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Reviews
Brijes 3D (2010)
My kids enjoyed it
I'll start by confessing I didn't see this movie personally, but we found it on a popular online streaming video service and thought we'd give it a try with our kids on a rainy day. And my 8-year olds loved it, they have been asking to see "Brijes 2" which, sadly for them, doesn't exist. From the bits I saw wandering in and out it's a fantasy film mixing up some traditional and invented Mexican fables with more modern history, but I certainly saw nothing that wasn't age appropriate for them, and they loved the fantasy-modern mash up. And it's great to see the Mexican animation film industry 1) making enjoyable films 2) in their own style and not just trying to ape Pixar/Disney and 3) doing so in a culturally sensitive and inventive manner.
My kids also loved Nikté, which is also worth tracking down if this type of film is your thing, or if your kids already saw it and liked it.
Escuela de placer (1984)
A turkey so turkey-ish, even the turkey felt insulted.
Utter bilgewater, complete guff, there is no redeeming feature that I can find for this film. And believe me, I try to find them. Nearly all of the Mexican cinema production from the 70's and 80's (and before and after) was seriously flawed in some way, but redemption of some description can be found. I often feel, in some strange way, guilty when watching these forgotten films from decades past. Guilty that someone, at one time, cared about the project, you can often see that despite zero-sized budgets etc that producers and directors strove to rescue something of value, inserted a modicum of entertainment through their own personal pride if nothing else. And here they now languish, once cared-for projects now consigned to the dustbin of little seen channels on Mexican cable TV, watched only by weirdos like me. And if someone once cared about these films, then I feel that one should at least have the decency to write a review on here to show that somebody, somewhere, also cares now. A bit. There always exists the chance of redemption.
This is the first film I have ever awarded a single star. I am now having to question all that I previously held true and stated in my previous paragraph. Some films deserve to die, forever. Some films deserve to never have been born at all. In fact, this isn't really a film at all. To label it as a "film" would suggest some kind of script was written. That planning went into it. Meetings were held, story lines worked out, a cast found etc. This clearly wasn't the process followed for this... erm... formless blob of moving images? And if that makes it sound like a lava-lamp, then switch one on and sit in front of it, you'll be far more entertained.
So what have we got? Three words. Boobs, backsides and albures (Mexico's beloved take on double entendres). Three words that make it seem infinity-times more interesting than it really is though. I guess the starting brief was that they found a few reels of film left over, and had to use them up. Utterly starved of ideas, they decided to discard them completely, and place the cameraman in a house with a few scantily clad women knocking around. And that is it. The cast wander around doing whatever they please, and as long as they have no clothes on, that's fine by the cameraman. And they are so palpably bored by the whole enterprise. You witness the scenes lurch past one after the other; presumably while sitting around one of the cast had a small idea, then manages to get the rest of the cast "enthused" (threats to family and loved ones?), so they act it out, then switch the camera off and wait for the next brainfart to attack them and act that out too. The most commonly encountered idea seems to be dancing while naked. Tough to fill the whole film with that though. We occasionally go surreal. Shoplifting by disguising a live turkey as a maternity bump is a typical example. Only problem was that they chose a film critic turkey, that as soon as he came out from close proximity to Lin May's lower abdomen started viciously attacking the rest of the cast. Who wouldn't? "Go turkey go, kill, KIIIIILL!" I screamed at the screen, but sadly it was subdued with only minor damage inflicted. Unlike my brain, which has suffered deep lesions following exposure to this celluloid Room 101.
OK, I did laugh once. In fact, I never laughed so hard at the sight of 12 people getting electrocuted, but then I found out they were just acting, and it wasn't funny anymore. I nearly added another star though (for the hope it gave me at the time). But I just can't. It would be too much. This hideous, unloved, uncared-for-by-anybody-ever movie needs no help from freaks like me. A vacuous black hole sucking in all joy from the universe, this film should never ever see the light of a projection lamp ever again.
Los peseros (1984)
Pretty poor effort all round
I've got a pretty high tolerance level when it comes to 1970s and 1980s trashy "taquilla" movies. I like them as social documents. I enjoy them for their trashiness and disposability. I love the way the same faces always turn up playing the same characters over and over again. But this movie made me realise that there has to be a bit more than this, just a bit, to really keep the interest.
