f. baez Reviews

The Post (2017)

The real tension in journalism

[9/10 · 17 September 2020]

As a journalist, what I liked most about The Post (2017) is that it portrays very well the relationship between the managing editor of the paper, the owner and the other members of the Board of Directors. There is a constant tension between the journalists' need -and lust- for good, important, information to give to the public, and the fact that newspapers are businesses who need revenue and are usually owned by people who have also connections and loyalties to part of the political stablishment. This tension is what makes newspapers both useful to the status quo and necessary for democracy, specially if it is solved in favor of the public interest, and it is well described in the context of the release of the Pentagon Papers. I also liked that, unlike other films about journalism, who seem to exaggerate the role of the reporter, this one does right to other members of the collective affair that is the making of a newspaper, from the intern, to the style corrector, to the printing and packaging staff, It also conveys the thrills and excitement that feed all of those who are lucky enough to have the best profession in the world. I didn't give it a 10 because of the somewhat confusing first 10-15 minutes of the film, when for the most part you didn't know who was who. Not a great intro. Otherwise, I found it flawless.

The Good Girls (2018)

Vacuous film about the idle class; it could have made a strike, but missed it.

[5/10 · 24 July 2019]

What could have been an interesting societal study of a change of elites in the times of crisis (the falling down of Sofía De Garay's status and the rising of Ana Paola Haddad's) is lost as the characters, true to the selves of Mexican upper class, are too frivolous to understand the reality they live in. And the film does not go beyond that limited look of things.

Yes, old banking and manufacturing families went down in the crisis of 1982-88, and others -notably the mogul Carlos Slim, well portrayed as Mr. Haddad- made millions and millions, but the process was not as swift and shallow as the movie makes it be.

Acting is good, production is nice, pace is slow and the whole film ends up to (almost) nothing.

The Mongolian Conspiracy (2018)

Damn Outer Mongolia!

[7/10 · 24 April 2019]

El Complot Mongol may not be a great film, but it's certainly entertaining.

It's funny, it's works well as a caricature of spy films and of corrupt politics, it's acid and noir and melancholic, all at the same time. And it certainly catches the farcical spirit of Bernal's novel.

The direction could have had better rythm, and has an tiring excess of close-ups and shot/countershots.

The acting was generally good, but three of the performances were a pleasant surprise: Sosa as the drunk lawyer; Owen as the deranged Gringa and Arizmendi, as the Russian spy.

A conclusion?: Damn Outer Mongolia!

Shame (1968)

Bergman's incubus

[10/10 · 29 November 2018]

"Sometimes everything seems just like a dream. It's not my dream, it's somebody else's. But I have to participate in it. How do you think someone who dreams about us would feel when he wakes up. Feeling ashamed?"

This is said by Eva, one of the protagonists of Ingmar Bergman's The Shame (Skammen, 1968). We are almost at the beginning of the film and, for us, she is a violinist turned peasant who is telling her dream. Little by little, as we enter the nightmare, we realize that the film itself is Eva's dream. Bergman's incubus. The dream the filmmaker makes us watchers dream. And as we wake up -when we live the cinema or when we finish the video- there is nothing to feel but shame for the human race. The story of Skammen is about descent into war and how wat gets into us even if we don't want to, even if we run away from it. The couple of musicians who have taken refuge in the countryside, as an unnamed war develops, want to be far and neutral. But war reaches them, transforms them, desintegrates them, turns them into pieces. There are two sides in this war. We don't know -as it usually happens with civil populations- who is right, but we understand, throughout the film, than both sides commit atrocities and that there is injustice. That people live war as a dead end, and in the process of running, accommodating or merely surviving, they degrade themselves. The film was made when memories of World War II were still fresh and when the Vietnam War raged on. But it's about all wars. A war anywhere, with anyone, and the chaos it can generate. External and internal, because there is emotional destruction, also. A war without end, because you can't run away from yourself, from your broken dreams, now distorted by the traumatic experience. There are hidden reason why one doesn't see a certain film in its moment. It's disheartening to realize that, half a century later, Skammen works exactly the same way (the same boat who sails from a Swedish island in a fictitious war, sails today from the coasts of Africa for the same reasons, with the same broken dreams and the same, horrifying, results.

