jlms

If you are looking for an action caper look elsewhere.

This movie tells two unrelated histories of two odd couples that consummate their friendships with an embrace.

The first couple is a school boy (not older than 15, since he is wearing a school uniform used in secondary schools in Mexico) and a supermarket cashier girl. The boy is initially attracted to her and musters the courage to approach her, she plays with him while having to deal with serious problems on her own life, and both grow closer to each other almost without noticing.

The second history is more interesting and weirder certainly, here a taxi driver picks up a guy that gets very sick on the taxi, once in the hospital the driver plays the role of a family member which eventually gives him access to the flat of the sick guy. He does this without malice, trying to be helpful along the way, but once inside the flat he decides to spend at least one night there, a more luxurious place than his own, which is shown in flashbacks. But then the daughter of the sick man shows up, after some initial friction they have to deal with the situation that leads to them becoming good friends, in spite of the taxi driver living a lie when he decides to pretend he was a friend of the sick guy.

The acting is quite good all around, the characters are all credible, the history is uncomplicated but presented with competence. Mexico City is a grim but non-threatening background where all the action happens which gives credibility to the two tales.

First the context: there is currently an small boom of a cult to the "Santa Muerte" (Saint Lady Death) in Mexico which obviously is grabbing the attention of many people in the country. People in the Catholic community in Mexico has derided this cult in many different ways going as far as equating it with Satanism, this is important because the movie has clearly this bias.

The film presents three different histories whose only connection is the involvement of the Saint Lady Death as an object of cult, although the film mixes characters of the three different histories in the same shot, the histories do not touch each other (which makes these gimmicky shots frankly unnecessary, no Amores Perros here I'm afraid). Needless to say, this being a propagandistic film, the Saint Lady Death cult is portrayed as something negative, the characters rejecting it having happy endings, the ones that don't suffering as a consequence.

The biggest history of the three follows the troubles of a little girl who gets cancer and is declared terminally ill. The parents in desperation try every remedy under the Sun until the mother in a fortuitous way finds the cult and this seems to cure her daughter. As the family pleases or displeases the Saint Lady Death the health of the girl takes turns for the better or for the worse accordingly (the poor doctor treating her I am sure got fed up with so many miraculous changes), until finally a battle of sorts between good and evil takes place. To say the ending is corny and kitsch is an understatement, this is the god of the 10 commandments done without filmaking craftsmanship.

The second history shows the problems of a guy that losses his job and his luck goes from bad to worse until he starts worshipping the Saint Lady Death, similarly his luck changes in accordance to how well he follows the wishes of Lady Death.

The third history, almost incidental, shows how a woman betrays her best friend with the help of the Lady Death.

I had two big problems with this movie. First the propagandistic tone of the movie. There are several points in the main history in which the characters rant on and on about "Jesus Christ the true saviour", but this is not done with the intention of advancing the plot of the movie but to moralise and preach to the movie goers, the only way I can qualify this is as propaganda and I , as a non Christian, felt quite uncomfortable initially, but they go so much about this that it becomes a self parody.

The second problem I have is the bad acting. I am sorry to say but the acting is as wooden as it can get, perhaps the actors involved have worked mostly on TV ( telenovelas perhaps?) where quantity counts more than quality, this shows and badly. Perhaps the best actor in all the movie was the little girl, maybe because she does not have all the hangs on of working for TV soap operas.

A forgettable movie, if anything an example of how not to do a proselytising film.

I just watched this movie in London's 3rd Spanish Film Festival.

Alatriste is the history of a soldier in the times of Spain's decadence as a world power, the soldier that gives name to the film, played by Vigo Mortensen, is involved in all kind of political intrigues (including assassination plots agains the most unlikely characters) and important battles while at the same time playing surrogate father to a boy, son of a comrade that died in the opening sequence, and getting involved with a beautiful actress (which is also whore to the ruling classes).

First the positives. The attention to detail is of high caliber, many scenes build great tension, for example the opening scene is full of imagination and is presented beautifully, the attention to several details of life in that time are humorous without detracting from the main plot.

Several of the actors deserve special mention. Ariadna Gil continues demonstrating a great versatility, hopefully this will be the springboard for a wider international carrier, the guy playing Malatesta does so with gusto and most definitively Vigo Mortensen gives gravitas to the main character (unsurprising if one recalls "An history of violence", this guy just keeps getting better).

