Waiting for what will come with the new normal, it is time to review the old abnormality. What movies released in April on any of the platforms did you miss? Which should be urgently retrieved? which not? We review from worst to best , the 10 most outstanding releases.

10. Tyler Rake (Netflix)

The big premiere of Netflix for quarantine and following also the most boring proposed one of the few heroes of action so far had shown something like ' orig ' (of super strength ) comic. Suddenly, the Thor or Chris Hemsworth who laughed so gracefully at his beer belly in ' Avengers ' is exhibited as a sentimental killer; an oxymoron very close, again, to the new normal. ' Tyler Rake ' is probably the latest and brightest example of how boring it can be to be permanently happy. Tired One has just seen this amazing waste of nothing and the only thing that asks heaven is another normality, although it is not new. Let's say the adaptation of the graphic novel 'City 'and written four hands by the Russo brothers ends up becoming the hands of the director of specialists Sam Hargrave in a wild and reactionary pastiche so entertaining that there is no other choice but to claim boredom as fine art.

Lovie Simone in 'Selah and the spades'.

9. Selah and the spades (Amazon prime)

Can a film be as perfectly grimy as it is fascinating? 'Selah and the spades ' is perhaps the best example of abyssal attraction: it has the same effect as looking at a cliff. It attracts without being clear what is the appeal of such an immense void. Tayarisha Poe's directorial debut is the result of an interdisciplinary project that mixes video, photography and a script that definitely fits in the corner of a paper napkin. It tells the story of the alien world of an American institute that we imagine as elite. There the gangs (or factions) deal with drugs and fight to make it clear who is in charge; all wrapped in an unreal, strange and undoubtedly magnetic environment. Too bad that between so precious and suggestive packaging what is offered is so close to nowhere. And hence, the relevance of the Nietzschean ' dictum ' on how the abysses return the gaze to the observer. If you want, it can be interpreted as the most obvious sign of the times we live in. But only if you want. Be that as it may, you have to comply with this film that promises to spread like a virus. Many more will come and will not necessarily make us better.

Daniel Radcliffe in 'Guns Akimbo'.

8. Guns Akimbo (Amazon Prime)

An employee of a mobile video game firm who spends the day vomiting bile on any social network (trolling trolls) suddenly finds himself the protagonist of a bloody video game (Skizm) halfway between the real and the virtual . What follows is the 'hardcore' (or why not porn) version of 'Ready player one'. Few such suggestive arguments for this time of hoaxes and impostures. What follows is a wise spectacle in which Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe, is confronted by the coven by obscene and more than violent force of his most intimate imposture. Kind of like, and excuse me, turning Heidi into a porn actress. Director Jason Lei Howden , formerly the author of the mindless hit ' Deathgasm ', more than pays tribute exacerbates the action and blood calligraphy of the violent videogame. Calling it irony seems too obvious. In reality, the idea is to go a little further to dismantle the addictive structures and manners of the virtual universes that are hidden behind the console. In short, it is about making a wild, fun and very wild metaphor of our misfortune, not time. The much vaunted trivialization of violence turned into a spectacle is not so much a cause of anything as a simple reflection of a deeper illness is what 'Guns Akimbo' comes to tell us from affection .

A picture of 'A secret love'.

7. A secret love (Netflix)

Sometimes the grace does not lie so much in the originality of the approach as in something much simpler and more and more complicated to achieve: sincerity. Chris Bolan tells the lives of two women. Nothing else. Everything runs in a straight line, without surprises, without unexpected turns of script, without shame if you want. They are two women who have lived 65 years together and who face the harsh evidence of first old age, then disease and finally death. They loved each other when they were forbidden and the secret of their love is exhibited with everything it has of resistance, of revelation, of recognition, of pain and, above all, of pleasure. No bragging, a little miracle.

Image for 'Beasty Boys Story'.

6. Beasty Boys Story (Apple)

Spike Jonze (not in vain he was responsible for the ' Sabotage ' video ) composes what he calls a "live documentary" and there, in the rigorous live (or 'live') that was said before, freezes more than the story of a mythical group, which also, something similar to an emotion. Yes, it is a documentary about music and musicians, but above all it is a film about friendship, about the uncertainty of youth, about the senselessness of good sense, about misunderstanding maturity and about time. And, indeed, what is music but time. Initiates to the Beasty Boys are likely to stay here; the others will find reasons to spend a well-deserved vacation with them, with the Beasty Boys, with those who remain and with whom they already are.

Javier Gutiérrez in 'Hogar'.

