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RobSac
Reviews
American Me (1992)
Underrated Gem in the Gangster Genre
This movie needs a month long run on HBO or Showtime, to remind people of how good it is, and hopefully create a buzz that would lead to a bluray release. Anyone with a remote appreciation of a terrific screenplay, solid acting, and neo-realistic direction would have to love this movie.
Edward James Olmos directs, and stars as main character Santana Montoya. Santana's parents are victims of a brutal and disturbing attack during Los Angeles's "Zoot Suit Riots" in the 1940s which sets the tone for Santana's power driven and violent life.
A childhood of gang activity in East Los Angeles eventually lands Santana in Folsom State Prison, where in the 1960s he starts La Eme, otherwise known as the Mexican Mafia. The gang controls all illicit commerce inside of the prison walls, from drugs to prostitution.
While paroled in the early 1970s, Santana meets Julie (Evalina Fernandez). Julie, who's aware of Santana's high profile in the criminal world, and is resentful of it for the most part, falls for him when she learns that while in prison he'd studied and read books about the Chicano political movement. Santana's childhood friend and fellow gangster, JD (William Forsythe), also a member of La Eme despite being white, is skeptical of Santana's relationship with Julie, and believes Julie's pacifist politics are rubbing off on Santana, which would make La Eme look weak in the gang world.
When Julie's cousin, "Little Puppet" (Daniel Villareal) commits a major infraction within La Eme's rules, Santana is given an ultimatum by JD to either endorse a gang hit on Little Puppet, or risk that his leadership of the gang would come into question, likely resulting in his own death. A series of incidents, including a drug overdose and a bizarre end to a date between Santana and Julia, put the two at odds, which leaves Santana at a crossroads of maintaining his gang status (and his life), or trying to salvage what little remains of his relationship with the only woman he'd ever loved. What results is both riveting and sad, and, as intended by Edward James Olmos, leaves a message about Chicano gang life in Los Angeles.
Enough controversy surrounded the movie to make another movie about in and of itself. In fact, the DVD has a documentary included in the special features called "Lives in Hazard", which goes into further detail, while also giving terrific insight to the streets of East Los Angeles in the early 1990s, including interviews with real gang members who were used as consultants and actors.
This one has fallen through the cracks, and it shouldn't have. It has a story, dialogue, and even great cinematography (which effectively captures downtown and East Los Angeles during three different eras in history) that help the film hold up twenty plus years after its release.
Big Fan (2009)
Good independent film, Patton Oswalt as obsessed sports fan
Paul (Patton Oswalt, "King of Queens", "United States of Tara"), is a New York Giants fan, presumably in his 30s, who lives with his mother in Staten Island, NY, works as a parking lot attendant, is single and, despite boisterous claims to his mother, obviously doesn't date. His social life consists of attending Giants games with his friend and fellow Giant fan, Sal (Kevin Corrigan, "Grounded for Life", "The Departed"), albeit without actual game tickets (they watch the games from a car battery-powered portable t.v. in the parking lot).
While the character's premise is obvious from the mere film poster, the story really begins when Paul is beaten nearly to death by a paranoid and presumably cocaine using NY Giants player, Quantrall Bishop (Jonathan Hamm, pro athlete, Arena Football League, no prior acting experience I know of) that he and Sal follow back to a Manhattan night club, after they spot him near their Staten Island neighborhood presumably buying drugs.
The beating isn't nearly as surreal or disturbing as you'd expect for an independent film, it's more like a launching pad for the film's overall story and the journey through a rabid sports' fans psyche, not to mention the arrogance of his family members, never short on unsolicited, condescending career advice, which, like most condescending advice, sounds an awful lot more like a subtle mockery of his station in life, and that also includes a mother who excessively pressures him to date, even angrily confronting him about what she suspects he does in his own privacy to pleasure himself, in an exchange strikingly reminiscent to that of Dirk Diggler and his mother in the film "Boogie Nights", albeit much sadder considering Paul is not a young stud who's coveted by young women in his neighborhood and porn producers.
Paul is pressured by a police officer played by none other than the same actor who plays Agent Harris on "The Sopranos" (Think agent Harris with a couple of tiers lower of a salary and a foul mouth) to put the "scumbag" Bishop away for 3 to 5 years, pending conviction (same urgency if its a white NY Giants player who attacks Paul? Bishop is black, btw. At any rate, I'm seeing shades of Plaxico Burress, real life NY Giants star sentenced to prison for accidentally shooting himself in a night club, and who seemed to be charged and sentenced at a much faster rate by NY's system than most unruly NY pro athletes...), and not to mention, is pressured to sue Bishop by his ambulance chasing lawyer brother Jeff (Gino Cafarelli, "The Good Shepherd").
What holds Paul up from taking any kind of action against Bishop is that he's so consumed with his hatred of a Philadelphia Eagles fan, Philadelphia Phil, (THE Michael Rapaport, who else?!?), with whom he has heated exchanges with over a sports radio show hosted by real life sports radio jock Scott Ferrall, that he doesn't want to jeopardize Bishop's eligibility, fearing the Giants would lose with Bishop out of the lineup, and having to endure Phil rubbing it in.