The weak point is most definitively the direction, in a history that spans several decades you need to be very clear where you are going and how you are going to get there, on occasions the narrative is lost, leaving the viewer in the middle of nowhere in relation to a new scene (for example it is not entirely clear why they ambush Alatriste, if he is failing or not in favour with the powers to be, why the wars and the intrigue are taking place, etc.).

All gets a bit muddled and confusing, but at least the intentions are good, the craftsmanship of all the involved is impeccable and at the end one leaves satisfied but wishing the director had managed to tell a more internally consistent history.

At 2:30 long it may try some people's patience but it is worth the effort in my opinion.

I just watched this movie in the 3rd Spanish Film Festival in London.

Oh goodness, this movie is all over the place.

First the annoying voice over of the main character (Rodrigo) saying all this pompous nonsense, commits a cardinal sin in cinema, trying to explain with words what the director was unable to explain with cinematic language. If I wanted to read a script or a book, I would buy the script or the book. Utterly pointless and annoying to no end.

The relationships between the characters are badly drawn, one fails to see why the granddaughter (Octavia) is so angry with everybody around her, you can draw you own conclusions eventually, but the process of discovery is tiring and uninvolved because it is badly presented: if you want to build so much tension between 2 characters they need to be more often on screen together, not to have just a couple of incidental dialogues.

As for NY audiences not knowing about the conflict in question, well, sorry but any person with basic cultural awareness of the wider world should know about the Spanish Civil War and its most important references (1936, Guernica, General Franco and his fascist credentials, the Catholic Church support of Franco's regime, etc). The references in the movie are enough to understand the context where the characters live and lived, but perhaps the annoying voice-over detracts from this.

Also the scenes of "rebellion" of Octavia are utterly childish, nobody cares, nobody is shocked, which kind of rebellion is that? Octavia, the character after which the movie is named, has barely 2 or 3 scenes to herself, is pretty much ignored during the first half of the movie and all of the sudden she acquires some relative importance out of nowhere. Dismal character development.

Finally the political points made are handled without tact and have the stench of conspiracy theories, and are delivered, of course, by Rodrigo's voice over.

The music (some sacred religious stuff) begins to drill your skull after a while. How many times does the same piece of music need to be played in such a long movie? Numbing.

To be avoided frankly.

This movie was a surprise hit in Mexico because it dealt with a theme that had been touched little: the immigration, of mostly impoverished people, mostly Native American, to Mexico City.

The movie follows one of these people and how things go from bad to worse from him while trying to earn a decent living. Hecto Suarez chamaleonic skills are put to good use here.

The Mil Usos of the tittle refers to the 1000 different little jobs that these people have to do in order to survive.

Witty and uplifting, with a happyish ending, it is worth a look, remembering the tremendous restrictions Mexican Cinema was facing on that era both economically and politically. This is basically as good as it could get for private producers, which is quite depressing to say the least.

The first thing you have to keep in mind is the format of the movie (8mm), and unfortunately the transfer to DVD was not made very well (the sound is pretty poor).

Nevertheless it is an interesting little movie that feels more like a surrealist's dream than a movie proper.

The dialogue is practically non-existent, thus you are left with small vignettes and images of relevant moments in the life of the artist, this may appear confusing if you don't know much about Frida and Diego, but if you do it is quite a poetic view abut their life together.

This is a movie made before Frida Khalo became a global feminist icon, conceived before all the hype generated by the rich and famous endorsing her and perhaps worth to watch just for this reason. reason.

This is a low cost movie (most Mexican movies were low cost on the 60s and 70s, the decline of the industry was very marked) that deals with an imagined situation that has been proposed in literature elsewhere.

A group of people get trapped in a huge traffic jam in their way to assist a motor sports event, the movie follows their adventures, including the death of one of the protagonists that brings out very witty moments of black humour with a very Mexican flavour.

The cast includes some of the most beloved Mexican film stars, some starting, some ending their carriers back then, which should make it interesting for any fans of Mexican cinema.

Synopsis: girl and boy have sex, drugs and rock and roll. And for some reason there are lots of ice in between.

The critics: Puritans are up in arms because there is an erect penis, ejaculation, oral sex, masturbation and penetrative sex. Liberals don't care because they have seen it all already either in pornographic films or in movies that have portrayed more intense sex than the one shown on this movie.

