Los Olividados

 

Luis Bunuel's stunning masterpiece on poverty in Mexico, Los Olvidados (1951).

Staying close to the non realist style of film making, Luis Bunuel crafts an absolute masterpiece. Its about a group of destitute children eking out a living in Mexico. El Jaibo (Roberto Cobo) has escaped a juvenile jail and is back with his group of friends, one of which is Pedro (Alfonso Mejia). Pedro is one of many children of his mother and he always feels his mother does not love him enough. There's a scene where he pityingly asks his mother to love him and she repels him with brute force. 

Jaibo is out to take revenge on Julien who he feels ratted on him to be sent to the juvenule jail. In the fracas that ensues, Julien is killed and Pedro becomes an accomplice. Pedro is shit scared and immediately sets about doing the right things like taking up a job as an apprentice with a blacksmith. There Jaibo confronts him again and asks him to keep quiet and coolly steals a costly silver knife from the workplace. 

The blacksmith sends police to Pedro's house to arrest him for stealing a knife. His mom confronts him but he says he did not steal anything. They visit a police headquarters which sends Pedro to a reform school called the Farm. Again Jaibo confronts him there and steals 50 pesos from Pedro. 

The movie stays close to a new realist cinema that you can expect from Luis Bunuel. Its an old black and white print but enough to see the raw poverty of the village in Mexico. Everybody is struggling to make money there, Pedro's mom does washing for a dozen houses, a blind singer makes money by singing, life is tough, life is hard, there is crime, grinding poverty. 

Most of the characters are kids and they have all acted very well.  

Coco

 

Wonderful animation movie Coco (2017) from the Pixar Disney combination, produced by Pixar and released by Walt Disney studios. Its a story of a young kid and his love for music but his family forbids from playing any music or even going near a musical instrument, because his great great grand father was a musician and left his family to pursue his musical career and the family to fend for themselves. From then on the family has no music in its household despite having passed through so many generations and having a successful business to boot. Then there is a Mexican festival the Day of the Dead, in which apparently the dead members of the family are remembered by keeping the food that they loved and celebrating with them. The story has beautifully taken off from there into the Land of the Dead where young Miguel goes on to find his great great grand father and seek his blessings to play music. The interplay between the living and the dead has been wonderfully made during this phase with lot of adventure, daring, innovativeness, creativity with a murder plot, a suspense and a reunion thrown in, all around a deep rooted culture and a family life. Pixar's animation has been absolutely magnificent to say the least. Awesome movie to watch for all generations. 

61 Hours

61 Hours is a Jack Reacher story by Lee Child. A few of these Jack Reacher stories have been converted into movies starring Tom Cruise. Jack Reacher is a kind of ex-military but now wandering aimlessly with minimal possession, and wherever he lands he finds some trouble in which his expertise is required. This time he lands in a town called Bolton in South Dakota in a bus of elderly tourists. It has been snowing, the roads are skidding and the bus falls into a gorge, luckily no major injuries, but Jack is stranded in the town for a couple of days, enough for him to find out something amiss there. There is a gang of bikers and some unused depot where strange things are going on. One old lady who has witnessed some horrific crime and is under threat by a gang operating out of Mexico. All that happens fast paced in a reverse countdown basis, so that keeps the reader engaged. It is no doubt a fast paced thriller. Jack talks to his ex-boss in Washington to get a lot of info on the Mexican gang. Goodreads 5/5

