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Review
It was a ripe time to live at the Students' Residence in Madrid and study at the School of Fine Arts. When he arrived from Catalonia in 1922, Salvador Dali met the future poet Federico Garcia Lorca and future filmmaker Luis Bunuel. Dali was a case study, dressed as a British dandy of the previous century, with a feminine appearance. No doubt he was a gifted painter. He was to become a rather loathsome man.
"Little Ashes" focuses on an unconsummated attraction between Dali (Robert Pattinson) and Garcia Lorca (Javier Beltran), who in the flower of youthful idealism and with the awakening of the flesh, began to confuse sexuality with artistry. Not much is really known about their romance, such as it was, but in the conservative Catholic nation of the time, and given Dali's extreme terror of syphilis, it seems to have been passionate but platonic.
It found release in their roles in the developing Surrealist movement, in which church, state, ideology, landowners, parents, authorities, laws all were mocked by deliberately outlandish behavior. In 1929, Dali wrote and Bunuel directed probably the most famous of all Surrealist works, the film "Un Chien Andalou" ("The Andalusian Dog"), with its notorious images of a cloud slicing through the moon and a knife slicing through a woman's eyeball. In a time before computer imagery, it was a real eyeball (belonging to a pig, not a woman, but small comfort to the pig).
By 1936, Garcia Lorca was dead, murdered by Spanish fascists. The story is told in the film "The Disappearance of Garcia Lorca" (1997). Bunuel fled Spain to Mexico, then later returned as one of the world's greatest filmmakers. Dali betrayed his early talent, embraced fascism, Nazism and communism, returned repentant to the church, and become an odious caricature of an artist, obsessed by cash. "Each morning when I awake," he said, "I experience again a supreme pleasure -- that of being Salvador Dali." Yes, but for a time, he was a superb painter.
"Little Ashes" is a film that shows these personalities being formed. Because most audiences may not know much about Dali, Garcia Lorca and Bunuel, it depends for its box-office appeal on the starring role of Robert Pattinson, the 23-year-old British star of "Twilight" (which was shot after this film). He is the heartthrob of the teenage vampire fans of "Twilight," but here shows an admirable willingness to take on a challenging role in direct contrast to the famous Edward Cullen. Is it too much to hope that "Twilight" fans will be drawn to the work of Garcia Lorca and Bunuel? They'd be on the fast track to cultural literacy.
Biopics about the youth of famous men are often overshadowed by their fame to come. "The Motorcycle Diaries," for example, depended for much of its appeal on our knowledge that its young doctor hero would someday become Che Guevara. "Little Ashes" is interested in the young men for themselves.
It shows unformed young men starting from similar places, but taking different roads because of their characters. Garcia Lorca, who is honest with himself about his love for another man, finds real love eventually with a woman, his classmate Margarita (Marina Gatell). Dali, who presents almost as a transvestite, denies all feelings, and like many puritans, ends as a voluptuary. Bunuel, the most gifted of all, ends as all good film directors do, consumed by his work. I am fond of his practical approach to matters. Warned that angry mobs might storm the screen at the Paris premiere of "Un Chien Andalou," he filled his pockets with stones to throw at them.
"Little Ashes" is absorbing but not compelling. Most of its action is inward. The more we know about the three men the better. Although the eyeball-slicing is shown in the film, many audiences may have no idea what it is doing there. Perhaps Dali's gradual slinking away from his ideals, his early embrace of celebrity, his preference for self-publicity over actual achievement, makes better sense when we begin with his shyness and naivete; is he indeed entirely aware that his hair and dress are those of a girl, or has he been coddled in this way by a strict, protective mother who is hostile to male sexuality?
Whatever the case, two things stand out: He has the courage to present himself in quasi-drag, and the other students at the Students' Residence, inspired by the fever in the air, accept him as "making a statement" he might not have been fully aware of.
I have long believed that one minute of wondering if you are about to be kissed is more erotic than an hour of kissing. Although a few gay Web sites complain "Little Ashes" doesn't deliver the goods, I find it far more intriguing to find how repressed sexuality express itself, because the bolder sort comes out in the usual ways and reduces mystery to bodily fluids. Orgasms are at their best when still making big promises, don't you find?
IMDB RANK = Not ranked yet
Description
Chelios faces a Chinese mobster who has stolen his nearly indestructible heart and replaced it with a battery-powered ticker that requires regular jolts of electricity to keep working.
IMDB RANK = 6.3/10
Description
Popular high school senior Mike O'Donnell (Zac Efron) seemingly has it all. He is a star athlete headed straight for a college scholarship when he decides to give it up to settle down with his high school girlfriend Scarlet is pregnant.
Twenty years later, an adult Mike (played by Matthew Perry) finds his life is not exactly what he expected. He is separated from his wife, Scarlett (Leslie Mann) and living with his wealthy software genius nerd and best friend Ned Freedman (Thomas Lennon), his career at a pharmaceutical company is at a stand still, and his relationships with his teenage children are nonexistent. After getting passed up for yet another promotion at work, he returns to his high school to reminisce over his basketball awards and the life he could have had. While he is reliving his glory days, he is approached by a janitor and shares with him how things were so much better when he was 17.
As Mike is driving home from the high school, he sees the mysterious janitor standing on the ledge preparing to jump into the Los Angeles River. Mike rushes out of his car to rescue him, but when he gets there, the janitor has vanished. What Mike doesn't realize is that he is about to fall into the river and turn into his 17 year old self.
Young Mike (Zac Efron) returns to Ned's house, where he has the difficult task of convincing Ned that he is in fact Mike. At a loss of what to do, Ned pretends to be Mike's father and they register Mike back in high school to finish the life he never had the chance to live.