At the end, one remains with a bitter feeling. Humankind has no remedy. What a shame.

Miss Bala (2011)

Social collateral damage and hopelessness

[5/10 · 14 October 2011]

Miss Bala tries to deal with one type of the social "collateral damage" of the ongoing Mexican war on drugs: people who are unwillingly thrown into the battle. An interesting premise.

The film starts well, as a beauty queen wannabe gets stuck in the wrong place at the wrong moment, and becomes involved with a gang after making a series of naive and very stupid decisions.

The depiction of violence and corruption is very good in this part, without resorting to the stereotypes of alleged miserable lives. The narcos' communication system as they drive their trucks rings very true.

But after a while, Miss Bala goes down the slope into a crash landing. The main character ends up being an unpaid slave to the narco boss, without ever showing the minimum sign of rebellion and never really having a moment of joy. The reasons behind the narco moves become more and more incoherent, as does the activity of DEA agents and police forces. The last shootout lacks any logic. The director's sense of timing gets lost and the whole film becomes a blurry mess. Loopholes abound in the script.

Perhaps the authors wanted the main character to be totally passive, but by doing this, they portray her as a person without attributes, without real dreams (it seems she didn't even care about being Miss Baja), without true emotions or feelings. Was she a lost dog or a zombie? The acting leads to the second opinion.

Finally, the movie sends a message of hopelessness. It depicts a society of stupid cowards and puppets ruled by criminals and corrupt officials with no way out. I find it odd that it was publicly financed.

The Dark Knight (2008)

The crazies take over

[9/10 · 22 July 2008]

The Dark Knight is deeper than a comic, yet still a comic. It is a pessimistic vision of society, yet fun to watch. It is disturbing, yet full of insights. It is an accomplished film.

There are several things I liked a lot about the movie. First of all, the fact that all major characters are crazy. Both the underworld and the "keepers of the peace" are in the hands of lunatics (The Joker is Chaos incarnated), the only difference being that the authorities are capable of presenting reasonable personae. Batman's mask actually comes off: Bruce Wayne is as obsessed and deranged as the villains he fights: he needs them to keep his alter ego alive.

"Any psychotic ex-boyfriends I should be aware of?" asks Harvey Dent. "You have no idea", answers Alfred, who knows too well.

Harvey Dent himself, the white knight of law and order, has clear schizophrenic traits. "Madness, as you know, is like gravity. All it takes is a little push", says the Joker, and he's right. Society's liabilities have grown, due to the malign influence of the vigilantes. Masked or unmasked. As they toy with the feasibility of fascism (debating about the need of a new Caesar), the "heroes" don't realize how much they have contributed to the people's passivity and general insanity. No one here gets out unscathed.

Devastating action, fascinating plot twists and also a good set of humor. Not only the acid kind delivered by The Joker's actions and words, but the strictly comic type: Gotham's police is as clumsy and corrupt as can be, the villain's henchmen are suicidally stupid, the mafiosi are all ethnic, and political cynicism is as comic ("We don't know how Lau came back to Gotham") as the people's gullibility.

The film would be perfect were it not for a couple of details. A bit too many plot loopholes –one has to get imagination going to fill them with possible explanations- and a miscast among throngs of good performances. Was Maggie Gyllenhaal the type of woman both Batman/Wayne and Dent would fall for? Christian Bale, while a good Batman, barely makes it as a classy billionaire. Other performances are very good. Heath Ledger's is extraordinary and nightmarishly unforgettable.

