The 33

One of the most difficult tasks for a filmmaker is to take a story where everyone knows the ending (or at least should know the ending) and retell it in a way that puts the resolution in doubt again. Steven Spielberg did exactly that in the fact-based Cold War film “Bridge of Spies,” and now Mexican director Patricia Riggen does something similar with a fact-based story from rather recently.

Glenn Kenny said in his review, ““The 33” is a technically impressive simulation of the mine collapse and rescue in Chile in 2010, a cataclysmic event that saw 33 miners trapped underground for a stupefying-seeming 69 days. Their plight became an international cause during that period, and their incredibly improbable rescue was a “whole world is watching” moment on a par with the first moon landing. The movie throws together an international cast that may on first glance strike the movie-savvy viewer as improbable as well: while the English-language production features Antonio Banderas and Lou Diamond Phillips, two actors with obvious Latino bonafides in several departments, in key leading roles, it also has French actor Juliette Binoche and Irish actor Gabriel Byrne in prominent parts, both playing Chileans. It’s a testament to director Riggen’s skill with actors that she makes the ensemble a seamless one. Unless your objections to casting against conventional type are violent ones, there shouldn’t be a problem.”

A little problem comes at the start of the film, as the main characters are introduced in a party scene. One is an elderly miner who’s retiring. Another is an experienced fellow who’s asking his friend and boss for an extra shift on a day he’s supposed to have off. Another is a younger miner who’s about to become a father and who’s looking into getting out of the mining job because of that. Kenny noted, “All three of these cases, of course, add to the “what incredible irony” quotient when a chunk of rock two times the mass of the Empire State Building trap them almost 2,000 feet underground, with only three days’ worth of food and water rations in the refuge area where the miners roost.”

It's in the end result of the disaster that the movie builds up the suspense and claustrophobia. The story pulls between the mine and surface land. Below, the miners judge their situation and determine how desperate they are to get out. Kenny said, “Above, miners’ families—including Binoche’s Maria, the guilt-ridden sister of a drunkard miner, one pregnant wife, and the competing wife and mistress of one sheepishly rakish worker—demand answers and action.” The Chilean government, in the person of a green and serious minister played by Rodrigo Santoro steps in. Gabriel Byrne’s tough mining engineer thinks the miners are all but dead, and his interactions with Santoro’s character do a good job with explaining just why the chances for a rescue were at first around one percent.

The resulting action shows how the odds increased. Kenny said, “There are a lot of characterizations, and a few character arcs, that the movie takes on, and Riggen doesn’t mind having to do sketches—a more thorough movie would have been, well a mini-series.” However, it’s a real success that she keeps the action clear throughout, and show shows likable daring at times. The awaiting starvation of the miners results in a hallucination dinner scene that’s very daring, and actually funny. Leading the underground moments are the performances of Banderas and Phillips. Banderas is reliably fascinating, while Phillips gives so many reminders of what a delicate and effective actor he can be. Kenny said, “This unabashedly crowd-pleasing movie gets to its uplifting but also somewhat disquieting conclusion and coda (which, as is the custom these days, introduces the audience to the real-life miners) with its integrity intact.” As such, “The 33,” released in 2015, is a really nice surprise, and in more than one way.

In all honesty, I had no idea about this news of the miners trapped in Chile until this movie came out. I don’t really watch or read news, unless I’m watching comedy news, but this was a really nice movie about something I never knew before. Thank you to this film for bringing it to my attention because I think this was really nice. Check it out and see for yourself how nice of a film was made.

Thank you everyone for joining in on “Lou Diamond Phillips Month.” I hope all of you enjoyed it, as I mostly did films that were about real events. Maybe he does that a lot, but I don’t know, since I have not seen a lot of his films. Hopefully people have seen his films that I have recommended.

Look out next month to see what I will end this year off with.

Hollywood Homicide

The most popular jobs in movies about Hollywood are cops, thieves, prostitutes, psychics and actors, and to this list we have got to add the ones everyone is scared of, real estate brokers. “Hollywood Homicide,” released in 2003, has all of these with a murderer, a cop who is who is a real-estate agent, a cop who wants to be an actor, and a psychic who can see that the murderer will be in an SUV on Rodeo Drive in half an hour. There are also two prostitutes. One is named Ferre Salesclerk, which can hardly be improved on. The other is Wanda, an undercover cop in drag. There is room for fixing.

