I am a very devoted enthusiast of horror movies. Recently, I’ve decided to watch more frequently short films in the genre. For several inherent cultural reasons, we never see them with the same regularity we usually see full length features. And I’ve decided to incorporate – or at least try – into my life the habit of seeing short horror movies more frequently. And, to some extent, I’m being successful on this objective. 

I’ve already had done a selection of six short horror movies, that you can verify here. I also explain the pros and cons of seeing this type of film, but it’s never enough to reinforce the arguments. 

For constraints of time (and mostly budget), short horror movies – shorts in general, so to speak – are usually very objective, even if they begin with a sideline or background story. Moreover, if you watch a more extensive short, one that has almost thirty minutes, for example, the story evolves and develops as a cohesive unity, and you really don’t have time to get bored, especially movies that are very concise. On the other hand, there is a negative side: sometimes the movie is exceedingly good, and when you become profoundly involved in the story, the movie ends. 

It’s imperative to disseminate the culture of short movies – in any genre, not just horror – because there are so many incredibly talented people involved in this mostly independent projects – directors, screenwriters, actors –, that unquestionably deserves more exposure. And who really wins is the public, that learns how to appreciate not just an entirely exotic form of art, that is a majestic and marvelously singular form of expression by its own merits, but incorporates into its culture a more vast and wide conjuncture of creative possibilities. It’s interesting to observe how these movies – not just short movies, of course, this also applies to feature films – are incorporating elements of technology, especially social media, to create relevant plots and intriguing premises, showcasing the dark side of digital revolution and virtual progress. On the movies featured below, being home alone is also another common theme.      

Well, here are the movies selected this time. I hope you enjoy!

An interesting cyber horror movie, a young man apparently finds solace for his terrible grief with an online friend. His girlfriend has committed suicide – and the storyline implies that she had executed such an extreme act by his fault – and he is overcome by guilt. When he finally acquires strength to unfriend his dead girlfriend’s profile on social media, that he constantly visits, she suddenly appears on the chat. Then something drastically bizarre starts to happen.  

The story is not entirely original. There are many other movies with the same premise, even shorts. Nevertheless, the movie – almost nine minutes long – presents itself decently, as an involving, cohesive and intriguing narrative.  

A night radio broadcaster – “Late Hour” Tom Bower (played by Brent Black) – expresses on air his disdain for magicians. When the audience starts to call for the show, a magician, or someone posing as one, gets online. That’s when things starts to get inexplicably dark. Written and directed by Faisal Hashmi. 

A girl – that apparently has plausible reasons for not being alone at her house – after a pleasant night, is driven home by her boyfriend. She asks him to stay for the night, but he says he has to take care of his little brother, but they will be together again tomorrow. Later that night, she sends a selfie to her boyfriend, and then he sends a message asking her who was in the back of the picture. She replies writing that she is home alone. Soon the girl verifies the photo, and discovers that she is not as alone as she presumed. And the intruder is not an ordinary assailant, but someone of a far more horrifying nature. The Glitch has an interesting sequence, that is also available on YouTube.

An interesting short whose characters communicate entirely by mobile text messages. Kelly Morris – the main character – is texting with her housemate, when her former boyfriend starts sending messages too, compulsively. He starts to apologize and begs her an opportunity for them to resume their relationship. Then, her housemate informs her that her social media status has changed from single to a “relationship with Todd Powers”. Kelly then assumes that Todd hacked her account, but when she confronts him, he denies categorically that he is the responsible. 

​Todd is persistent and asks to talk to her personally. She refuses and then the doorbell rings, followed by a knock on the door. Kelly doesn’t answer, and Todd again sends new messages, informing Kelly that he has to say something to her, and has to be personally. Kelly then starts to eat a meal her housemate has prepared specially for her. Not too long after, she starts to feel bad and collapses. Despite the plot twist in the end, it’s not that difficult to figure it out the background story right before its conclusion.

A five minutes short, on this movie, a night watchman in his cabin finds a lost and found box, where he gets a laptop. On the laptop, he starts to read the story of a deformed and solitary creature named Larry. Suddenly he sees in the parking lot, next to the only car there something very bizarre, impossible to identify precisely in the dark. When he looks away for a moment because of the flickering light, and then looks back into the parking lot, the figure is no longer there. Assuming that what he had seen was just a hint of his imagination, the lookout resumes reading Larry's story on the laptop.

Frightened by the morbid story and the energy that suddenly goes out, the night watchman sees again the strange creature in the parking lot. Forced to accept that Larry is real and is watching him, he uses the laptop to help him observe the creature, until he loses Larry from sight. When he pulls away the laptop, he sees Larry right in front of him. When the lights return and he sees two customers returning to their car – the only one that remains in the parking lot – he feels alleviated, and begins to wonder if he was somewhat delusional. But to his distress, the horror was just beginning. 

With little less than four minutes, on this interesting short, a man discovers in the most terrible way that he is not as solitary in his home as he thought he was. 

Written, directed and produced by Marc Cartwright, on this short movie – a little less than seven minutes long –, the main character (played by Baker Chase Powell) arrives home, and starts cleaning the mess from a party he had done the night before. Then he showers and dresses a costume for Halloween. Shortly thereafter, when he goes to the kitchen that he had recently cleaned, he notices a bottle of vodka and a plastic cup near the sink. Then he sits in the couch and when he picks up his marijuana, the drug was almost entirely consumed. 

Assuming a friend had visited him when he was in the shower, he calls his friend demanding satisfactions, but his friend doesn’t take the blame. Saying that he had left a bottle of gin in the refrigerator, when he verifies, he sees that there is no bottle at all. In some brief passages of the movie, it is possible to see a dreadful mask in the wall observing the main character. When he sees a mysterious figure reflected in the mirror, he discovers too late a horrifying presence lurking in the dark. 

When her boyfriend leaves for the night shift, a girl (Maika Monroe) has the whole house to herself. Then she starts to wander, and the border between reality and imagination begins to blur. A very interesting psychological horror movie, the story allows the audience to submerge into the deeply surreal universe of the protagonist’s mind, in an attempt to discover what demons she has to confront. 

An old lady (marvelously played by Beatrice Howard) sees someone outside her house, late at night, and frightened, decides to call her son. She was diagnosed with a condition called Charles Bonnet Syndrome, that causes hallucinations. Her son tells her that she is probably seeing something that is not real, but she responds by saying that she used to see “shapes and patterns… this is a person”. Her son assures her that – according to the doctor responsible for her treatment – she can see anything with her condition. She then opens a window and talks to the figure, that does not respond. She tells that to her son, that assures her that probably she is hallucinating, and the individual is not real. After turning off the phone, she looks again at the figure outside, but this time she doesn’t see anything. 

Soon thereafter – when she is in the bathroom –, she starts to hear strange noises. Then someone bangs on the bathroom door. She opens the door, and her wheelchair bumps into a saucer with a cup on the floor. She calls her son again, but only the voicemail responds, so she leaves a message. After a few more moments, she sees the strange figure again, just for him to disappear in a matter of seconds. 

While in her bed, she tries to convince herself that she is only having a delusional experience. She lies down, and turns on the radio. Then the electricity starts to oscillate, and she hears disturbing noises. Then she listens a knock in her door bedroom. Soon after, the door is violently opened, and someone enters the room. For her relief, it’s her son, that became worried and decided to check upon her personally. To comfort his mother, he checks the entire house, including the basement. Unfortunately, while inspecting the basement, he has a terrible surprise. In desperation, the old lady begins to pray. Then she hears a child’s voice, and everything becomes more sinister than the night itself. 

A man eating his dinner alone at home is suddenly disturbed by persistent bangs on his front door. He opens the door, but finds nobody there. Then, an unknown person calls him on his mobile phone, demanding him to look outside from his balcony. When he does, he sees a mysterious unknown figure staring at him. The mobile phone rings again, the mysterious person disappears from sight and the somber voice demands the individual to go outside. 

After grabbing a knife in the kitchen to protect himself, the man goes towards the building corridor, where he sees the hooded figure. In fear, he returns to his apartment, in a moment where the lights fade away. He grabs a flashlight and his mobile rings again. After a brief conversation, the assailant says some words, where becomes implicit that he is seeking some kind of revenge. Unfortunately, for the young victim, his worst nightmares were just beginning.   