The plot is wafer thin. Our two lovable rogues flee Mexico City and wind up in Monterrey. There they get caught up in a union dispute, find jobs, get caught by their pursuers and generally ape around. If that sounds pretty bland, then I made a good job of summarizing the movie.
Nothing much happens of interest and there's not enough spark to keep anyone watching for long. Not terrible, but not really worth the time to watch.
La portera ardiente (1989)
Very patchy, veers between amusing and terrible
A cheaply made and mildly exploitative film with little to recommend beyond the performance of Maribel Fernandez, who delivers her lines with crackle and spark and has enough charisma to fill the screen and carry the film on her own, luckily, as the supporting cast do little to help her.
Fernandez plays the titular "doorwoman", more or less charged with watching over the entrance to the large yard around which her neighbours small houses are arrayed. This makes up a traditional Mexican "vecindad", where everyone knows everyone else's business, and the habitants seemingly spend most of their time hopping into the beds of their neighbours. Thus the film is filled with plenty of low-grade farce, cheap double- entendres (or albures as they are known here) and a shot of one of the women cast members showering naked included (gratuitously) approximately every 20 minutes or so.
What tiny amount of plot that does exist is awkward and hardly worth mentioning, but involves the Porteras resolve to save herself for her absent husband's return being tested. The title, which translates loosely as "The Horny Gatekeeper" is quite spectacularly misleading, as the Portera is by far the most virtuous character in the film, while all those around her throw their clothes off at a moment's provocation.
I must confess I enjoyed this film. Apart from Fernandez's performance, these films are almost social documents, and while the dialogue and depictions are exaggerations, they are none the less grounded in a reality that is fast being lost. The vecindad was the bedrock of community organization for generations, yet they are becoming scarcer and scarcer with time. As a relative newcomer to Mexican society, I find I can learn a lot from these films without having to take them at face value.
La pandilla infernal (1987)
Little above the ordinary
A pretty much bog-standard potboiler, with all the standard ingredients present, but without much fizz to add interest. Plotwise its a regular rich girl-poor boy romance; she's the indulged, bored daughter of distracted and distant parents who yearns for a bit of attention and excitement in her life and he's the sparky petty criminal who crosses her path and catches her eye. As with practically all of Valentino Trujillo's films, there are few redeeming features for any of the characters, and his characteristic nihilistic view of Mexican society is well-worn but none the less truthful for its familiarity. There's no pretence in his anti- hero, who keeps his dreams just about alive behind his resigned acceptance of a criminal lifestyle.
Average, would be five, but it gets a point for a neatly scripted bit of ensemble playing around a hospital bed.
La guerrera vengadora (1988)
Austin Powers meets Quentin Tarentino
This film has practically no objective redeeming qualities. The acting is just appalling, the camera-work jerky, the plot is bonkers, the dialogue disastrous (and seemingly ad-libbed in places), the whole thing has turkey written all over it. And yet it has one quality in spades, and that's entertainment. Relentlessly and joyously, this film revels in the glory of cinema as escapist entertainment. This isn't art, there's no message or lesson or purpose here. Just sit back, relax, and luxuriate in the warm glow of cinema's bottommost circle of hell - and as anyone worth knowing will tell you, heaven is for boring squares, hell is where the fun is to be had.
So what does this film deliver? It's got a pneumatically-breasted heroine (Lola la trailera turned motociclista) that dodges more bullets, missiles, flame throwers and poison gas grenades than Rambo managed in a lifetime, all the time with a killer "big hair" arrangement that wouldn't shame an electrocuted lion. Gasp as she shoots 15 bank robbers dead with one sweep of her Uzi, splutter as she leaps her 150cc motorbike (with pillion passenger on board!) over a 300m wide canyon without even the pretence to have ridden up a ramp on the take off side. Really. Thats it, her road runs out, she approaches the canyon, then a shot of her in the air and then she's on the other side. At least they could have left a "convenient" trailer being unloaded that could act as a ramp, or a half fallen down bridge or something, but nope, apparently you just drive off the edge and then land on the other side.