The movie stars Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett as the two cops, named Joe Gavilan and K.C. Calden, who are detectives assigned to Hollywood. Galvan is so busy with his real estate business that he tries to sell a house to the owner of a club where four rappers have just been murdered, and later negotiates the purchase price during a police chase. Calden has decided he wants to be an actor, and makes Galivan rehearse lines for him from A Streetcar Named Desire. Galivan is not impressed: “Who wrote this stuff?” The movie was directed by Ron Shelton, who co-wrote with Robert Souza. Roger Ebert noted in his review, “Shelton also made "Bull Durham" and "White Men Can't Jump" and specializes in funny dialogue for guy characters who would rather talk than do just about anything else.” One of the enjoyments of “Hollywood Homicide” is that it’s more interested in its two silly cops than in the murder plot. Their dialogue transfers otherwise simple scenes. Ebert noted, “It's kind of a double act, between a man who has seen everything and a man who seen too much.” Consider the part where K.C. drives a vehicle with a mother and her two small children. He needs it to chase a villain. “We’re gonna die!” yells one of the kids. Ebert said, “"Yes," agrees K.C., who moonlights as a yoga instructor, "we are all going to die someday, but..." His philosophical observations are cut short by a crash.”

The movie starts with an upbeat song on a rap group in a music club. Four people are dead when Joe and K.C. arrive to investigate. Joe immediately orders food. K.C. tells the club owner he is an actor. Their investigation is hindered by an inconvenient development: They are under investigation by Benne Macko, played by Bruce Greenwood, the Internal Affairs guy who hates Joe, and who reminds everyone once again that movie villains usually have a hard C or K in their names.

Ebert said, “Joe is suspected of "mingling funds," which is to say, he confuses his personal debts and the debts of his real estate business.” He has been seen with Ferre Salesclerk, played by Lolita Davidovich, who is a known prostitute. No wonder. You do not get to be an unknown prostitute by being driven around town in your own stretch limousine. Internal Affairs thinks he is fooling around with Salesclerk, but he isn’t. He’s playing around with Ruby the psychic, played by Lena Olin. Ebert said, “She is yet another in the baffling legion of Los Angeles women who believe it is fun to make love on a blanket on the hardwood floor of an empty house while surrounded by a lot of candles.”

At Harrison Ford’s age, this counts as a dangerous stunt. But Ford just gets better, more purified, more laconic and more sternly likeable, every year. It is hard to catch him doing anything at all while he’s acting, and yet whatever it is he isn’t doing, it works. Ebert said, “You don't feel he's going for laughs when he tries to sell the club owner a house, while the two of them are standing in fresh pools of blood, metaphorically speaking; you feel he desperately needs to unload the house.”

Ebert continued, “Hartnett makes an able partner for Ford, trading deadpan dialogue and telling everyone he's really an actor. He's given one of Shelton's nicest little scenes, when he goes to the morgue and looks at the dead bodies of the murder victims (he hates looking at dead bodies), and then notices some other dead bodies that have just arrived at the morgue, checks their shoe sizes, and says, "Hey ... those guys shot these guys."” There is a chase and a half at the end of the movie, a lot of it near the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood and Highland. That gives the movie a chance to interrupt Robert Wagner as he’s leaving his handprints in front of Grumann’s Chinese Theatre, and obviously the movie is filled with cameos and people walking by, including Frank Sinatra Jr. as a show-biz lawyer, Martin Landau very funny as a passing producer who needs to leave his mansion, Lou Diamond Phillips as Wanda the cop in drag, Gladys Knight, Dwight Yoakam, Isaiah Washington, Master P, Kurupt, Eric Idle, Dr. Dre and just plain Dre.

Ebert said, “Much of the closing excitement depends on the Fallacy of the Climbing Killer, that dependable chase cliche in which the killer climbs to a high place, from which he cannot escape unless he can fly.” “Hollywood Homicide” uses this as an excuse to show police helicopters and TV news helicopters flying over one another out of the skies. It’s a masterful chase, well done, but the dialogue is the reason to see the movie. This may be the most exciting film ever made about real estate.

Ebert noted, “I am aware that "realtor" is a trademark and is always supposed to be used with a capital "R." But I refuse to go along. Realtors can complain all they want, but why should they get an upper-case R just because they say so? Would we capitalize Philosopher, Exterminator, Proctologist or Critic?”

