Click here to listen to the interview with Eugenio Derbez. Click here to listen to the interview with co-writer Joshua Davis. RADICAL won the Sundance Festival Favorite Award, and the Mill Valley Overall Favorite. It’s no mystery why. Based on the story of Serio Juarez Correa’s, ahem, radical approach to teaching 12-year-olds in the putatively… Read More »
RADICAL — Joshua Davis Interview
Click here to listen to the interview with Joshua Davis. Click here to listen to the interview with Eugenio Derbez. Josh Davis has had a storied career writing on topics as diverse as competitive arm wrestling (he also competed), life behind enemy lines in Iraq, and the legal problems of tech mogul George McAfee, getting… Read More »
CASSANDRO — Roger Ross Williams Interview
Click here to listen to the interview. When I spoke with Roger Ross Williams about CASSANDRO on September 9, 2023, I wanted to get the obvious question out of the way. That would be about why he wanted to make a narrative about the eponymous, openly gay luchador after making a documentary about the exótico who became… Read More »
MEMORY
Based on the delightfully quirky 2003 Belgian film, The Memory of a Killer, MEMORY has the makings of a solid neo-noir. Alas, rather than a tight script to match its excellent visual acuity, MEMORY rambles too much before leading us down the familiar path of corruption in high places and the loss of innocence across… Read More »
SUNDOWN
Potent and deliberately enigmatic, Michel Franco’ SUNDOWN doesn’t so much tell a story as put a mirror up to its audience. With a central character that never explains, only exists with his own imperturbable agenda, it is for us to project our own ideas onto him as we sort out the mysteries of his actions… Read More »
FRIDA
At one point during Julie Taymor’s exquisite film, FRIDA, Diego Rivera tells Frida Kahlo that while he can only paint what he sees, she paints from the heart. And so it is as it should be that Taymor’s biopic of Frida’s life is the landscape of Frida’s heart than a straightforward telling of the events… Read More »
Marin, Cheech — THE PERFECT GAME
Cheech Marin’s turn as a priest in THE PERFECT GAME may be counter-intuitive, but this icon of the counter-culture plays it absolutely straight as the strong but unassuming heart and soul of 1957 Monterrey, Mexico. He was equally unassuming when we spoke on April 1, 2010, though the topics included his own memories of the… Read More »