By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Miguel Arteta
Cast: Salma Hayek, John Lithgow, Chloë Sevigny, Connie Britton, Amy Landecker, Jay Duplass, John Early, Sean O´Bryan and David Warshofsky.
Rating: Excellent.
Miguel Arteta, director of “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” brings “Beatriz at Dinner”, indeed it is the movie of the “Trump Era” and brings very good results.
The movie centers in Beatriz (Salma Hayek) a healer that attends a dinner of her wealthy clients in Newport Beach, California after her car breaks down.
In that dinner she will meet people who are indeed wealthy including Doug Strutt (John Lithgow) a business man with who has some problems with environmental groups.
Indeed the dinner will be not only a day that Beatriz will remember but the rest of the guests as well making it an unforgettable one.
The thing that made “Beatriz at Dinner” a very interesting movie centers not only was the story but it is told in a very interesting and original way.
The screenplay written by Mike White, who has written movies like “The Good Girl”, “School of Rock” and the upcoming “The Emoji Movie” again wrote a very interesting screenplay that consisted in characters that at the same time they have something in common and they don´t. White made a huge statement with his writing about how we are living in America with this movie and it´s a criticism of how you can be in a society with people who only think of what they own and how useless are without those elements.
Miguel Arteta´s directing was phenomenal and knew how to chose the right material in directing a great screenplay but also directing fine actors like Salma Hayek and John Lithgow.
John Lithgow´s performance is one of the most brilliant ones I have seen in his illustrious career and he is the personification of the typical unscrupulous business man and I hope he can get an Academy Award Nomination for this performance as well as Salma Hayek who gave so far the best performance till this day and she is fantastic.
I was completely fascinated with the setup from this movie and it has one of the most unexpected ending which I am not going to spoil but is a movie that is also a huge criticism towards society how we live today, specially in America.
And also is a criticism about immigration this film specially in one of the scene when they are at the dinner table they talk about the subject and it´s been told in a very original way.
The cinematography, editing, performances and score of the film are great ones and another thing that I liked is that has a lot of humor in it and very good and funny moments despite of being a dramatic film.
Miguel Arteta directed a fantastic film in “Beatriz at Dinner” and I put it as one of the year´s best films and this is one that you cannot miss.