If a society avoids to face its own history, becomes a factory of stories in order to disguise facts. That we are living that in Argentina.But like in his film Buenos Aires Viceversa, Agresti denounces that in We are not Animales. Here he cleverly commits the "sin" of making fun of Story telling, Plot, and all the shebang, underscoring those elements in order discuss History from an apparently superficial set up. The second view of the film brought to my attention certain patterns that, late at night, the first time I was not ready to catch (Also because I was expecting a standard Cusack film). The film discusses Art and Politics on a way that I'm not sure that here we are ready to digest. To mention chronologically some structural points of this kaleidoscope: Concentration Camps, Aramburu, Evita, sons of assassinated people during the military, West Point Academy,Trelew, Do a Story need cameras?, freedom, It was a War or not?, Obama, Terrorism, Justice, Participation of US on Argentine Genocide, Faith and church, Generalization of US a Evil, What is culture?, Media manipulation, Do we have to tell our kids what happen, or better we let them grow free from the demons and resentments of a country in which we are all partly responsible of the mess? --The easygoing tone of the film, the courage to trash Story in favor of History, makes this an unique product, to be analyze more relaxed but deeply (also a strange combo?), than a normal movie. Probably Groucho Marx would had understood it much better, the other Marx too.
... View MoreI watched this largely because I love Argentina. What a waste of 90 minutes. I stuck it out and watched the entire thing because I wanted it to be a decent movie. It wasn't. To say this movie is dull and dry is really being generous. There's no plot. Nothing of any significance happens. It's not even funny. This seems like a movie where someone was trying way too hard to be sophisticated and ended up producing garbage as a result.
... View MoreWhen I first started watching this, I had my mind set to write a completely sarcastic review and summarize this as a tale of a man who once won a sizable amount of money on a popular game show while wearing his magical Wonder Woman wristbands, only to later in life be reduced to begging on GoFundMe for attorney retainer funds after being charged with methamphetamine possession following a Grindr hook-up gone wrong. But then something about this movie made me very sad, in a very deeply painful, aching kind of way. I can't completely explain it. Maybe if you have horrible attention deficit disorder like I do you'll sit through the whole thing while eating a large burrito. This movie might make you question your sanity, sort of like a psychopath or narcissist does when gaslighting a person, making them wonder what actually is reality.
... View MoreThis movie belongs to the "film within a film" genre that opened up half a century ago with Fellini's 8 1/2. It features John Cusack and other American actors summoned to Buenos Aires to make a film that, we are told, experiments with cinematic language. The story is improvised (there is a script but nobody seems to take it seriously) and some scenes (like in Godard's La Chinoise) actually belong to the film within, as the point of view changes and we see the cameras rolling and the booms in place. Sequences are announced with title cards, also in Godard's style. The view of Buenos Aires and its people is that of an average American tourist; there are some comments about Peronism and the 1976-1982 military dictatorship but there is no depth or meaning in them. Everything we see or hear is capricious and at best whimsical, at worst pretentious and at times boring.Al Pacino plays the mysterious (and somewhat devilish) long distance mastermind of the project, He gets the best lines and makes the most of them; the short time he is on screen is the best part of the movie.The movie ends up saying nothing significant. Although some ideas may be interesting, it it difficult to gauge the intentions of the director. All in all, an unsatisfactory film.
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