And that's what I love about this film, it just demands that you accept its universe, lock stock and barrel. No excuses, no pretence, no fudging the issue, they present it how they want to and you just have to accept it. Before I gave an example, but the whole film is shot through with such barnstorming nonsense. For example, she's a teacher, so one of her pupils asks her for help with family troubles. Next minute the pupil has moved into our heroines flat, and a few minutes after that (literally) has been brutally murdered in a case of mistaken identity. As for the assassin, his facial expressions are meant to signify some sort of dehumanised maniacal brutality, but he just ends up looking badly constipated. But there's no time to laugh, as the action is too thick and fast. Well, there is time to laugh at the dwarf. for some reason, our heroine lives with a dwarf-sidekick. I swear Mike Myers must've seen this flick when he came up with the concept of MiniMe. Except our dwarf is soooo much better. Too many highlights to mention them all, but the best by far was the plan to spring a jailbreak. So the dwarf hides below one of those silver platter covers so beloved of the top restaurants, the ones that are removed with a flourish at he presentation of a dish, and smuggles himself into the cell disguised as the inmates dinner. Which is fine, but the problem is that the dwarf is still about 4 foot tall. But in this films twisted universe, that's no problem, because of course the inmates get served with four foot long meals covered in elegant serving platters nearly every day, no need for the guards to get suspicious. Even when the cover starts moving and the dwarf's hand is clearly visible poking out from under the side. Just keep 'em rolling, boys, keep 'em rolling.
Look, do yourself a favour, and just rent this film, if you can find it. It's seriously good. You've never seen action done like this. I love this film to bits, even my wife, who detests rubbish Mexican films, was enthralled, and she *really really* didn't want to like it. Helicopter chases, motorbikes, bloody murders, manic sadist assassins, dwarf sidekicks, cod bullfights, flamethrowers, explosive-tipped arrows, this film has it all and carries it off with utter aplomb.
Ratas de la ciudad (1986)
Another Trujillo life-on-the-other-side tragedy
Sadly I saw this film as part of a tribute to Valentin Trujillo, who died recently. One of Mexico's more prolific leading men and directors, Ratas de la Cuidad was a fitting film to chose, as it has all the key elements of his canon.
Separated from his son after a stretch in gaol, upon his release Trujillo's typical rough-diamond character is taken under the wing of a cop who pulls a few strings and gets his protégé a place by his side as his partner on the beat. Gradually he proves his worth and courage upholding the law, and wins the trust of his immediate boss. But all the while he's eaten up inside by the knowledge that somewhere out there in the big city his son is living rough, and he is driven by the need to find him. His son, meanwhile, has dropped through the cracks of society into a shadowy gang of child-robbers, who squat in slums and survive by selling their spoils to a Fagin-type fence. With no protection, the kids are forced to look after themselves, and a spiral of violence swirls through the film as it winds up to its inevitably tragic conclusion.
A harsh, gritty look at the realities of urban life, albeit at times melodramatic, but without a trace of sentimentality that is a welcome counterpoint to Hollywood fluff. While the performances are never bravura, the script never sparkles, the set-pieces can be a bit leaden, and the characterisations a touch clichéd, it's a film with it's heart in the right place and which knows its purpose - to tell the story of a corrupt society consuming itself from within in a maelstrom of hatred, retribution, and with little hope of redemption.
Closer to the truth than many want to believe.
Fandango (1985)
Above average, that's all
As most people commenting here, I stumbled on this film while channel-hopping late one night, and I was pleasantly surprised. Sadly, that doesn't mean that Fandango is a good film, just that it was a cut above normal 3am-midweek fare, but in Mexico, the competition is rank awful.
