Reviews

This is one of the best war films ever. You'll feel watching a documentary, that grainy look is impressively real and it enhances the overall visual experience. You'll feel you're watching footage from the Algerian war and not a movie, this is enhanced by the acting and how the camera becomes almost invisible (only a great director can make this, thank you Pontecorvo) and it's a way to understand the people and the culture behind Algerians after 9/11, where everyone coming from that side of the world, were called "terrorists" without a logical reason.

We follow Ali La Pointe while he tries to survive in the streets of Paris and how he becomes a guerrilla leader who fought for the independence of the Algerians from the French. What makes this movie unique is that it humanizes the "bad guys", they're not a monolithic group, they have different reasons to fight and this is how you as the audience start to think about their reasons to do these despicable acts.

There's a scene involving a woman on a mission: to put a bomb in a cafeteria full of innocent people, including children, that will make you think about a lot of things and probably would make you think that maybe this girl with the bomb has her own reasons, her own goals even if she's doing something horrible and maybe this is the only way she has to achieve her goals.

A though provoking movie. A great family flick. Forget The Muppets this holiday season and bring the pop corns, watch this movie with your kids. It's like watching a dirty special on the History Channel but 10 times better.

Try to find the Criterion Collection edition in Blu-ray. The sound and picture quality is as good as it gets!

Luis Buñuel is one of my favorite directors of all time and this movie stands out as one of his best offerings. This movie is reminiscent of Slackers, for those of you who hate watching older movies. It takes several characters, it follows them for a while but in a certain point of the story the camera will follow a different character and you'll forget the one you were following before, capiche? This is a social satire about the idea behind the word freedom and how Buñuel suggest we actually need some rules to follow through life if we don't want to live inside a zoo.

The way the director plays with our minds is superb. He always makes you think the contrary of what's happening on screen. For example in the first tableaux we know a guy, that can be a very nice guy, but the audience, giving the circumstances of how he's introduced, think he's a pedophile. We don't give the guy the benefit of the doubt, and this is one of the aspects why Buñuel is so great doing what he does in this movie, he makes us judge, he makes us think about the nastiest things you could think about, he makes us go deep inside our brains. Not only that but the sexual innuendos in this movie are really direct and powerful, and it not hesitate to put a critique on the church and the people behind it (all about the gambler monks).

This movie depicts society as is and it tears it apart, we are all sometimes so hypocrite we don't feel we're behaving that way. Sometimes we all like to be spanked in our bedrooms by our significant other, maybe you know someone that feels sexual attraction for an uncle or you have plenty of friends who wear Ed Gein's or Charles Manson's t-shirts just because they think they are "cool". A lot of people like to do all this and more, but nobody talks about it.

To me the best scene involves toilet seats and a dinner table, you'll be speechless. Another sequence that got me was the one involving a sniper and how he becomes this media darling after he shoots several innocent people on the streets without any reason at all.

If you're tired of Tom Cruise and his great hair saving the world, go and rent this wonderful piece of cinema and make your grey matter a favor.

PS: You won't see cathedral photos the same way never again after you watch Phantom Of Liberty, trust me!

PS2: If you like horror movies the last tableaux will delight you!

I always say horror movies are more interesting when they tell a story about something that can happen to you. Yes, we can dream with a man that has knives for fingers a la Freddy Krueger, or we can also be scared of going inside the woods because maybe there's a Blair Witch Project around or a Jason Vorhees just behind our backs that will kill us with a machete, but what it's really scary is when you live a horror story inside your own house with the ones you care about and you're afraid of your own uncle for example.

"The boogeyman is real and you found it" is a quote from House of a 1000 Corpses, but it completely translates into this shocking piece of cinema.

Once were Warriors is the story of Beth, a woman who is married with a guy that drinks a lot, and happens to be possessive and abusive, that's why I only drink on special occasions. The awful part is THIS is a real horror story that many women live on a daily basis.

The movie has scenes of extreme violence and the acting of Rena Owen, who plays Beth, is great, thanks to a screenplay penned by a woman which has a result a multi-layered character. On the other hand, although I hated the character of the abusive husband, played by Cliff Curtis, sometimes it felt a little bit overacted, but that's just me. Beth Reminded me of Sarah Connor at times and the scenes inside the bar sometimes made me think about The Terminator and the famous scene where the T-800 is looking for Sarah.

I wish this movie was in 3D because I wanted to strangle the husband every time he was on screen, I mean it, he's one of those bad guys you just want to see burned and tortured at the end of the flick, but i wont spoil nothing to you because IMDb can burn me and that would be a shame.

The directing is great and the way they present the characters in the first five minutes of the film makes me wonder if Quentin Tarantino is a fan of this film, because 10 years later Kill Bill used similar techniques on this particular element.

In a nutshell this is a real horror movie, a great date flick (your girl will squeeze you to death) and one of those movies that really helps to create a moral conscience towards the evil that surrounds us in the real world and the nightmare lots of families live inside their own houses.

This one will haunt you after you watch it!

NOTE: This is a movie made by a Mexican director so I was thinking to do this review in Spanish, but the guidelines at IMDb says it needs to be in English so here I go.

The Other Conquest is a film by writer/director Salvador Carrasco, and it's about the Spanish conquest in Mexico. If a word can describe a piece of art, poignant will be the one attached to this piece of storytelling.

This is a story about resistance, about finding your true self and the fight against those who want to destroy the most valuable thing a man can have: his own culture.

In The Other Conquest the audience follow the path of Topiltzin, played by Damian Delgado in his first starring role, and how he is drag by this "new world" guide by Spaniards who want to convert him into a catholic. The acting of Damian is superb, actually his acting is invisible, and he carries the picture like a champ.

The soundtrack is superb: Indigenious and classical music thrown in the mix to create a monster that enhances every dramatic aspect of The Other Conquest.

I think The Other Conquest is above Amores Perros, Nicotina and Y Tu Mamá También, movies that claimed to be the face of the new Mexican cinema, because this movie has a heart of its own and it's not trying to be a product for the masses, or at least it doesn't feel that way.

This is a universal story, you don't have to be a Mexican, a Latino or a product of the so called "mestizaje" to identify with Topiltzin, because at one point or another, just as a human being, you will surely fight for your rights.

Hallucinations, fights, great dialog, a little bit of catholic-surrealism (in a scene a won't spoil for you), and a tale with a heart that is better than Apocalypto, a movie that sometimes is compared (absurdly) to this one.

Do you want to learn more about this culture? Do you want to stay away from some of the garbage Hollywood is releasing nowadays? Well, if you're not too lazy to read subtitles, run and find this movie ASAP, Topiltzin will be proud.