Mexico
LFF 2012: After LuciaSunday, 21 October 2012
It’s the suffocating inevitability of what is done to the girl that makes you keep grimly watching. Mexican director Michel Franco’s film is about people with nowhere to turn, expressed most brutally in the bullying of its teenage heroine Alejandra... Read more... |
Santa SangreWednesday, 19 September 2012
Circus and church, and a whole lot of other extremes, come up against each other in bewildering opposition in Alejandro Jodorowsky’s re-released 1989 Santa Sangre, a cult film of which it could truly be said, “They don’t make them like this any more... Read more... |
DVD: The Discreet Charm of the BourgeoisieTuesday, 10 July 2012
The great Spanish surrealist film-maker Luis Buñuel was 72 when he made The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie but it is as madcap a piece of weirdness as ever he came up with. It also won him the 1972 Oscar for Best Foreign Film. One of the great... Read more... |
Casa de mi PadreThursday, 07 June 2012
Comedic curio Casa de mi Padre features Will Ferrell in his most surprising role yet – that of a Mexican rancher who “no habla inglés”. This Spanish-language film is a tongue-in-cheek thriller featuring Ferrell alongside Mexican stars Gael García... Read more... |
Cannes 2012: Making a killing on the Côte d'AzurThursday, 24 May 2012
The last time that actor Brad Pitt and New Zealand director Andrew Dominik teamed up it was for the epic and elegiac western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Their new one, in competition in Cannes, couldn’t be more... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, Shakespeare's GlobeThursday, 17 May 2012
The two parts of Henry IV parts 1 and 2 are very macho plays. Men drink, tell rude jokes, strut and lie their way into power and influence. In Globe to Globe's Latin American takes on the Bard, some hijo de puta and de puta madre seem fitting... Read more... |
DVD: Miss BalaFriday, 17 February 2012
In Gerardo Naranjo’s Miss Bala, an aspiring beauty queen becomes an unwitting accomplice in the dirty deeds of a criminal gang. If it sounds like the plot of a cheap thriller, it isn’t – it’s visceral and uncommon, capturing the ferocity and reach... Read more... |
Miss BalaFriday, 28 October 2011
Miss Bala, just to clear it up at the start, does not concern itself with beauty pageants. Or not like Miss Congeniality. Beauty is indeed involved in the form of Laura, a pretty young Mexican woman from a poor family who aspires to win the crown of... Read more... |
Anri Sala, Serpentine GallerySunday, 09 October 2011
A single snare drum greets you on entry to the Serpentine Gallery; there’s no one playing it, yet in response to an inaudible cue, the drumsticks begin to vibrate autonomously. Meanwhile on a nearby wall, a pair of blue rubber gloves revolves slowly... Read more... |
Miracles and Charms, Wellcome CollectionThursday, 06 October 2011
Ex-voto paintings are a tradition in Mexico, an offering of gratitude to God and the saints for answered prayers, row after row of them lining the walls of Mexican churches, testifying to the congregations’ devotion, and to the enduring link between... Read more... |
A Better LifeTuesday, 26 July 2011
A Better Life is Bicycle Thieves remodelled for modern LA. Vittorio De Sica’s iconic 1948 film about an Italian father and son living over a precipice of poverty sadly requires adjustment only in its details, the theft of a bicycle the father needs... Read more... |
The Mexican Institute of Sound, KOKOMonday, 18 April 2011
The downside of this job is that because new CDs are dropping through the letterbox every day, a lot of stuff inevitably gets consigned to the archives and forgotten about, when it really shouldn’t be. So when I heard that The Mexican Institute of... Read more... |