Veredict: if you want to watch a couple of scenes with real sex this is one of the few mainstream movies where you can do so. If you want pornography look elsewhere.

I am trying to figure out a reason why such a film was made and I can't think of any. if it was to show real sex on screen, well, it has been done for many years so frankly I don't see what the fuss is all about.

One to avoid unless one is desperate or like me got the DVD as a misguided gift.

The plot outline provided by IMDb is quite inaccurate.

The protagonist disappears without a trace one rainy night after a boozy night.

He is not jailed and paroled. He is kidnapped, drugged regularly and kept imprisioned for 15 years without ever getting an explanation until he manages to escape (or so he believes).

Once outside he plots revenge against his captors, but without suspecting why he runs into a cute, young girl he has seen on TV (that became his only contact with the outside world) which will eventually play the biggest part on the protagonist's fate in unsuspected, chilling ways.

The movie is quite a wild ride and will be infamous for its moment of gastronomic audacity and madness.

Although the plot thickens quite a bit in towards the end and some of the propositions are a bit stretched, some questions posed by the movie are quite interesting: would you be happy living without knowing terrible truths? Is love without reserve always a good thing?

The movie has some quite realistic (for East Asian cinema tastes) fight scenes in which the hero beats gangs of young assailants, in contrast with Chinese action movies or even some Hollywood action movies, the protagonist is badly beaten, dragged and humiliated until the point of self destruction.

But at the end he prevails. Kind of...

Although the characters lack credibility (it seems like every single woman in the history, all of them gorgeous, is dying to get into the underwear of the main male character as a matter of urgency).

Nevertheless the plot is unusual and nothing is what it looks. All seems like a normal thriller in which the roles of everybody are the typical ones but the surprises that unfold in the last minutes make it a watchable twist around a theme many times explored before.

The superb luscious ladies and the unusual plot make it a good watch,

This is a quientaessential British movie, it explores the best of the British psyche: the sense of community, the good sense of humour, the outdated institutions and how common sense can triumph over convencionalism and comformity.

Unfortunately for the movie, once the characters are outrooted from their original environment into the vacous glamour of Hollywood, the director and the script run short of ideas. A tyresome explanation of how some conflicts develop is used as an excuse to parade the characters on US TV shows and to paint all related to Hollywood as hyper commercial and corrupting, like if the viewer would not have those generalizations already engraved on his mind. The film loses the chance to dig a bit deeper into the motivations of these women and how they change, choosing instead to aim for a cheap easy contrasting of the British ladies against the brutish Californian city life.

The best part of the movie is how these conservative women move from a crazy idea to a beautiful and dignified expression of self belief. Once that is done and dusted all the rest is mainly unnecessary filling that could have been cut.

Sorry but I don't see the reason of the enthusiasm for this movie. The history line has no head or feet, the escatological scenes get tiresome, the ending is facile and predictable and even hurried. In general it reminds one of the countless drivel that Manga aficionados are so fond of, one more of the apparently unending carbon-copy characters that we have got used to.

The movie has a hint of pretentiousness that never really catches on, at the end is more of the same weird idiomatics that every single manga caricature has used to the point of exhaustion: the perfect girl with no fault on her character, the absent parents, the hero that saves her (and that in a convoluted turn of events has saved her before) and the loads of wackos that look mostly repulsive.

It is an OK movie for children with strong stomachs (I wonder if their attention could be fixed for this long) but as a cinematographic experience it lacks all the ingredients of a respectable movie.

This movie portraits life in the infamous jail of Lecumberri (now thankfully closed).

"El apando" is the name of the punishment cell where the inmates are sent when they brake the rules.

The inmates are abused, the concept of human rights is non existent.

The inmates are no heroes, they certainly are guilty of different crimes, but the movie makes the point that perhaps their greatest crime is to have been poor.

This movie is based in a real life story in which a group of students and university workers go on holiday and finish in a small town (Canoa) in the Mexican countryside. They look for a place to spend the night without being aware of what his happening around them until it is too late.

The political climate is volatile: Mexico, 1968, leftist students have been protesting all around the country and the local priest is a megalomaniac afraid to loose his little power and completely paranoid about communism.

What follows is the mob taking over under the directions of the local priest, with funest consequences for the unfortunate students.

Very explicit violence, Disturbing scenes.

Highly recommended.