I've had the privilege to watch it at São Luis movie theater in Recife. The place is really a character of the movie. The theater was at full capacity. 10% of the public was with a yellow t-shirt that Wagner Moura uses for 10s :-) I forgot how good it was to see movies in a theater. Everybody laughed or clapped together. I've never more seen a movie with so much popular appeal. People seeing their lives and history in the big screen. If it had won an Oscar, maybe São Luiz would exhibit it frequently. Like the Casablanca theater in Morocco that just exhibits Casablanca movie.
Pure cinema.
pearlsontheroad 3 hours ago [-]
Having grown up in Brazil in the 70s, I thought the cinematography of "The Secret Agent" absolutely nailed the aesthetics of that era.
forinti 2 hours ago [-]
Kleber Mendonça Filho's other films are great at analysing modern Brazil.
aeciorc 2 hours ago [-]
Neighboring Sounds is my favourite. It's the only movie I've ever watched that captures the psychology of living in a violent city: the mental load of constantly being in fear that something might happen to you, likely not today, but probably someday.
bugglebeetle 2 hours ago [-]
Bacurau is one of the best movies I’ve seen in recent memory and Pictures of Ghosts tells an amazing story about the history of Recife’s relationship to cinema.
padjo 2 hours ago [-]
Bacurau was quite a trip. I left that one pleasingly befuddled.
builtbyzac 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
JoeJonathan 2 hours ago [-]
Was this written by a person or an AI agent?
VenturingVole 2 hours ago [-]
It's a very badly made AI agent that simultaneously posted 3 comments.
zemvpferreira 1 hours ago [-]
I found it unsatisfying. Such a strong opening let down by a meandering movie with no payoff. Made all the sadder by great moments and performances spread thinly through the 2-something hours. I remember coming out of the movie theatre thinking there was a really enjoyable film buried underneath the crud if they could have had more restraint in the editing room. To each their own I suppose.
cassepipe 24 minutes ago [-]
Yes, I was a big fan of Bacurau and it works well as a fable but this one is very grounded historically and even with a basic knowledge of Brazilian history of this era I spent too much time wondering what was happening and why (even though I did understand everything, it's not cryptic either, just the rythm feels a bit off)
Excellent aesthetics though but I am less sensitive to that
andrepd 14 minutes ago [-]
Having no payoff is the payoff. After everything that's happened to him, he is killed offscreen and his son, now an adult, doesn't even quite remember him.
The journey is the point, basically :) The scenes with the fellow "refugees" are great, insightful glimpses into Brasil, into that 1970s Brasil in particular. They don't need to lead anywhere in particular for me to enjoy it.
That being said, I did like Bacurau and Aquarius more than The Secret Agent. But that speaks more to how incredible those films are.
anderber 4 hours ago [-]
The Secret Agent was not an easy movie for the average movie watcher. It had an unorthodox ending, graphic violence, and it's in a different language. With that said, it's too bad it wasn't able to come out with any Oscars. I can see why OBAA won quite a few awards.
dinkblam 4 hours ago [-]
> I can see why OBAA won quite a few awards
how can you see it? one of the worst AAA films in a decade, on every level including narrative and visual
eszed 3 hours ago [-]
OBAA wouldn't have been my choice for best picture, either, but it had some beautiful pieces of film-making. The long shot while running through the Sensei's safe house was great, and the car chase at the end was a) gorgeous, and b) visually not quite like anything I'd ever seen before. I can see what Academy voters liked about it, in addition to the "this director has been nominated so many times without winning, so maybe he finally deserves one" angle, which I think maybe had as much to do with it as anything.
I had no idea about this! Thank you, I quite enjoy Pynchon’s novels.
holmesworcester 2 hours ago [-]
Bravo, palmas! etc.
subpixel 1 hours ago [-]
Quality is not really near the top of Oscar eligibility criteria now, is it?
kenjackson 2 hours ago [-]
Well I think there are some people that disagree.
anderber 3 hours ago [-]
Academy members aren't always good at picking "good" movies. I'd argue they're actually pretty bad at it. Every once in a while they guess correctly. At least my 2 cents.
cammikebrown 2 hours ago [-]
Lemme guess… you didn’t like how “political” it was.
ubermonkey 2 hours ago [-]
OBAA was technically well executed but, to me, pretty fucking soulless.
I haven't seen all the nominees, but the ones I did see -- Train Dreams and Sinners -- were, to our eyes, profoundly better films than OBAA. I'm in particular interested in seeing Hamnet soon; everything I read about it puts it in the same category as TD and S.
OBAA was the safe Academy pick, and so that's what they picked.
holmesworcester 2 hours ago [-]
The visuals weren't terrible, I thought, but the writing, dialog, acting (except for Moura), and narrative arc were terrible.
It's one of those movies where almost everyone looks like they just really love being on stage ("isn't cinema lovely?") and where the writers have an idea of what cliches they're trying to work with but can't land them into an actual story, even a story made out of cliches.
padjo 3 hours ago [-]
What on earth is a AAA film?
kylebebak 2 hours ago [-]
There's no such thing (parent likely borrowed this term from the video game industry)
FuriouslyAdrift 2 hours ago [-]
The whole single A, triple A thing comes from league baseball. Single A was the lower leagues and AAA is the top of the heap pro ball. AAA denotes big budget tent pole productions. So big a studio could go bankrupt if it doesn't do well.
padjo 2 hours ago [-]
Ah so the OP thinks OBAA was designed as a big budget popcorn flick? No wonder they didn't like it.