Apocalypse Now (1979)

A trip, in both senses of the word

[8/10 · 11 March 2007]

"Help!- Cú'u toi vó'i I am lost - Toi lec du ó'ng I am wounded - Toi bi thou'ng"

Say it in Vietnamese, Hoang-Vu Publishing House, Saigon 1963, page 1

Apocalypse Now is a trip in both senses of the word. A voyage trough a river in Indochina and a hallucinating trip that shows the eruption of feelings and sensations provoked by the war in the group that travels trough the river. It is a journey to the last circle of Hell: as you move on, the horror of war advances, makes itself clear in its absurdity. But Captain Willard's intentions are different from Dante's: he is to go to the bottom and kill the devil.

The first half of the movie can be read as a progressive's interpretation of the Vietnam war.The gratuity of American violence, the vision of war as a macabre sport("Charlie don't surf"), the despise of anything alien to American culture (and hence, the intention of bringing the USA with you to the other side of the world). Fear of othernerness as the mechanism that makes the soldier somewhat efficient.

As Willard and his group advance through a bloody Disneyland, filled with corpses of Vietcong and passive Vietnamese, they arrive to the line of front: the bridge that has to be reconstructed every night only to satisfy the needs of the propaganda machine. We are now at the middle of the trip (in both senses of the word), where Zombie soldiers, mad and calm, fight against an invisible and omnipresent enemy.

After the bridge is crossed, the film will become symbolic, and will try to explain Vietnam in a somewhat philosophical way: the forces of the barbarian, with their prehistorical weapons, decimate the supposed rappresentatives of Civilization, and the renegade Colonel Kurtz has installed a reign of terror and atrocities. He does it against himself, only to show (and to show himself) the vacuum that exists in the depths of Western Civilization: a vacuum that can only be filled with horror. The second part of the film is not as strong, not as tight, as the first one.

The music deserves praise. It works not only to put you in the times, but also defines the state of mind, the feelings of the characters and the feeling of war itself. On one side, it clearly shows the social function of music, as the expression of a generation that was involved, against their will, in the most atrocious violence and -uncapable of an organized rebellion against the system- turned their parricide vocation ("Father? -Yes, son -I want to kill you", says Jim Morrison) against other peoples and, finally, against itself.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)

I smell peroxide

[6/10 · 6 March 2007]

Granted, trying to film a novel based on the sense of smell is a compelling challenge: cinematography, sound and editing must be good enough substitutes, just as words were in Süskind's work. We must praise the filmmaker's courage. Tykwer's effort is generally true to the story, sometimes lavish, sometimes horrid, but fails in its main attempt. It wants to be detached, like the novel, but ends up being too well photographed, too cold. The original capacity to evoke aromas using sight and sound, dwindles into a melodrama with pretty cinematography. Irony is lost. At one moment, the main character smells his victim who is running away in a horseback. The camera asks us to go through the forests in search of her scent. There she is, with her perfectly bright red hair. Suddenly, I smell peroxide. Oh, and it was the essence of innocence, not the essence of beauty, what Granuille was looking for.

War of the Worlds (2005)

A Master Without a Masterpiece... Again

[7/10 · 21 July 2005]

Spielberg is a master filmmaker, when he wants to. He often wanted to, in "The War of the Worlds". I will not dwell into that, but he conveys the more than human grandiosity, the monstrosity of the war and the sense of fear and helplessness.

But he's a prisoner of his own let's-please-the-American-audience device.

The happy ending is terrible. Just about everybody agrees on that. Some one told me the Martians spared Boston because they're Red Sox fans. In both the novel and the aura of the film, it was clear that those who survived were the ones who moved. Well, there is one block in Boston where nothing happened and Granma had time for putting her nice make-up on in the midst of chaos. And the son not only survives a certain blast, but goes back to momma unharmed.

What is not clear for all American audiences, I think, is the absurdity and the morals of the Spielberg film. First, it is a freaking "family history" in the midst of war, just like in "Saving Private Ryan". Can't wars be personal and collective for once? What we see is a family fighting exclusively for themselves, and let the other humans by. I hardly sensed a moment of human solidarity from the Cruise character towards their fellow Americans. Yet he is supposed to be heroic.

