Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s trilogy of stories connected by a crippling car wreck is quite literally a portrait of a violent dog-eat-dog world in the margins of Mexico City.
Tag: Mexico
Luis Buñuel’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’ on Amazon Prime
Luis Buñuel is best known for his witty, surreal comedies that satirized society, religion, politics, and sexual mores in the 1960s and 1970s, but he had a long career before his breakthrough as an internationally celebrated satirist. Robinson Crusoe (1954), his first English language movie and his first color feature, was produced not as a […]
‘Santa Sangre’ – Alejandro Jodorowsky’s surreal psychodrama free on Kanopy
Santa Sangre (Mexico, 1989) – A student of Marcel Marceau in Paris, a founder of the surrealist theater Panic Movement in Mexico City, a Zen Buddhist, playwright and comic strip author, the Chilean-born Alejandro Jodorowsky made his fame as a cult film director with his sprawling, symbolic, surreal films El Topo and The Holy Mountain, […]
Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Cronos’ on Criterion Channel
Cronos (Mexico, 1993, R, with subtitles), the feature debut of Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, is an alchemic twist on vampire lore and the costs of eternal life. It’s also the first expression of the budding genre master’s affinity for cinema fantasy and horror as a crucible for exploring humanity. Federico Luppi stars as Jesus, […]
Criterion Blu-ray: ‘Canoa,’ ‘Multiple Maniacs,’ ‘Blow-up’
Time to play catch up with Criterion releases of the past couple of months. I confess that I had never heard of Canoa: A Shameful Memory (Mexico, 1976) before Criterion announced it. Having now seen, I wonder how that could have been. While not on my radar, this is celebrated as a landmark of Mexican […]
‘Y tu Mama Tambien’ on Criterion Channel and Sundance Now
Y Tu Mamá También (Mexico, 2001), Alfonso Cuaron’s return to Mexico after his initial sojourn in Hollywood, recharged his ambitions and his creative juices. Ostensibly a coming of age drama by way of a sex comedy, it’s vivid, thoughtful, political and unapologetically raw. Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna star as best friends, a pair […]