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Directed by Elias Benavidez, the movie begins with a boy a little terrified at being alone in the dark of night in his room. So, he goes to his mother’s bed, and lie down by her side. Not wanting to spoil him, she leads him back to his room, and looks under the boy's bed to reassure him that nothing is wrong. She calms him down, leaves a flashlight on the dresser, counsels him to think happy thoughts and kisses him. When she leaves, he hardly feels any better. When her mother awakes in the morning, she finds her son sleeping by her side, on the floor. 

Looking at a portrait, the mother begins to cry, probably grieving for her deceased husband, a navy officer. Meanwhile, her soon keeps drawing pictures of monsters and horrible creatures. She screams with him for using around his neck the military medallions of his father. Nevertheless, she warmly tries to connect with her son by telling him an apparently scary story, that was in fact an opportunist encounter she had with a raccoon, underlining the narrative with the importance of overcoming personal fears. After the end of the story, though, the boy seemed profoundly disappointed. 

At night, after going to sleep, the boy wakes up hours later, deeply disturbed. Hearing some noises, he illuminates his bedroom with the flashlight. The noise persists, and the boy gets even more anxious, and activates traps he had prepared with his toys the day before. When one of the traps apparently had caught something, the boy go to his mother’s room, and calls her desperately. 

His mother becomes angry when she sees the floor wet – as one of the traps involved water –, so she picks up a towel and gives to the boy to dry the floor; then she says there are no monsters in the house, and gets even more disturbed after seeing the medallions of her husband in her son’s bedroom floor. 

In an interesting turn of events, the mother decides to take part on what she assumes to be her son’s game. She puts the medallions around his neck, grabs the flashlight and says to the monster that both are now going after him. Then both act as if they were in a war zone, and the mother acts as very involved in the performance. Then she shouts that the monster is under the bed, and the boy shoots at him with a toy gun. 

After the play, she puts the boy to sleep. When she is about to leave, she hears a strange noise, then something grabs her by the legs, and pulls her under the bed.  

A young man moves to a house where strange things starts to happen, like taps and doors opening completely on their own, for no apparent reason. Despite the common ground premise, some amateur insights, the precarious acting skills of the lead actor and its homemade inferior quality, the movie manages to be a regular incursion into the supernatural subgenre of horror, if you are willing to ignore the fact that this movie is probably the most mediocre on this list. 

A forty-five minutes long British horror film, this short revolves around a group of three children – Max, Jacob and Sarah – attracted to a desert field in the countryside, upon which they have heard sinister rumors from their schoolmates. Finding the stories somewhat too supernatural and hard to believe, they decide to search for accurate information and to confirm the legendary folktales for themselves. Later, they hear from a friendly candy shop owner some terrible first-hand experience stories related to the field. Then they go to a house where a supposed witch lives. When Sarah – the most courageous member of the group – is about to knock on the door, a woman leaves the house and reprimands the children. Then she invites them to enter her residence, and they reluctantly accept. She offers lemonade to them, and they start to talk about the field. She has many cats in the house. Then she tells them a story of her childhood, about when she was a girl, and was near the field with her friends in a certain occasion, when she saw supernatural cat’s eyes projected from the field. From then on, whenever she closes her eyes, she sees those same cat’s eyes staring at her. This testimony somewhat discourages the children to accept the challenge imposed by their colleagues to go into the field. 

When the children leave, they go meet a man – an acquaintance of Sarah – that supposedly had an experience in the field. After persistently asking, he narrates them his personal incursion into the field, becoming a little distressed. Very curious and determined to fulfill the challenge, the children decide to go into the field anyway. The group split and decide to reunite at night. While eating lunch, Jacob, the youngest, tell his mother what he and his friends are planning to do, and his mother forbids him of going there. Later, she tells him a scary story that explains her fear about the location, and Jacob asks her if she has ever done the challenge. Soon thereafter, while trying to sleep, the door of his closet opens, and Jacob sees a pair of eyes staring at him. Then a mysterious creature attacks him, and suddenly he awakes, realizing he just had a nightmare. A little later, he goes on his bicycle to the place where he is supposed to meet Max and Sarah. When the three reunite, they finally go to the field. The first to get close is Max, that, after approaching the fence, returns screaming, though he haven’t saw anything sinister. Then Sarah goes next, and returns crying. She insists Jacob not to go there, but he goes anyway. After approaching the fence, he listens to somber and mysterious noises, and then he sees the cat’s eyes in the midst of a dense fog. Then many hands touch him. At first frightened, Jacob then feels relief, and jumps the fence into the other side. The narrative voiceover leaves implicit that Jacob has disappeared into another dimension, and then we see the other children desperately looking for him. In the aftermath, its early morning, and we see police officers with Sarah and Max, and a rescue team in the field, trying to find Jacob, along with his mother. Then one member of the rescue team finds a sneaker, that presumably belonged to Jacob.  

A man that collects sinister memorabilia runs a paranormal session with a Ouija board along with his best friend. Unbeknownst to them, they have summoned terrible ghostly creatures, that will transform the night into a living nightmare. 

When two women – Charmaine and Kira – discovers an occultist scripture near a wooden cross in the woods, they go to the supposed location where a witch was executed centuries before (as shown in the beginning of the movie). Apparently, the witch somehow managed to took revenge on her executioners. Suddenly, mysterious things starts to happen to both women. The front doors in their respective houses knock, but when they answer, there’s nobody there. Kira inexplicably develops bruises in one leg. Charmaine one night hear voices, before the bed starts moving inexplicably by itself, provoking a dreadful and fearful experience on her. 

As Halloween approaches, both women leaves pumpkins in the forest, near the wooden cross, while returning the book to the same place where they had find it, in the hopes that – whatever spell they had released –, may be dormant again. Suddenly, Kira is killed by the witch, just for Charmaine to wake up, realizing she just had a nightmare. After choosing Halloween costumes in a store hours later, both women start the night preparing a Jack-o'-lantern. After listening to mysterious noises in the house, someone knocks the door, frightening both women. After a violent knock, the door opens by itself. Charmaine closes the front door, then both women seeks refuge inside the house, as the noises increasingly become more atrocious and sinister.  

Soon, Charmaine sees the witch by the window. Kira decides to leave. She goes to her house, and there, bizarre things happen, like doors opening up, and a swarm of insects attacks her. As Halloween approaches, the two friends find each other near the wooden cross in the woods. Charmaine thinks that burning the book will free both from the witch curse, but burning the book proves to be a very difficult task, as all the matches that she lights fade out rapidly. Soon thereafter, both women are severely beaten by the witch. Nonetheless, one of them manages to burn the book. 

Charmaine’s mother sees her face severely beaten, so she demands an explanation. Then she makes a terrible confession to her daughter, revealing that she had known much more about the curse than what anyone could have possibly imagined. Charmaine then goes to Kira’s house, to tell her about the exceedingly complicated nature of the curse. She was a target from the beginning, because the witch wishes to kill all the descendants of the people who murdered her. This should have excluded Kira, since she is not a local, and her ancestors didn’t lived in the community. Positive that they are safe since burning the book, Kira urges them to enjoy Halloween. 

In the Halloween night, the girls go to a party, while Charmaine’s mother stays at home watching horror movies. Then, she hears a knock on the door, but when she answers, there’s nobody there. Then she hears someone whispering, and in the next scene, she lets the plate with candy fall to the ground, just to be viciously attacked by the witch. Then Charmaine tries to call her. Since she doesn’t answer, Charmaine gets worried, and decides to leave the party, to check upon her mother. 

When she arrives home, she finds a lot of Jack-o'-lanterns, and her mother dead. Kira is then taken and killed by the witch. Charmaine sees the witch coming down the stairs, and tries to run away, but the front door is locked. She flees to the living room, but is surprised there by the witch, that is everywhere to be seen. She is then imprisoned in a pentagram, surrounded by pumpkins. The witch then stabs Charmaine with a knife, but even mortally wounded, she manages to escape. Then, in a surprising turn of events, Charmaine reveals herself to be some kind of sorceress, thus successfully subjugating the witch.

A family is packing their belongings to move, ready to leave a house that is apparently haunted. The couple occasionally argues for no coherent reason, and soon the wife suspects that her husband, always in denial, is concealing something from her. All the mysterious noises and shadowy figures that she sees he insists the raccoons are to be blamed, and builds traps to catch the animals, persisting to deny the paranormal phenomena. Conflicts increase as the woman claims she saw something in the basement, and her husband insists on denying it.

