The Five-Year Engagement [2012]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (O)  Michael Phillips (3 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (2 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1195478/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/12mv052.htm
Michael Philips' review -
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/sc-mov-0424-five-year-engagement-20120426,0,5506041.column

The Five-Year Engagement (directed and cowritten by Nicholas Stoller along with Jason Segal who also costarred in the film along with Emily Blunt) chronicles in a comedic but often quite realistic way the bane of a more than a few parents and grandparents to say nothing of their religious leaders.

Exactly a year after aspiring chef Tom Solomon (played by Jason Segal) and English born but studying in the states psychology grad-student Violet Barnes (played by Emily Blunt) met at a San Francisco Bay Area "Come as your own Superhero" themed New Years Party, Tom proposes to Violet.  She says yes!  

At a somewhat stodgy "engagement party" sometime afterwards, we meet the rest of the families / friends.  Tom's parents, Pete and Carol Solomon (played by David Paymer and Mimi Kennedy respectively) are Jewish.  Violet's parents, Silvia Dickerson-Barnes and George Barnes (played by Jacki Weaver and Jim Piddock respectively) are Anglican and divorced.   Violet's father has since remarried to a striking woman (but with no lines) of Violet's age.  Tom also has a often stupid co-worker / best friend named Alex (played by Chris Pratt) and Violet is close to her younger sister Suzie (played by Alison Brie).  Among the things that happen early in this story (that spans five years) is that Alex ends up knocking-up Suzie at the Tom and Violet's engagement party and thus because they "have to get married" the two get married even before Tom and Violet were going to get married to begin with, that's if all things had gone "as planned." But of course, things don't go "as planned."


Soon after the engagement party, Violet finishing grad school, finds out that she was rejected for the post-doc program that she had applied to at U.C. Berkeley.  Accepting that, she puts her energies into planning Tom and her wedding.  Then she and Tom find out about Alex and Suzie and thus they too were now (scrambling) to get married.  And obviously, though it shouldn't matter, both Tom and Violet are taken aback that even though Alex and Suzie were doing everything in a heavily improvised fashion (Suzie was like 6-7 months pregnant in her wedding dress, etc) their wedding went actually quite nicely.  So no pressure on Tom and Violet ... (Alex and Suzie remain an improvisational counter-example to Violet's and Tom's far more "let's get everything perfect before..." approach throughout the the movie).

A short time afterwards, Violet finds out that by a fluke she got accepted into the post-doc program at the University of Michigan.  After talking about it, Tom and Violet _postpone_ their wedding but decide to move out to Michigan (Tom quitting his promising job in San Francisco) so that Violet could do her post-doc work in Ann Arbor.

The story really begins at this point, and clearly much ensues, including among other things, the one-by-one deaths of every single one of Violet's grandparents, while the couple never seems to get married.

What happened?  This is something that I actually know something about from my own grad-school / academic days, and it is also something that comes out relatively prominently in the FOCCUS inventory that the Catholic Church uses in its marriage prep program for young couples: Has the couple really discussed and come to agreement regarding each one's career aspirations and, yes, each one's expectations of the other in their roles as husband and wife?  This film was ultimately about two talented and ambitious people, Tom and Violet, who really needed to choose between career and their relationship and had trouble accepting that their decisions whatever they were had real consequences.

Indeed, that FOCCUS inventory that we give marriage couples was all but made for a couple like Tom and Violet, a couple that only knew each other for a year before they got engaged and really did have conflicting career/life aspirations. 

How does the film turn out?  I'm not going to tell you ...

But it turns out from my own experience at the parish where I work that most couples that do come to us to get married already know each other "forever" and have been "basically engaged" for years (and yes come often enough with small kids already in tow).

Why does it seem to take so long?  Well, those questions about life, career and marriage expectations do take time to sort out.  So yes, there's generally a huge difference between how a couple that's known each other for 10 years and been engaged for 2-3 scores on the FOCCUS inventory and a couple like Tom and Violet who met simply at a "Come as your own Superhero" party the year before.  It appears to take a while for a couple to achieve those "super powers" :-)

So what then to make of the movie in the end?  I do think that the film could make for a very good discussion piece for young adults.  It is also a reminder to young adults to not get particularly involved with someone if one isn't really "settled."  And yes, it is a warning about being too ambitious in pursuing a career.  There are always relational costs to pursuing "glory" ...