There is also a lack of common sense. If mobility equals survival opportunity, then a moving car is the most valuable, coveted and desired commodity. You have to be both selfish and stupid to not carry several people like yourself with whom you can forge a survival alliance. But in the movie, most of the people who flee move like zombies, letting the (supposedly)legitimate owner of a car pass by. Hours pass before the car is taken for what it's supposedly worth. Is the value of private property in America, so important that it would be sanctified even in those moments? (And I wonder, do all kids who attend rock concerts in the US travel in their own car? Doesn't anyone somehow force fellow music lovers to give them a ride?) Finally, there is this ridiculous thing about child rearing. The girls screams, is claustrophobic; the boy is plain obnoxious. And the freaking blue-helmet father is unbelievably incapable of slapping them, showing some authority, even if to save their lives, lest some well-thinker say "Spielberg condones child beating".

You can be a master filmmaker and yet make films that are caged in a non-obvious, but quite distinguishable, ideological trap. That is why Spielberg, a master of cinema, has never, in my opinion, made a true masterpiece

The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)

A believable look into a terrible and fascinating character

[8/10 · 21 October 2004]

I think Diarios de Motocicleta is a quite good film, even if not great.

It's a good, believable portrait of the 50s in Latin America. A good, believable psychological portrait of Guevara and his friend Granado. Even if García Bernal is a good actor, De la Serna (as Granado) steals the movie.

I agree with those who say that it's more of a road movie than a political film. It's also entertaining, specially the first half.

For people interested in this terrible and fascinating character, the film makes you understand Ché a little better.

It makes you think about Guevara's individual virtues, and about how reason nurtures monsters when virtues become compulsory.

It also makes you think about the Christian roots in Ché, and in many Latin American left-wingers (the idea of visiting a leper colony, so biblical!). Guevara seems more inspired in St. Francis of Assisi and the Spartan morals than in Karl Marx. I do believe he was (or rather that he re-interpreted the bible with a tinge of Marxism).

At a certain moment, you see Guevara devouring the best known book of José Carlos Mariátegui, and notice that the early reading of the most radical Latin American theoretician (the ideological father of Shining Path), in the context of the trip to Peru, made a great impact on the future of the rebel turned fanatic.

The film makes you think about the place he chose to die (after leaving Cuba, at a time where his differences with Castro were open, since Ché was more radical): Bolivia, the center of the Andean social nightmare.

Of course it makes you think about how little have things changed at their root. A similar voyage would have today better roads, a little more riches, but the very same social injustice.

Finally, Granado's character is a great portrait of the kind of macho, socially conscious, easy tongued, very corny, adventurous, romantic, lyrical Latin American of his generation.

Honey for Oshun (2001)

A "Politically Correct" Return to the Roots

[7/10 · 1 March 2004]

An exiled Cuban goes back to his motherland, 32 years after he was taken to the USA by his father. We witness a return to the roots, as in Alejo Carpentier's classic story. We also witness a road movie, a subtle love story and a mural of Cuban life, in an overall nice little film.

Only the ideological premise on which the film is built is fake. Social criticism of the situation in Cuba is minimum (yet, it is barely at the acceptance level of the bureaucrats who rule the island). If a bike is stolen, it is by a thief who has been in jail; if buildings are half-destroyed, they are being repaired; if a the neighbor is a "jinetera", it's because she wants to leave the country; if the characters are sent wrongly to jail, everything settles finely a few hours later. No hunger (even smiling children with ice creams), no police State who represses santeros, all the houses nicely decorated. We only get one blackout and several transportation problems.

And the key of the film -Roberto's unhappiness because he is at the US where he doesn't belong, in contrast with the "happy" islanders- is impossible to sustain. In the most important scene, in the middle of a town plaza, surrounded by locals, Roberto claims he's unhappy because he's a nowhere man. If that was to happen in the real Cuba, tens of people would tell him: "You can worry about your existential problems because you have three meals a day!", to say the least.