As she is troubled by her visions, she decides to investigate, and uncovers evidence of a crime related to Satanism. When she finally confronts her husband, he admits that he has otherworldly visions too. Soon thereafter, ghosts from the past return to torment the couple. 

A reclusive writer, John Stramen (played by David Clarke, in a great performance), wakes up from a nightmare – one where he was in a dark forest, working as a woodsman, when another man points a mysterious shadow close to him – and he goes to his desk to draw the horrifying creature of his dream. The darkness that revolves outside shows that his apprehensions can be more real than his imagination would ever be able to guess.   

The writer lives in relative isolation. When he wakes up in the morning, and walks outside with his dog, he sees that someone has messed up with one of his windows. Minutes later – deeper into the forest –, he sees in a tree the mysterious shadow that appeared in his nightmare, but it disappears as fast as it came. Then he stars to cut trees with an axe, to relax, and later he tells a friend what is happening to him. His restless nights are filled with extreme anxiety, and he always wakes up at dawn waiting for something to happen. In one occasion, someone bangs on the door violently. He goes outside, and sees some figures moving behind the bushes. 

When he pulls out a manuscript from his desk, titled Dark Strings, by Angela Stramen, we speculate that this woman is probably the lady that appears by his side in a portrait that he constantly looks upon, and that his book by the same title was indeed written by her, a work that she dedicated to him. In one single page, there is this picture of a horrible creature, similar to the one he constantly draws. 

Soon thereafter, John burns a doll over a barrel in the forest. Then, someone with a creepy voice starts talking to him. Taking courage, he turns around his head, just to see the abominable and dreadful shadow of his nightmares, that horrendously multiplies. When he turns his eyes again after a few seconds, the creature had disappeared. John lives his days stuck in this uninterrupted cycle of intermittent hauntings. 

In one occasion, confiding his problems to his friend Beth, John says he made a terrible mistake and now he's paying for it. He explained that he “took something from this person”, and used for personal benefits, probably referring to his book, that he plagiarized from his deceased wife. His friend asked “did the person it belong to find out?” to which he responded “she can’t… she’s dead”. 

At night, he wakes up with the noise of his favorite portrait falling into the ground. Then he sees an enormous radiance by the window. He goes outside, and sees that someone has thrown his car into flames. By this point deeply paranoid, John gets suspicious of everybody around him. 

In another night, John wakes up, and misses Baako, his dog. He gets up, sees a lot of paper scattered in the floor, and then searches for his dog, to find only the collar, along with a trail of blood in the grass. He then calls 911, only to hear in the end the voice of his friend in the place of the attendant’s. He sees also the colossal shadowy creature observing him from a distance. Then he sees other shadowy creatures. 

He then enters a shed, and with an axe decides to confront the creatures. He sees there a man hanging from the ceiling. In another lodging, he sees miniature dolls, and hear nefarious steps. He hides behind a staircase, and down the stairs appears two masked men dressed in black. Both call him by name, and one has a female voice. Then John attacks one of them with his axe. Then his friend, Beth, takes off her mask, and tells John that they were just kidding. Then she says that the man John attacked is dead. 

Soon another man appears – a neighbor John had reprimanded earlier –, and John attacks him too, accusing him of having murdered his dog. Beth says that his dog is with her, and his neighbor says they were just trying to help. Beth explains to John that they were trying to help him find inspiration for his next novel. Then the shadowy creatures appear from the upper ceiling, and John loses his temper, screaming with the ghostly creatures. Beth and the other guy doesn’t see anything towards the place John is staring to. Then John starts to cry. 

In the final scene, we see John locked in a mental institution, working in a sequel to Dark Strings. He still listen to the voices and sees the dark creatures. 

An excellent movie directed by Sean van Leijenhorst – that displays perfectly what a profoundly disturbed and guilty conscience can do to a person –, Woods is probably the best movie featured on this list.  

Alistair, a somewhat discreet and reclusive scientist, is working in a secret assignment, apparently serving as a guinea pig for an undercover project. He has a terrible scar on his neck. When talking to a friend in a cafeteria, she gives him the newspaper, saying that his boss is on the news. So he sees a headline informing that Roman Grady (played by notorious actor Daniel Roebuck), a leading figure in the scientific community, responsible for cancer research, is missing. Alistair then gets profoundly disturbed.   

When he goes home, he sees his neighbors agglomerated in front of his residence; one lady says that someone has heard strange noises coming from his basement. When he enters his house, he sees a neighbor fixing his refrigerator, and saying that noises came from downstairs. Alistair says that possums made a nest there, and he will have to call an exterminator to solve the problem, but they doesn’t have to worry about it. Alistair rapidly expels his neighbor, while another one enters unnoticed by the front door, willing to experiment a key she found on the front yard. Apparently, they heard her entering; the neighbor persistently try to make his way into the house, saying that the noise they are hearing certainly isn’t made by possums.

The women experiments the key in the door lock; it matches, but Alistair manages to interrupt her, saying that she cannot go there. Alistair then expels his two neighbors for good. The woman says that she felt like something was calling her. Alistair then calls someone by the phone, but without saying anything, turns off after a few seconds. While resting near the basement, he suddenly has an anxiety attack, and hides himself in the bathroom. Apparently, he is seeking refuge from a dangerous person.  

He rests in the bathtub, and suddenly gets delusional, before recovering reason. In the next moment, he starts talking to his boss, Roman Grady, that says to Alistair that he wants to talk about what he had done to him. Alistair then replies, saying that he had took everything away from him. By the way they talk to each other, it is implied that Alistair had cancer, but was cured. Grady also knows about crimes and felonies committed by Alistair, and demands Alistair to stop saying to everybody how he had ruined him. He says that Alistair took great advantage in being fired, because he associated himself with an obscure organization. Grady continues, saying that people are chasing him to put their hands on what he has on the basement. Then Alistair asks Grady where he had been for the past couple weeks, and Grady responds by saying that he is exactly where Alistair had left him, “buried in the backyard”, leaving implicit the fact that Alistair probably had killed him, and he is delusional again, something that is confirmed in the next scene, as we see Alistair completely alone in the living room. 

Someone then calls Alistair, and says by the phone “its time”, and then he enters the basement. There, he stops in front of a camera, knowing that he is being observed. He see faces being projected in a white screen. Then he enters into a special chamber, and a voice transmitted by a loud speaker starts communicating with him. Meanwhile, his intrusive neighbor enters the house incognito, and she goes directly to the basement. Anticipating this, Alistair surprises her, and kills her with a shovel, after she screamed in panic, for seeing something horrendous off-screen. 

While contemplating an aquarium, Alistair has apparently pleasant reminiscences, that becomes more sinister, when the beautiful woman that is accompanying him gives a severe bite on his neck; so this was the reason behind the bandage that Alistair had on the neck the entire time, as well as the stitches, seen when he removed the bandage. Then Alistair takes off the aquarium a bizarre creature – that appears to be an alien –, with explicit orders of how taking care the little monster, having the obligation of showing him the pictures in the projector every twelve hours. He then starts to act like a father to the nefarious creature. An unknown person, that can be seen from behind, as well as from some other angles, gives orders to Alistair uninterruptedly. He also says that the creature is only the first of its kind, “soon there will be many more”. He also urges Alistair to move, for there will be hunters trying to prey on him and the creature. 

Alistair receives in his home his friend from the cafeteria. He deliberately lets the creature gets out of the cage, to kill the woman. In the final scene, Alistair is seen in his car, leaving the city, with the creature in a little cage, by his side. Beyond the Basement Door was written and directed by Jason Huls.

The movie begins with a woman walking disoriented into a forest. Six months later, a man named Kyle is coordinating a task force to find several people who had mysteriously vanished into the nearby woods, including one friend. Then he presents slides of some people found dead, with a bizarre dark substance within their mouths. They don’t know what it is. As he is speaking, some people begin to leave, until a woman approaches him, and says that a few years ago, she was found in the forest, in the same exact circumstances, with the black substance coming out of her mouth. She gives him a paper with her address, saying that her house is near the forest, and then she leaves. Her name is Mary Grey.  

A few weeks later, Kyle goes to her house in the forest with two more women, his girlfriend Sadie, and electronic technician Rachel, for further investigation. Initially they think no one leaves there, because it is possible to see that there is no furniture in the house, but then Mary appears, and welcomes them. 

