“Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio”

Today, when we read that a certain classic book has been “reimagined” for a new film adaptation, it is legitimate to expect the worst. That is precisely what happens in this new animated version of the work by Carlo Collodi, signed by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson, who abuses the freedoms allowed to almost completely disfigure the original story. The plot moves to 20th century Italy and is severely truncated and altered, Geppetto builds Pinocchio because he lost his son in a bombing raid during World War I and, in the end, the wooden boy does not become a meat boy and bone. The last straw is the blatant politicization of the story, with Pinocchio transformed into an anti-fascist “malgré lui”, even mocking Mussolini himself during a puppet show. “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” is a riot of good stop motion animation.

“Strange world”

After the mediocre “Stripe and the Dragon” and the outrageous and clumsy “Charm”, the animation of the Disney studios continues to go from bad to worse. “Estranho Mundo” takes place in an imaginary country that depends on a vegetable, bread, for everything, from food to fuel and energy; and brings to the fore the Clade family, which has a long tradition of voyaging, although Searcher Clade, one of its members, chose to become a farmer after the disappearance, years ago, of his legendary father, Jaeger. The story is a reworking of “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” the film clumsily attempts to harmonize traditional Disney family values ​​with the imperatives of the “wake up” agenda, and the digital animation unsuccessfully seeks to emulate that of the affiliate. from Pixar, with moments in which it is more like those cartoons that are made in the subway and are shown in children’s spaces on television.

“Crimes of the future”

Nearly 25 years after “eXistenZ,” David Cronenberg returns to write and direct a sci-fi and “body horror” film, returning to the genre that made him famous. The story takes place in a desolate, nondescript future and is deliberately not very detailed, and its protagonist is Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), a performance artist who, after an operation, manages to spontaneously grow new organs in his body, and with the help of his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux), a former surgeon, who then removes them, he turns it into a spectacle, presented as avant-garde art. In this future world, surgery is the new sex and pain, in addition to being a form of pleasure, is also an aesthetic emotion. “Crimes of the Future” was chosen as the movie of the week by The Observer and you can read the review here.