High school presents a lot of new challenges for Mike, such as dressing cool, keeping up with the latest gadgets and making new friends. But nothing compares to being in high school with his own children. He discovers that his daughter, Maggie (Michelle Trachtenberg), is not nearly as innocent as he thought she was and his son, Alex (Sterling Knight), is the brunt of the star athlete's jokes.
But Mike's most difficult realization is that he hasn't been a very good father or husband. Mike befriends Alex and tries to instill him with enough confidence to join the basketball team. He gets close to Maggie's obnoxious boyfriend and does everything in his power to break them up. Most importantly, he visits an unsuspecting Scarlet and rediscovers all the things that initially made him fall in love with her. You don't know what you have until you lose it.
Through his experiences, Mike realizes that he had chosen the perfect life he just never appreciated it. Now, he must figure out a way to transform back into his older self and win back his wife and kids.
IMDB RANK = Not ranked yet
Description
A petty thief is gunned down in an alley and a Congressman's assistant falls in front of a subway - two seemingly unrelated deaths. But not to wisecracking, brash newspaper reporter Cal McAffrey who spies a conspiracy waiting to be uncovered. With a turbulent past connected to the Congressman and the aid of ambitious young rookie writer Della Frye, Cal begins uprooting clues that lead him to a corporate cover-up full of insiders, informants, and assassins. But as he draws closer to the truth, the relentless journalist must decide if it's worth risking his life and selling his soul to get the ultimate story.
IMDB RANK = 6.0/10
Description
Memo (Luis Fernando Peña), a young Mexican, lives on a milpa in Santa Ana, Oaxaca with his family. Once, a river flowed through the milpa, which his father owns. But a few years ago, the Del Rio Water Company built a dam upstream. Now, residents of Santa Ana must pay $1/gallon to enter the facility and collect water.
In his spare time, Memo tinkers with discarded radio parts and builds an antenna to pick up voices from far away. One night, he overhears a transmission between Rudy (Jacob Vargas), a drone gunship operator, and his compatriots. His signal is detected, and tracked down to his family's shack in Santa Ana. Live on TV the next day, Rudy carries out a mission to neutralize an "aqua-terrorist intercept". As Memo and family watch on their TV, they soon realize that the target is the antenna on top of their shack. They run back to the shack, only to see it obliterated by a hovering drone gunship. As Memo's father crawls out of the building, Rudy gets confirmation that he is a known "aqua-terrorist", and Rudy fires a rocket at him, blowing him to bits.
Overcome with guilt, and needing to find a way to support what's left of his family, Memo takes the bus to Tijuana, the Mexican "city of the future". On the bus, he meets Luz (Leonor Varela), a freelance writer. He notices that she has "nodes", or data ports, on her arms (as does Rudy). He tells her vague details of his background. Struggling for material to make ends meet, she submits her memory of meeting Memo on the bus to an online memory-trading service. To her surprise, her story of Memo is purchased, and the buyer offers a generous amount for another story on Memo, this time with much more on his background.
Memo goes to a shady alley in Tijuana where "coyoteks" are known to hang out; they offer cheap, black-market installation of "nodes", which allow an individual to go online, which can provide economic opportunities. Memo intends to get nodes and work at Cybracero, a sweatshop virtual labor factory, where workers are connected and operate remote-control robots all over the world -- a form of cheap labor for the developed world. He is mugged by a con man instead.
Partially in order to gain his confidence, and partially because she likes him, Luz installs nodes for Memo. He makes relatively good money working for Cybracero, although the connections are not safe and equipment incidents can lead to serious disabilities. He sends some of his pay back to his family, who are amazed at how much he is making. Meanwhile Luz reports another memory of Memo, but her buyer complains she did not get the background info they asked for.
Luz gets closer to Memo and finds out about the milpa, the Del Rio company, and the death of his father. She relays this memory, and is paid handsomely. Later, Memo visits her and is let into her apartment by a neighbor; there, he sits at her console and discovers she has been selling memories of him. He leaves angrily.
The buyer of Luz's memories turns out to be Rudy, who has been having doubts about the Santa Ana operation. Having discovered the reality behind what happened, he takes time off work to cross the border into Mexico and meet Memo. He tracks down Memo and confesses that he was the drone operator that killed his father, but wants to make amends. Reluctant, Memo eventually accepts his help.
Luz and Memo sneak Rudy into Cybracero after hours, where Rudy connects to his Del Rio security network, taking command of his drone. His coworkers notice him coming on, and ask what's going on, and he tries in vain to deflect their curiosity. Eventually, we see that Rudy is piloting his drone to Santa Ana, and his coworkers, realizing he has gone rogue, give chase and try to shoot his drone down. The star drone operator manages to make it all the way to the Del Rio Water Company dam in Santa Ana, and he unloads his firepower onto it, reminding Memo of the times his father would feebly throw a rock at the concrete edifice. Rudy's drone is taken out, but the dam has been destroyed. On videophone back to his family, Memo's hears that the water is flowing again, and the town is celebrating.
Rudy, who can never go back to America, stays in the village outside Tijuana, selling water. Memo stays as well, but gives up sweatshop node labor for farming.
IMDB RANK = 8.2/10
Description
On the lonely roads of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, two men forge an improbable friendship that will change both of their lives forever. Solo is a Senegalese cab driver working to provide a better life for his young family. William is a tough Southern good ol' boy with a lifetime of regrets. One man's American dream is just beginning, while the other's is quickly winding down. But despite their differences, both men soon realize they need each other more than either is willing to admit. Through this unlikely but unforgettable friendship, GOODBYE SOLO deftly explores the passing of a generation as well as the rapidly changing face of America.