Dallas Buyers Club

Dallas Buyers Club is a 2013 American movie based on a real life story of Ron Woodruff who is diagnosed with AIDS but does not get the medicines because FDA has not approved of them. These are early days of the AIDS treatment and the research is still picking up on what is the best medicine for AIDS. Mathew McConaughey has brilliantly played the lead role of Ron, for which he won the Best Acting Oscar. Jennifer Garner as the supportive doctor has also played a superb role. The more I see of Jennifer Garner acting, the more I feel that she is developing in a fine actor in the mould of Meryl Streep. So Ron does not get the AZT because they are still on trial, but he goes to Mexico and gets dDc and peptide T, which is a protein from a local doctor there whose licence has been squashed. He brings a bootful load of medicines masquerading as a padre who requires them for his cancer treatment. Meanwhile he starts selling the medicines to fellow AIDS patients who are similarly denied the AZT treatment and forms the Dallas Buyers Club. His activity prompts other cities to form similar clubs like Florida Buyers Club which is mentioned in the movie. Ron gets into business with a transgender and sets about charging $400 as membership fee for the Dallas Buyers Club. But FDA confiscates his supplies and then IRS sets about investigating his activities. Meanwhile Jenifer is forced to resign from her post because she is seen as supporting the Club activities.

I liked the way this difficult subject was treated in the film. In India we don't see these kind of autobiographical movies which are even slightly controversial. We have sports and politics bio pics which are far away from truth and which are more like goody goody movies with a lot of song and dance. 

Babel

Babel is  a 2006 film starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett among others. It is set in four different countries Morocco Mexico, United States and Japan and the movie moves from one setting to another. Brad Pitt and his wife Cate are on a holiday to Morocco, leaving their two kids behind with their Mexican nanny in the US. They are emotionally distraught from having lost their third kid and so their marriage is on a strain. While in the bus, Cate is accidentally shot by a stray shot from one goatherd up in the mountains. The goatherd and his brother were given the gun by their uncle who gave it to them for protecting the herd from wolves. So Brad struggles with his bleeding wife and some emotionally disturbed co-passengers who think it is a terrorist attack and want to leave as soon as possible. Cate is taken to the village of the bus tour guide where there is no hospital but a local veterinary doctor sews up her wound. Meanwhile the nanny in the US has to go to Mexico for her son's wedding but the parents are not back, so she decides to take the kids with her to Mexico, a risky job but they manage to cross the border safely. Out in Japan, a deaf girl Rinko Kakuchi is shown as a rebellious kid and has unnatural sexual drive. She is recovering from the suicide of her mother so uses sexuality as a balm to calm her. She does not succeed any time. Her father Koji Yakusho is equally emotional disturbed and he has given away the gun as a memento to the goatherd's uncle. When the Japanese detective asks him about his wife's death, he says that he shot herself with a rifle, not jumping from the balcony. The connection between these stories slowly comes to the fore. There is one strand which connects all these stories. Absolutely powerful movie directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. The music by Gustavo Santaolalla is simply breath taking. I watched this movie on Amazon Prime Video, unfortunately the movie did not have any sub-titles, which is a major drawback. The acting by the cast is absolutely good. There are so many languages used in the movie - Moroccan, Spanish, English, Japanese, Sign language but there were no sub-titles. The movie is mostly shot on actual locations which is breath taking. Adriana Barazza as the nanny has done a superb role. The Moroccan part of the actors were also extremely good and lifelike. 

A Deadly Shade of Gold

My first one of the Travis McGee series by John MacDonald, the plot twists and turns literally into so many parts that you begin to wonder where this character came from. McGee is drawn into a murder of his close friend, who himself is drawn into some shady dealings with some pure gold Aztec statuette that have some value. McGee sets off on a quest to find out who killed his friend which takes him into a small village in Mexico. The plot slowly unravels every time McGee visits a new adventure, we start learning something about the story. Still it is not a linear narrative so we start tucking into one twist after another. We move from Mexico to Los Angeles, where the finale is set. Bodies start dropping one after another, all the bad guys go off one after another. McGee starts getting the hang of the plot more than us, of course, but we are still drawn to the end of the story through one sub-text after another. McGee is not the atypical detective, so his methods are unconventional but brutal in the end. Some perniciously vile characters are presented to us along the way.

John MacDonald is an American writer and the Travis McGee series spawned the 60s to mid 80s and were fairly successful.  This book was published in 1965.
My rating 3/5