While Paul's character may seem pathetic, the film interestingly shines a light on Paul's family which makes them in a way seem more pathetic than him. His lawyer brother, Jeff, is married to a silicone queen secretary (Serafina Fiore), whose only attractive asset is her ginormous and almost annoyingly fake breasts, and who he had an affair with while in a previous marriage. Paul's mother hypocritically plays the religious card against Paul's chosen life of isolation from women, all the while, and as Paul points out in one of the few heated exchanges with her, she seems to have no problem with her other son Jeff's past adulterous affair. In perhaps the most gripping exchange between Paul and one of his obnoxious relatives, when confronting his brother Jeff, for making a pivotal legal decision on his behalf without first discussing it with him, Jeff matter of factly tells him that based on industry standards in the legal field, Paul is incapable of making his own decisions, due to his single marital status, his low paying job, and him living with a parent. Yes, this is where one of his relatives finally, to his face, basically sums him up to be mentally disabled. At this point, you get the feeling that the only two decent people on the planet are Paul and his Giant fan wing man, Sal.
The film, however, stays true to what I feel is its overall message, that we're all flawed. Paul, showing poor judgment similar to when he decides to stalk Bishop, sets out to confront Philadelphia Phil in real life, and does something that will make his life drastically more pathetic than it already was.
My only real problem with this film is that it doesn't seem to tie up so many of the loose ends in Paul's social and family life, and instead does go a little "Rocky Balboa" in the final 15 minutes. It almost seems as if writer/director Robert Siegel ("The Wrestler") plays it safe toward the end of the script, figuring an action filled ending might give it a better chance of getting more cineplex screens. Even if that's the case, "Big Fan" is still a solid offering by Siegel, and considering it's only the 3rd film he's been involved with (first being the spoofish "The Onion Movie"), what he's accomplished already between Big Fan and The Wrestler only makes you long for his next film.
Big Fan
9 out of 10
Mi vida loca (1993)
Most realistic film that will ever be made about Echo Park
As Echo Park becomes a gentrified suburb, you'll see more and more movies reflecting the middle class hipster culture that's taking over the neighborhood. Mi Vida Loca is the best glimpse a lay person will ever get into the pre-gentrification Echo Park.
This is Los Angeles, shortly after the Rodney King riots. Mousie (Seidy Lopez, "Resurrection Blvd") and Sad Girl (Angel Aviles, "Desperado"), two lifelong friends, and members of the Echo Parque Locas gang, each have a kid by the same guy, drug dealer and Echo Parque gang member Ernesto (Jacob Vargas, "Selena", "Road Dogz").
A death in their tight knit circle changes everything, including many preexisting grudges. But a real wild card gets thrown into their hand when a homegirl, "Giggles" (Marlo Marron, "My Funny Valentine"), is released from prison, and tries to steer the homegirls away from the street life, and into a life in "COMPUUUUTERS!!!". Her very astute warning of what the future will be like, likely learned while reading in prison, falls on deaf ears, but her independent, entrepreneurial spirit does not, as she leads the homegirls through a plan to get the best out of a pickup truck in which the ownership thereof is in dispute, not only within the Echo Park gang, but also with a member of the rival River Valley gang, El Duran (Jesse Borrego, "Bound By Honor: Blood In Blood Out").
A correspondence between a beautiful yet reclusive younger sister of Sad Girl, La Blue Eyes (Magali Alvarado), who's "trip" is getting an education and avoiding the gang life, and a "torcedo" (guest of the California prison system), eventually puts La Blue Eyes front and center of the tragic climax of these intertwining stories.
W. (2008)
Not JFK or Born on the 4th, but good from an indi perspective
Don't expect that JFK, Born on the 4th of July or Nixon magic. It's not there, except maybe in small, small doses. Perhaps that was the mistake I made going in.
Only a few real classic Oliver Stone cinematic moments. Two that come to mind were George W.'s debate for congress in the '70s, where he gets "out Texaned and out Christianed" in a big way. Another Stone-esquire scene is when Bush is visiting a wounded Iraq War veteran of Mexican-American descent, and starts speaking Spanish to him. The soldier's mother, sitting bedside, is visibly unimpressed. A lot of quick cuts to Iraq war footage sort of give it that JFK/Nixon feel, but just seem to fall short.
Overall, the characters were believable. Brolin may have worked the spoiled frat boy angle a little too hard playing Bush, yet it worked. And that's probably because so much of the real life W.'s actions seem to mimic that of a frat boy in chief.
I'm going to see the film again, yet this time watch it as an independent film. That would be my advice to anyone going to see it for the first time, as well. Don't expect the big Oliver Stone blockbuster. It just doesn't play that way. Watch it as a character study and this film is truly interesting and certainly an important film defining the time we live in.