And yes parents, this film is appropriately rated R.  The film, even by its subject matter, is not intended for teens.  It is intended for young adults and above.


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Pirates! Band of Misfits [2012]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-II)  Nell Minow (3 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1430626/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/12mv050.htm
Nell Minow's review -
http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/movies/12115855-421/comedy-comes-fast-and-furious-in-pirates.html

Pirates! Band of Misfits (directed by Peter Lord and Jeff Newitt, screenplay by Gideon DeFoe [IMDb] based his own book Pirates! In an Adventure With Scientists the first of a series that he had written in the style of the famous British comedy franchises of Monty Python [IMDb] and Douglas Adams [IMDb]) is a silly enough animated film using clay figurines in the style of the directors' previous run-away success Chicken Run [2000] to entertain both the young and old.

Set in the 1830s in Victorian Era, Gideon DeFoe [IMDb] and the others involved in the project, take liberties with poking a lot of fun at Queen Victoria [IMDb] (voice by Imelda Staunton) herself, as well as of all people, Charles Darwin [IMDb] (voice by David Tennant).  The latter, the hapless/anti-heroic Pirate Captain (voice by Hugh Grant) and his similarly hapless/anti-heroic crew encounter when they attack his famous ship, the HMS Beagle, in hopes of finding booty, only to find the bookish Darwin, a lot of strange exotic animals and one "rather angry baboon" (you'll have to see the movie to find out why ... ;-).  The baboon aside from being "rather angry" turns out to not be all important to the story..., but the Pirate Captain's "big boned parrot" does.  Much ensues ...

As a teenager I loved most of Monty Python [IMDb] especially Monty Python and the Holy Grail [1975], Jabberwacky [1977] and Monty Python's Meaning of Life [1983].  As a college student, I read most of Douglas Adams [IMDb] Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, and liked the original BBC Hitchhikers' Guide [1981] television series (the subsequent Hitchhiker's Guide movie [2005] not so much).  More recently, I've actually enjoyed the Robert Downy Jr "reboot" movies regarding Sherlock Holmes [2009][2011].  Growing-up in a Czechoslovakian immigrant household, I also enjoyed the various stories about the fictitious Czech folk-hero/"academic" Jara Cimrman who also "lived" in that same era.  (I mention Cimrman because the scene in this movie where Darwin/the Pirate Captain present the Pirate Captain's parrot to the "august" gathering of scientists/academics of the Royal Society is something that any Czech Cimrman fan could appreciate ;-).

All this being true, and my betraying a more or less obvious predisposition to love a movie like this, the one thing that I didn't like about this film is its portrayal of Queen Victoria [IMDb] which I found over-the-top mean.

True, not a great many Irish-folk would have a lot of nice things to say about Victoria as the Great Potato Famine took place under her reign and the British monarchy did next to nothing.  I would imagine that the Indians/Pakistanis would probably not have many nice things to say about her time either as she presided over the height of the British Empire and took the title, among others of Empress of India.  Further, while the Victorian Era was noted for both its prudishness and hypocrisy. It has been said that even as "proper Englishmen didn't do such things" there were more prostitutes in London during the Victorian Era than at any other in London's history.  Obviously, there was a demand ...

Still true as all of this may have been, her era was one of a great flowering of both Sciences (again, Charles Darwin [IMDb], et al) and the Arts (Charles Dickens [IMDb-1][2], Oscar Wilde [IMDb-1][2], et al).  So I found the portrayal of the Queen in this film needlessly mean.

What to tell parents?  Like many "kids' movies" made these days, the movie has as much for adults as for kids.  Yes, the pirates are goofy enough to entertain the little ones, and yes there are enough allusions to historical people and events to both entertain the parents, and give them things to talk about with the kids afterwards.  Is it a spectacular movie?  No.  But it's not a bad one.

And all things considered, with the exception with going to town on beating up the Queen, it's better than a large number of nominally "kids' movies" released last year that had far more obvious (and unfunny) ideological axes to grind.  So if you haven't gone to the movies with the kids in a while, this would not be a bad one to go to ... Otherwise, you could wait for it to come out on video.

Finally, once again, with regards to 3D -- I saw the movie in 2D and it was just fine.  There's no reason to spend the extra $3-4/kid to see it in 3D.


