Alejandro Landes
-
Mica Levi Composes for the Music-less Commandos of Monos
Transcribing a verbal interview can calcify its fluidity. Congealed to text, the spontaneity of a subject’s ongoing efforts to articulate their process is reduced, encouraging readers to mistake the record as definitive. Some interviewees ponder the permanence of their words anxiously and fear fumbling, saying what they don’t mean, or what they might not in a month or a year. But composer Mica Levi’s (Marjorie Prime, Jackie, Under The Skin) oral replies retain their suppleness on the page. Her understanding of her score for Alejandro Landes’ Monos, about a group of teenage commandos flummoxing their military responsibilities atop a mountain […]
by A.E. Hunt on Sep 13, 2019 -
The Forever War
Alejandro Landes’s Monos parachutes viewers atop a hillside in an undefined part of South America, where a group of child soldiers live a cult-like existence—playing, observing various ritualistic rites of passage and waiting for radio orders that will send them fighting into the guerrilla war occurring in the land below. Their identities are already reduced to one-name labels (Rambo, Smurf, Bigfoot et al.), and their training is chaotic—and that’s before they are given orders relating to the hostage they are overseeing, Sara Watson, an American engineer played by Julianne Nicholson. Descending from the mountaintop and along the river, their tenuous […]
by Gabriel Mascaro on Sep 4, 2019 -
New Directors/New Films 2019 Critic’s Notebook: Monos, Manta Ray, Bait
[A selection of films from the ND/NF program, including Bait, are currently playing online for free on Festival Scope from April 8-April 22.] As it unveiled its 48th edition last week, New Directors/New Films—the annual collaboration between the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art—could justifiably tout itself as a fount of international cinematic discovery. Although most of its programming is cherry-picked from other major festivals, including Venice, Berlin and Sundance, its 12-day spree of screenings ushers a new wave of ascendent film talent into town for a Manhattan debut (or in some cases, an encore) as spring […]
by Steve Dollar on Apr 1, 2019 -
“A Mock Basic Training Camp High Up in the Andes Mountains”: Director Alejandro Landes | Monos
Whenever directors watch their own films, they always do so with the knowledge that there are moments that occurred during their production — whether that’s in the financing and development or shooting or post — that required incredible ingenuity, skill, planning or just plain luck, but whose difficulty is invisible to most spectators. These are the moments directors are often the most proud of, and that pride comes with the knowledge that no one on the outside could ever properly appreciate what went into them. So, we ask: “What hidden part of your film are you most privately proud of […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 26, 2019 -
Porfirio — A Hammer To Nail Review
(Porfirio world premiered at the 2011 Director’s Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. It opens theatrically in New York City at MoMA on Friday, February 8, 2013. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) Though his stylistic vision might superficially call to mind filmmakers like Carlos Reygadas, Lucrecia Martel, and Yorgos Lanthimos, with Porfirio, Alejandro Landes carves a unique path all his own. Based on a too-strange-to-be-true story concerning a Colombian man named Porfirio Ramírez that made headlines back in 2005, Porfirio stars none other than the real Porfirio Ramírez himself. From the very first second that you see […]
by Michael Tully on Feb 8, 2013 -
VIRTUE AND VICE AT THE 2011 CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
Moral questions about science, war, justice, and ethics were at the forefront of some of the strongest international work at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. “He’s really not judgmental of his characters at all, is he?” said one party-goer of the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. Between bites of warm peaches and pistachio ice cream at a reception for the filmmaker’s sleek, stylish new thriller, The Skin I Live In, party-goers discussed the dark, unsettling tale of a mad scientist (played with panache by Antonio Banderas) who develops a miraculous new variety of human skin and a fraught relationship with his sad, beautiful […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on May 31, 2011
