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Reviews
El cantante (2006)
An obscene low blow... well acted, but low blow nonetheless
I came out of watching this film revolted to my stomach. We all know that Héctor Lavoe wasn't a saint, and his life was indeed a tragedy from when he became famous on... but the overwhelming feeling you get from all real-life sources of information and trivia that have described his life in the past is that, contrary to the despotic, abusive brute portrayed in the film, Héctor's character was way more generous, more people-friendly (I'll talk about this in a minute), pained, multidimensional than what we're fed with through Marc Anthony's interpretation. That role, Marc plays quite well, so let's not diminish his and Jennifer Lopez's acting talents on what is a flawed script to begin with (heavily biased in favor of Puchy Rosario's viewpoint of things). But this is not a movie about Héctor's life, this is, somehow, a caricature of a Tony Montana of sorts turned salsa singer.
This movie says "personal vanity project" all over it, and is more a vehicle for pushing J-Lo's talent to people's faces (more so than Marc Anthony's, even!) than a serious recreation of the man and his music. Another big blunder is the portrayal of Willie Colón, which is inaccurate to the hilt. The gossip fodder has been put underneath a microscope; in the past, Willie has been blunt and frank about his own life's mistakes, but was a far more serious, genius-like, professional influence over these facts than was portrayed of him. His is a blur here.
I do share the feeling that the movie comes across as a big movie video. Marc's pipes are undeniably good, even if his on-stage portrayal of Héctor is a bit stiff. J-Lo's sex appeal and talent oozes through, of course, but this movie isn't named "La Esposa del Cantante" for nothing. We have no notion of what drove Héctor to New York to begin with, how big the Willie Colón years really were... we're not even truly aware on how much Héctor was manipulated by those who do manipulated him in real life. And, since most real-life sources have stated that their contribution to the film was squelched to begin with, this comes across as a flashy, lopsided, expensive mess of a biopic.
Too bad the non-Latinos will only have this movie as a reference of Héctor's impact over Latin American culture and salsa proper. As it has turned out, the hardcore fans who have seen it hate the movie... and so do I, who happen not to be one.
There's an apocryphal story about Lavoe actually meeting Marc Anthony shortly before his death. At the time, Marc looked like a rocker, sort of a Latino Axl Rose. Héctor, who spared no one in the teasing department, said: "¡Qué nena fea!" (What an ugly girl!) when they met. Marc, as big a chip on his shoulder as he has proved himself to have, probably never forgave him...
The Queen (2006)
Great performance by Mirren... but a bit puzzling...
In this film, Helen Mirren is just plain EXCELLENT as Queen Elizabeth II, but the sense I get from her performance is that she portraits the role as realistically as possible, while her dialog is, from a psychological and emotional point of view, incongruous with her mannerisms and the events she portrays on the film. In other words, she acts one way, but her lines suggest some other course of action... I guess that the WRITING is to blame. We have no way of knowing, of course, how close Mirren's lines are to how the real queen of England behaves: if she's as arrogant, conceited, etc. as the lines Mirren reads, then the script is a triumph, but her acting gives the queen a true human perspective, a woman torn between her life-long duty and institutional stuffiness versus the aged grandmother with the truly dysfunctional family who at least should have SOME feelings, for crying out loud.
That's where the role of Tony Blair comes in to help decode the queen's. Sheen is extremely goofy as Blair at the beginning of the film, truly laughable. I perceived the movie as a comedy while sitting at a movie theater in Puerto Rico with no Spanish subtitles, and due to the subject matter people around me didn't know whether to laugh or not. I laughed and laughed hard, to the puzzled looks of everyone around me (including my wife), because the humor (particularly the exchanges between the queen and Blair) is truly clever. Helen McCrorie as Cherie Blair goes for the gut, and to me, hers and James Cromwell as the Duke of Edinburgh (as excellent as Mirren's!) are the best portrayals of the film. Sheen eventually becomes his role at the end, but the progression is slow at times; I strongly doubt that the real Blair was as a passive player of the events just before Diana's death as the movie portrays him. I see a Tony Blair that is more manufactured public servant than leader of his government.