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Chimpanzee [2012]

MPAA (G)  CNS/USCCB (A-I)  Roger Moore (3 stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1222815/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/12mv047.htm
Roger Moore's review -
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/sc-mov-0417-chimpanzee-20120419,0,3134250.story

Chimpanzee (directed by Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield, narrated by Tim Allen) is a child-oriented (Disney-Nature) documentary about a baby chimpanzee named "Oscar" by the film makers growing-up with his group of Chimpanzees in the wilds of the canopy  tropical rainforest in Africa.

Note to parents: Despite the documentary's relatively short length (78 minutes) and generally "child friendly" tone, it still may be too long for the attention spans of a lot of small children.  This is where zoos actually can be better than these kind of programs -- when the kids get bored of the "chimps" you can head over to the "polar bears" or "penguins." ;-), whereas here, you're pretty much committed to the 78 minutes ... ;-).

Having said that, the nature photography is beautiful.  A night time scene with the green phosphorescent mushrooms seemed almost straight out of Avatar [2009].  Viewers learn a little about Chimpanzee social structure: The group into which Oscar was born was headed by an Alpha-Chimp that the film-makers named "Freddie."  He had some younger male chimps that would one day become his rivals.  And there were a number of females with their young (including Oscar, the youngest) making-up the rest of the clan.  The clan's territory was centered around a grove of nut trees which the chimps were shown routinely breaking with stones (tool use).  Sometimes though, they would venture in other directions for for food, like to a group of tropical fruit/berry trees, but those appeared part of neighboring group of chimpanzees' territory (a group led by a chimp that the film-makers called "Scar").

So there would be occasional battles between these two groups of chimps over control of these two groves of trees -- the nut trees that seemed to be in the center of Freddie/Oscars group's territory and the fruit/berry trees that seemed to be at minimum in disputed territory or in the territory of Scar's group of chimps.  As a result of one of these battles between the two groups of chimps, Oscar's mother is wounded (and is presumably finished-off later by some other ever-opportunistic animals like leopards).  Who would take care of Oscar now?  Well a surprising "foster parent chimp"steps-up to do the job providing an example of altruism that researchers have come to note with regards to the behavior of chimps.

All in all, it seemed to be a very enjoyable documentary, though perhaps more for the parents than for really young kids. 

ADDENDUM:

I'd also add, that this kind of research, in the wild, in the natural habitat of chimpanzees is probably preferable to the kind done in cages / laboratories at universities other research centers.  One thinks of the documentary released last year named Project Nim [2011] about a chimpanzee raised among humans and taught how to communicate with humans using sign language.  All seemed fine until Nim started approaching maturity (4 years of age) and became simply too strong to be casually around humans.  What to do then with a chimp too strong to be around us and yet not really knowing how to relate to other chimps much less survive in the wild?  The research done simply observing chimps (and other animals) in their natural habitat seems like a better way to go at least with regards to the chimps / other animals themselves.


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The Lucky One [2012]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  Roger Ebert (2 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review
Roger Ebert's review
 
The Lucky One (directed by Scott Hicks, screenplay by Will Fetters, based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks) is a romance novel about an American marine, Logan (played by Zac Efron), who on his third tour of duty in Iraq amidst the rubble left-over after a raid that didn't go particularly well -- two different patrols unexpectedly converged on the same spot, then there really were insurgents there who did put-up a fight --  finds a picture of a young American woman with the inscription on the back saying "keep this."  He assumes that the picture was accidentally dropped there by one of the American soldiers who had been wounded in the raid.  But the picture apparently didn't belong to anyone from his unit and he apparently lost contact with the other one.  In any case, the picture proved to be good luck charm for him -- even as he picked it up from the rubble, he was narrowly missed by an enemy RPG and this happened to him several more times during his tour of duty afterwards.

So when he returned home to Colorado after his tour and realizing that he really had little else besides treatment for PTSD and his ever faithful dog, Zeus, waiting for him, he decides go look for the young woman on the picture -- Forrest Gump style -- walking.  After some months, in Louisiana (some 1200 miles away from Colorado), he runs into a few people at a bait-and-tackle shop who say that they recognize the woman.  They turn out to be right.  The young woman on the picture turns out to be Beth (played by Taylor Shilling) who lives with her grandma (played by Blythe Danner) and young son Ben (played by Riley Thomas Stewart) and operates a "dog care service" outside of town at the edge of Bayou country out there in Louisiana.

