Royale Without Cheese

Visitamos a mente peculiar de Ingmar Bergman, olhando para o seu filme “A Hora do Lobo”. Apesar de ser um filme um pouco impenetrável em certos momentos, não deixa de nos impressionar com a força das imagens, o mood misterioso e o lugares surrealistas a que nos leva.

Hoje reencontramos Pedro Almodovar com o seu filme recente, “O Quarto ao Lado”. Achámos o filme relativamente contido e leve tendo em conta as sensibilidades do realizador e o temas que aborda, e as performances de Julianne Moore e Tilda Swinton trazem um grande poder emocional ao filme.

Today we’re joined by Lesley Loksi Chan to discuss her award-winning film “Lloyd Wong, Unfinished”. We talk about how Lesley was first approached to make this film and her journey throughout the whole process, and what her approach was to honor Lloyd’s images.

Today we welcome filmmaker Jake Abraham to the RWC table, and he brought Leone’s “Once Upon a Time America” for discussion. It’s an engrossing but challenging film, especially because of the main character’s horrible actions. Still, Leone is a master at what he does and there’s so much here to discuss and dwell on, so come on in and take a listen…

Today we discuss a tough one, folks... "Emília Pérez" is a mysterious work of filmmaking, which left us perplexed, and we very much disliked it. It looks like a boring serious TV-Drama, lacks visual imagination, and we don't believe it approaches Mexican culture and trans people with the proper respect they deserve. Are we missing something?

We dive into the art-house epic of the year, "The Brutalist". The impressive scope and its strong first half give the film a lot of strength; however, the narrative loses a bit of potency in the second half. Very intellectually stimulating, nonetheless...

Hoje discutimos a falhas e virtudes de “Anora” de Sean Baker. O filme tem um balanço muito bem conseguido entre a comédia e o drama, e toma umas decisões narrativas inesperadas e interessantes; no entanto, sentimos que podia ter havido mais desenvolvimento da interioridade das personagens.

Juntem-se à nossa discussão de “All We Imagine as Light” de Payal Kapadia. Ficámos impressionados com a beleza deste filme, que demonstra muita empatia e atenção aos gestos das personagens. Para alem disso, as duas atrizes principais são excelentes, capturam perfeitamente as vidas de duas mulheres de gerações diferentes.

The Royale boys take the substance and reveal their honest thoughts on why the film didn’t quite work for them. Despite Demi Moore’s great performance, we felt the story was somewhat one note and its world too thin and cartoonish to register emotionally. And despite the amazing and creative moments of body horror, we felt it was lacking creativity in other aspects: for example, its surface level depiction of Los Angeles.

We join the high stakes world of cardinals and priests to discuss the shortcomings of “Conclave”. It’s an interesting film for its unique context, but we felt some disconnection to it - when it focuses on the politics of the conclave, it’s pretty fun; but in regards to the personal drama of Cardinal Lawrence, we didn’t really feel it was very interesting. Plus: it has some very TV-show-like sensibilities, and also, Miguel has some big problems with its overbearing use of the music.