Cine - Movies

Title: Rudo y Cursi
Released: 2009

Plot Summary

Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal, reunited after Y Tu Mama También, are brothers who live in a rural Mexican town harvesting bananas. Rudo (Luna) spends his free time gambling and losing his wife's blender (licuadora) while Cursi's (Bernal) passion is music, which he sees as his true calling. Both brothers play soccer, and are discovered by an Argentine talent scout named Batuta who take them to DF to try out for division one teams.

Rudo y Cursi is a great story of sibling rivalry, pursuing dreams, and adjusting to success. The acting and storyline are well-done, and is the quality you would expect from a film put together by three greats: Carlos Cuarón (y tu mamá también), Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros), and Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth).

Language Learning Notes

Title: Amores Perros (Love's a Bitch)
Released: 2000

Plot Summary

From director Alejandro González Iñárritu, Amores Perros is an extremely well-made movie from Mexico. The first scene indicates that this movie isn't going to be easy to watch: the film opens with a car chase scene, rushing to the hospital to save a dog that's bleeding to death. While on the surface the movie is about dog-fighting, it also weaves together three stories, while providing a social commentary about life in Mexico at all levels of society.

Amores Perros doesn't provide an escape from reality as many films do, but rather dives into it. Many scenes use rough camera-work, florescent lighting, and show characters as they are, like the arranger of dog fights who is fat, sweaty and scratching himself. Even Gael García Bernal (Octavio) looks like an average guy in this movie.

Title: Tapas
Released: 2005

Plot Summary

This quirky Spanish film centers around a tapas bar in a tranquilo suburb of Barcelona. Although the storyline is not full of action, you do get to meet some great characters who form unlikely relationships, like the bully tapas bar owner who hires a Chinese immigrant with a passion for cooking and a perfect command of Spanish or the young grocery store worker Cesar who falls for the owner of the neighborhood deli who is twice his age.

The film is also about secrets in love and life and coming to terms with them, like the drug-dealing grandma grappling with her husband's cancer diagnosis or the tapas bar owner understanding why his wife may have left him.

I imagine anyone who has spent time living in Spain would love this film for pointing out the subtle idiosyncrasies of Spanish culture.

Language Learning Notes

Title: Sugar
Released: 2009

Plot Summary

Sugar is the story of Dominican baseball player Miguel "Sugar" Santos pursuing the American dream which, the film shows, is not always as it seems. Sugar opens at a baseball camp in the Dominican Republic, a springboard for recruiting the best players to play for US teams. Sugar is recruited to a small town in Iowa where he works both to prove himself as a great player but also to adjust to his new surrounds despite cultural differences and a language-barrier. This textured American-dream story includes many funny moments, like newly arrived players ordering French toast for every meal since it's the only thing they know how to order. It also explores the struggles involved in following a dream and what it takes to make it.

Language Learning Notes

Title: Sin Nombre (Without Name)
Released: 2009

Plot Summary

Sin Nombre is not an easy movie to watch. One of the first scenes shows the initiation of twelve-year-old Smiley into gang Mara Salvatrucha by men with their faces covered in tattoos in southern Mexico.

Smiley's macabre story intersects with a more hopeful story of a Honduran family at the dawn of their immigrant journey to the United States. The film exposes the dangers of the trip including crossing the Mexican border and shows what lengths people will go to for a better life.

The film illuminates gang culture from the inside as well as highlighting the dangerous reality of immigration. Sin Nombre blends Hollywood gangster movies like Goodfellas and New Jack City with classic immigration story El Norte, a favorite film of high school Spanish teachers. I'll certainly be thinking about this movie for quite some time.

Title: Y tu mamá también
Released: 2001

Plot Summary

This racy film out of Mexico from director Alfonso Cuarón was one of Mexico's greats and was extremely well-received internationally. The story recounts the coming-of-age of the film's two young protagonists: Tenoch (Diego Luna) and Julio (Gael García Bernal), who were recently reunited in 2009 film Rudo y Cursi.

The basic plot is a road trip from DF to Boca de Cielo, a beach Tenoch and Julio have invented to invite Luisa, a thirtysomething Spaniard who happens to be married to Tenoch's philandering cousin.

Title: Bella
Released: 2006

Plot Summary of Bella

A common theme in Bella is the power one moment has to change your life and that mistakes can often find redemption. The film is only partially in Spanish, mimicking the lives of immigrants living in New York City existing between their own culture and the American melting pot. The story is about an unlikely friendship between a former soccer star after losing his glory and a waitress at a crossroads.

Title: El Orfanato (The Orphanage)
Released: 2007