No somos animales (2013)

No somos animales: Directed by Alejandro Agresti. With John Cusack, Kevin Morris, Paul Hipp, Alejandro Agresti. A Hollywood actor grows tired of making the same corporate movies, so he moves to Argentina to find more experimental and meaningful work.

“This film reminded me of the Dogma film u0026quot;Hotelu0026quot; (2001 dir: Mike Figgis) where many American movie stars appear mostly as cameos, or barely as part of the plot. There was, however a plot there, at least. On this film, we have u0026quot;Kubrick-likeu0026quot; intertitles preceding scenes, all about the planning of the filming of a movie, which is being filmed as this is a movie within a movie anyway. The dialogue for the first half is – as always – about u0026quot;the evil military that killed people indiscriminatelyu0026quot;, without a full explanation of WHY and WHAT HAPPENED. This is as if you were learning about World War II and u0026quot;there was a lot of killing going onu0026quot; but absolutely no explanation of what happened, just tidbits of talk. Imagine every German film ever made from the end of the war to the present, in which they talk about Nazis. Every film. Or every American movie talking about Vietnam… even it if is a romantic comedy. They try, and fail, to make this some type of artsy film, some very recognizable names are in it, but the dialogue goes nowhere. They try to be u0026quot;French New Waveu0026quot; but with less plot, and a lot of scenes about Buenos Aires that serves more as a fantasyland attraction rather than the presentation of a city, or the history of the country, or even some type of plot. A complete waste of time and talent. Go see u0026quot;Hotelu0026quot; instead. There is a scene in which a girl tells John Cusack that Argentina is stuck in the past, 35 years back, and cannot move forward. Such is the state of filmmaking in ARG today. Stuck in the 1980s and forever trying to sanitize (but failing in omission) the event s that CAUSED the military coup of 1976. The Argentitnes need at least another 50 years to catch up to the rest of the world. This is a piece of garbage, and frankly, had the coup never occurred, Argentina would have been another Lebanon of the 1980s or the Venezuela of today. Che Guevara and Maoists forever admiring what is unclean only because it is u0026quot;revolutionaryu0026quot; – conveniently ignoring that ARG, for all its faults, became rich and prosperous thanks to the European immigrants that worked – and di dnot pick the quick fix of a revolution to advance the country. For the lazy and the feeble minded, the Cuban revolution is a thing to be worshipped. These are still dangerous times!”