This is a really funny movie. If you haven’t seen it, see if and have a good laugh. Don’t listen to everyone else who has bashed this movie. See it for yourself and judge it based on your own thoughts. I think everyone will get a good laugh out of this, and it is an action-packed thriller that you will get in to.

Look out next week when I end off “Lou Diamond Phillips Month” with another movie he did that is based on true events.

Stand and Deliver

Rita Kempley started her review by saying, “"Stand and Deliver" is a rousing, real-life underdog drama -- "Hoosiers" with logarithms. This time the Cinderella story is set at a high school in East Los Angeles; the hero is a driven, Bolivian-born teacher; and the players are remedial mathematicians who triumph over calculus.”

Edward James Olmos’ powerful performance as workaholic teacher Jamie Escalante pushes the movie a lot as Escalante pushes a class of unmotivated Latinos to study math. “What’s cal-coo-luz?” asks one tough student who, like the rest, can barely subtract. Kempley mentioned, “Escalante, his pate peeping through his plastered-back linguine hair, goads, kids and cajoles the Garfield High seniors into bettering themselves.”

Fearless as he is funny, Escalante faces down Chuco, played by Daniel Villarreal, with a wisecrack: “Tough guys don’t do math. Tough guys deep fry chicken for a living.” He loses Chuco but wins the respect of his partner Angel, played by Lou Diamond Phillips, a gangster wearing a hairnet. He calls Angel “net head” and threatens, “I’ll break your neck like a toothpick.” Standing up to bullies still works. His antics become popular when he comes to class with a meat cleaver – not for self-defense, but to cut an apple in half, thereby shockingly demonstrating the concept of 50%.

Kempley mentioned, “Unflappable as a Borsch Belter fending off hecklers, he plays hard to get when the kids start with the smart talk and spitballs. "You think I want to do this? The Japanese pay me to do this. They're tired of making everything." He tempts the dispirited youths, promising them unheard-of powers.”

Angel stays a charming rascal, but a rascal who is also a calculus genius. The fat girl, the pretty girl, the brain, the boy who fixes cars, all succeed to meet Escalante’s high expectations and beyond. Tough hours, racial prejudice, bureaucrats and broken hearts do not discourage him. Kempley noted, “Chewing their pencils and crinkling their foreheads, the Garfield seniors enter the Math Super Bowl -- the forbidding National Advanced Placement calculus test.” However, that is not the end of it.

Kempley mentioned, “This modest, time-tested story line pits the little people against the establishment, like "The Milagro Beanfield War," but not so evocatively. Even though Cuban-born director Ramon Menendez is familiar with barrio culture, there's nothing rich and pervasive in the movie's atmosphere. The language, yes. But you can't sense the salsa. It's all math anxiety, and no milieu.”

Perhaps with the limited budget, Menendez has made a rather simple film. Kempley noted, “He keeps to the classroom instead of the streets, capitalizing on the charm of his modern Don Quixote and the natural dynamics inherent in a clique of students. Blackboard computations can't compare, however, with basketball or bean farmers.” “Stand and Deliver,” released in 1988, with its small scope, would have made a perfect television drama focusing on character over action, dialogue over cinematography. It takes a stand, but not a grandstand.

Olmos is amazing as Escalante, whose determination is larger than life even though the man isn’t. Kempley said, “He's almost too human, a pudge whose chest shows through where the buttons gape -- a former computer nerd with the nerve of Zorro. As the chief troublemaker, Phillips lends the stardust. Slouched at his desk, his legs stretched out, he oozes the bravado that adolescents mistake for confidence. But under the machismo, Escalante finds the perennial schoolboy.”

This isn’t a corny film. “Stand and Deliver” is inspirational, but never sentimental. It resists so many temptations. It cries out for sentimentality. However, this is a drama as honest as its protagonist, a work that comes from the heart – the heart of a computer programmer.

As you may have guessed, this is a very powerful movie that you should all see. You could compare this to “Lean On Me,” but this is good in its own respective way. Check it out and see for yourself. My brother was showing my cousins this one day, so I only saw a little bit of it. Later on, I checked it out on my own and I fell in love with it. I give this a recommendation.

Look out next week when I continue “Lou Diamond Phillips Month” with a film that really got slammed by critics, but I actually liked.

La Bamba

For the month of November, I was going back and forth on what I would review. However, now I have decided that I will review every movie that had the great Lou Diamond Phillips. I will start with the 1987 classic that I saw in Spanish Class in High School, “La Bamba.”