We don't know what happened to Roberto. But I can bet that, if this tormented character decided to stay in Cuba, with his mother, his cousin and his regained roots, he'd regret it loudly.

The direction is feeble at times (is this the same Solás of "Lucía"?), the audio is terrible, but the music is super, some scenes are very good (the Santera, the arrival of the mother) and some of the acting is great (I particularly enjoyed Limonta's portrait of a typical Cuban cab driver)

The City and the Dogs (1985)

A kick in the groin

[8/10 · 5 January 2004]

The film may have a low budget, a non-existent soundtrack and mediocre acting. Yet the story is so powerful -the movie is loyal to Vargas Llosa's classic novel-, so close to the truth and so well told, it is capable to kick you in the groin.

Talk to Her (2002)

Losses, true love and weird miracles

[8/10 · 24 April 2003]

I liked this film quite a lot, even if it's not my favorite Almodóvar.

While the story is wild, the characters are very realistic. Not black & white, as Hollywood usually likes them.

Of course the film is not mainly about the friendship that grows between Marco and Benigno (stunning performance by Javier Cámara), but rather about losses, true love and weird miracles (life is so capricious!).

While many people (logically) see Benigno's story as the center of the film, I related a lot with tear-prone Marco, who is the one learning about life during the film. (Benigno is Peter Pan, a forever wild child, wise, innocent and perverted, always locked in his mother's sick womb).

The sentimental cuadrangle Marco-Lydia-Niño de Valencia-Marco's exgirlfriend is quite excruciating. Why can't Marco and Lydia be happy together, since they deserve to be? Because Marco can't forget his crazy ex girlfriend and Lydia can't forget Niño de Valencia, their toxic true-loves.

What kind of cleansing must be done in order to make the improbable Marco-Alicia liaison work? What must be lost to regain life?

Another great feature is Rosario Flores (Lydia) the daughter of mythical Lola Flores (the passionate epitome of Spanish folklore). She's far from being beautiful, but exudes tremendous personality. Her face while she's "knelt receiving from the burladero" (a suerte, a 'trick' which has sent many a bullfighter to the surgeon) tells us that she's letting the bull define her suerte, her fate: that this brave woman, torn between two lovers is, in fact, killing herself.

Sex and Lucía (2001)

Not so good prose, great poetry

[8/10 · 20 January 2003]

The story is circonvoluted, with many loopholes and inconsistencies. The prose -including the writings of Lorenzo, the main character- is rather corny. But we are told to forget those loopholes, and rather penetrate one of the holes in everyman's fantasy island, and end up somewhere else, where women declare to us unrequitted love, remember the one-night stand they had with us as a glorious moment in their lives or choose us as their wild sex partner, in a world of limited pain and certain forgiveness.

We are sent by Menem into a different place. A place where feelings, and not the story, counts. The place one will remember for a long time: where the tidal flow made by full moons is also the flow of our soul, where we can see happiness as an island -or rather, a raft- in the midst of a sea of indiference, where we can find Lucía's loving and admiring eyes and smile, and live in them forever.

No News from God (2001)

Enjoyable film, comic use of languages

[9/10 · 24 June 2002]

This is quite an enjoyable comedy, tough it probably is not for all cultures. The idea of an outdated, black & white French Heaven and an English speaking hell run by Brits with a sick sense of humor and a corrupt Mexican manager with a Swiss passport is brilliant. The use of Latin as the lingua franca between devils and saints is absolutely comic. Even if the screenplay has some loopholes and flaws, the dialogue was hilarious; the acting, in most cases, very good, and it has some unforgettable characters: like the the corrupt woman cop, capable of punching the devil himself.

Blow (2001)

Very good film, much better than Traffic

[10/10 · 2 August 2001]

Blow is, so far, the best film about drug trafficking I've seen. It has all the ingredients: the kind of unstable, luxurious life the druglords live, the level of involvement of white Americans, the idea of blowing life's candle very fast, the way they destroy themselves while destroying other people and their mad adoration of money ("money isn't real", what a great line!). It's very realistic.

