Steven Rubio's Online Life

güeros (alonso ruizpalacios, 2014)

This is the sixteenth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2024-25", a "33-week-long community challenge" where "you must watch one previously unseen film that fits the criteria of the theme for the week." This is the 10th annual challenge, and my sixth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", "2022-23", and 2023-24). Week 16 is called "Viva la revolucion! Week":

Order and adherence to social norms is so intrinsic to any society that almost any kind of social change can only occur very gradually. Art and movies can be a part of what brings about this kind of slow change as societies evolve. However, there have been groups throughout history who have felt that the need for a new social order is so necessary that they sought to quick-start the change they wanted through the powerful force of violence and revolution.

Whether it be a depiction of an actual historic event or something like the overthrow of a futuristic dystopia, this week watch a movie about a political revolution where violence is involved. Here is a list from Darren Carver-Balsiger to help you get started.

The politics, the revolution, the violence, they are all here, but none of them drive the story, which is ultimately a road movie that takes place amidst those events. It's 1999 in Mexico City, and a student strike at UNAM essentially has shut down the university. A mother sends her young troublesome son Tomás to stay with his brother "Sombra" in Mexico City. Sombra and his roommate Santos are taking advantage of the strike to ignore school ... they are slackers. Sombra's girlfriend Ana is involved with the strikers, and writer-director Alonso Ruizpalacios gets all four characters to travel around town, crossing with various elements of the strike while looking for an old folk-rocker named Epigmenio Cruz.

This was the first feature for Ruizpalacios, and he has a confident tone, full of influences, notably of French New Wave filmmakers like Godard. Güeros is shot in black & white and has a documentary feel which makes the strike scenes especially believable. No particular political stance is taken in the film ... what matters is the characters and how they relate as they interact with the world around them. Epigmenio disappoints when they finally find him, and Ana deserts Sombra for the strike, at which point everything is pretty much back to where they were when Tomás first arrives in the city.

The cinematography of Damián García is excellent. Overall, Güeros is impressive without ever knocking you over. It makes you want to watch more films by Ruizpalacios.

[This was also part of my occasional ongoing attempt to watch movies in Spanish using subtitles in Spanish. I read a summary of the plot in advance. I felt this was my most successful try yet ... I never felt lost.]

revisiting pan's labyrinth (guillermo del toro, 2006)

Fifteen years ago, I wrote about Pan's Labyrinth:

I'm not sure I can recommend a movie as being for the whole family when it's not in English and there is a lot of violence, but this is my idea of the kind of movie that kids should be watching, rather than the usual tripe kids are offered. To point out an obvious example, Pan's Labyrinth was nominated for an Oscar for best original screenplay ... it lost to trite Little Miss Sunshine, which I'm sure was more "appropriate" for youngsters but wasn't half the movie that Pan's Labyrinth was....

Watching it again, I'm not sure what I was on about. This is absolutely not a movie for kids. I guess my only excuse was that I was pissed off at the middling Little Miss Sunshine beat it out for Best Screenplay.

Meanwhile, Pan's Labyrinth remains an enthralling experience. Currently #46 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of the 21st century, and #531 on the all-time list.

triangle of sadness (ruben östlund, 2022)

With Triangle of Sadness, I have now seen 9 of the 10 movies nominated for a Best Picture Oscar this year (sorry, Avatar). I think Everything Everywhere All at Once and Women Talking are the cream of the crop (I'd include RRR, but it didn't get a nomination). I'd put Triangle of Sadness in the middle of the pack.

My guess is by next Monday no one will even remember that Triangle of Sadness got three Oscar nominations (Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay) and won none. Which isn't a knock on the movie ... there are more worthy/likely winners in those categories, and if the three nominations are a stretch, they aren't egregious. But Triangle of Sadness will eventually stand on its own, regardless of Oscar nominations, and based on what I've seen, it's a pretty typical Ruben Östlund picture. I've seen Force Majeure and The Square, and like Triangle of Sadness, those are odd movies, decent but not great, with just enough bizarreness to stick in your mind. I wrote about The Square, "You might call The Square smug ... at the least, it is quite proud of itself." I added, "None of the characters come off well, although they are pleasant enough on the surface and not exactly evil underneath." I'd say something similar about Triangle of Sadness. It's supposed to be an attack on class structure, it is an attack on class structure, but the rich people aren't mean enough. Which I can see as a good thing, but Östlund sets things up so we can enjoy the comeuppance of the rich, and then makes it less enjoyable because they aren't that awful despite their wealth. I may be asking for the wrong thing.