The movie starts with a scene that first looks like a flashback. Some teenage boys are playing basketball on school grounds. Way over their heads, a light plane flies over them. The colors of this scene are faded, like an old memory, and the voices sound like they are in a distance. There is slow motion. Another plane shows up. The basketball game continues. We get the feeling that this is a slow summer afternoon. Suddenly, the two planes crash into one another and fall on the school grounds below.

Because “La Bamba” is the story of Ritchie Valens, we think this is his flashback. However, he was not there when the planes fell, and the scene appears to be how he might have thought it went. One of his friends was killed that day. He always believed that if he had been on the school grounds, he also would have been killed. That was why he never liked to fly on planes.

The scene itself is very powerful. Roger Ebert said in his review, “But I wonder if it is the right way to open "La Bamba."” Everyone who watches this movie will know that Valens died in an airplane crash with Buddy Holly (Marshall Crenshaw) and the Big Bopper (Stephen Lee) on February 3, 1959, the day the music died. Ebert said, “The opening scene is followed by several other references to Valens' fear of flying, and the effect is to put the whole movie under a cloud, to weigh down every scene with the knowledge of impending death.”

Ebert continued, “That robs "La Bamba" of a quality I think it could use: the sense of fun.” This is a sincere, well-acted movie about the short life of a small rock ‘n’ roll singer, and by the time it’s over we almost have the feeling Valens would have been surprised not to have died in a plane accident.

He is played by Lou Diamond Phillips as a serious, thoughtful, strongly focused young man who wanted to play his music more than anything else in life. His dedication almost goes to an obsession. He never seems to really let go.

Valens only had three famous songs. His public career lasted less than six months. He died before he turned 18. There isn’t a lot of information to draw from as there was for “The Buddy Holly Story.” So, the director, Louis Valdez, tells the story with information about Valens’ family, especially his hard-working, happy mother (Rosana De Soto) and his half-brother (Esai Morales), who both supports him and dislikes him.

Valens’ real last name was Valenzuela. He was a Mexican-American, raised for a time in refugee labor camps, and he idolized the older brother who would show up from time to time on a stylish motorcycle. However, he loved music more and began to sing wherever he could find work in Los Angeles in the late 1950s. His family moved to town and Valens got a girlfriend – a blond Anglo named Donna (Danielle von Zerneck), whose parents didn’t like him – inspiring Donna, one of his famous songs.

He had some of the normal journeys growing up, and the movie tells a lot of a trip he and his brother took to Tijuana, where Valens was less interested in girls than in a band (in the movie it is, of course, playing La Bamba).

Once Valens is seen by a small record producer, played by Joe Pantoliano, his career surprisingly rises. He records a song, it is a hit, he is invited by Alan Freed, played by Jeffrey Alan Chandler, to show up at one of his original rock ‘n’ roll stage shows in Brooklyn and two other hits follow relatively fast. Valens made one important artistic decision: Despite that he didn’t speak Spanish, he insisted on recording La Bamba in Spanish, using the overwhelming logic that if Nat King Cole could record in Spanish, he also could.

Valens’ last tour is handled in an almost obligatory way. We know how the movie will end, however. The Big Bopper comes backstage, saying “Hello, baby!” to everyone he meets. Buddy Holly sings Crying, Waiting, Hoping. They go to the airport in a snowstorm, Holly flips a coin and Valens calls heads and wins his place on the fated plane. Inevitably, still to come is a movie about the Big Bopper, which will be called “Rock ‘n’ Roll Pilot!” (“He Was at the Controls the Day the Music Died!”).

This is a good small movie, sweet and sentimental, about a kid who never really got a chance to show his talent. The best things in it are the most surprising parts: the look of everyday life, or a loving mother, of a brother who loves and hates him, of a kid growing up and getting famous and leaving everyone standing around at his funeral surprised that his life ended just as it looked like it was starting.

Undeniably, this is a powerful movie that will stay with you after you watch it. After seeing this in Spanish Class, I never forgot this movie. I’m glad I saw it there because I really liked the movie, but I was sad by the end. I didn’t know about Ritchie Valens, but after seeing this movie, now I am familiar with him, even though I don’t know his entire life story. Still, if you can, watch this movie because you will love it. Especially if you like listening to La Bamba, I would recommend this.

Sorry for posting this late. I was going to start, but my computer had a little difficulty. Now look out next week when I look at another powerful movie in “Lou Diamond Phillips Month.”