Sin Nombre ****

(Without Name)

Writer/Director: Cary Fukunaga
Year: 2009

Cinematographer: Adriano Goldman

A difficult film to watch emotionally, but excellent. Very good direction and acting here, conveying the brutality of the Honduran MS-13 crime gang, and telling the story of one of their young members who attempts to escape from the gang by hitching one of the freight trains heading north to the Mexican/US border, where passengers hope to successfully cross into the USA to find a better life.

Unfortunately for this young boy, he knows that if he is able to get to the US, he will still lead his life in fear, hiding from the gangs branches in the US, especially the gangs incredible power and influence in Los Angeles.

The boy finds a friend in a young girl also on board the roof of the train. She hopes to make it to New Jersey to live with her father's American family.

The story is brutal, pulls no punches. It serves as a document to two separate but interconnected cultural phenomenons, the immigration trains and the MS-13 gang.

A must see film.

Cool Hand Luke ****

Director: Stuart Rosenberg

Year: 1967

Book by: Donn Pearce

Adapted by: Donn Pearce, Frank Pierson

Cinematographer: Conrad L. Hall

The Limits of Control *****

Writer/Director: Jim Jarmusch

Year: 2009

Cinematographer: Christopher Doyle

Editor: Jay Rabinowitz

I love this film, not only because it's one of my favorite directors working with my favorite cinematographer and editor and some of my absolute favorite actors (Isaach De Bankolé, Bill Murray, John Hurt, and Gael García Bernal) but because the cinematic poetry here is so mesmerizing. The themes and ideas regarding control, artist control especially, are meta. Jarmusch's characters speak of love for different art forms, just as Jarmusch practices an expert cinematic control in every dimension of filmmaking. De Bankolé's character exerts extreme zen self-control, just in order to kill Bill Murray's character, who is set up as the symbol of external control that hates the improvisation and disorganization of the arts. It really is a meditation on the different kinds of control and chaos, and the control artists must exert to protect their ability to be creative, unpredictable, even chaotic in their art. Art is neither total control nor total lack of control, there is control, and limits of that control.

This film is a masterpiece of poetic cinema, I love it.

An Inconvenient Truth **

Director: Davis Guggenheim

Year: 2006

Al Gore is not a good subject for a documentary... the strong point here is the information contained in his powerpoint... but it's a huge mistake for a documentarian to make a slick, self-glamorizing politician who is now making a living off of telling us about global warming... the black and white sap story about Gore replete with shots of him staring concernedly at his lap top does not constitute an interesting story, nor a riveting investigation into the facts of global warming... cut Al Gore out, ditch the power point, but do your own in-depth fact finding and interviews with credible sources (i.e. scientists, not politicians) and you'll have yourself a good documentary...

Unfortunately I think Davis Guggenheim is a lazy director, and just because he's helmed two big zeitgeist subjects for his two documentaries, does not mean he's done them adequate justice... so far very unimpressed with his abilities as a documentarian.

Little Miss Sunshine ****

Directors: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
Year: 2006
Writer: Michael Arndt

Cinematographer: Tim Suhrstedt

Ver Llover *****

(Watching It Rain) - short film

Writer/Director: Elisa Miller
Year: 2006

Cinematographer: Jimena Montemayor

Won the Palme d'Or short film prize at Cannes in 2007.

Traffic ****

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Year: 2000
Writers: Simon Moore, Stephen Gaghan

Cinematographer: Steven Soderbergh

Bottle Rocket *****

Director: Wes Anderson

Year: 1996

Writers: Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson

Cinematographer: Robert Yeoman

Dancer in the Dark ****

Writer/Director: Lars von Trier
Year: 2000

Cinematographer: Robby Müller

Bjork stars in the most tragic, strange musical ever.

I admire the stories, the characters of von Trier, but I still hate his camera work.

I feel like Trier hates his audience some times, that he wants to punish us. He is a self-righteous filmmaker, and he focuses much on the evil committed against and suffered by women, even, as he seems to consistently accuse, at their own hands. He has certainly been accused of portraying only foolish women who mistakenly cause themselves unnecessary harm.

I don't know if he really has such a view of women, I tend to think he just thinks this to be a tragedy, one that all people suffer, but especially these particular female characters. They are victims of men always, but the most horrific things that happen to them come directly from their own decisions.

I speak of these films in trend because I have only so far seen: Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, Dogville, and Antichrist. There is some interesting cinematic research to be done in looking further into these characters and films.

Anyway, speaking directly to Dancer in the Dark, I like the way the music comes only as a function of Bjork's character's love for musicals, and as she is fantasizing about musical interludes in her life, we see those. For those who find Bjork's music a bit grating on the nerves, expect the same here, for she did compose the music. I can, however, suffer the music because of the way it is used vitally for the story here, and I also like how von Trier works in the music in the second half, the film is not a musical, it is about a woman who fantasizes about being in a musical.