Force Majeure had an impressive avalanche, and The Square had some kind of monkey man who was also a work of art or something. The impressive avalanche in Triangle of Sadness is a colossal classy dinner served on a cruise ship during a storm that has some of the most ... what word am I looking for, "entertaining"? ... scenes of vomiting. It's not easily forgotten, for better or worse. It's even part of the publicity for the movie:

Triangle of Sadness is too long ... it has three parts, and for me, the entire first part could have been cut without doing any damage to the film. (The Square was also too long.) It's another Ruben Östlund film that you'll remember with a combination of fondness and something less positive. With Harris Dickinson, Dolly de Leon, and Charlbi Dean (who died unexpectedly at 32 just after the film's release).

coco (lee unkrich and adrian molina, 2017)

Coco is a multi-award winning film, including an Oscar for Best Animated Feature. It filled absences in many of my "Blind Spot" Letterboxd lists of popular movies I haven't seen. It is a landmark in Latino cinema, "the first film with a nine-figure budget to feature an all-Latino principal cast." I am pretty picky about animated features ... I love Miyasaki, like a lot of Pixar films, but am not a fan of a lot of the animated musicals that are ever-present. Coco comes from Pixar, and it is one of their best.

I watched in Spanish ... dubbing for animated films doesn't bother me, but ordinarily I'd have opted for English. But I knew they had made a specific Spanish-language version of Coco, and given its setting in Mexico and its emphasis on Mexican culture, Spanish seemed like the proper choice. (The only voice actor to appear in both versions is Gael García Bernal.) I can't make comparisons, but at the least, I was very satisfied with the Spanish voices.

I was also satisfied with the songs, which is often where I check out. I don't know if it was the way the Spanish-language versions felt less intrusive or something else, but I didn't gag. Meanwhile, the way Coco shows not just that Family Is Good but that Family Is Difficult was done in a pretty powerful way. Honestly, I didn't expect to like Coco ... now I can't wait to watch with my grandson.

simon of the desert (luis buñuel, 1965)

This is the twenty-sixth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2020-21", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 6th annual challenge, and my second time participating (last year can be found at "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2019-20"). Week 26 is called "Transcendental Style in Film Week".

In 1972, Paul Schrader wrote a book on the wave of slow, contemplative art house cinema entitled "Transcendental style in film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer". In it, he examines the three titular directors' works and how their films apply a certain style that seems to transcend language. The original book focuses on the directors named, though in 2018, Schrader released a updated version with a new introduction that applies his framework to the 50+ years of cinema following the original publishing. Feel free to select a film from either group of films.

This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen mentioned in Paul Schrader's "Transcendental Style in Film". Here is the original list of films and here is the list that includes all of the films mentioned in the new introduction.

I'm not sure how closely Simon of the Desert fits into a compendium of slow cinema. After all, it's only 45 minutes long ... how slow could it be? It's also interesting to consider what Buñuel is telling us about contemplative film (or anything else). The titular Simon spends his time atop a column, trying to connect with God through his ascetic life and near-constant examination of himself and the world. In short, Simon's life is contemplative to an extreme. But despite his efforts, his life is also meaningless ... at the least, his attempts to commune with God do not lead to enlightenment, and his actions are never as helpful as might be hoped. (Early on, he cures a man whose hands were cut off because he was a thief, restoring the hands to their original state. The man immediately smacks one of his kids upside the head.) If Simon is any example, Buñuel thinks the contemplative life is worthy of our disdain.

I'm surely looking at this wrong. No matter that I'm doing the Challenge, it doesn't really matter how the film fits into Schrader's framework. So from here, I'll try to take Simon of the Desert as its own work.

There are two stories about why it is so short. One is that the money ran out, so Buñuel came up with a quick (nonsensical) ending and finished. The other comes from Silvia Pinal, who plays Satan. She claims that the film was originally to be part of a three-piece anthology film, but that the concept didn't pan out (she blames herself) and so Buñuel just released his short movie as is. In any event, the ending is indeed nonsensical (it takes place in the 5th century, but at the end it jumps unexplained into the 1960s). Buñuel's work is full of things that don't make obvious sense, so I don't think the end hurts the film that much. But it is an abrupt break ... it's not like the movie is full of time shifts, just the one at the end.

Pinal makes a great Satan, because she is trying to make Simon give up his mission, and she exudes the kind of sexuality that clearly affects Simon. Does she break him down? It's hard to say ... if you count the sudden trip forward, when she and Simon are in a discotheque, perhaps she has succeeded. But ultimately, Buñuel is less interested in Simon's persistence and more interested in showing what a foolish mission it is. This is not a religious movie ... it's anti-religion.

I've liked every Buñuel film I have seen, including Simon of the Desert, with Los Olvidados at the top. Simon of the Desert strikes me as lesser Buñuel. #912 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of all time.

