939 is usually regarded by historians, film buffs and scholars as the greatest year in film history. During the course of those twelve months audiences saw the premieres of films like The Wizard of Oz, Ninotchka, Love Affair, Wuthering Heights, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Young Mr.Lincoln, La Grande Illusion, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Stagecoach and Gone With the Wind. Most of those films...
12 May 2009
Considering all the essays, sequels, theories and spoofs it has inspired, it’s strange for a film to remain as refreshingly thrilling as Psycho. The film begins in the most inconspicuous of places; a hotel room in Phoenix where lovers Marion and Sam Loomis share a passionate post coital embrace. They can’t be together for economical reasons, Sam has alimony and debts to pay. A despaired Marion...
21 April 2009
The 400 Blows is something of a strange case. It’s hailed as being one of the most groundbreaking films ever made, yet watching it what remains the more astonishing is its simplicity. Francois Truffaut’s debut feature length was based on his own experiences as a child and focuses on the experiences of Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), a French boy in his early teens who is always getting in...
27 March 2009
Looking at Alfred Hitchcock’s filmography, which spans fifty years and just as many films, Notorious arguably stands as its centerpiece. Filmed in 1946, the movie is filled with what would become known as Hitchcockian themes and trademarks, but does it so subtly that it’s debatable whether he was nervously experimenting with them or injecting them right into the spine of the film in a way they’d...
18 March 2009
There’s a title card at the end of “All About My Mother” where director Pedro Almodóvar dedicates his film to “all the people who have wanted to be mothers”; the fact that he doesn’t say “women” but “people” is enough to capture the essence of this wonderful work of art. Trying to do justice to her son’s last wish, Manuela travels to Barcelona looking for her “son’s heart” and reveal the whole...