The acting, again, is great, but the constantly moving camera drives me nuts. I know that von Trier seems to always want to deconstruct cinema in a way, to break the comfort of the audience, reminding us always "It's only a movie", but I've had enough of the stupid moving camera and zooms. I guess at times it seems to achieve a certain type of realism, as the camera is able to just be a document of great acting, however I would love to enjoy that acting, and the powerful stories he tells, with stable images at least.

Wings of Desire ****

Director: Wim Wenders
Year: 1987
Writers: Wim Wenders, Peter Handke, Richard Reitinger
Cinematographer: Henri Alekan

It Might Get Loud ***

Director: Davis Guggenheim

Year: 2009

I won't tell you to not see it, cause face it, if you like these guitarists, you are going to be just as anxious as I was to see it... but you might be let down.

The Edge, Jimmy Page, and Jack White get together to talk guitars, while the film attempts to explore a bit of their background with the instruments in order to explain their different styles and approaches. Some really good music gets pulled out of the closet by White and Page, so take notes on which overlooked bands you're now going to need to add to your i-pod. But ultimately this doc directed by the over-hyped Guggenheim lets us down because just as in "An Inconvenient Truth" his skills as a documentarian lay more in the visuals and big premise than in actually investigating and giving us an in-depth, revealing film.

We also never get the promised loud moment. Things stay pretty calm, and non of these guys really busts a gut playing something spectacular for the audience.

Interesting fiction bits with Jack White teaching Jack White as a kid about rock and roll... but still, Guggenheim is really the one lacking the chops, not the guitarists. That's why this film falls flat. The best moment is when Jack White hand-makes his own single-string steel guitar.

Jarhead ****

Director: Sam Mendes

Year: 2005

Book by: Anthony Swofford

Adapted by: William Boyles Jr.

Cinematographer: Roger Deakins

Hamlet *****

Director: Lawrence Olivier

Year: 1948

Play by: William Shakespeare

Adapted by: Lawrence Olivier

Cinematographer: Desmond Dickinson

Excellent film, truly great performance by Olivier.

Morirse en Domingo ***

(Never Die On A Sunday)

Director: Daniel Gruener

Year: 2006

Writer: Antonio Armonia

Cinematographer: Guillermo Granillo

Fitzcarraldo *****

Writer/Director: Werner Herzog

Year: 1982

Cinematographer: Thomas Mauch

A crazy man is obsessed with the opera, and determined to bring it with him aboard a river steamboat to an isolated river in Peru. First he must drag the ship over a mountain.

If you aren't convinced that real cinema is born without CGI, well you haven't seen Werner Herzog, the mad director, insist that his actors literally drag a ship over a mountain.

The film is intended to document the madness of the character Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald... but maybe serves better as a document of the madness of Herzog. Still, you got to love it, after all, knowing the real struggle and danger actually exists adds enormously to the drama of the film in a documentarian sense. Put this film on the list with Cleopatra, Dances With Wolves, Lawrence of Arabia, Bridge on the River Kwai, and Birth of a Nation for cinema that actually captured incredible real events on film, just for the sake of cinema.

Frost/Nixon **

Director: Ron Howard

Year: 2008

Writer: Peter Morgan

Cinematographer: Salvatore Totino

A well-made documentary would be more interesting here, even though the acting is good, and Frank Langella ought to be commended for not doing an out-right impression of Nixon, I still think the drama of the original tapes is interesting enough to make a good documentary out of.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford ****

Director: Andrew Dominik

Year: 2007

Book by: Ron Hansen

Adapted by: Andrew Dominik

Cinematographer: Roger Deakins

Was Jesse James America's first celebrity?

If so Robert Ford was the first obsessed celebrity fanatic. This film shows us the dark nature of this type of celebrity worship, and the lengths to which some will go for that perverse desire of fame. I find this film greatly relevant in our time of celebrity reality TV shows, the gossip on the E! channel, and the statistic that revealed that the current generation most wants fame, even more than fortune.

Gorgeous to look at, and thoroughly enjoyable because of Dominik's non-traditional approach to the western. He doesn't adapt his screenplay to fit the usual hollywood plot-points, doesn't make this an action film, it is more accurately a character-study who's setting is western. I really love this film. It's moody and haunting, and Casey Affleck is perfect in this role, although I really enjoy the acting put forth by the entire cast.

I like Brad Pitt here as well precisely because he plays it down. He gives us maybe a more realistic look at the hero's of legend... they maybe weren't all so charismatic, maybe it was the fans like Robert Ford who built them up so much in the imagination that we can't even recognize the real man living in the shadow of his hyped-up legend.

In America ***

Director: Jim Sheridan

Year: 2002

Writers: Jim Sheridan, Naomi Sheridan, Kirsten Sheridan

Cinematographer: Declan Quinn

The Fountain *****

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Year: 2006

Writers: Darren Aronofsky, Ari Handel

Cinematographer: Matthew Libatique

Pink Floyd: The Wall ****

Director: Alan Parker

Year: 1982

Writer: Roger Waters

Cinematographer: Peter Biziou

A classic must see for any fan of rock and roll.

A well made film, not perfect, but extremely memorable.