As the processions fill the streets, Many of us take advantage of the days of Easter to use the remote control and enjoy a good movie. The general television programming of these dates is full of great religious classics, from ‘The Ten Commandments’ (Cecil B. DeMille, 1956) to ‘Ben-Hur’ (William Wyler, 1959), through ‘Marcellin, Bread and Wine’ (Ladislao Vajda, 1954), it is not difficult to end up lying on the sofa, after some too many French toast, while the smell of incense burner and old wood permeates the living room. Unless Mel Gibson wakes you up with his wild foray into religious gore in ‘The Passion of the Christ’ (2004), it’s likely that the days will go by and you’ll wake up on Sunday, dizzy and with a stew ready to iron out what’s left. of festivity.
For those who prefer to select their movie marathon a little more precisely, but do not want to earn excommunication with 15 wild films for not-so-Easter Week, we propose a list of must-see classics available on Prime Video only until March 31a perfect excuse to cross off some of these irreplaceable classics from the list or enjoy these gems of the seventh art again.
‘Annie Hall’ (Woody Allen, 1977)
Without a doubt, one of Woody Allen’s best films. It represented a radical break with his previous work and opened the fruitful path that he has followed to this day. Presented in an openly autobiographical tone, his relationships with women in general, and Diane Keaton in particular (the actress’s real name is Diane Hall), constitute the basis of an acidic and brilliant comedy.
‘Cinema Paradiso’ (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988)
When Salvatore receives a call from his mother from his hometown to announce Alfredo’s death, his entire past comes back to him. Salvatore is now a naive and curious boy who has made the projection booth of the only cinema in his town his second home, where he, together with Alfredo, discovers the secrets of cinema, introducing himself to the magic that the big screen can transmit. Why does everyone love ‘Cinema Paradiso’? How not to love her!
‘City of God’ (Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund, 2002)
“One of the most interesting Latin American films of recent times,” noted our review of ‘City of God’. “And not only because of the subject matter, but because of the daring, violent but aesthetically brilliant way that Fernando Meirelles has chosen to draw attention to a situation that is becoming unsustainable day by day in the large Latin American cities.” The film introduces us to Fusée (Alexandre Rodrigues) and Dadinho (Douglas Silva), children who live poorly in the late 60s in The City of God (name of a suburb of Rio de Janeiro), until, at the beginning of the 80s, The first is a photographer, and the second a drug trafficker, they tell their hard story.
‘Midnight Cowboy’ (John Schlesinger, 1969)
‘Midnight Cowboy’, the classic by Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, is already more than 50 years old, a great excuse to enjoy the misadventures of Joe Buck (Jon Voight), a good-looking but somewhat naive young Texan, who leaves his He works as a dishwasher and, dressed as a cowboy, heads east in search of fame and fortune. When he arrives in New York, with no friends and no money, he meets Ratso (Dustin Hoffman), a rogue from the Bronx who intends to scam him. But Ratso’s first plans give way to a deep friendship. They both have one goal: to escape one day from the miserable world in which they live.
‘Cape Fear’ (Martin Scorsese, 1991)
In 1991 we were lucky enough to enjoy ‘Cape Fear’, one of Martin Scorsese’s best films. With this remake From the classic ‘Cape Terror’ (J. Lee Thompson, 1962), in turn based on the novel by John D. MacDonald, it is possible that the filmmaker filmed his most terrifying production. And not just because it says so in the title, but because the story becomes something incredibly dark and tense thanks, in large part, to the unhinged and iconic performance of Robert De Niro, who took the baton from Robert Mitchum. The story follows his character, Max Candy, a psychopathic ex-combatant who is released from prison after serving a long sentence for sadistically raping a woman. Once on the street, Cady only has one idea in her head: to get revenge on Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte), the lawyer who did not defend her as he should. She therefore begins to harass him and his family (Jessica Lange and Juliette Lewis), managing to plunge them into a nightmare.