[Letterboxd list of Buñuel films I've seen]

godzilla: king of the monsters (michael dougherty, 2019)

I've been impressed enough by the previews for Godzilla vs. Kong that I decided I needed to prep. I'd seen the first film in the series, Godzilla, and liked it a lot. I began to catchup recently by watching Kong: Skull Island, which was a bit of a drop but still entertaining. Now I've seen Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and the drop is a lot bigger.

This one brings out a bunch of the Japanese originals ... Mothra, Ghidorah, Rodan, and of course Godzilla, all of whom are listed in the credits as playing themselves. This is more fun if you're a fan, although Rodan seems less important to the plot. Michael Dougherty shows his love for the genre, and the film isn't condescending. It's just not very good.

We're invited to care about the characters, and the cast is impressive. But the characters never get deeper than their stereotypical base: family struggling over events in the earlier movie, Japanese scientists with more understanding of the monsters, smart-ass American scientist, Charles Dance as a bad guy. Hey, these are stereotypes for a reason ... they make it easy for us to slide into the movie. But when we are asked to actually care about them, to react emotionally to them, I didn't care and didn't get emotional.

Perhaps it's a bit of a surprise, given the all-star cast, but the standout is someone making her first appearance in a feature film: Millie Bobby Brown, who had already established herself via the television series Stranger Things. Brown only just turned 17, but you can see she'll have a solid future. She isn't just playing the cute factor. Indeed, Brown is the one person who convinced me her character was worthy of an emotional response from the audience.

As for the action, it's fine, as expected, although during the climactic battle, they kept switching attention to the humans when all I wanted to see was Godzilla going up against Ghidorah. Truth is, the action in the Godzilla vs. Kong trailer excited me more.

redes (fred zimmerman & emilio gómez muriel, 1936)

This is the twenty-second film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2020-21", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 6th annual challenge, and my second time participating (last year can be found at "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2019-20"). Week 22 is called the "Golden Age of Mexican Cinema Week".

From The Austrian Film Museum:

"Beginning in the early 1930s and continuing for a quarter-century, Mexico was home to one of the world’s most colorful and diverse film cultures: not many other countries could claim a comparable range of production, diversity of genres and number of master filmmakers. The excellence of Mexican cinema was founded on its commercial strength – Mexico supplied all of the Spanish-speaking markets in Central and South America, and delivered several box-office successes in the United States as well. During the thirties, the country also became an important refuge for European exiles. Numerous filmmakers and craftsmen had their own (usually semi-secret) Mexican Period, and German-born Alfredo B. Crevenna became Mexico’s most prolific director. In the 1940s, few other film cultures were quite as potent."

This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen from the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema. Try looking here or here for starters.

Another win for the Challenge. I had only seen one film in either of the suggested links (Los Olvidados), and in fact have been remiss in watching Mexican films in general (my favorite being Y Tu Mamá También from Alfonso Cuarón).

Redes has a complicated history, and is perhaps better called an international picture than simply a Mexican film. On the one hand, the film was commissioned by the left-wing Mexican government. There was Mexican co-director Emilio Gómez Muriel ... he went on to direct close to 80 movies, but Redes was his first. Redes was filmed at a small fishing town in Mexico, using a mostly non-professional cast. The score by Silvestre Revueltas, his first, is considered to be a great success, although I confess I found it overbearing at times. On the other hand, the film began as an idea from left-wing photographer Paul Strand, who was from Brooklyn. Fred Zinnemann, an Austrian who had moved to New York, was brought in to co-direct, although he didn't speak Spanish so Gómez Muriel worked with the actors. Strand and Zinnemann cited influences like Eisenstein and Flaherty, and Redes is often compared to Italian neorealism, which hadn't happened yet. So Redes is unmistakably Mexican, but with influences from many places.

Redes tells the story of fishermen who are exploited by the rich, and it's clear what side the film is on. It never looks amateurish ... there is a lot of talent behind the camera, and the non-professional actors are mostly appealingly natural. It's a small picture, to be sure, but its ambitions are large.

film fatales #83: zama (lucrecia martel, 2017)

Lucretia Martel takes her time between fiction features ... Zama was her first in nine years, and only her fourth since 2001. But she's busy ... between 2001 and the present, she has also made more than half a dozen shorts and a feature documentary. Zama was highly anticipated.

I wrote about her La Ciénaga,"You need to settle into its rhythms, you need to accept that Martel isn't going to hold your hand, but there's a difference between wanting the audience to be uncomfortable and making a movie that did not connect with an audience. Scenes begin and end in the middle, you aren't always immediately sure where you are, but you aren't lost." Much the same could be said about Zama.

