Change Your Image
nicolasito
Reviews
Fraude: México 2006 (2007)
Propaganda, just for the unconditional
The film is just an effort by an unconditional of the loser of the Mexican 2006 presidential elections to justify his defeat. All the alleged 'evidence' provided is weak since the documentary shows just anecdotal evidence. It uses eminently politicized language and images displaying carefully selected testimonies that try to convince the viewer of its truth, while failing to provide factual proof. As part of the advertising campaign the director denounced pressures not to release it, trying to increase its subversive profile, though he didn't provide proof of such pressures. The film was in fact released without incidents in 1000 Mexican theaters, as was the director's purpose, but quickly faded because of lack of interest by moviegoers.
Eréndira la indomable (2006)
Flat in time, characters and plot.
Overall, a very boring and uninteresting movie. The whole story could have been told in around 10% of the time with the proper timing, and no insight of characters is ever shown, let alone hinted at. It is just like an old-time movie with the good ones and the bad ones, with very crude stereotypes of the Purhépechas and the Spaniards (ie, the good ones and the bad ones, in case you'd wondered). Worse yet, since the film lacks a sound fiction plot, I looked for some serious re-enactment of history or faithful depiction of the customs and facts of the peoples depicted, to no avail whatsoever. I'm still searching for a good movie about Pre-Columbian peoples without so many clichés as this one and others, showing the real psychological and cultural clash between two cultures that finally merged into our modern Mexican culture, a movie beyond the images of "peaceful" Indians and the blood-thirsty Spaniards that all these films display.
¿Quién es el Señor López? (2006)
A cult of personality documentary previous to the elections.
A documentary entirely devoted to how good, benevolent, fair and humane a Mexican politician supposedly is. It is awkwardly repetitive, one-sided and crude, but honest in its thesis, since it doesn't hide the purpose behind its making: providing a 'serious' basis for the candidacy of its starring character to the 2006 Mexican presidential elections.
I had never seen anything like it since the 50s documentaries on Mao or Stalin as big fathers of the people, shown in tender situations with children, the poor and the huddled masses, fighting the dark enemies of justice, all of it deprived of any factual information on the career of the politician in question. Only for his unconditional followers.
El niño de barro (2007)
Children can also be evil...
An eight year old Argentinian shook his country in 1904 after trying to murder a 21 month old out of pure cruelty. He would eventually murder four other children after trying to kill seven more. This movie is his story, a story of marginalization, abject poverty, abuse, diseases and neglect about a retarded boy who was systematically abused by the society he lived in and who lost any capacity to feel or judge his own acts. Still, the director chose a different viewpoint to tell his story, by telling about one of his victims, another boy, who feels a special domination link to his attacker.
OK, this is the summary. Now, can anybody tell me how can it have a 5.3 and several votes, from 1! to 10!, if it has not been released by now (May 20th 2007)??? Let's be serious, if we intend to keep this forum as a guide for other moviegoers...
A través de A(lan) Glass (2006)
A transparent look on one of the most transparent artists alive.
Makhlouf's direction only matches Glass's artwork as one of the most naive though complex artists alive today. Direct heir of surrealism (and sometimes described as the last Surrealist himself), Glass is devoted to display his very particular look on life through glass and wooden boxes full of alive memories, charming objects and quaint associations. Makhlouf rescues this viewpoint and tells us Glass's work and life as an equally charming glass box, outside our reach but extraordinarily appealing to our memories and artistic sensitivity. Glass is then presented as the eternal outsider, English-speaking in Montreal, Quebecois in Canada, Canadian in France or Mexico, surrealist in our postmodern world, box-maker among painters or sculptors, shy and discreet among prominent art divas.