‘Fellini, eight and a half (8½)’ (Federico Fellini, 1963)
A caravan of cars suffers a providential traffic jam in the middle of a tunnel. Within one of them is the film director Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni), who feels faint until he wakes up in a kind of spa, where he is impressed by the beauty of a nurse who distributes mineral water to the sick. Become Fellini’s alter ego, Mastroianni will experience the anguish prior to filming and must face his personal ghosts in an introspective journey of the filmmaker himself. One of Federico Fellini’s best films and an obsession of all kinds of authors with later pretensions.
‘Paris, Texas’ (Wim Wenders, 1984)
A man appears completely amnesiac and they contact his brother to discover that he was married and that a tragedy had to happen for him to leave home and end up in the desert. A chronicle about uprooting as thoughtful and intellectual as it is melodramatic, a title with which you will want to take Harry Dean Stanton home and he will discover why half the planet is obsessed with Wim Wenders, a filmmaker so pure that, forty years later, he has released ‘Perfect Days’, the most beautiful movie of the year.
‘Showgirls’ (Paul Verhoeven, 1995)
The young and independent Nomi (Elizabeth Berkley) arrives in Las Vegas fleeing a turbulent past. In the city she gets a job as a striptease dancer, and to round out her earnings she works in a booth. Paul Verhoeven is the best, that’s the only way to understand why, almost 30 years later, ‘Showgirls’ has gone from the worst movie of the decade to a cult classic. For those who need even more substance to lower their torrijas, we recommend the wonderful documentary about the film, ‘You Don’t Nomi’ (Jeffrey McHale, 2019), and the 6 most provocative sequences in Paul Verhoeven’s cinema.
‘Suspiria’ (Dario Argento, 1977)
A young woman (Jessica Harper) enters an exclusive dance academy the same night that one of the students is murdered. The deputy director of the center is the kind Madame Blank, who provides the new student with the necessary facilities for her learning while we immerse ourselves in an unhealthy atmosphere that is taking over the place. An irresistible nightmare story directed by maestro Darío Argento and which, in 2018, had a decaffeinated revision by Luca Guadagnino. For those who have any doubts, we held a face-to-face meeting between the original ‘Suspiria’ and its remake.
‘Men in Black’ (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1997)
Agents J and K are part of a secret organization: the Men in Black. Its mission is to control the immigration movements of extraterrestrials to Earth. An alien with bad intentions will arrive on Earth ready to destroy everything that stands in his way. It’s not just that it crowns the list of Will Smith’s best films, it’s that we’re talking about one of the peaks of spectacle cinema in the 90s, the decade in which popcorn tasted better. None of its sequels were up to par, but we recognize that ‘Men In Black 3’ (Barry Sonnenfeld, 2012) came close.
Ricardo Rosado is a film critic, cultural journalist, expert in North American comedy, horror films of any kind and everything that happens between genres and formats. Raised on Steven Spielberg films, and spoiled since he encountered David Lynch, he has been writing for a decade about the art he consumes.
In FOTOGRAMAS you will read him commenting on the latest theatrical releases, promoting peace between Marvel and DC fans, reviewing all the Star Wars news or diving into the depths of the Netflix, HBO Max, Prime Video and Filmin catalogues. He also likes to make galleries and rankings of movies and series, but no one trusts his judgment too much.
After studying Audiovisual Communication at the Complutense University of Madrid, he created a film review blog with the hope of attending film festivals and press screenings for free. Now, after seven years writing in FOTOGRAMAS about the latest theatrical releases, current series and any content available on the different streaming channels, she still thinks it was worth it.
Frontman of two embarrassing musical projects, director of various video clips by heavy metal bands from Madrid and author of many short films hidden in the Internet, he is the editor and one of the proud members of the cultural podcast ‘Los de al lado de Pumares’ , a space that has allowed him to participate as a collaborator in other radio formats such as ‘Vamos de cine’ (Castilla-La Mancha Media) and ‘El faro’ (Cadena SER), in addition to having made him one of the main voices of the videos of FRAMES.
 once in your life){kind=link}