On meeting her, he tries to explain why he's there, but she's busy taking a number of phone calls and doing a number of relatively small yet apparently immediately necessary tasks, even as he's trying to speak.  So he never gets a chance to explain.  In the midst of her busyness, well behaved dog Zeus at his side, Beth and grandma assume that he's there applying for the job that they had recently advertised.  If Beth was somewhat taken aback at Logan's free admission that he had arrived in Louisiana from Colorado by foot (!!), grandma worried about Beth's simultaneous busyness/loneliness ... hires Logan on the spot.  And Logan accepts the job offer.  Much fairly predictable and some less predictable ensues. 

All in all, it's a rather nice, timely young adult romance (for American / other NATO country audiences).

The motiff of "the picture" in this case of a young attractive woman "back home," reminds me of the story of the "Stalingrad Madonna" a picture of the "Virgin Mary and Child" drawn by a German soldier as a morale booster for the men in his unit as they were hunkered down and surrounded, Christmas-time, in 1942 amidst the snow and rubble of Stalingrad.  After Christmas, he mailed the picture back to his sister in Germany on one of the last German flights to make it out of the city.  Subsequently, he was captured and died in Soviet captivity a few years later.  HOWEVER, the following year, again Christmas time, he had drawn ANOTHER "Madonna and Child" for his German comrades languishing with him as POWs in a prison camp somewhere in Soviet Central Asia.  He himself died out there as a POW.  BUT the German POWs who did survive and were finally able to return back to Germany in 1954 (!!)  -- nearly 10 years after the end of the war -- CAME BACK with the soldier's SECOND MADONNA honestly testifying that the picture helped save their lives.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of Communism in Russia, a copy of the Stalingrad Madonna was solemnly received by the Orthodox Cathedral in now Volgograd.  The original hangs in a Cathedral in Berlin and a third copy in the Cathedral in Coventry England (destroyed by a notorious German terror air-raid in 1940) and is seen as a symbol of the possibility of reconciliation between all three lands.

I mention the story of the Stalingrad Madonna because American experience is not unique.  ALL common soldiers from all countries, even the most guilty ones, often suffer terribly during wartime (to say nothing of innocent civilians) and all have people, buddies and families that love them.  Don't get me wrong, The Lucky One is indeed a very lovely story, of suffering, loss and "going on" but we have to remember that we're not the only ones who've ever suffered ... and learned from that suffering.


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Artigas - La Redota (orig. La Redota - Una Historia de Artigas) [2011]

Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1820494/

Artigas - La Redota (orig. La Redota - Una Historia de Artigas) is a film directed and co-written by Uruguayan film-maker César Charlone along with Pablo Vierci about Uruguayan "founding father" / national hero José Gervasio Artigas (played int he film by Jorge Esmoris)  The film played recently at the 28th Chicago Latino Film Festival.

The movie begins in 1884, nearly 35 years after Artigas' death with Uruguayan painter Blanes (played in the film by Yamandú Cruz) commissioned by the then Uruguayan "powers that be" to paint a heroic portrait of Artigas, who had been a homegrown revolutionary at a time when whole region was in flux -- Argentina to the south and west had just won its independence; in face of Napoleonic invasion, the Portuguese King had fled to Brazil to start a Portuguese empire to the north, and Montevideo which eventually became Uruguay's capital remained the last bastion of imperial Spanish presence in southeastern South America. 

But precisely because Artigas was a homegrown revolutionary, leading a band of "miserable ones" composed of Spanish speaking frontiersmen and still Guarani speaking natives with ties to their kin in Paraguay, Blanes' task was not easy.  The "powers that be" would like a portrait of a "heroic leader" of the Enlightenment mold (a George Washington or Simon Bolivar).  Yet, Artigas and especially the band of supporters that grew around him looked more like the band that grew around Pancho Villa in Mexico a few decades after Blanes finished his work.  How to give the "Powers that Be" what they want and yet be true to oneself and to the historical record?  That is what this film is about.  Blanes does come up with a solution but it's not what one would necessarily expect.

