Review: "The Secret Agent" is a mischievous masterpiece

by Cláudio Alves

Today, The Secret Agent begins its Oscar-qualifying run, ahead of an awards season it enters full of high hopes. And why not? At Cannes, Kleber Mendonça Filho won the Best Director trophy while Wagner Moura was picked as Best Actor by the Main Competition jury, a set of honors complemented by the FIPRESCI prize, which made it the Croisette's most awarded film. Between critical acclaim and yet more festival hardware, The Secret Agent was announced as Brazil's official submission for the 98th Academy Awards, where it surely hopes to replicate some of I'm Still Here's success from last year. Right now, it's up for two Gotham awards, competing in the categories of Best Original Screenplay and Outstanding Lead Performance. 

All that said, at this time of the year, it's easy to let oneself think about cinema exclusively in these terms. The race for gold is a thrilling diversion, yet it shouldn't distract us from appreciating the art for what it is. Nor should it flatten how we look at film. In The Secret Agent's case, this is especially true as it's a work much greater than any award could hope to be. Pardon the hyperbole, but I'd easily call it a masterpiece, an instant classic even…

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Pt 2: International Feature Race - Auteur Spotlight

by Nathaniel R

SOUTH KOREA's Park Chan Wook & Lee Byung Hun [image via Lee Byung hun's Instagram]

To broaden your appreciation of this year's Best International Feature Film Oscar race we already looked at some overall trivia. Before we get to the movie stars (the finale of this three-parter), let's look at some stats involving the artists behind the camera. It's auteur season! We're highlighting 8 directors due to their critical reputation, being a cinephile fetish object, or having previous Oscar history... or in some cases all three! We'll start with...

3 ICONS

• Park Chan-wook (South Korea's No Other Choice) 
Remarkably this 62 year-old auteur and Academy member has only been submitted twice by South Korea  despite a rich filmography...

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Oscar Volley: Best Director is an embarrassment of riches

The Oscar Volleys are back! Tonight, it's time for Cláudio Alves Eric Blume to discuss the Best Director race...

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, Paul Thomas Anderson | © Warner Bros.

CLÁUDIO: This early in the season, every race is somewhat volatile, prone to radical changes down the road to Oscar. However, I think that Best Director feels especially mercurial as far as nominations are concerned, though not for a lack of contenders - quite the opposite! Voters are spoiled for choice from a roster of strong candidates, all with mighty campaigns behind them, sterling reviews and eye-catching narratives. So much so that only PTA feels secure in his nomination bid, all but locked for the honor unless AMPAS pulls a 2012 on us.

Personally, I can't complain, even if he has been way more worthy of these plaudits in the past and should have already won a couple of Oscars - There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread come to mind. Of course, One Battle After Another is excellent, not some mediocrity destined to win apologies in the form of unwarranted trophies. The "River of Hills" chase sequence alone will surely be played in all tributes to PTA's career in a couple of decades. And yet, my mind can't help but wander to The Departed when pondering OBAA at the Oscars...

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Cannes at Home: From Linklater to Ducournau

by Cláudio Alves

Between an Oscar, a Silver Bear, and THE SECRET AGENT's sterling reviews, Brazilian cinema is having a moment.
The 2025 Cannes Film Festival is almost over, so I've got to get going with this miniseries. After the directors already discussed in parts one and two, it was Richard Linklater's turn to present his latest creation. Nouvelle Vague purports to tell the making of Godard's Breathless, paying homage to the vanguard's aesthetic in a fashion some have compared to Michel Hazanavicius' Oscar-winning pastiche. Lynne Ramsay proved polarizing, as usual, with her Die, My Love, a literary adaptation that's gotten critics raving about Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson. But the best-reviewed title of this batch has to be Kleber Mendonça Filho's The Secret Agent, a period thriller of epic proportions with Wagner Moura in the leading role. Then there's Tarik Saleh's supposedly underwhelming Eagles of the Republic and Julia Ducournau's follow-up to her Palme d'Or victory. The AIDS crisis allegory Alpha divided audiences and disappointed many of the director's fans, but that's to be expected with such a provocateur.

For this chapter of Cannes at Home, I invite you to revisit Linklater's Waking Life, Ramsay's Morvern Callar, Mendonça's Aquarius, Saleh's Cairo Conspiracy, and Ducournau's Titane…

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TIFF '23: "Pictures of Ghosts" Sings a City Symphony

by Cláudio Alves

When I walk around Lisbon, I often pass by places that once were cinemas, temples of art and communion left abandoned or transformed for new commercial purposes. There's a big one that got bought by an Evangelical church years ago, its screening room turned auditorium for religious spectacle. I've witnessed some of these changes, but many had already happened by the time I found myself alone in the city. My parents' memories and souvenirs tell the stories of a metropolis I never knew, invoking ghostly cinemas I wish I had seen. Lisbon is a graveyard for a moribund culture, the moving image surviving in a few palaces that persist, raging against the dying of the light.

While watching Kleber Mendonça Filho's Pictures of Ghosts, I couldn't help but translate its reflections to my beloved Lisbon. I imagine most cinephiles will do the same for their homes. It's an identification that shouldn't betray the Brazilian master's intent, which is deeply personal. But in specificity, the universal resides...

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