JCEFalconi Reviews

eXXXorcisms (2002)

Boring and uninspired

[1/10 · 31 March 2006]

Contrived and self-important. The movie starts up with lazy, uncreative exposition in the form of a never-ending monologue by Spindola who hams it up like the best. This shows what will be a recurring theme in the movie, characters ceaselessly speechifying and reciting a inorganic speech written by a man who doesn't know how people really talk.

It's also quite disappointing that a movie with so much crass graphic nudity doesn't even manage to summon a fifth of the passion and eroticism any Almodovar film has, he didn't need to show one set of genitals to convey the raw sexuality of the characters. It's just laziness and shock where flair should be.

Alberto Estrella is the only who doesn't surrender fully to the director's mediocre vision and does the best with what he's given, but in the end it's not really enough.

Imaginum (2005)

A failure on so many levels

[1/10 · 14 September 2005]

Watching this movie makes you sad about the state of the film industry in Mexico.

The movie barely makes sense, uses the most formulaic story conventions, talks down to kids, uses the most generic character design, the dialog is awful.

Again, it just makes you sad, this was a movie made with no vision, except the one to sucker a few parents into bringing their kids to this... "thing". One of the most disparaging aspects was that government money intended for support to Mexican cinema was used to fund this movie.

The only good thing about Imaginum would be that some good directors' kids got their brakes. Now that they failed, one hopes they will creep back into the creative void they came from.

El bulto (1992)

What an awful movie

[2 October 2004]

The fact that Mexican movies were seldom made during the early 90's is no reason to tag this amateurish film as a classic. It's a movie with an interesting sounding plot, shoddily executed.

Retes hires relatives for the roles, and boy, you can really tell they're not actors. Maybe I'm being unfair since almost all actors do an awful job during the movie. The writing's one dimensional and cliché-ridden and the direction is consistently unremarkable.

I read reviews talking about the "Mexican identity" that is portrayed in the movie. As if the identity of tens of millions people could be defined. The human expression in the movie isn't it even representative of Mexican behaviour, it isn't representative of human behaviour period.

This is no classic.

Lucía, Lucía (2003)

Awful movie

[25 August 2003]

I avoided seeing this movie for a long time, simply because I was tired of being let down by bad mexican cinema. After seeing the huge marketing campaign behind it and noticing that it had the same director/writer of Sexo, Pudor Y Lagrimas, I decided to give it a shot. Big mistake, this is a mess of a movie, the plot, the dialogue, the paper thin characters. Not one of the elements that made Sexo, Pudor Y lagrimas translated, the only thing that remained were the preachy monologues and overall pretentiousness.

Asesino en serio (2002)

Good photography, Good acting, good directing, awful script.

[4/10 · 18 May 2003]

Yeah, this movie may have some funny moments, but it really isn't worth it. It's like taking one of the early 80's Mexican sex comedies and then giving it a better budget and better actors. The movie may have been a funny light comedy if they hadn't decided to add a boring unnecessary sub-plot, and a friggin half hour of pure exposition. The only good thing about this picture is that while the plot is worthless, the movie really does a good job at making fun of Mexican society e.g. ; Corrupt authorities, bureaucracy, machismo, alcoholism. etc.

Rating: In a world of numbers: 7. In a world of stars * 1/2.