Sylvia Sims looks too young for her part as the Queen Mum, and is her role is more comic relief than opinionated royal elder; it suits the comic intentions of the movie well, although I have no idea on just how comic the producers and director intended this movie to be. Alex Jennings nailed the Prince of Wales' voice, but he doesn't look the part (he actually looks a lot like George W. Bush in this one!), and his role wasn't as well written. He did an excellent job with the convoluted idea of the prince that was developed for the role. I suspect that the prince in real life felt a lot of second-hand guilt for his ex-wife's death, which isn't as convincing when portrayed by Jennings. I suspect that the royal princes probably played a role in their mother's events, which wasn't even a bleep on the screen on this movie. Finally, the movie was very favorable to both Blair and the queen at the end, but probably understates Blair's contribution to keep things in perspective at the house of Windsor. It is not a very flattering portrayal of the queen of England, but it is probably as real as it gets.
¿Qué pasa, U.S.A.? (1977)
The best Latino sitcom ever, period
I am not Cuban, and yet I used to watch this series fervently on our local PBS station in Puerto Rico. It was extremely funny, and a great deal of the credit, besides the excellent cast, belongs to Luis Santeiro. Given the comedy's format limitations (no dialog would be uttered in English without it being referenced, directly or indirectly, in Spanish, and vice versa), and given the obvious limitations of explaining a culture (in this case, Cuba's) within an American context through acting alone, Santeiro did an excellent job of synthesizing Cuban, American, and Cuban-American elements within a comic vehicle that could only bring you to the floor, laughing, and laughing hard. I'm unaware of the series' episodes being available in DVD format nowadays, but if you have a chance to see them, somehow, check these ones out: The episode where Joe, Steven Bauer's character, has an appendectomy (the African-American nurse is a riot, and so are the Peñas trying to sneak into Joe's room while his suffering room co-patient, a Jewish-American, has to endure them); the episode where Carmen and Pepe Peña end up drunk (and Pepe has to give her some rather hypocritical fatherly advice about the ills of alcohol); Carmen's crash while trying to get driving lessons from Mi Abuelo Driving School (and the entire family's day in court), and the episode where Adela's friend dies, therefore ruining Carmen's, Violeta's and Joe's party and dates. Velia Martinez was EXCELLENT as Adela (there's an episode where she has to do a live coffee advertisement right in the middle of a TV soap opera broadcast, and that vignette is a gem in itself), and so was Connie Ramirez as the sassy, sexy Violetica... to say little about the rest of the regular cast, which was equally good within their context.
One further word of advice: scrap the non-Bauer episodes towards the end of the series run (as well as the rather flat "Parque sí, Parqueo no" one... these are the few ones that force me to give the series a lower score), and try to watch all others in their entirety. Only in this series you'll ever see a Roman Catholic father trying to bless a house simultaneously while a santera evokes her spirits at some room elsewhere in the same house... and they accidentally end up facing each other.
This is a comedic gem of a series. I miss it dearly.
El vacilón: The Movie (2005)
Funny... not for the faint-hearted... could have been better
This movie is essentially a collection of vignettes that describe the mental process behind Luis Jiménez's desire to make a movie that portraits some of the (rather outrageous) phone calls he (and his partner Moonshadow) receive at their radio morning show, which is New York's most popular. Luis Jiménez, perhaps, comes across as a neurotic, Moonshadow steals the show (he's the one on the bunch, besides Juan Manuel Lebrón and Paul Rodriguez, with some acting experience) as his own self (a fun-loving prankster and notorious miser), and Rubén Ithier, acting in a very decent performance before he was deported from the U.S. permanently, does his job as bearer of the brunt of the visual jokes.
