Secret Agent (6.5/10)

This film earned four Oscar nominations, but I wasn’t nearly as impressed as the awards attention might suggest.For the first 90 minutes, I struggled to understand where the story was heading, and the 2-hour-40-minute runtime only made that disconnect more noticeable. With the entire film in Portuguese and so much of its meaning rooted in historical and political context, this felt like a movie that demands a stronger background knowledge than I brought into it. The acting is excellent throughout, and the cinematography is easily one of the film’s strongest assets. Visually, it’s striking and consistently well-composed, even when the narrative feels distant or hard to follow. Overall, I can appreciate the performances and visual quality, but the film itself never really connected with me. "In 1977, Marcelo, a technology teacher, moves from São Paulo to Recife during Carnival to escape his violent past and start over. He finds the city full of chaos, and his neighbours begin to spy on him."