She leads them to a corridor, where they start the investigations. The place strangely looks more like an abandoned school than a residence. They rapidly install the equipment, after which Mary starts to behave in a very eccentric pattern. Sadie then sees a mysterious dark figure, that disappears as fast as it came. Soon thereafter, they find strange paraphernalia in a wicket; among the miscellanea, there is a camera with recorded footage. It registered scenes of a team of paranormal enthusiasts, that investigated the same place where they are now, in an earlier occasion.    

Then they find the file of a psychiatric institution, with information about Mary Grey, soon discovering that her real name is Mabel Green. She suffers from several distressful mental conditions, including paranoid schizophrenia. They discover that they are in an abandoned psychiatric facility. Kyle wants to find Mary, but Sadie and Rachel stop him. 

They manage to go outside, but they discover that their vehicle is gone. Entering the building again, they see Mary, and Kyle tries to confront her. She confesses that all his friends died there, and expresses a nefarious, unstable and erratic behavior, taking pride of how haunted the place is. Then she asks them if they don’t want to be part of her collection. 

The trio try to run away. They end up in a run, after which Rachel closes the door, and demands that Sadie and Kyle save themselves. She is immediately killed by the malevolent entity hunting them. Outside, Kyle asks Sadie to save herself. Behind him, the evil entity involves Kyle in a black smoke and kills him; so Sadie becomes the only survivor of the group, running for her life.  

In the forest, Sadie touches a vase, and soon thereafter, the evil entity appears close to her. Nevertheless, the sensitive energy of Kyle – along with the previous victims of the entity – manages to avenge themselves, and kill the malevolent creature. Sadie gets near the evil entity, pulls the mask off, and sees Mary Grey dead. 

Then the story jumps to fifteen years later. Two teenagers are talking, and one of them gets a Ouija board, that she said she found on her mother’s wardrobe, and belonged to her father, or to his friend that disappeared. She then picks up a picture, where it is possible to see Kyle with another man. Then her friend asks if they would use the Ouija board to contact him, a possibility that the girl confirms.   

The girl calls her father. Then they hear a strange noise. Sadie and another woman, the mother of one of the girls, reprimands Sadie for letting the Ouija board accessible to the girls. She picks up her daughter and then leaves. Then the audience realize that the girl in the room is Sadie’s and Kyle’s daughter, and she never managed to know her father. Before Kyle had met his tragic fate, Sadie had confided to Rachel that she was pregnant, and was looking for the right opportunity to tell him, but given the circumstances, she never had the chance.  

In the final scene, the girl goes out of her room in the middle of the night, and sees a vase over a wood structure, similar to the one her mother had encountered in the forest fifteen years before, and touches it. Then, from the dark emerges an evil entity, ready to prey on the girl. 

20 – Downstairs 

A marvelously fantastic movie made by The Boxleitner Brothers, Downstairs is a golden treasure of short horror fiction, and certainly one of the best movies on this list. The plot revolves around security officer Flip Schubbers (played by Sam Boxleitner), who by the beginning of the movie, is calmly reading a book, while doing his shift in a regular condominium. He sees in the computer a note where Rhonda, the security employee from the previous shift, wrote “Don’t go downstairs!” When a psychotic couple goes bother him about the putrid smell of trash coming from the garbage duct, he politely reprimands them for their hypocrisy, as – for what he had observed –, their hygiene and recycling habits in their art studio are incompatible with their demands.  

Some minutes later, the tranquility of the night shift is disturbed when, inexplicably, music comes from a room that is empty, and the door of a storeroom opens by itself. While checking the other rooms, bizarre things starts to happen. Suddenly, Flip hears a terribly dreadful voice, and gets profoundly scared. He then decides to investigate what is going on, and courageously heads towards the direction where the voice came.  

Perceiving a putrid smell coming from downstairs, Flip wants to discover what is causing such a stench, but the door to the subterranean pavement is locked. When he goes away, behind his back a mysterious figure dressed in a hospital apron can be seen passing by, and easily opening the door; Flip turns around, get a glimpse of the figure, and sees the door open. A little frightened, he grabs a flashlight, and goes down to investigate what is going on.  

Down below, the security officer calls for the person he believes he saw upstairs. Disturbed by the dark, Flip gets nervous when he sees a knotted rope hanging from the ceiling. Soon, it is possible to see someone chasing him. Perceiving that someone is after him, Flip runs upstairs, but the door to the first floor strangely closes by itself, and he is unable to open it by the inside. Although he is desperate, he has no other option, but to return to the subterranean. 

Very cautious, he illuminates the darkness with his flashlight. He gets really scared, though, when a children’s toy ball run to his feet. Then a ghostly apparition suddenly comes from behind. The security officer runs away in desperation. After finding a hideout, he hears a girl crying, and illuminates with his flashlight the place from where the sound is coming. Then he sees another ghostly creature, and runs away one more time. Then he sees an enormously dangerous man (played by Lee Boxleitner) lurking in the dark, and again runs away for his life. Flip luckily crossed a gate that he managed to close. But his good fortunes lasts only for a few seconds. Soon he is encircled by three ghostly creatures, and is hanged by one of them. 

In the morning, the artist that bothered Flip in the beginning of the movie with his wife is seen entering the building. He gets a little distressed when he sees the door of his studio opened. Then he has the fright of his life when he comes across a zombie version of Flip. 

​Wagner

Tim Roth – whose complete name is Timothy Simon Roth – is a notorious British actor and director, born in London in May 1961, active since 1982. After gaining exposure playing a skinhead in the made-for-TV movie Made in Britain, Roth managed to consolidate himself as a promising young actor. For the remainder of the eighties, he was able to become a rising professional star, securing roles in several movies and television productions. 

His first major movie was the fabulous 1990 dramedy Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, written and directed by Tom Stoppard, based on a play written by Stoppard himself. Marvelously funny, on this movie the two main characters, Guildenstern (Roth) and Rosencrantz (played by Gary Oldman) – originally Shakespearean characters that are featured on Hamlet – decide to find the real meaning behind their mundane existence, when they are not needed in the plot of Hamlet.  

When the nineties came, Roth’s output increasingly expanded, as he started to participate in several American productions. In 1992, he starred in Jumpin' at the Boneyard, along with Samuel L. Jackson. On this movie, Roth played Manny, a character that surprises his younger brother Dan (played by Alexis Arquette) stealing his home. Then both brothers – forced by arbitrary and turbulent circumstances – starts to walk by the neighborhood of their youth, and slowly reconcile, only to succumb to a drastic fate, becoming victims of a sordid fatality. A beautiful movie with a virtuous and melancholic intensity, Jumpin' at the Boneyard is a marvelous, yet defining drama, where all necessary elements, from dialogues, to setting, to characters and competent direction, were perfectly combined altogether, to create a sensible and dense picture of the vulnerability of the human condition. 

In 1992, Roth had a major role on Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, initiating a partnership that would result in three more films. In 1995, Roth played villain Archibald Cunningham, in the epic drama movie Rob Roy, opposite Liam Neeson, that plays the title character Rob Roy MacGregor. A historical biopic, the movie narrates the story of a Scottish clan chief, Rob Roy, who clashes with a terrible and unscrupulous nobleman, Cunningham, that is desperate to subjugate the Scotsmen to his sordid interests.  

In 1999, Roth made his directorial debut, with The War Zone. In 2001, with the blockbuster Planet of the Apes, Roth managed to become a select member of Hollywood, consolidating his reputation as a viable actor, as well as his mainstream stardom and celebrity status, distancing himself a little from independent cinema and art house pictures, that were until then his primary sources of revenue and exposure, the means by which he became a notorious actor, in a similar vein to Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling and to a minor extent, Edward Norton.  

In 2005, Roth played a character named Jeff Platzer, in the horror movie Dark Water, starred by Jennifer Connelly and directed by Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles. In 2007, Roth starred as George Farber in the movie Funny Games. Directed by Michael Haneke, this pungent and aggressive drama was a remake of a homonymous 1997 movie, directed by Haneke himself. The plot revolves around a couple, George and Ann Farber (played by Naomi Watts), who are terrorized by two psychopathic individuals, Peter and Paul, played by Brady Corbet and Michael Pitt, respectively. The story, that has a dense and cruel premise, shows two hostile and nefarious youngsters, who amuse themselves by torturing physically and psychologically a decent and friendly couple.

