'Hugo' (Martin Scorsese, 2011)

Title: 'Hugo'

Release Year: 2011

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Asa Butterfield, Ben Kingsley, Chloë Grace Moretz, Sacha Baron Cohen.

Plot: The film narrates the adventures of Hugo Cabret alongside Isabelle, with whom he will discover the hidden yet magic truth of the past of George Méliès.

Review: And we finally reach the end of the road. I particularly choose this film to be the closure as a tribute to that journey, since it was 'Hugo' the film that helped me chose this research project many months ago.

I remember watching the movie and gasping all the time due to its beauty. I've said more than once that 3D and digital technologies must be used for plot purposes and in 'Hugo''s case it's something that is strangely achieved; through the breathtaking beauty of the high-definition, master Scorsese gets us into the curious and excentric universe situated in the train station where Hugo lives. That's the first contact; the audience is so visually absorbed by the film that when they start unfolding the mystery behind Isabelle's uncle or the weird machine that Hugo's father left him, all you see is pure magic.

Visually breathtaking, the atmosphere created in the train station is warm, golden, and dazzling

And of course, I also was hooked on that magic. Who else than Martin Scorsese could do such a magnificent tribute to the origins of cinema? There's nothing like watching film industry praising the pioneers of such an incredible world, and when Isabelle quoted Méliès to claim that "Films have the power to capture our dreams" I felt all the hairs on the back of my neck standing up.

Martin Scorsese, Thank you for such an inspiring love story about cinema. Both a moviegoer and a master of his field only his  incredible talent and his love for films could be able to create "Hugo" as spellbinding as it is

And it was the love to cinema that the movie exuded which convinced me to choose this project. The objective was to answer a question and suddenly for me it was crystal clear; which mystery could be better than unfolding the beginning and developments of my biggest passion? For that reason I owe 'Hugo' many things: a remembering of how much I love cinema, a dazzling visual and cinematographic experience and basically every single moment I've been blown away by the magic of films while doing the research project. It's been an amazing journey, and no better way to end it than by returning to how it started.

'Black Swan' (Darren Aronofsky, 2010)

Title: 'Black Swan'

Release Year: 2010

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Cast: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder.

Plot: Nina, a troubled, frigid, rave ballet dancer obsessed with being perfect, starts to go mad when she's cast as The Swan Queen in a Swan Lake production. The pressure of the role and her overprotective mother turn her unstable mind and her life into a nightmarish, self-destructive thorny path that increasingly threatens her own physical and mental safety.

Review: And if 'Inception' was an example of how innovative blockbusters can be (done right they can really become masterpieces), 'Black Swan' is the other side of the coin; a recent proof that independent cinema can actually reach mainstream audiences, thanks to Aronofsky's masterful direction and Portman's indescribable performance.

'Black Swan' was for me 2010's best film for many, many reasons. To start with, it feautres as its lead a disturbed, misunderstood character: Nina. While desperately working to be perfect, she's cast as the Swan Queen in the revival of the play and, whereas at the beginning she bursts in tears and emotionally tells her mother what she has achieved, her reality soon starts to collapse around her. Natalie Portman is just perfect. Yes, the film is almost perfect at every level but Portman's performance is something out of this world: fragile, scared, deranged, obsessive, agressive, hallucinatory... She delivers all this while showing how little by little her obsessions become her self-destruction.

Naive and fragile, Nina's innocent beginning, and the beauty of her pure world will quickly be drowned by the shadows of her mind

In Nina's environment, one of the key pieces is her mother. Strict and almost dictatorial she is one of the many thorns that end up cracking the already cracked ballerina. Then there are the shadows, her different faces: Lily (her wild side) and Beth (her dying self-destructive side). Between her "professional enemy" (only in her mind) and her inevitable future, we find Thomas, the director of the play, who insists on her relaxing a bit, even making moves in sexual fields.

Nina's mother scary obsessiveness is one of the causes leading to her mental breakdown

Through the film, Nina's hallucinations only get worse and worse...

Each element destabilizes Nina's mind little by little, who starts seeing the ghosts of her fears while she prepares for the final act of the film. Through the two hours, she discovers her darkest side, strongly endangering her mental security, and leading to the opening night in an uncontrolled situation. Once that part starts, we're thrown to a thrilling vertiginous transformation; from the disastrous first act, where her white swan perfection is smashed by her constant hallucinations, through the murder of Lily, when her dark side emerges, causing her to nail her black swan, ending in the realisation that the self-destruction has reached its maximum stage: in one of her hallucinatory scenes (the one in which she supposedly murders Lily), she stabs herself.

Nina's transformation while performing in the Swan Lake is magnetic, emotional and a thrill for every moviegoer. An authentic work of art.

Knowing what she's done, she tearfully prepares for her final act, after which she is cheered for her impressive performance, before Lily and Thomas realise that she's bleeding. In her last breaths, Thomas asks her "What did you do?", Nina smiles and answers: "perfect, I was perfect". And deep down, she really was, going at last through every stage of her beloved Swan Queen, even dying in the process.

Yes, you were...

And the film goes up and up to the lights that Nina will no longer see, ending with one of the most amazing and chilling final climaxes I've ever seen. By the end, Aronofsky's work turns him into a visionary, the film into a masterpiece and Portman into and Academy Award winner.

'Inception' (Christopher Nolan, 2010)

Title: 'Inception'

Release Year: 2010

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, Ellen Page, Marion Cotillard, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, Michael Caine, Tom Berenger.

Plot: Dom Cobb, a skilled mind extractor, teams up with the most prepared professionals to achieve a mission that could give him his life back: performing an Inception. But while he's preparing for the complicated journey, a mysterious enemy who he fears and misses at the same time starts threatening his plans.

Review: When I talked about a blockbuster with 'brains' while reviewing 'Avatar', I was referring to 'Inception', Nolan's impressive masterpiece after crowning himself as one of the most innovative directors of our time with movies like 'Memento' (2000) or the more mainstream installments of the popular Batman saga.

Seventy years after 'Citizen Kane' marvelled the critics and the audience with a more-than-usually complex, perfectly constructed script, 'Inception' knocks it out of the park. Not only Nolan does an impressive immersion in the world of the dreams (Your mind is the scene of the crime), but the massive number of intertwined layers and the mixture of guilty and regrets through all of them makes of 'Inception' a groundbreaking movie. And yes, it uses some of its large budget in special effects, but unlike Cameron's movie, it doesn't let that part be the most important of the film.

Creating a world easy to get lost in, Inception really tests its audience abilities as one of the few challenging blockbusters done nowadays

Add to that a powerful soundtrack and compelling cast led by the assuring figure of Leonardo DiCaprio, constantly tortured by its self-created worst nightmare, Mal (played by Marion Cotillard, my favorite actress), and Nolan's picture becomes one of the smartest, most dragging and haunting films of the last decade.

Cotillard as a femme fatale: Cobb's guiltiness over the death of his wife is one of the movie's main plots and explains his troubled behaviour


"You keep telling yourself what you know, but what do you believe? What do you feel?" Cobb reveals he planted the idea that would change his life...

It was such the obsession I had over this movie the first time I saw it, that I have seen it again thousands of times, writing down every level Cob's team goes through (and who stays in each of them) and to the date I still ask myself the same question...:

...After wobbling a bit, does the top stop spinning in the end? Has Cobb really escaped limbo and returned to reality? Or it's just another dream created by his mind to be able to see his kids at last?