FuriouslyAdrift 2 hours ago [-]
Paul Thomas Anderson will tell anyone who will listen that he doesn't make commercially sound films. It's kind of his thing...
They did throw some serious money at this film, though, so I can see where people would have strange expectations.
boogieknite 47 minutes ago [-]
when they said AAA i assumed it was satire
fleahunter 3 hours ago [-]
[dead]
haunter 2 hours ago [-]
Decent film but to me 'I'm Still Here' (Ainda Estou Aqui) was still a too fresh experience from last year to have a similar film again from Brazil set in the 70s covering the military dictatorship. I also think that I'm Still Here is a much better film.
forinti 2 hours ago [-]
I definitely like that film, especially the acting and the music, but I think that, as with most material that covers that era (arts, history, journalism), it focuses on the middle and the upper classes.
The poor get a footnote: what happened to Zezé? But the poor were the biggest losers of the dictatorship. It was at the precise moment that the country needed to modernise that the coup made everything stop and the favelas grew along with violence in the periphery. Maybe City of God is a better depiction of what the dictatorship meant.
marcosdumay 1 hours ago [-]
It's just now starting to become common knowledge that the military dictatorship didn't industrialize Brazil. On most circles, saying that it deindustrialized the country will surprise every single person, and get immediately rejected as false by a large share.
Propaganda is a hell of a thing. We are not even close to start that discussion, so it mostly won't appear anywhere.
expedition32 3 minutes ago [-]
Reminds me of the dictatorship in Suriname in the 1980s. It was not about ideology. The military was just corrupt- they even did business with drug cartels.
Generals can't fix the economy they can only use violence and repression.
basiliobeltran 2 hours ago [-]
One of the strongest movie start sequences in a while, it immediately sets the vibe.
beepbooptheory 3 hours ago [-]
One thing I noticed is that both this and another incredible film this year, Sirāt, were, at least in part, funded by a grants and state institutions.
If you haven't seen either, highly recommended. Don't watch Sirat if you're wanting a "good time," but I honestly can't think of the last time a film made me feel the way it did, especially the final minutes of it.
The Secret Agent is maybe as good though. Makes you want to say "they don't make them like this anymore.." It feels like a good long novel; every character, however minor, is rich, full of life, in some way beautiful. It's something about how the past has these pockets of clarity, bookended by loose ends and uncertainty. The mix of myth and anecdote. Pieces of life we can remember, those we can't... Five bags of popcorn.
FuriouslyAdrift 3 hours ago [-]
Another movie that kind of slid under the radar but is very watchable (and mainstream) is Nuremberg. It's just entertaining without trying to be too much. It's not "great" but it's not bad, either.
The immersion into the time and place was fantastic, the surreal elements being bold , outlandish, and unexpected were great. The time jump at the end was interesting. a great piece of work that some felt divided over as a general audience but overall memorable and ambitious
next_xibalba 1 hours ago [-]
I watched both The Secret Agent and One Battle After Another (didn’t see any of the other nominees). For me, The Secret Agent was definitely better.
Pure cinema.
Excellent aesthetics though but I am less sensitive to that
The journey is the point, basically :) The scenes with the fellow "refugees" are great, insightful glimpses into Brasil, into that 1970s Brasil in particular. They don't need to lead anywhere in particular for me to enjoy it.
That being said, I did like Bacurau and Aquarius more than The Secret Agent. But that speaks more to how incredible those films are.
how can you see it? one of the worst AAA films in a decade, on every level including narrative and visual
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vineland
I haven't seen all the nominees, but the ones I did see -- Train Dreams and Sinners -- were, to our eyes, profoundly better films than OBAA. I'm in particular interested in seeing Hamnet soon; everything I read about it puts it in the same category as TD and S.
OBAA was the safe Academy pick, and so that's what they picked.
It's one of those movies where almost everyone looks like they just really love being on stage ("isn't cinema lovely?") and where the writers have an idea of what cliches they're trying to work with but can't land them into an actual story, even a story made out of cliches.
They did throw some serious money at this film, though, so I can see where people would have strange expectations.
The poor get a footnote: what happened to Zezé? But the poor were the biggest losers of the dictatorship. It was at the precise moment that the country needed to modernise that the coup made everything stop and the favelas grew along with violence in the periphery. Maybe City of God is a better depiction of what the dictatorship meant.
Propaganda is a hell of a thing. We are not even close to start that discussion, so it mostly won't appear anywhere.
Generals can't fix the economy they can only use violence and repression.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir%C4%81t
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Agent_(2025_film)
If you haven't seen either, highly recommended. Don't watch Sirat if you're wanting a "good time," but I honestly can't think of the last time a film made me feel the way it did, especially the final minutes of it.
The Secret Agent is maybe as good though. Makes you want to say "they don't make them like this anymore.." It feels like a good long novel; every character, however minor, is rich, full of life, in some way beautiful. It's something about how the past has these pockets of clarity, bookended by loose ends and uncertainty. The mix of myth and anecdote. Pieces of life we can remember, those we can't... Five bags of popcorn.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_(2025_film)