The movie suffers from overacting from almost everyone on screen at one time or another (but we're dealing with radio people, for the most part, so coming up with convincing acting in front of a camera is rather an achievement for all of them). The plot suffers a bit from predictability at most of its key scenes (perhaps on purpose: Jiménez and Agustín perhaps want to build up on it for comic effect), but the vignettes are rather clever... genius, at times (the Iraqi prison scene is a riot). The movie parodies other films (Rocky I, Raging Bull and The Matrix, among others) are quite absurd, and funny as a result. However, the movie itself has no ending, and the attempts to finish it with animation fall flat.
I loved: Carolina Cadillo, both in answering machine mode and in person (she could have been far more time on screen), the Tetona subplot and Moonshadow's Rocky scene. I hated: the Platanoman vignette not being given a more decent plot. Could have been better if: some scenes were shortened (example, the g-string incident). More visual gags and less bodily fluids, please... Perhaps some cameos.
Cayo (2005)
Good movie, with room for improvement
Cayo was written (or so claim the producers, Ineabelle Colon and Pedro Muniz) as to make its plot slightly more general in tone and subject matter than movies that are intrinsically tied to their place of origin. Here, the plot, subplots, acting styles and general framework are decidedly Puerto Rican. My fear is that something might get lost in the translation... maybe not.
Without giving much detail, here's my take: Cayo is about a man's (Ivan) last few months. He's dying from cancer, and wishes to go back to his native island of Culebra, part of the Puerto Rican archipelago, to spend his last days. His loving wife (Julia) reluctantly returns with him; they were sweethearts since childhood. But there's a third person in this triangle: the dying man's former best friend (Kike). He still holds a grudge against both, since he was the woman's lover while Ivan was away fighting the Vietnam War.
Ivan discovers that visiting one cay surrounding the main Culebra island regularly gives him physical strength and inner peace. He prolongs his live for about a year and a half, and the whole town notices it. The Federal government then decides to declare the cay off limits to the population... and giving you more details would spoil the plot.
Pros - The cast, as usual in the few Puerto Rican movies that are out there, has quite a few actors that would give Hollywood a run for its money. In particular, Roselyn Sanchez has a decent role on this one, and she acts it quite well. Adrian Garcia is surprisingly good as one of the secondary actors. Colon and Muniz do their limited roles quite well, and so does Idalia Perez Garay, whose otherwise meaty role is probably over casted, given her excellent talents as an actress. The cinematography is a VISUAL TRIUMPH. Ambientation is excellent. The main roles (Ivan and Kike) are well played by Carlos Esteban Fonseca and Jose Felix Gomez, respectively, although the roles themselves are not strong enough for their talent. Raul Carbonell's role is also very good, although he overacts his crucial monologue a bit. Music and scoring is generally good, becoming excellent towards the end.
Cons - The plot reflects Ineabelle Colon's background as a Literature teacher. Cayo's is NOT a film script, it reads more like a play. The pacing can be glacial at times, the editing is too conservative, and the direction (role- and script-wise, and not in visual terms) can be almost non-existent at times. Some secondary roles were atrociously miscast (young Kike being the worst offender). The script lacks depth and can be a big cliché in some key scenes. Two subplot parts make no sense whatsoever: how Ivan, being a bastard while living with Julia in New York, becomes model husband again, while she is willing to forgive him, and how Kike can hold a 30-year old grudge that happens to be so strong.
I loved - The scene where Roselyn receives a marriage proposal by mail, with her friends joining her. A riot! I hated - The corny "No Tresspassing" sign the Feds were using. Plus, the two gaps in the plot that I mentioned above, plus the fact that the whole "Feds invading Cayo Pescao" was not given enough buildup during the movie.
The movie would improve if - here and there, 20 to 30 minutes be chopped off to accelerate the pace, particularly by shortening the initial scenes of Ivan back in Culebra. Some key scenes be re-shot with meatier dialog and more ambiance. And a good DIRECTOR'S CUT. These CAN be fixed before Oscar time... and with those changes in, it would at least deserve the nomination, maybe even win the Foreign Film one...