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'The Secret Agent': Exploring a Vibrant, yet Violent Brazil (2025)

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Re: 'The Secret Agent': Exploring a Vibrant, yet Violent Brazil (2025)

#21
post #14

Having grown up in Brazil in the 70s, I thought the cinematography of "The Secret Agent" absolutely nailed the aesthetics of that era.

Kleber Mendonça Filho's other films are great at analysing modern Brazil.

Bacurau was quite a trip. I left that one pleasingly befuddled.

Re: 'The Secret Agent': Exploring a Vibrant, yet Violent Brazil (2025)

#22
post #3
post #2

The Secret Agent was not an easy movie for the average movie watcher. It had an unorthodox ending, graphic violence, and it's in a different language. With that said, it's too bad it wasn't able to come out with any Oscars. I can see why OBAA won quite a few awards.

[flagged]

The visuals weren't terrible, I thought, but the writing, dialog, acting (except for Moura), and narrative arc were terrible.

It's one of those movies where almost everyone looks like they just really love being on stage ("isn't cinema lovely?") and where the writers have an idea of what cliches they're trying to work with but can't land them into an actual story, even a story made out of cliches.

Re: 'The Secret Agent': Exploring a Vibrant, yet Violent Brazil (2025)

#23
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole single A, triple A thing comes from league baseball. Single A was the lower leagues and AAA is the top of the heap pro ball. AAA denotes big budget tent pole productions. So big a studio could go bankrupt if it doesn't do well.

Ah so the OP thinks OBAA was designed as a big budget popcorn flick? No wonder they didn't like it.

Paul Thomas Anderson will tell anyone who will listen that he doesn't make commercially sound films. It's kind of his thing...

They did throw some serious money at this film, though, so I can see where people would have strange expectations.

Re: 'The Secret Agent': Exploring a Vibrant, yet Violent Brazil (2025)

#26
The immersion into the time and place was fantastic, the surreal elements being bold , outlandish, and unexpected were great. The time jump at the end was interesting. a great piece of work that some felt divided over as a general audience but overall memorable and ambitious

Re: 'The Secret Agent': Exploring a Vibrant, yet Violent Brazil (2025)

#27
post #3
post #2

The Secret Agent was not an easy movie for the average movie watcher. It had an unorthodox ending, graphic violence, and it's in a different language. With that said, it's too bad it wasn't able to come out with any Oscars. I can see why OBAA won quite a few awards.

[flagged]

Well I think there are some people that disagree.

Re: 'The Secret Agent': Exploring a Vibrant, yet Violent Brazil (2025)

#30
post #3
post #2

The Secret Agent was not an easy movie for the average movie watcher. It had an unorthodox ending, graphic violence, and it's in a different language. With that said, it's too bad it wasn't able to come out with any Oscars. I can see why OBAA won quite a few awards.

[flagged]

OBAA was technically well executed but, to me, pretty fucking soulless.

I haven't seen all the nominees, but the ones I did see -- Train Dreams and Sinners -- were, to our eyes, profoundly better films than OBAA. I'm in particular interested in seeing Hamnet soon; everything I read about it puts it in the same category as TD and S.

OBAA was the safe Academy pick, and so that's what they picked.

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