Popular reviews

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  Review by Sean Gilman ★★★★ 5

  The reason this works while The Artist does not is subject matter. Being set in the world of silent films, and transitioning to sound at the end as the lead character does, explicitly positions The Artist as an homage to silent movies. Thus, when it fails to correctly use silent film grammar and hammers us with ahistorical references (the dog and the adventure serials are products of the 30s, not the silent era), the movie just feels weird and unfocused (similarly with the use of the Vertigo score: it doesn't make any sense: it's both period inappropriate and thematically irrelevant, why should we be thinking about Vertigo in that scene?). The whole experience seems condescending towards silent film ("Oh isn't…

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  Review by Naughty aka Juli Norwood ★★★½ 2

  A Spanish twist on Snow White and the Seven Dwarves! It is a Gorgeous Black and White Silent Movie!

  I was glued to the screen the whole time! Beautifully shot and well executed! I was surprised to find out a silent film could be so entertaining! I had been avoiding The Artist for quite some time now and I feel like giving it a shot after seeing this wonderful film!

  I truly appreciated the dark atmosphere of the film! And the kinky evil stepmother was an unexpected bonus! If you feel like expanding your horizons I'd say give this film a shot!

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  Review by Edgar Cochran ★★★½ 5

  Matador Snow White and the Six Bullfighting Dwarves! Well, that's a twist!

  Whereas The Artist felt like "I want to revive an era", Blancanieves felt more like "I want to try that too!" Pablo Berger attempted, however, what few can accomplish successfully: to create a silent film in the current state of the movie industry, where the risk of a project is high, from both a financial point of view and from a studio perspective.

  Now, if we are purists, Blancanieves follows the silent formula less faithfully than The Artist. It doesn't feel like a silent film per se, but as a black and white film with no sound. This can be said because of the filmmaking style. It is…

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  Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★½

  A retelling of the Snow White's fairy tale by the Grimm brothers, this time set in Sevilla during the 20s and instead of a forest, it all takes place in the world of bullfighting.

  Two years before, The Artist won the Best Picture at the Oscars. Whether you like it or not, there's no doubt it all felt a lot like gimmick. If you enjoy those "gimmicks," good for you, but sadly it didn't transcend. That's wher this movie shines, the way how the script reinvents the classic tale and not only play with the lore of Snow White, but also many of the archetypes of the Grimm's stories. The Snow White as a child looks and plays more as…

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  Review by ejay ★★★½

  Fighting Bulls and Rules
  
  I don’t care if you’re making a silent film in the sound era, a black-and-white film in the colour era, or both. Heck, even if it is yet another Snow White movie regardless of whether it is darkened or sweetened, or just a cliché-ridden retelling in general. Just let all that artful pretentiousness come together in a way that still adheres to contemporary approach to filmmaking and not just unevenly using the language of silent film for kitschy throwback (*cough* The Artist *cough*). Such is the case of Blancanieves (2012), albeit all styles too.

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  Review by Rod Sedgwick ★★★★★ 7

  ''A minute of Philosophy - To yearn for the past is to run after the wind.''
  Russian Proverb

  With 2011's The Artist sparking a possible resurgence in silent cinema, I didn't actually think another would come along so soon, but what a true gift this is from Spanish filmmaker Pablo Berger of which he refers to as a "love letter to European silent cinema.''

  Essentially a Spanish twist on the fairy-tale of Snow White but with matador's and bullfighting set in 1920's Andalusia. Through it's monochromatic gothic-tinged lens we are drawn into world that at times is both haunting and melancholic, and at others wonderfully absurd and spirited, yet the balance of tone is always perfectly rendered with it's seductive…

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  Review by Ethan Lyon ★★★ 2

  1st Pablo Berger

  An admirable attempt to evoke the glory days of silent cinema hampered by a lack of fidelity to the style of the period and some rather unsubtle misogyny. Based on the iconic tale of Snow White, it relocates it to pre-Franco Spain and the world of bullfighting. In a nice touch, the dwarves are in fact played by little people. There are interesting nods towards genderbending in the bullfighting storyline by having a woman who appears masculine be the bullfighter. But this attempt to inject some subversion into the fairytale is undercut by the characterisation of the Evil Queen/Stepmother, which cleaves to a number of stereotypes about strong women. She's thoroughly evil and unrepentantly so; vain, murderous…

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  Review by Jaime Rebanal ★★★★

  Feels nice to see another film that came from around the same time as The Artist to revitalize interest in silent films after they've practically disappeared for so long.

  Pablo Berger's Blancanieves is one of the most stunning films that I've seen in a while, although the tendency to lean towards homage can only go so far. Being another stylized take on the Snow White fairy tale, I feel like there's a whole lot more that Pablo Berger could have achieved here with the fact that he's reinventing the Grimm fairy tale as a matador story set in 1920's Andalusia, but it's hard to not fall in love with the setting especially when it looks every bit as gorgeous as…

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  Review by Steven Sheehan ★★★★★ 2

  Third time watch and everytime it nudges up by half a star...not sure what will happen on a fourth.

  Confirmed as my favourite of 2013. It will take something special to shift this from top spot.

  If you haven't seen it, do so.

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  Review by Calvin Kemph 🤠 ★★★★

  Friends Rec Festival 2022 / Daydream

  Blancanieves is immediately successful as a modern silent film because it understands the charged image. It understands the power of the Matador. The Matador as a woman; she is Spanish Snow White. The film must understand the power and the poetry of all these objects and what combining them does.

  It powerfully pulls them together into stark black-and-white, beautifully designed and ornamented, and strives to find the modern power in pulling film back away from its language and succeeds here too. It succeeds, again, because it understands what an absence of language would do like it understands what the absence of colors would do, and how it understands what the mixed and chopped fairytale in a new setting would do.

  This fluid combination gorgeously concocts silent film, as it can exist today, and with the power with which it has existed before. A great idea documented here, ripe for further avenues of exploration.

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  Review by Kevin Wight ★★★½

  The effect of this immensely stylish silent take on the Snow White tale was muted by the runaway success of The Artist, but if anything this feels closer in spirit to those early pre-talkie days than that Oscar-winner.

  The fable is transported to 1920s Andalucia. Carmen is the daughter of a legendary Toreador who grows up with her kindly flamenco-loving grandmother after her mother dies in childbirth. Her father, who wheelchair-bound after being gored badly by a bull on the same day is too heartbreaking to acknowledge his new daughter. His nurse, the evil Encarna becomes his wife and, after her grandmother's death, she is sent to live with her wicked stepmother. So far so like the tale we all…

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  Review by Robert Beksinski ★★★★ 3

  I am glad that beyond The Artist, silent filmmaking has made a reemergence into modern and contemporary cinema. It can be easy to see the homage and nostalgia for the silent era in The Artist and while I still consider it the superior film, I think Blancanieves does an even better job at incorporating both the silent model with new age conventions creating a superb and unique experience.

  First off I have to admit that the visuals in this film were past the point of stunning to damn near indescribable. It is not as much of a pastiche to the classic silent imagery as it felt more modern in the film's framing. Sort of Malickian in its beauty but without…