In 2008, Roth participated in another blockbuster – The Incredible Hulk –, playing the hero’s antagonist, a character named Emil Blonsky, that transforms himself into a villain known as Abomination. With a budget of US$ 150 million, the movie grossed US$ 263.4 million at the box office. In 2012, Roth played Detective Michael Bryer, opposite Richard Gere, in the fantastic drama-thriller film Arbitrage.

From 2009 to 2011, Roth portrayed Dr. Cal Lightman, in the Fox Television Show Lie to Me. In a rare incursion into a TV series – the actor until then had participated only in four –, Roth portrayed for three seasons a man specialized in reading and deciphering facial microexpressions of people, instantly acknowledging if they are telling the truth or not. His company, The Lightman Group, was frequently employed by police and security agencies to interview crime suspects, to discover if they are telling the truth or concealing relevant information. 

Since 2017, Roth stars as the lead in the British-Canadian Television Co-production series Tin Star. In January, premiered in Sundance a movie titled Luce, on which he has a role. The movie stars Naomi Watts, his screen partner in Funny Games. In July, it will be released the movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, in which Roth has a small role. Directed by Quentin Tarantino, the movie features an ensemble cast that includes Bruce Dern, Al Pacino, Dakota Fanning, James Remar, James Marsden and Michael Madsen, amongst many others. 

As the decades passed, undoubtedly, Tim Roth has managed to become one of the best actors of his generation, doing complex roles in relevant movies. In a career spanning almost four decades, Tim Roth has participated in over eighty movies (including televisions films). We sure wish him to continue, hoping to see him in eighty more productions or so, according to his professional ambitions. 


​Wagner

Richard Gere is an amazing and terrific actor, unquestionably one of my favorites. Having started his career in theater in the late sixties, in the mid-seventies the actor started doing films. His first movie was the 1975 cop thriller Report to the Commissioner, on which Gere had a small role. The actor started to gain profile and fame in the eighties, with romantic and dramatic movies, that would ultimately consolidate his reputation as a viable leading actor in Hollywood and a seductive gentleman, somewhat appellative to female audiences. From then on, the actor became a major star in the American movie industry. 

His better-known movies in the romantic and drama genres are American Gigolo, An Officer and a Gentleman, Pretty Woman, Mr. Jones, Runaway Bride, Unfaithful and Nights in Rodanthe, amongst others. 1982 An Officer and a Gentleman increased Gere’s profile as a Hollywood star. 1990 Pretty Woman – on which Gere shared the screen with a then rising Julia Roberts –, significantly consolidated his place of honor in the industry, besides propelling Julia Roberts to Hollywood stardom. Richard Gere and Julia Roberts would again play a romantic couple in the fabulous 1999 movie Runaway Bride. 

In 2002, Gere shared the screen with the marvelous actress Diane Lane, on the brilliant drama film Unfaithful, a remake of 1969 La Femme infidèle, by notorious French filmmaker Claude Chabrol. On this movie, Gere plays Edward, a man that discovers his wife Connie (Diane Lane) is cheating on him with another man, Paul (played by French actor Olivier Martinez). When he acknowledges his wife’s infidelity, he decides to meet under a false prerogative his wife’s lover. When he sees in the man’s home a snow globe – which he gave as a gift to his wife –, Edward kills Paul in a mortifying explosion of rage. 

This is a formidable drama film, that puts all the correct elements into place to deliver to audiences a solid and drastic panorama of marital infidelity. An impeccable, cohesive and intense drama, Unfaithful is a marvelous movie, with a very involving, consistent and dense story. The movie was a box office success, that generated seventy million dollars in profit. Richard Gere and Diane Lane are radiant together. They had previously collaborated in the 1984 movie The Cotton Club. In 2008, they again played a couple, in the film Nights in Rodanthe.

Despite some romantic and drama movies that are astoundingly marvelous, in my modest opinion, what Richard Gere really does best, with exceptional capabilities – and with exceedingly proverbial acting skills – is to play law enforcement agents, government investigators and police officers, whether they be morally sensible or depravedly corrupt. Like Al Pacino, Richard Gere really knows how to perfectly play a cop by all means. On this genre, his most significant movies are Internal Affairs, The Jackal, The Flock, Brooklyn's Finest and The Double. 

On the 1990 movie Internal Affairs, Richard Gere’s character is Dennis Peck, a corrupt police officer, who built a misguided façade of impeccable conduct and role model for the Los Angeles Police Department. Nevertheless, he falls into the radar of Raymond Avilla (played by Andy Garcia), an Internal Affairs detective, who is willing to hunt and to eliminate police officers that are evil and corrupt. On The Jackal, Richard Gere played Declan Mulqueen, a former Provisional IRA member, that has to hunt a professional assassin known only as the Jackal, played by Bruce Willis. 

One of the best movies I have seen with Richard Gere was 2007 The Flock, on which he played Erroll Babbage, an astute, but brutal employee of the Department of Public Safety, responsible for monitoring registered sex offenders. He is about to retire, so he has to train his replacement, the somewhat idealistic, but persistent Allison Lowry (played by Claire Danes), on how to deal with violent abusers. Initially distrustful of the young woman's potential and determination, Babbage eventually becomes aware of her competence and dedication, and the two cross together professional challenges, upon which both learn a lot about themselves and the human nature in the process. Babbage’s approach to his job is one of deep commitment; he regularly visits a family whose daughter is a missing person, and her case was never solved, something that leads him to a feeling of failure and debt.

This movie is absolutely amazing; people who love relentless thrillers – with a lot of fear, demise and suspense –, will definitely appreciate this one. With an incisive and coherent plot, as well as impeccable performances by both Richard Gere and Claire Danes, The Flock is one of those movies that you definitely doesn’t wish to end; its marvelous qualities were all perfectly arranged in a dramatic, sensible and cohesive structure, that undoubtedly extracts the best storyline ever for this genre of movie. 

In 2009, Richard Gere played New York City police officer Eddie Dugan, in the   Antoine Fuqua directed cop thriller Brooklyn's Finest. On this excellent movie – the very best in Gere’s career, in my opinion – the actor played a cop about to retire (yes, in a similar vein to his character Erroll Babbage in The Flock); he has only one week left of service, so he is designated to oversee newly hired police officers. He executes a relatively mediocre work, and his first partner, after a coward attitude on the part of Dugan, that refused to interfere in a couple’s argument – upon which the husband became violent – under the pretext that they were in another police district zone, asked his superiors to change the mentor. In the next day, he was killed in action. Then Dugan, with a new partner, was implicated in a store discussion, over an attempted robbery. His partner had fired his gun, leaving the supposed assailant, a teenage boy, deaf, which puts Dugan in a controversial position, in direct conflict against his superiors. His only comfort in life is a prostitute whom he regularly visits, and he plans to ask her to run away with him when his retirement begins. 

This awesome movie also stars Ethan Hawke and Don Cheadle as police officers. All of them cultivates a very different relation to their jobs. The storyline has no central plot, and keeps interchanging between the major characters. Wesley Snipes also stars in the movie, as a notorious criminal, that has a somewhat close relationship with Clarence Butler, Don Cheadle’s character. Vincent D'Onofrio does a small part in the beginning of the movie. 

A formidable movie, one of the best cop thrillers that I have seen, Brooklyn's Finest has a spectacular and exceptional storyline that revolves around human dilemmas, the general uneasiness of life and the problems brought about by police corruption. A great work of art that definitely delivers a sensational and suspenseful color of density, apprehension and drama into the plot, this astoundingly marvelous movie has everything to please enthusiasts of the genre.  

In 2011, Gere played retired CIA agent Paul Shepherdson, in The Double. The plot concerns a dangerous mission that requires consistent investigation. Shepherdson is summoned by his former superior, Tom Highland (played by Martin Sheen) to investigate the homicide of Dennis Darden, a politician, whose M.O. resembles a professional assassin he tried to catch in the Cold War, but failed – a mysterious soviet agent known only as Cassius. After positively assuring to Highland and his former co-workers that the killing was done by a copycat murderer, Shepherdson is assigned to work with a young and skilled agent, Ben Geary (played by Topher Grace), an enthusiastic and intelligent professional exceedingly determined to catch the killer, to bring light to the homicide. Geary is also a talented criminologist, and has done research and written a dissertation about Cassius.  