As a historical period piece, I found the film to be well done.  Further, I was appreciative to the Chicago Latino Film Festival as well as to the makers of this film for the opportunity to learn something about Uruguay.  I always suspected that there was probably some connection between Uruguay and Paraguay simply because of the similarity in their names.  Yet the two countries are quite distant from each other.  This film helped explain to me the connection as well as the rather difficult circumstances in which Uruguay came to be -- surrounded on all sides (Argentina to the South, Brazil to the North and even Spain across the Sea to the East) by rather powerful neighbors.

So all in all, this was a satisfying historical film that teaches its viewers something about a country and a leader that most people outside of Uruguay would probably not know.  And yet the problem that Blanes faced in making the portrait of Artigas is one that many artists and historians across the world have faced.  So the story here is about Blanes, Artigas and Uruguay, but it is also about more than just about Blanes, Artigas and Uruguay.  It's story is bigger than that.  Good job!


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Day of Black (orig. Dia de Preto) [2012]

Fr. Dennis (4+ Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1971371/

Day of Black (orig. Dia de Preto) is a masterfully shot and sound edited Brazilian film, written and directed by (alphabetically listed) Marcos Felipe, Daniel Mattos and Marciel Renato, which played recently at the 28th Chicago Latino Film Festival.  It recounts the story of the first African slave in Brazil to gain his freedom -- a prized cow (vaca) of a landowner (a "patrão" played by Paulo Abreu) had wandered off the landowner's property.  Under threat of death, the landowner sent a black slave ("o Preto", lit. the black man played by Marcelo Batista) to find the lost cow.  He finds it the next day on top of a hill on the landowner's property.  The landowner is so happy that he commissions the building of a church on top of the hill where the black man found the lost cow and gives the black man "papers" declaring that he is free.  But how "free" do mere "papers" make a former slave?

So except for occasional flashbacks to the original story recounted above, the movie actually takes place at an upscale Shopping Mall in the present day.  A Black Man (again Marcelo Batista) is about to leave the shopping mall in his car when he is prevented from doing so by a "Corno" (Brazilian Portuguese for basically "a-hole" played by Guillerme Almeida) leading a Posse (played by Andrea Cassali, Naiara Hawaii, Heráclito Junior, Deivid Araújo), a posse that could have been straight out of Quentin Tarentino's Kill Bill [2003/04].  Prevented from leaving the parking-lot, the Black Man flees back into the Shopping Mall, eventually hiding out feet up in a bathroom stall.  When he finally feels it safe to leave the bathroom, it's dark and the mall has long been closed.  He has to now find his way past a Patrão (played again by Paulo Abreu) of one of the stores who's looking for his wayward Daughter ("Vaca" apparently a rather derogatory slang term for "girl," translated in the movie actually as "b...." played by Vanessa Galvão) and of course "Security" (o Chefe played by Ricardo Bonaverti).  Can he make his way out of the Labyrinth of the Shopping Mall to freedom?

I have to say that with the exception of the fact that according to the two from the team of three who wrote, directed and produced the film (who were available for questions following the screening of the film) Dia de Preto was made for a cost of $100,000 (plus many, many hours of their own time editing the final product), both the sound and cinematography in the film were of the quality that make comparisons to Lars von Trier's Meloncholia [2011] or Terrence Malick's Tree of Life [2011] come to mind.  The sound was that sublime and the visuals were that eye-poppingly good!  How could that be possible?  I suspect that part of the answer lies in the fact the "day job" of the two film makers present for questions after the screening was in advertising, and commercial ads both in the United States and abroad often have an sophisticated, eye-popping quality to them.

Still, my hat off to the makers of this film!  The story was excellent and it was produced in a superbly chic, eye-popping manner that certainly catches attention.  Whether the future of this team of Brazilian film-makers is in making films or simply starting a world-class "post production company" based in Rio de Janeiro, I told them that honestly with this film, which is going to play the Latino Film Festival circuit in the United States and then go on to Portugal, they ought to really see if they could get this played in Venice or Cannes.  I really do believe it is that good!


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Under My Nails [2012]

Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing


Under my Nails (written and staring Kisha Burgos and directed by her husband Ari Maniel Cruz) is a movie filmed in Puerto Rico and New York, which played recently at the 28th Chicago Latino Film Festival.