It also deals very well with other aspects of their reality: their troubled family life (I think the character of George's parents is a key), the constant betrayals among them and the fact that they often kill each other mercilessly (the scene where Pablo Escobar executes a traitor is almost Cinema Veritè).

This has nothing to do with pretentious, and absolutely unbelievable things that happen in Traffic, such as the head of DEA looking for his daughter in the ghettos and dealing directly with the bad guys, or the wife of an accused trafficker easily driving into Mexico (where the biggest drug barons of the country are shown in a crappy billiard joint).

Johnny Depp's acting is great, as usual. he's a chamaleon. Too bad that cannot be said about Penelope Cruz.

PS. It's been noticed that most women in this film are bitches (the exemption would be Barbara, George's first girlfriend). You must notice that also most men in this film are s.o.bs. It's the environment, not the gender (or, do you expect women around drug traffickers to be esencially different?).

Hidden River (1948)

Beautiful, classical, demagogical, hopelessly dated

[3/10 · 22 May 2001]

A master's camera at work, great still moments, superb use of black and white. Eisenstenian shots of people. And one of the most overtly manipulative films in Mexican cinema. The story of a mean (priista) landlord and major who takes away the water from the always suffering helpless indians and the beautiful (priista) teacher who opposes him, delivering one (priista) political speech after another to her children, becomes so dated it leads to unintentional laughter. The crucial moment, in which dying Rosaura after yelling that the children are Mexico, decides to write a letter to (priista) President Miguel Alemán himself is one of the lowest political moments I've ever witnessed in film. The President as God. Very enjoyable to the eye, Río Escondido tells us of a Mexico that only existed in the minds of propagandists. Great acting -as usual- by López Moctezuma as the mean cacique.

Before Night Falls (2000)

Great performances, great rendering of Cuba in the 50s and 60s: a good (but not great) film

[8/10 · 27 March 2001]

Good story, good direction, great acting, great cinematography, but something's missing. The rendering of Cuba in the 50s and 60s is great: lights, clothes, people... Its description of the political situation, as far as I know, is accurate, both in the great expectations on the Revolution and the gradual conversion into a dictatorship. Bardem's performance is superb, as the talented rebel-poets who inflicts so many wounds on himself. He even conveys a good cuban accent (not an easy task for a spaniard). So, I must say, are Johnny Depp's cameos. All in all, a good, strong film. But somehow the circle does not come full. The film has great core, but is faulty at the sides (not only the beginning and the end).

Crónica de un desayuno (2000)

The worst defects of mexican cinema, all in one film

[1/10 · 15 November 2000]

Cronica de un desayuno combines the worst defects of mexican cinema, a rare feat nowadays.

It's pretentious: it wants us to believe that it is deep, only because some scene is out-of-focus, another is pseudo-surreal, yet another plays with the Eisenstein-Infante-Caifanes tradition of laughing-crying faces, the edition is fragmented, and it is all so solemn.

It has a weak script: the main story hardly develops, so it has other three smaller, needless stories, stuck into it. They are only good to make the film last longer.

Most of the acting is bad. A true feat, baring in mind that many of the best known mexican actors were cast.

There is an abuse of unnecesary foul language. To the point that the character of Paloma, who symbolizes the dreams of freedom of a child, uses it throughly.

It is homophobic. The character played by Eduardo Palomo is the sorriest, and most punished, representation of a transexual I have ever seen.

It is very boring. I ended up envying the people that left the theater before the end of the film.

Whatever it tries, it has been done better, in Mexico and elsewhere.

In other words: "Para partirte la madre, nada como una mala película"

The Holy Mountain (1973)

The ascent of Mt. Carmelo with surrealistic dressing

[6/10 · 1 August 2000]

The film is based on The Ascent of Mt. Carmelo, by the spanish mystic San Juan de la Cruz, one of the closest catholic relatives to new age and buddhism. Only instead of Mt. Carmelo, we find Jorodowsky climbing the towers of Satelite, the shrine of suburban mexican middle class! I found it a great idea that, hidden in those towers, there is a gate to nirvana (the characters are hairless, for they have given up their selves).