After the proper investigations, Geary eventually discovers, and reveals what he already suspected from a long time: that Shepherdson was in fact Cassius. In the end, when confronted by Geary with the information, Shepherdson confirms, and reveals that, likewise, he discovered Geary to be himself a double agent, a Russian spy, who was carefully chosen and led to this precise circumstance by his superiors in the Kremlin, to capture him and to put a definitive end to the Cassius dossier. He even killed Dennis Darden using his M.O. to attract his attention. In the end, they unite forces to capture a dangerous criminal named Bozlovski, a long personal feud of Shepherdson, who later dies from injuries sustained in the resulting confrontation, after killing Bozlovski using his typical M.O. as Cassius, slicing the throat with a wire hidden in his wristwatch. When authorities arrive, to protect Shepherdson’s reputation, Geary lies, and says that Bozlovski was Cassius. He also decides to stay in the U.S., with his wife and son, abandoning the idea to return to Russia.

A great movie that definitely fulfills the expectations for a decent spy thriller, some things in the storyline where relatively obvious, given to the title of the film, that already delivers a clue. Nevertheless, the “double” to which the title refers is ambiguous, as can refer to either Shepherdson or Geary, the two main characters.

On these three final movies that I want to comment, Richard Gere haven’t played cops or law related roles, but likewise, they were all morally deficient and cynical characters, aggressive to some extent. In 2007, Richard Gere played unscrupulous and egocentric journalist Simon Hunt, in the movie The Hunting Party. On this movie, his character reunites with a former partner, known only as “Duck” (played by Terrence Howard) to catch war criminal Dragoslav Bogdanovi
, nicknamed “The Fox”, a depraved villain loosely inspired by real life Bosnian Serb politician Radovan Karadži
. Together with freshman Benjamin Strauss (played by Jesse Eisenberg), they embark on a sinister journey, to find the most dangerous men in the Balkans. 

Somewhere in the movie, the plot reveals the motivation behind Simon’s obsession for Bogdanovi
. Several years previously, Simon and Duck were work colleagues covering the Bosnian War. Simon in the capacity of a reporter, and Duck as a camera operator. Eventually, Simon became enamored with a local woman, and began a relationship with her. She got pregnant, and they were seeking a future together. Nevertheless, she died when the armed militias commanded by Bogdanovi
 completely destroyed the town where she lived. When Simon saw Bogdanovi
 for the first time, enraged, he felt tempted to attack him, but was prevented by Duck, as it was too dangerous, given the fact that Bogdanovi
 was surrounded by armed men. Therefore, Simon, fulfilled by hatred and bitterness, swore to track him down someday. From then on, because of his depression, Simon’s career as a journalist started to sink, and he never properly recovered. Simon was in fact seeking personal revenge.

On their way to catch the criminal – beloved and considered a national hero among the people in Republika Srpska, inside Bosnia and Herzegovina –, they encounter several problems and nefarious obstacles in the pursue of their objective. They even make their way into a UN office, who suspects them to be CIA agents, and eventually, they act like they were, when this proves to be a smart move. As the local villagers’ gossip spread, Bogdanovi
 discovers that he was being sought after by a group of foreigners, and, in anticipation, orders his henchmen to capture the three individuals. They are eventually captured, and when Srdjan, one of the most ruthless of Bogdanovi
’s bodyguards, is about to start killing them, he is surprisingly shot by a member of a CIA squad team, who arrives to save Simon, Duck and Benjamin in the last minute. 

After being severely reprimanded by authorities later, Simon, Duck and Benjamin are ordered to leave the country immediately. When they are in a hangar to board a plane to the US, they decide to run away, to track down Bogdanovi
 for once and for all. Having investigated his habits, they eventually discover his whereabouts, and find him hunting without his bodyguards in a forest (he had earned the nickname the Fox due to his habit of hunting foxes). They capture him, and leave him completely unarmed and helpless in the busiest area of a village full of people related to the victims of his cruelty, leaving them to do justice with their own hands. They recognize him, and Bogdanovi
 fruitlessly try to run. 

The movie ends with Simon and Duck reaffirming their friendship. In the closing credits, real life information about the characters based on real war criminals – Radovan Karadži
 and Ratko Mladi
 – are displayed, though they are now outdated. Both war criminals are serving life sentences for crimes against humanity. The movie also greatly espouses the hypocrisy of both the US and the UN about their attempts to catch war criminals in the Balkan Peninsula, since they in fact knew where they were, and openly engaged in exchange and negotiations with them in shady, immoral and obscure political interests. 

The Hunting Party is a formidably great and spectacular movie, full of action, suspense and drama, as well as elements of apprehension and anxiety. With a tremendously great and sensational storyline, this movie is an awesome tip for everyone who enjoys an impeccable and fabulously conceived international thriller. Certainly, this is a masterpiece, that can be included among Gere’s best movies. 

In 2012, Richard Gere played Robert Miller, a respected and successful business executive, in Arbitrage. Nevertheless, things are not what they appear to be. Miller’s company has been involved in fraud by his own initiative, and he has an affair with a woman. He has been leading a double life, and concealing it from his family.  

In a certain occasion, he gets involved in a car crash when he was with his mistress, and she dies. Miller becomes desperate to leave, and disappear from the scene. He then calls Jimmy Grant (played by Nate Parker) the son of an employee – that is somewhat indebted to Miller, since he helped him in the past with the authorities, when he got involved in illicit activities – to pick him up on the spot and take him home. He arrives late to his residence, and his wife (played by Susan Sarandon), unbeknownst to him, was awake in bed, and starts to get suspicious of him. 

When investigations about the accident starts, police detective Bryer (played by Tim Roth) rapidly becomes distrustful of Miller, especially after discovering a connection between him and Grant. Meanwhile, Brooke (played by Brit Marling), Miller’s daughter and his business associate, discovers the fraud, and confronts her father. 

Bryer eventually takes forward the case against Grant, while trying to arrange evidence against Miller. Facing the possibility of jail, Grant begins to press Miller to confess the crime to the police. Staring at the moral and ethical consequences of his actions, Miller knows that turn himself in is the right thing to do. Nevertheless, Miller is about to sell his company in a multimillion dollar deal. He cannot confess the crime in the moment, because he will lose the deal, provoking a major scandal in the financial market, ruining himself, his family and all his group of investors. He tells Grant that they have to wait, until the deal is properly closed.    

Nevertheless, Miller manages to arrange circumstances on his behalf to avoid prosecution, and accuses detective Bryer of falsifying evidence to implicate him in the accident, which is believable enough to convince authorities. Subsequently, the law official is forbidden to get near Miller. Even the case against Grant is dismantled. But things are not going as well as Miller thinks. His wife knows everything and wants the divorce; she openly tells him that she was awake the day he arrived late at home, and will tell everything to the police if he doesn’t sign the papers. In the end of the movie, Miller is seen receiving a homage in a luxury social dinner. 

This is a spectacular and unforgettable movie, that highly exposes the hypocrisy, so normal in the society of appearances that we live in. With a decent, intelligent and cohesive plot, the storyline departs and evolves from the axial point of a debatable and suspicious circumstance, questioning what really hides behind the façade of a respectable man. All the four major characters in the movie were marvelously displayed by the dynamic, gracious and vivid performances of Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Brit Marling and Tim Roth.  

The Dinner, released in 2017, is one of Gere’s most recent films. He had done only one other movie after this, titled Three Christs, that was released in the same year. On The Dinner, the plot is very simple. Two couples, Stan and Katelyn Lohman (Richard Gere and Rebecca Hall), and Paul and Claire Lohman (Steve Coogan and Laura Linney) meet at an exclusive restaurant. Initially, everything is unclear, and things develop gradually and surprisingly. Stan and Paul are brothers. Stan is running for political office, and Paul did not wanted to go. It’s difficult to understand what they have to discuss so urgently, as tensions are clear, especially between Paul and Stan, although Paul is hostile and exceptionally rude to everyone.

As the movie develops, we learn that their teenage offspring, Michael Lohman, son of Paul and Claire, Rick Lohman, son of Stan and his ex-wife Barbara (played by Chloë Sevigny) and Beau Lohman, adopted son of Stan and Barbara, had committed a vicious, sadistic and brutal crime together: they had burnt to death a homeless person inside an ATM. Therefore, the couples have to decide together what they will do. Stan favors telling the truth to the authorities, while Claire refuses to surrender her son, and to accept that they did what they did on purpose, trying to convince herself, as well as the others, that everything was a terrible accident. Which evidences left clear, wasn’t at all. Nevertheless, Claire do everything in her power to protect her son, and prevent him from facing the consequences of the horrendous ordeal he committed, and for which he was the major responsible. 