Fandango is a breezy coming-of-age roadmovie that barrels along at a decent pace, which ticks the boxes and holds the interest but slips too often into cliché and simplistic juxtaposition to deserve the over-heated praise I see in the rest of the comments. Just because a movie slips through the net, doesn't automatically make it a 10 star attraction! And yes, Kevin Costner does a decent enough turn, which is to say he isn't toe-curlingly bad as he becomes in his later films, but how far can you praise an actor for being bearable, for once? It's interesting to see that the movie was born from a shorter work, as this is how it comes across - a series of set-pieces that are internally too long and not strung together convincingly enough. Better editing would have made a more coherent story come together, as it is we are left with four engaging if one-dimensional characters forced to dance from one scene to another to the tune of the director's hard-ground organ.
In summary, bright and breezy and yes, occasionally reflective, but unbalanced and unconvincing.
El diario íntimo de una cabaretera (1989)
Curiously compelling rubbish
I can think of nothing to recommend this movie, apart from the fact that for some reason I watched it all the way through. The plot is pure soap opera - identical twins are orphaned, grow up separately and live contrasting lives - one lives an honest, hardworking life with her honest hardworking husband, a diamond struggling hard to reform a corrupt prison. The other is a prostitute and chancer, turning tricks on clients, running insurance scams, golddigging her way through wealthy husbands and living an amoral life. The film follows their two lives in parallel, jumping between the two plot lines that cross infrequently and tenuously, until finally limping towards a frankly rubbish ending.
Thinking hard, one of the best aspects of the film are the hairstyles. Truly frightening 80's monstrosities, they were clearly built by architects rather than hairstylists, and are a flashback to the decade that taste forgot. The hairspray employed in this film must have been responsible for half the ozone hole alone, let alone most of the budget. Which is a shame, as if they'd spent it on scriptwriters who can write, actors who can act, a director who can direct etc you might have got a half decent film. Even the music is frightening, odd synth stabs blasting in at the wrong moment, screechy wails robbing the film of any atmosphere or coherence.
For fans of 80's fashion, towering hairstyles, distorted synth, high camp and irredeemably awful cinema. And mass catfights. It does have a great mass catfight, I'll concede that.
Huele a gas (1986)
Carry on Gasfitters!
As a fan of the Carry On series of films, I quite enjoyed this film. It's a harmless tongue-in-cheek take on the misadventures of a group of gas delivery men, with a number of set-piece comic skits in the opening half hour or so that although familiar to anyone who has picked up a saucy seaside postcard, are executed well nonetheless. After that the film does run out of steam a little once the featherweight plot tries to emerge, and the low budget of the film really starts to show through the wobbling set walls. Curiously, at certain points throughout the film the actors switch into a kind of "Public Information film" mode, solemnly instructing the housewives/husbands on the correct way to care for their gastanks, boilers etc - illustrating both the advantages and disadvantages of having a state-funded film industry.
Die hard fans of "Confessions of a..." films might last the distance, but otherwise just stick around for the opening third. And the kitsch song-and-dance opening is inspired!
Masacre en el río Tula (1985)
Complete pap, but above average pap
Caught this movie on the local CineMexicana channel, which reruns a wide range of homegrown movies from the 50's onwards. Most of these are pretty basic and unadventurous potboilers that don't hold one's interest more than a couple of minutes, but this movie was different. It's no masterclass, don't get me wrong, but it had enough to warrant a second look.
What makes this movie worthwhile, just, is that is has a thin vein of the darkside running through it. The story is pure pulp - honest but occasionally wayward taxi driver tries to make a go of his life skirting around the edges of the law, but a combination of official corruption and bad luck force him in with a very bad crowd from which he struggles to break free. Along the way it showcases the usual Mexican 'barrios pobres' movie clichés - corrupt cops, drunken housewives, tarts with hearts, 'noble' rogues; hope , humour and despair mixed in together. But what sets this movie apart is that when the darker elements of the plot intervene, they aren't watered down as usual, but come at you pretty much full in the face. It's a fine line between gritty realism and exploitative schlock, and this film does veer more towards the latter, but it does still serve to plant a shadowy heart at the core of this film that is unusual in this genre. And the ending, although telegraphed in the opening scenes, is still powerful enough to surprise anyone raised on Hollywood endings.
A curious, ambivalent hybrid of a film that truly draws in the viewer as voyeur, interesting to fans of low-grade Mexican cinema and pulp-gore aficionados alike.