Movie reviews of Filipe Freitas

A quiet intensity and elegiac melancholy pervades the scenarios of a chamber film whose feelings and textures didn’t always resonate with the expected emotional weight. Review

Aggressively formulaic, the film is stitched with clichés and implausibilities. Review

The frustrating Master Gardener brings a message of inclusivity and redemption but forgets the thrills, never going far beyond the basic set-up. Review

Reichardt is subtle but incisive in her analysis. Showing Up is an observant, critical, gently lilting, and hyper-realistic account that uniquely captures the inner world of an introverted and peculiar artist. Review

Vapid at times, and with a deft camerawork refusing to cope with the story's confined temperament, the film is full of artifice to the point of absurdity. But that may just be the point of Cavalli, who keeps the humor, the drama and, let's face it, the goofy undertones that make this portrait of Italian bourgeoisie more derisive. Review

Reality is well-made but depends almost entirely on the acting. And neither the lead nor the supporting actors let it down, providing merciless authenticity through crisp performances. Review

The centre fails to hold, lashed around in an intellectual straitjacket, so the plot never wraps up appropriately. Although crossed by some beautiful cinematic imagery, Leonora Addio hardly seems more than an experimental exercise. Review

The talent of the young actors is obvious as they reflect teen life and confused feelings with impressive accuracy. Review

By trading brains for bullets and characters for puppets, the director made the worst possible choices for this exhausting fourth chapter. Review

With warped sounds enhancing the industrialism of the setting, this twisted fairytale is pretty darn hypnotic. Review

Even if you’re not tech savvy, Johnson puts it all in fascinating context. Aiming for greatness and not quite making it, he, nonetheless, discloses a vital, engaging part of technology history while guaranteeing absolute fun by effectively mixing serious and comedic tones. Review

The beauty of the story lies precisely in how to overcome fragility, doing it with both realistic and supernatural quests that will take you out of your comfort zone. Review

Profoundly human and saddled with a mix of somber and limpid energy, More Than Ever is, in some measure, a slightly conventional work that could have explored its characters a bit deeper. Review

Winter Boy is stilted, with deficient dynamics and questionable choices of monologues in front of the camera and explanatory voice-over. Review

Dupieux’s antics are provocative, psychedelic and unapologetic. His film, so well titled, so funny, so pathetic and so bizarre, is also so memorable for all that. Review

Moll and his regular collaborator Gilles Marchand co-wrote the film with seriousness, making it less immediately stunning and sometimes hardly pleasurable to watch. Review

The emotional waves are never allowed to erode the unflinching truthfulness of the film’s insights. Accordingly, with intelligent nuance molding storytelling, this is a drama that, in the end, reaches our hearts. Review

Often captured with handheld camera and featuring a score that emphasizes as much the heroic as the emotional side of things, The Covenant is not earth-shatteringly exciting, but manages to trace the political and cultural scenario of the time without overstuffing things. Review

Considering the numerous traps associated with the material, this brave, funny leap into womanhood and religious consciousness stands in good stead. Review

Even if the agenda does come with good intentions, the developments are less daring than expected, making Blue Jean a shockingly dull work with which I wasn’t able to connect. Review

There’s this indelible sense of isolation, uncanniness and mystery enveloping a skimpy but relentlessly chilly mystery that ingrains the mind after it grabs the senses. Jenkin demonstrates remarkable artistry in the manner he handles the material, and will leave you guessing until the end. Review

Return to Seoul is a compellingly constructed, deeply felt drama. Review

The action tenses up by the end, and there’s a level of urgency and frustration that screams in every shot; it’s the pure magic of cinema versus the harsh pain of reality presented with simple scenarios and genuine characters. Review

The film takes its time to build, advancing steadily and surely but never expanding outside its atmospheric cocoon. Preferring the cold approach, the sharply observed Chile ’76 carries off a readable merge between the personal and the political. Review