Although this movie is much more frozen and slow – predictable and monotonous to a moderate degree – compared to the other movies mentioned above, even so The Dinner has strong qualities. The plot is cohesive, afflictive and dense, the dialogues are intelligently displayed, and the general storyline is very apprehensive, credible and genuine. The fragile relationship between the characters alludes to the difficult and complex dramas of reality, and the hostility that arises among them expresses the natural conflicts that exists within a family. Definitely, The Dinner is an interesting movie, competently directed by the exceedingly talented Israeli-American filmmaker Oren Moverman.

With more than fifty films in his curriculum, Richard Gere has conquered his place of honor in the American movie industry. In the current year, he stars as Max Finch in the BBC television series MotherFatherSon (written exactly as it is, altogether), which marks a drastic shift in Gere’s career. This is the first time he stars in a television series. Gere has scarcely done any television work in the past. 

Observing his career attentively, we learn that it is possible to see two different versions of Richard Gere. One that is more charismatic and serene – almost fun, depending on the film –, present in romantic and drama movies, and the other that is more brutal, hostile and ferocious, that is possible to see in cop thrillers, although more aggressive, serious and dense characters share these same features in movies that are not necessarily police-related tragedies, but delves deeply into the dark underground of the nihilistic and obscure paths of the human nature, like the last movie mentioned, as well as several others. 

Richard Gere, who is sixty-nine years old, is deeply involved in humanitarian causes throughout the world. He is a practicing Buddhist, and supports the Tibetan Independence Movement. As to what concerns his professional career, he will certainly continue his memorable contributions to cinema, the big screen and the dramatic arts, as audiences surely expect to see him in many more movies and roles in the future. 



​Wagner

Over a falling agony 
Melancholy rises
Nobody will ever feel or see
the distant grace 
of a splendor
that never was   

So all the sodomy upon which the human beings enjoy their disgrace
Becomes a paradox
We try to be invisible, but in fact, we’ll never be
So many distant planets are tired of us
A complex diagram of fragile behavior
Delineates our sour existence
Now it is evident

We will never become
We will never feel   
The solitary presence
Of our ghostly demise


​Wagner

If we fall
Altogether
Nobody will ever promise rescuing us 

Sincerely, I will never see
I will never feel 
The lightness density of life
Over the horizon 
Of your eyes again 
 

​Wagner

Unrestrained 
By a severe darkness
Nothing in this world could be forgotten
Easily 
Except for your kindness 
A sensible intuition

Everything remains unrestrained 
A desolation that could be manipulated 
Through a forest 
Of consecrated brains  
Shattered illusions of false memories
My shadows remain obliterated 
By a horrendous  
Disposition of time


​Wagner

Now we feel
One thousand skies
Falling over 
Our unspeakable desolation 

Into the vicinities of our splendorous discontent 
Life never manages to be an instant fortuitous glory
Into the graceful, but somber distance of a moribund solitude
A breathtaking rudeness 
Consolidates the painful road 
To desertification  

And we never feel the risk of monotony
Desolation – by itself – strikes us indirectly
Blank faces never stares at each other  
Only an empty universe
Will be allowed 
To understand precisely 
the vibrant and cold  
eternal darkness of the night 


​Wagner

Iris is an American synthpop duo, active since 1993, integrated by musicians Reagan Jones and Andrew Sega. So far, they have released five albums: Disconnect, in 2000, Awakening, in 2003, Wrath, in 2005, Blacklight, in 2010, and Radiant, in 2014. Iris was founded by Reagan Jones and Matt Morris, who worked together for several years under the name Forgiving Iris, before shortening to Iris. In 2000, they released their debut album Disconnect, who earned them two awards, and inserted the act into the spotlight of the underground music scene. 

Eventually, creative divergences between the duo made Morris leave the project. So, Jones – searching for a replacement – found Sega between a mutual acquaintance, and they started working together; initially in a more experimental ground, to see what ideas they could materialize as a team. Shortly thereafter, though, the musical dynamic between both became so successful that Sega was immediately integrated into Iris, and now these two talented musicians have been collaborating for almost two decades.  

Despite the fact that Iris was never allowed a space into the mainstream – you probably never heard of them before – the duo achieved modest degrees of recognition in the underground synthpop scene, both in the United States and Europe. They tour regularly around the globe, together with other acts of the genre, always supported by a loyal and devoted fan base. 

So, I selected below my favorite Iris’ songs, some of which are probably among their relevant and best-known hits. Influences easily recognizable in their sound are British bands like Depeche Mode, New Order and Erasure, that evidently helped Iris to shape their musical style and sonorous identity. Nevertheless, they were influenced also by several other important musical acts, amongst them, more conventional groups, like R.E.M. and The Killers

This is one of their most beautiful and recognizable songs. With soft – somewhat conventional –, but elegant and poetic harmonies, The Picture displays a gentle and gracious melodic atmosphere, that uncovers the flexible tenacity of its melancholic sonorous layer. Ironically, this marvelous hit is not theirs, it’s a cover song originally written and performed by German synthpop singer Hubert Kah. 

A simple, but marvelous song that remembers a little Depeche Mode in their period of transaction to a more mature pop style in the mid-eighties, Prophetic is an elegant, somber and diffusive track, that perfectly embodies the precise qualities of Iris’ music – sober mordacity and lucid melodies –  and delivers the genre as it should be: direct, melodic, gracious and vibrant.

With a very sympathetic and almost romantic atmosphere, Twilight is another song that can be considered a trademark of the duo’s style. With simple, but gracious and rapturous melodies, the harmonies evocate a sentimental splendor, that slowly dilutes into the infinity of an elegant and surreal dream pop placidity. Sidelined by a fugacious vivacity that circulates within its reflexive density, its serene musical diagram revitalizes its inherent beauty with a deeply poetic and humane fragility.

With more aggressive musical tonalities than usual, New Invaders has an energetic and powerful harmonious vitality, despite its simplicity, conciseness and lack of extraordinary features. With a somewhat acerbic melody that revolves around a subtle and disdainful ferocity, the tempestuous layout of the song unveils its restless creative grandiosity, despite an opaque generic ambivalence, that is normal within the genre. 

Last, but not least, Lands of Fire is a beautiful song, that condensates with marvelous intensity the principal virtues of the duo’s music. With splendid harmonies that penetrates deeply into the creative wall of an objectively dense, but expansive mosaic of creative dissonances, Lands of Fire departs from the organic musical devices inherent to the genre, but reshapes them in a more fluid and flexible sonorous sensibility. Almost aspiring to be a delightful anthem of comprehensive and contemplative susceptibility, Lands of Fire reunites in its rhythmic vortex the serene vivacity that is typical to Iris’ music.   

While Iris is not well known as it should be, the veteran duo – soon it will be twenty years since the release of their debut album – certainly has left a profound mark in the synthpop underground community, with their sentimental and melancholic songs, that helped shape and revitalize the modern trends of the genre. Bringing up new enthusiasts to their music with each new record, we hope Reagan Jones and Andrew Sega continue to work on Iris for years to come, creating more beautiful songs, as they do it so well, and releasing more amazing albums, unfolding new grounds and challenges to their creativity, in accordance to their musical aspirations. 


​Wagner

Musicology, in short, is the scientific study of music, something that can involve a lot of disciplines and correlated studies, like historical musicology and ethnomusicology, amongst many others; basically, this area of knowledge embraces everything concerning the relationship human beings have with music, from the perception of sound, until the behavioral response one has with a certain genre – or genres – of music, as well as aesthetic combinations, music theory, music therapy and several other fields of study, that can multiply into different categories. As a matter of fact, it’s a marvelously splendid and complex area of human knowledge.  

But, moreover, I want to digress a little about the way we develop our musical preferences. This field of knowledge also concerns musicology.  

Early musical influences and formative years

First of all, something inherently responsible for the development of our musical preferences are related to the ambient where we grow up, especially since early infancy. I would like to share some fragments of my personal experience, if that’s all right with you. My father was a non-professional musician from his early adulthood, having played in some bands throughout his life. In my childhood – early eighties –, he was the only major source of musical reference I had. His favorite band was The Beatles, so I was surrounded from the beginning by British rock, getting acquainted with vinyl albums, something that later became a passion. Some years ago, he gave to me all his vinyl records, a modest collection that includes Beatles, David Bowie and George Harrison, to name just a few. There are some exceedingly precious and marvelous rarities in the collection he gave me, be sure about that. 

