Rachel Getting Married

Maria Full of Grace

Perhaps the most important factor in rating a film "positive" or "negative" is if the viewer buys the central conceit of the film. If the viewer simply doesn't believe the main conflict of the film, everything else flows in a negative direction. If the viewer DOES believe the central conflict, then the viewer is more likely to enjoy the film.

And that was my problem with Joshua Marston's "Maria Full of Grace," a 1994 Colombian-American film that introduced Catalina Sandino Moreno to the world when she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Moreno plays Maria Alvarez, a young Colombian woman who accepts a job as a drug mule, bringing drugs into the US in pellets she has swallowed, and will deliver when she shits them out.

I didn't believe that her situation was bad enough to accept a job that everyone knows is so risky. Spoiler alert: of the four girls who serve as mule's on Maria's flight, one dies when a pellet bursts in her stomach, another is arrested at immigraiton, and Maria barely escapes arrest when she is unable to be x-rayed due to her pregnancy.

So she's 17, unmarried, pregnant, and working a dead-end job (de-thorning roses) she doesn't particularly like. But she has a stable home, loving although not-wealthy family, and is healthy and pregnant. Which is MORE reason she wouldn't take the drug job.

Sure, the backstory of how Marston immersed himself into both Colombian and drug culture for several years to make sure his screenplay is factually accurate and realistic appeals to a wannabe screenwriter like myself, who would do the same thing if I ever were able to take the time to write a screenplay. And the fact that the "don" of Little Colombia in Queens, NY, was played by Orlando Tobon is fascinating, since he's actually the "don" of Little Colombia and not an actor at all.

But I just couldn't buy into the conceit that Maria's situation was SO dire that she would risk so much to both her and her unborn child for a few thousand bucks. And as such, I couldn't buy the entire film.

The Towering Inferno

Movie: The Towering Inferno (1974)

Drink:

Lenny

Movie: Lenny (1974)

Drink:

Chinatown

Movie: Chinatown (1974)

Drink:

The Conversation

Movie: The Conversation (1974) - January 2

Drink:

Introduction: Having watched the late John Cazale play Fredo in The Godfather, I felt the next film should be another of Cazale's five films, all of which were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. As such, I watched The Conversation on January 2.

Movie Review: There are always people and films who "age well" and those that do not. Gene Hackman, playing the lead Harry Caul in The Conversation has aged VERY well, actually looking pretty similarly to how he looks today, 35 years later. But the film in itself has NOT aged well. I have no doubt that a film about paranoia, emotional isolation, and wire-tapping carried much more weight and impact the year after Watergate than it does in an age of digital media, the internet, and cell phones.

Harry Caul is a totally insecure security expert, totally paranoid about everything since he himself is hired to spy on people and tap their phones. His most recent project involved taping an outdoor conversation for some mysterious "director", and Caul takes great pride in all the technological advances he uses to record this conversation.

In the end, when the director's assistant attempts to get the recorded conversation, Hackman begins to suspect that something is not up. Wracked by guilt over a triple murder that occurred a decade ago because of a recording he made, in a paranoid fit, he parses the entire recorded conversation and in the end hears a message that he believes may end up resulting in ANOTHER death.

Eventually, this guilt leads him to try to prevent this murder, and a series of scenes are intercut with what may or may not be Caul's imagination running amok. Much debate has occured whether a scene actually occurs or whether it's in Caul's imagination (I think it's imagined), but in the end, Caul succumbs to his paranoia and totally destroys everything material in his personal space, an unsettling ending.

But this movie is all about 1974. In 2009, 35 years later, it's more or a relic than a classic. Perhaps the best thing about this movie is David Shire's haunting piano score, which actually mesmerized me more than Hackman's performance or the plot itself. And, of course, John Cazale is tremendous as Caul's assistant, Stan, even if Cazale, just through two roles, begins to seem like he always plays one type of character - the awkward nerd.

Drink review:

The Godfather

Movie: The Godfather (1972) - January 1

Drink: Sottimano Bric Del Salto Dolcetto d'Alba 2007

Introduction: The daily ritual of watching a film and enjoying a drink begins, and finding a starting point was a larger challenge than I had expected. I decided to start on January 1 with the American Film Institute's #2 picture of all time, and end on December 31 with the AFI's #1 film, Citizan Kane. For the 363 days in-between, I will just allow the movies to take me wherever they lead.

I also had a few houseguests at the beginning of the year, so the idea of watching a legendary "family" movie while I had family visiting was a great way to kick of 2009.

Movie Review: The Godfather is often considered one of the best films ever made, yet I had never seen it. Well, now I have, and I can confirm that it's great. Not the best I've seen, not the most riveting, but still absolutely great. I think the film gets such high, universal praise because it is stellar in so many, nay every, aspect; the writing, the acting, the cinematography, the thematic elements, the music... everything is great. I had two major take-aways from this film.

First, so many people talk about different thematic elements from The Godfather, whether family, or the American dream, or the concept of vengeance. I felt that the over-arching theme of The Godfather was moral relativism. This is a film about criminals, murderers, just bad people... yet I felt sympathetic to them, basically because Coppola found a way to morally justify terrible actions through the actions of somewhat sympathetic characters. When Michael Corleone justifies killing a cop because the cop is involved with another Mob family, and thus crooked, I didn't question it. When Don Vito Corleone refuses a man's request that the Corleone family murder a man who raped the man's daughter, Don Vito parses the difference between revenge and equanimity by claiming that since the man's daughter was raped, beaten, and disfigured, her attacker didn't exactly deserve to be killed, just to live the pain he has caused. And I bought it. To me, the over-arching theme was moral relativism.

Second, the scene where Michael Corleone sits at his nephew's baptism as well-organized, multiple hits are carried out on other crime family leaders and other people who have crossed the Corleone family stands as one of the finest scenes I have seen in film. Everything ties together in the most dramatic yet cogent way, and the concept that as the well-planned hits are carried out, Michael is both literally and figuratively becoming "The Godfather" was well-stated yet not overly obvious. A masterpiece in cinematic scene creation, in my opinion.

Drink Review: 2007 Sottimano Bric Del Salto Dolcetto d'Alba

It was only appropriate to select an Italian wine to enjoy with The Godfather, and I also wanted to celebrate New Year's Day with a couple glasses of one of my favorite wines. The 2006 vintage of this tremendous dolcetto d'alba is slightly better than the 2007, which is available now, but that's only because the 2006 vintage achieves perfection. Just like in the film The Godfather, this wine is very complex, yet not so much that it is too expensive or not possible to enjoy.

Up Next: I have always been fascinated by the acting career of John Cazale, who made only 6 total films before dying of bone cancer in 1978. What amazes me is that all 6 of these films (this total includes The Godfather, Part III, which included Cazale posthumously and used archived footage) were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. There can never be another actor who will achieve such a record, but since Cazale has been dead more than 30 years, he's often overlooked or even forgotten. So the next film I will review is 1974's The Conversation, the second film John Cazale made.