It helps to approach Zama without trying to squeeze it into pre-conceived notions. The more you try to figure out what is going on, the less you'll get out of the movie. Which isn't to suggest Zama is too obscure for enjoyment. It's just that its pleasures have less to do with narrative thrust and more to do with the feel of each scene. The title character is an official functionary somewhere in Argentina. He wants to leave ... he spends much of the movie trying to facilitate his release ... his desire is understandable, but Zama becomes something of a comical figure because his hopes are never going to be fulfilled, and at times, he seems to be the only person that doesn't realize this. The arc of his story is probably the easiest thing to latch onto, but Martel isn't really concerned with audience ease. Meanwhile, the subject of imperialism wavers between text and subtext, as the nobility exists on the backs of slaves it barely acknowledges.

Zama is comical, although his trials finally become too extreme for us to laugh at. And life for the slaves is not funny at all. Martel effectively blends subtle commentary and absurd bureaucracy, all the while condemning the ruling class for their perfidies. It's a fine movie for a patient audience. #61 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of the 21st century.

(Here is a letterboxd list of Film Fatales movies.)

film fatales #77: even the rain (icíar bollaín, 2010)

Another movie for "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2019-20", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is out of order. Week 23 is called "Gael García Bernal Week".

Gael García Bernal is perhaps one of the best performers working today that doesn't get nearly the amount of attention he deserves. And though his most well known performance is in an animated film, one needs to see this man perform in live-action to get the full effect. So, give some love to one of yours truly's favorite actors.

This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen film starring Gael Garcia Bernal.

Even the Rain is a complex film that might seem fairly straightforward at first glance. Bernal plays a Mexican director, Sebastián, making a film with a Spanish producer about Columbus "discovering" America. They film in Cochabamba, Bolivia, for the usual reasons: it's cheaper.

It soon becomes apparent that the film Sebastián is making about how Columbus exploited the native population in many ways is replicating that exploitation. The people of Cochabamba go on a general strike (this is based on true events), and Sebastián is torn between support for the people and the problems he will have making his film (one of his primary actors turns out to be a leader of the revolt).

There are layers here. Sebastián wants to make his movie, he doesn't want to exploit anyone, but it happens anyway. And we in the audience can't help but wonder just how much the creators of Even the Rain paid the extras who came from the local area. It's not really fair ... they spoke to this in interviews ... but it's hard not to imagine Even the Rain following a similar path to Sebastián's movie. Unfair, but obvious without context. The filmmakers speak to this:

Meanwhile, much of Even the Rain is effective. Juan Carlos Aduviri, who plays the actor/revolutionary in his screen debut, comes from El Alto, next to La Paz. He grabs the screen ... it's believable that Sebastián wants him for his movie.

The parallels between the filmmakers and Columbus are interesting, although they are pressed on us a bit too hard. And I really have to believe that the filmmakers did right by the people. Perhaps the power of Even the Rain is that it raises such questions in the first place.

(Here is a letterboxd list of Film Fatales movies.)

blade runner 2049 (denis villeneuve, 2017)

What to make of Denis Villeneuve? I've now seen six of his movies, loved one (Incendies), liked three others very much, and didn't care for two of them, including Blade Runner 2049. I'd start with the length of his films ... Blade Runner 2049 is the longest at 163 minutes ... except I also didn't like the shortest one (Enemy, 91 minutes). So it's probably not the length, but recency bias steps in here ... Blade Runner 2049 is way too long. Don't take my word for it ... Ridley Scott said he would have cut out half an hour (of course, he would have subsequently re-edited it several times) (that's a joke, son), and Villeneuve agreed that it was too long, adding that he had made "the most expensive art house movie in cinema history". Honestly, that's what I liked best about Blade Runner 2049, that someone had given Villeneuve 150 million dollars and he came up with this movie. I can only imagine what the studio must have thought when they saw the final product.

Blade Runner 2049 moves so slowly it's like a Hollywood version of a Tarkovsky film. And not one of his good ones. There are a couple of plot twists that wake up the audience, and it's nice when Harrison Ford finally turns up. The film looks great. The legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins won an overdue Oscar on his 13th try. Having just finished binge-watching Halt and Catch Fire, I enjoyed the brief appearances of Mackenzie Davis. I'm running out of good things to say.

One thing that always disappointed me about the original Blade Runner was that I thought it missed a lot of what Philip K. Dick brought to the novel. I don't know if this is a good sign or a bad one, but I never gave any thought to Dick while watching 2049. It's point of reference was always the Ridley Scott movie, not Dick's book.

I admire Villeneuve's willingness to make an expensive art house film. I just didn't care much for the result. Critics disagree ... it's currently #692 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of the 21st century.