A few years later – after my mother and father divorced –, in late eighties to early nineties, my mom also became an influence in my musical preferences. As a consequence of our close relationship – we always lived together –, I developed a personal taste for one of her favorite musical groups, the Norwegian band A-ha. This passion was by far greater than The Beatles. Over the years, the passion just grew, to the point that I have almost the entire discography of the band, except for their latest albums. I have CD’s, DVD’s and one vinyl album of A-ha, a band that became a sensational success in my country, Brazil, in the eighties. In 1991, A-ha won a Guinness World Record, when 198.000 people attended a concert they performed in Estádio do Maracanã, a football stadium in Rio de Janeiro. In 2002, my mother and I went to an A-ha concert in the city of Porto Alegre, during A-ha’s tour of their album Lifelines, one of my favorites. In the mid or late nineties, by my mother’s influence, I also started to like British duo Tears for Fears. 

Nevertheless, doesn’t matter the influences we may have in early life, eventually we develop our own taste as we grow up, that can be drastically different from the music of our primary education. Some people even rebel against these formative influences, and develop a musical taste entirely different from the references they had. Certainly, our personal preferences can change several times throughout our life, as we – more or less – dare to listen to different things.
The general cultural content of a person may stay intact; one may never be too naturally eclectic, for example, a lover of gospel music that is also someone who loves jazz, classical music, funk and trash metal – though some people have a degree of eclecticism superior to others. So, while our cultural identity may stay relatively homogeneous, our musical preferences can change, probably several times, over the course of life. All of us eventually get bored of certain albums, songs and bands, and proceed discovering new musical groups, albums and genres of music, expanding our personal sound experience. 

Several years ago, when I was working in the night shift of a company – in the warehouse department –, I discovered a radio station, coincidentally located in my city, where, beginning in a certain hour, they played only the type of music similar to the ones featured in the mixes below. At dawn, beginning at 11 pm or midnight, there were no commercial breaks. In the calmer nights, I could listen to these marvelous genre of music peacefully, especially in the one-hour interval I had for dinner.

On Fridays, generally, the sound was exceedingly bad. Starting at midnight, the radio station played dance and electronic music – I think a subgenre similar to Psytrance –, where nonsense sounds were played endlessly, completely devoid of coherent and beautiful harmonies. But with the exception of Fridays, the other days of the week usually had very good, sometimes excellent, songs. Unfortunately, on late night and dawn, singers or song names where never pronounced, the radio station just played one track after another, in direct sequence. Some of them I was able to identify years later searching on Google or YouTube, by writing (wrongly or correctly) some lines of the lyrics that I could remember. Some of the songs I (re)discovered were Face to Face, by Daft Punk, Déjà Vu, by Beyoncé (the Freemasons Remix version), Good Life, by Inner City, Still Here, by Aural Float and Love Rain Down, by Gary B, to name just a few.

Since then, I developed an inextricable passion for this genre of music – adult contemporary –, and for underground alternative music in general; I already had it, but it was dormant, though somewhat latent. Listening to that radio station opened up my musical perceptions, and expanded my personal musical horizons. I’m always eager to discover musicians, bands and songs that are not well-known – especially the ones that are completely unknown –, to appreciate all the hidden treasures that are concealed somewhere. And I definitely want to inspire people to do the same. 



​Wagner

Jards Anet da Silva – better known as Jards Macalé – is a Brazilian singer-songwriter, active since the mid–sixties. Born in 1943 in the Tijuca neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, Macalé had a precocious contact with music through his family in his childhood, and formed his first musical groups when he was a teenager. Soon thereafter, he learned how to play several instruments, like cello and acoustic guitar, as well as musical theory. In the sixties, Macalé gained some prominence when he became involved in the Tropicália cultural movement, that would later reveal many talented musicians, some of which would become relevant artists in contemporary Brazilian music. By the late sixties, Macalé had established himself as a prominent songwriter, having songs of his authorship recorded by other artists. He also became a respected concert manager, and with some partners from the music business, created his own spectacle agency.

By the late sixties and early seventies, Macalé was a solid name in the business, working mainly for other artists. He wrote songs, musical arrangements, assisted in production and recording, and organized everything concerning the musical direction of concerts and LP’s. Nevertheless, he sought to venture into a solo career; so, in 1970, he released a compact, titled Só Morto. Soon thereafter, now renowned singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso invited Macalé to record an album with him in the UK – together with other artists –, and Macalé accepted. Macalé worked as a musical director for Caetano Veloso, but when the album, titled Transa, was released in 1972, Macalé became extremely resentful after discovering his name was not in the credits.   

When the bitterness was over, Macalé returned to Brazil and started working in his first full-length album. The eponymous Jards Macalé – an album containing nine tracks – was released in the same year as Transa, by Caetano Veloso, in 1972, Macalé also worked with the same musicians, Lanny Gordin and Tutty Moreno.

In the following years, Macalé also achieved moderate prominence as a soundtrack composer for films and theater plays; he is occasionally employed as an actor by some of the productions for which the music he signed the score. 

Besta Fera, his most recent release, is an excellent and genuinely Brazilian masterpiece. The album has twelve tracks: 1) Vampiro de Copacabana; 2) Besta Fera; 3) Trevas; 4) Buraco da Consolação; 5) Pacto de Sangue; 6) Obstáculos; 7) Meu Amor Meu e Cansaço; 8) Tempo e Contratempo; 9) Peixe; 10) Longo Caminho do Sol; 11) Limite; 12) Valor; while this album delivers some of the more general trends that were always present in popular Brazilian music, the peculiar style of Jards Macalé is decidedly authorial and intrinsically singular. His creative sensibilities playfully disperses the harmonies among the volatile dissolutions of his soft, somewhat jazzy and fragmented melodies.

Although the entire album is a formidable, original and passionate work of art, the tracks that mostly caught my attention are Buraco da Consolação, Pacto de Sangue, Obstáculos and Meu Amor Meu e Cansaço; the fourth until the seventh, in direct sequence. The final song, Valor, also has a deeply introspective, lugubrious and sensible premise, that is wonderfully filled by a soft, but melancholic tenderness.  

With some Bossa Nova and neoclassical elements subtlety incorporated into the dispersive and elegant structure of his music, the style of Jards Macalé is widely impregnated with the glorious, refined and exotic tonalities of sixties Brazilian music. The fourth track, Buraco da Consolação, transmits perfectly the gracious sensibilities of this peculiar type of musical atmosphere, that displays a delicate, placid and surreal tenacity, whose latent, but soft and imponderable melodies undoubtedly revitalizes the sonorous past references of a country whose high culture was definitely at the peak of its splendor. 

Pacto de Sangue has a vivacious and graciously urban rhythm, whose playful guitar lines redefines the melodies over the renitent beauty of its exotic and charismatic charm. Obstáculos – with a relatively melancholic and somber atmosphere –, seems to acknowledge and project the exasperating shadows of a dying afternoon, that slowly dilutes into the vague and evasive underworld of a lugubrious life, that seems resented with the tragedy of its pale and lethargic existence. 

Meu Amor Meu e Cansaço – with sensationally vivid and splendorous musical overtones that dilates the tenacity of its resigned and serene stagnant graciousness –, displays a poetic sensibility that not only understands the lucidity of its cautiously sculpted and restrained melodies, but contemplates the fugacious contempt of an everlasting disillusion, that will be forever impregnated into the consciousness of the soul. 

Other songs, like Peixe, with its tender, humane and calmly smooth, captivating melody, Longo Caminho do Sol, with its fantastic choir of wonderful and amazingly tuned female voices, and Limite, with its poetic and melancholic atmosphere, sidelined by distant, despondent and dissonant guitar lines, are also wonderfully splendid tracks, that genuinely brings on the strength of its formidably consistent essence an exceptional degree of artistry.  

All in all, the whole album is fantastic, beautiful and full of a genuine artistic essence, whose soul is definitely shaped over a vortex of magnificent grandiosity.    

The way the artist explores sound textures and beautiful harmonies departing from guitar lines conceives a conjuncture of wonderfully creative cantilenas, that irradiates a graceful mosaic of melodies, that detaches its colorful horizons of dense and vivid serenity from the realistic depictions of a tender and sometimes despondent portrait of dramatically pungent sentimental tonalities. Evidently, Besta Fera is an album that aggregates a marvelous conjuncture of undeniable qualities to contemporary Brazilian music. 


Wagner