The film, a drama, is about a young and very lonely/isolated Puerto Rican woman named Solimar (played by Kisha Burgos) living alone in a spartan one bedroom flat somewhere in the Bronx.  Born in Puerto Rico, she had lost both her parents when she was only about 8-10 years old.  Her mother apparently abandoned her and her father.  Her father then committed suicide (by drowning) soon afterwards.   Apparently she was largely raised afterwards by a (presumably) gay uncle named Amalia (played by Antonio Pantojas) living in New York who remains pretty much her only family.  Indeed, aside from Rose (played by Maite Bonilla) a coworker at a neighborhood nail salon where Solimar works, Amalia is pretty much the only person that Solimar ever talks to or confides in.  Thus it's a pretty cold and lonely existence, heightened all in the film by the fact that the scenes shot in the Bronx were taken in the winter with the streets full of snow.

During the course of the film, a Dominican couple moves to the flat next to hers.  Actually the man, Roberto (played by Ivan Camilo) is Dominican.  His wife, Perpetue (played by Dolores Pedro) is Haitian.  Moving in / living with the two was also Roberto's mother Goya (played by Rosie Berrido).  It becomes rather obvious rather quickly that Roberto's mother Goya doesn't like or respect Perpetue and Perpetue doesn't like her mother-in-law either.  Solimar can hear the sounds of a lot of fighting from that neighboring flat.  She also comes to hear some rather noisy love making as well.

With her uncle having left for Puerto Rico for a number of weeks after his long-time companion dies at the end a long illness (AIDS?), Solimar's already small horizons become even smaller, now restricted to her largely empty one bedroom flat and her hours at the nail salon a short if cold distance away.  So she becomes increasingly focused on the noises, both angry and sensual, coming out the neighboring flat.  Much, often very sad/tormented ensues ...

I found the movie to be excellent if in its realism often very depressing.  As is often the case at film festivals, the director Ari Maniel Cruz was present after the film to take questions.  After fielding several questions from some of the viewers somewhat disappointed/irate at the film's portrayal of Solimar, with the director assuring them that this portrayal did not come from him but from his wife Kisha Burgos who wrote and starred in the film, I asked him a similar question:

Beginning by saying that I honestly thought that the film was excellent, and that it reminded me of works by, say, Italian American director Martin Scorsese (who incidentally was also from New York) whose similarly unflinching/graphic portrayals of gangsters and so forth actually angered a fair number of Italian Americans because his films actually ended up supporting a number of negative stereotypes of Italian Americans in society (that "Italian Americans have supposedly been 'largely gangsters' in this country), I asked the director here what he would say to those who would criticize him for doing something similar in this film.  After all, this film was about a young Puerto Rican woman living in the Bronx who was (1) poor, (2) obviously had "some issues" from a tormented childhood and (3) chose to enter into an abusive and rather degrading relationship with a man who wasn't her own.  One could therefore fear that a movie like this could actually support some unfair/negative stereotypes of Puerto Ricans.

I thought that director Ari Maniel Cruz's answer was excellent.  First, he noted, that his and his wife's intention was not to produce "commercial cinema" but "real cinema," that is, that he didn't particularly care if non-Puerto Ricans seeing this film could perhaps use it to put-down Puerto Ricans (he intended the film for serious audiences, not mindless ones much less bigoted ones).  Second, he maintained that "real cinema" has to speak/confront the truth.  (Who cares what non-Puerto Ricans may think of this film? Traumatized and lonely characters like Solimar exist in this world, as do (Dominican) Robertos (who by being Dominican are often looked down-upon by Puerto Ricans) and even Perpetues (Haitian, who often are looked down-upon by both Puerto Ricans and Dominicans).  As such, the scenario may not be pretty, but it's real.  And the director insisted that real cinema from any country or culture would generally not be pretty either.  Yet such cinema speaks the truth, as any art that is true). 

So my hat off to Ari Maniel Cruz and Kisha Burgos.  This is a simple yet unflinching and powerful film.  Parents note that it is a film that if rated would certainly be rated R.  But I do believe that it tells a story that deserves to be told and from the perspective (largely from the perspective of the main character, Solimar's) that it is told here.  So once again, as has been the case of virtually everything that I've at the Chicago Latino Film Festival over the last 2 years, my congratulations to the film-makers and the cast for a very very good job!


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