feliperuizmendoza
This is one of the best movies I've seen lately. Considering you can read the storyline and watch the trailer, I'll stay away from any sort of story description. The movie builds a real and completely believable story that keeps you hooked during the entire film. It was well shot, and the characters evolve nicely, offering the viewer enough information to follow the story and sympathize with the characters. The story is dark enough to be interesting, but real enough to make you feel you are watching real people dealing with their daily lives. I think what I loved the most is how simple and clever the story is—not a Hollywood blockbuster for sure. The Man Next Door leans towards an independent film where story goes first and production and visual effects are just minimal. I'm really excited to see independent filmmakers producing awesome films with a fraction of the budget.
Leftbanker
This would have been brilliant as a 20 minute short but as a feature it is entirely too minimalist. It went even longer than most features (1:43:00); talk about beating a dead horse. For a movie with very little to say to go 13 minutes longer than the average feature is simply unpardonable. There were some nice touches to the film but whatever statement he was trying to make seemed hardly worth this much effort. It had a few good laughs but there was a lot more squirming in your seat as you want to fast-forward to the end. I'm having a hard time fulfilling the IMDb guideline of writing at least 10 lines, and I'm rarely short for words. Oh well, the movie served as an educational tool to aid me in understanding Argentine Spanish.
David Traversa
From the very beginning, the film starts with a split screen, the left side light and luminous, the sun hits directly a white, solid wall. The right side of the screen is the same wall, but viewed from the interior, very dark, no light whatsoever. Someone is hitting the wall from the inside with a sledgehammer, trying to open a hole, blow by blow. The hole gets larger and larger. On the left, sunny side the wall starts to crack, soon it crumbles and the hole is opened. Light starts lighting up the dark interior. And here starts the film, with the opening of an illegal window on a party wall. But not only that window is illegal, it opens facing its neighbor, the only house that Le Corbusier built in all Southamerica, in La Plata, capital of the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. (This house can be seen in Wikipedia and we see tourists coming from different parts of the world to see it, to photograph it and even to ask permission from its owner to visit the interior!!). The premise couldn't be simpler and its the only premise of the whole movie, but... what a movie! I don't remember seeing another movie with that particular stylishness in its look.Every frame seems to have been designed by a designer of cool contemporary objects. The Le Corbusier house is perfection itself, and when we consider that it was built 80 years ago, its hard to believe it and even harder not to show deep respect for that genius of an architect.The house seems built this morning and with the latest tendency in architecture. Two are the main characters, the refined architect and the coarse neighbor --perfect casting-- a neighbor guilty of breaking the law with his need to open a window because he "needs a bit of sunlight" in his dark interior.I was mesmerized throughout the whole film. Excellent in the way it portraits social relationships among different classes and the inherent criticism of it. The ending is pure black humor on the surface, but a hard blow on our moral standards when considering on which side is our judgment in front of such behavior. This film will certainly make you think. Do not miss the final credits because there is a touch of black humor during its run.
nihao
Forgive me the flippant title but... The two young Argentine directors behind this movie have served up an interesting, stylish, oddly provocative film using what Argentina is rather good at... a keen interest in all things foreign. The film could well have been a British class-clash movie. It has all the controlled tension and violence of a British movie. BUT... it's more attractive, more quirky, and more cosmopolitan. It seems to tell us that however much mankind tries to adorn the ANIMAL within.... it is ALWAYS there, looming, and ready to pounce. Socialy the film is a slice of 'state.of-the-art' Argentina (a country which is in constant mutation, like a huge anaconda shedding its skin). But a New Yorker or a Londoner, o even a Parisian would undoubtedly feel very well represented by the subject matter and milieu. One protagonist is a '"succesful Modern man", an interior designer, living what looks like a perfect life, but , as the film progresses, reveals itself to be an angst-ridden nightmare. The OTHER is a psychotic freak.... or is he? The way our points of view are manipulated to shift, as the film unravels, is very amusing, and revealing. Are we ALL a bunch of brainwashed bigots? A good question, from Argentina. MUY BIEN, AMIGOS!
AD