The first scenes (the conquest of Mexico with frogs and lizards, in the middle of the Basilica de Guadalupe) are great; the ending gives some enlightment. In the middle, you get the usual Jodorowsky salad dressing: freaks, blood, meaningless words, put there to make you feel you're watching something sooo bizarre and sooo special you are, alas, a "chosen" person.

P.S. I believe the date of release is 1974. But I am not 100% certain.

Dinosaur (2000)

High technology; low intelligence

[6/10 · 9 July 2000]

The technology and special effects in Dinosaur are, indeed, very good, almost as good as in BBC's "Walking with the dinosaurs". I know it's Disney and it doesn't have to be didactic, but fun. But it need not be so shallow, so far away from natural history; the plot is too thin, and too traditional (where have I seen the story of the male youth who defies the leader and gets the princess?). Besides, the Dinosaur's dream land looks a lot like Mr. Average American's dream land: a golf course. There should be no contradiction between technology, intelligence and fun... if you don't confuse ends and means.

El Topo (1970)

Needs specific conditions to be seen

[4/10 · 13 September 1999]

The following annecdote is true:

One teenage afternoon my friend Victor told me we must go see El Topo, the greatest film of all times. He had seen it the day before and was stunned. I was fond of Alexandro's "Fabulas Panicas" in the sunday newspaper (a cow wanting to become a cube, and the sort), so I went on with enthusiasm.

The film is stuffed with stuff, and lets anyone be his own interpreting "genius" of the goulash he's presented with. It tries to impress wellthinkers, and succeeds. It's full of sound and fury (and dozen of ounces of red paint), but signifies nothing. A few striking images rest in the mind, a few phrases, already read in the "Fabulas". And the sensation of being utterly cheated.

As we left the theatre, Victor confessed:

"It sucks, man, but I didn't realize it yesterday. I was on acid".

That's one specific condition in which you can enjoy (and maybe think you grasp) El Topo. Other one, if you remained "forever" (that is, stoned for life). The third and last, if you ego as an intellectual is too big to admit you were fooled like a baby by an artist of fakery.

The Olympics in Mexico (1969)

It catches the spirit of both the year 1968 and the games.

[8/10 · 6 September 1999]

The film catches the spirit of 1968. The glance is on the individual against odds and the joy of sport, not -as in previous olympic films and as the mexican government expected- in the "greatness", the solemnity of ceremonies or the "participation" of the masses. It is also the first olympic film to take a deep look on losers: the scene of the arrival of the last marathonian made a breakthrough on the way we look at sports. Or film them. It could have given a critical view of the events before the games (the massacre in Tlatelolco), but was constrained by its' sponsor: the government. Anyway, in Mexico young guys liked it, but it was abhorred by older folks.

Me ha gustado un hombre (1965)

Beats "Glen and Glenda" as the worst cross-dressing film of all time

[1/10 · 1 March 1999]

From the time mexican movies were made with a chastity belt on, this is one of the worst. The thin plot was "heavy" enough, so they made Tere Velázquez never look like anything resembling a man -her hair obviously dyed, her shapely figure bouncing with total femininity- so the spectator wouldn't feel "confused". I mean, Schwarzenneger made a better woman in "Junior" than beautiful Tere a man in this film. The acting is awful, as in most movies featuring Alemán. Certainly beats "Glen and Glenda" as the worst cross-dressing film of all time.

Slap the Monster on Page One (1972)

Manipulative journalism brilliantly portrayed

[8/10 · 13 January 1999]

The film's main lesson is its realism, miles away from Hollywood's view of newspaper and newsmakers, even when it tries to be critical. The cynical newspaper editor's character (played by Volontè) is a brilliant and accurate portrait of the worst manipulative journalism.