5. Home (Netflix)

The Pastor brothers have been warning against pandemics for years. His films prior to ' Home ' (' Infected ', 2009, and ' The Last Days ', 2013) were apocalyptic adventures based on the certainty of a world that, in its apparent solidity, was cracking. Everything excessively hard ends up being fragile. Now, the two brothers invite a change of registration. Where once there was destruction under the open sky, now everything runs inside. The film tells the story of a man obsessed with himself and with what society wants from him. And from there, from the desperate gaze of a Javier Gutiérrez besieged by consumption and the desire to consume, to the most intimate destruction of everything. Besides topics and tricks (that there are), there is a brilliant description in ' thriller ' mode of the virus that is still there and that we always carry inside. Confinement ceases to be an accident to become the only possible description of who we are. Bright and cruel.

Zita Hanrot in 'The Professors of Saint-Denis'.

4. The Saint-Denis teachers (virtual cinema and platforms room)

Every year he deserves at least one French film set in a school. This year's is signed by four hands Mehdi Idir and Grand Corps Malade (literally Great Sick Body). If they are more or less trained in the matter ... eureka! ... It is exactly what they have in mind. Indeed, the film that in French is called with the more graphic title of ' La vie scolaire ' (school life) tells the story of a teacher who one day lands at a school in a suburb of Paris. And there, basically, the story ends. What follows is not so much a narrative as the almost impressionistic capture of a mood. Everything unfolds on screen without interruption, without any limit that separates the edge of the screen from the other, from reality itself. And it is there, in the evident sensation of recognition (it does not matter whether it is Paris or Vallecas) where each frame takes shape and becomes large. And even sick with pure vitality.

Karen and Barry in 'Circus of books'.

3. Circus of books (Netflix)

Rachel Mason , the director of this delicate 'hardcore' prodigy with a family documentary look, grew up convinced that her parents ran a bookstore. Only that. She says that as a child, when she went to see her parents at work, her mother, the incredible Karon, urged her and her two brothers to look at the ground. "Something was seen, but little," says one of them laughing. But she, obedient and carefree, never looked up. She does it now and, with thanks, the girl who was looking at the ground, points the camera at her parents' faces to tell an essentially beautiful story of an obviously peculiar woman and man. But also understanding, fighters, imaginative and empathetic. And unprejudiced and free. Her parents, Barry and the aforementioned Karen, raised 'Circus of books ' out of nowhere , which, in addition to a pleasant business in downtown Hollywood, would eventually become the largest distributor of gay porn movies of all United States. Along the way, the viewer is invited, without major speeches or affected proclamations, to discover the role, between consolation and resistance, played by the bookstore during the harshest years of AIDS. That and the blind brutality of obscenity laws that harassed the gay community during the Reagan and First Bush administrations. And in between, Karen and Barry.

Image for 'Ex libris'.

2. Ex Libris (Filmin)

At the start of this monument of just over three hours in duration, an employee in charge of answering inquiries by telephone uses the same education and determination to respond to a man who is convinced of the existence of unicorns as to another who claims a 17th century file. Then the director of the Library develops in a meeting before his team the methods of public and private financing while Richard Dawkins exposes the reasons for scientific atheism in the conference room or a group of children attends a language lesson. They are just notes of a frieze that expands and floods everything as it progresses. Master Frederick Wiseman thus offers a meticulous vivisection of what appears to be a perfectly living animal: the New York Public Library. With ' Ex libris' , the director closes a kind of triptych that started in ' At Berkeley' (2013) followed in ' National Gallery ' (2014) and that is now living its perhaps crucial moment in the enlightened, educated and thorough claim of that which makes us members, all without exception, of a universal community, of a body as carnal and daily as, why not, mystical. Wiseman's belief in the healing virtue of culture and knowledge does not come from above but from below, from the surgical analysis of each of the pieces that make them up. The library is morally good because its organic functioning is.

Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg in 'Vivarium'.

1.Vivarium (virtual cinema and platforms room)

Suddenly, all the songs talk about our love and all the movies about our confinement. Lorcan Finnegan's 'Vivarium' is, in all probability, the extreme example. With Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg, the film is both the brightest tribute to ' The Exterminating Angel ' and a beautiful and precious epilogue to any of the brilliant seasons, but not the last, of ' Black mirror '. That and an even more surreal remake of Mercero's 'The Cabin' . A couple comes to visit the pilot apartment of an impeccable urbanization on the outskirts and ... there is no way out. The director proposes an immaculate staging at the height of a metaphor as evident as it is effective. You know, alienation, lack of communication and the abyss. That is taken care of. Finnegan to include some strange elements so that everything trembles. Is it all a product of aliens or are we aliens? And so. Without a doubt, a successful story, another one, for servants, maids and inmates. And so on until the new normal.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • movies
  • culture

Cine'Vivarium '; the film that portrayed confinement before confinement

CultureCultural guide to quarantine: arthouse cinema, free comics, new songs and books

Series 'The invisible line', ETA's first step towards the abyss