I never thought I would ever find a filmmaker who could make Michael Bay feel staid and static. But in comes Afonso Poyart, a Brazilian director from São Paulo whose crime caper 2 Rabbits seems to redefine all boundaries of…
Movie Review: ‘Beyond the Grave’
Along highways littered with a dead civilization’s detritus, a radio crackles. “It’s hard to know if loneliness is more dangerous than a company,” the crazed disc jockey announces to anyone still alive to listen, “To be alone is to risk…
Movie Review: ‘The Second Mother’
Dona Bárbara’s house is a house of rules—rules which her steadfast maid and nanny Val (Regina Casé) eagerly keeps. Val navigates the unspoken taboos endemic to upper-class São Paulo households in an exhaustive lower-class ballet: Val may enter the dining…
The Film Canon: Black God, White Devil (1964)
By the 1960s Brazilian cinema was in a crisis. For almost a decade Brazil had suffered under the tyranny of foreign (read: American) distributors and narrow-minded exhibitors that flooded the market with Hollywood epics and puerile chanchadas—low-budget musicals frequently featuring…