
The Aeronauts
The thrill of The Aeronauts lies in its death-defying stunts.
The thrill of The Aeronauts lies in its death-defying stunts.
This documentary about a family-owned private ambulance service in Mexico City is one of the great modern films about night in the city.
Roger Ebert on James Ivory's "Howards End".
"The Ballad of Narayama" is a Japanese film of great beauty and elegant artifice, telling a story of startling cruelty. What a space it opens…
An article about today's noon premiere of a new movie about architect Benjamin Marshall at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
An article about the screening of Horace Jenkins' "Cane River" on Friday, November 1st, at the Academy Film Archive in Los Angeles.
Scout Tafoya's video essay series about maligned masterpieces celebrates Steven Soderbergh's Solaris.
An article about today's noon premiere of a new movie about architect Benjamin Marshall at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
An FFC on Gavin Hood's Official Secrets.
A celebration of Yasujiro Ozu, as written by a Far Flung Correspondent from Egypt.
An article about Chicago native Verdine White, and Earth, Wind & Fire receiving the Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday, December 8th.
A review of the EA game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.
This is the Che Rivera we meet at the beginning of “La Mission”; he's played by Benjamin Bratt as a tattooed macho guy — a man who isn't afraid to face down unruly passengers on his bus. He loves his son Jes (Jeremy Ray Valdez). After some disagreements with his upstairs neighbor Lena (Erika Alexander), he's beginning to see her in a new light. He's also the anchor of a group of friends who work together on their lovingly customized cars.
Then he discovers his son is gay. That isn't part of his world, his culture, his comprehension. There is always violence coiled inside Che, and he throws his son out of the house, fights with him on the sidewalk, and as a result, assures that everyone in the neighborhood and at his son's school knows his secret. They both sense a lot of stares and giggles and negative feelings from the Latino community.
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Lena, as it turns out, works at a shelter for abused women. She is firm and unyielding in her distaste for violence. She'd started to like Che — there's a lot to like about him — but now she fears he's a type she's seen too often. He doesn't have a way to process anger. He explodes. He loves his son, but hates homosexuality more.
This story is told earnestly and with some force in “La Mission,” written and directed by Benjamin Bratt's brother Peter. They worked together earlier on Peter's “Follow Me Home” (1996), an in-your-face film about a car full of minority graffiti artists on a cross-country odyssey. Here their hearts are in the right place, but the film tries to say too many things for its running time.
I believe Che's outrage at his son's personality. I do not believe his son would challenge him by suggesting Che found out something about gay sex in prison. At that moment I felt a screenplay talking, not a character. The film's treatment of Che's alcoholism is perfunctory; it's used for plot points, not character revelation. I believe an African-American woman and a Mexican-American man could certainly come together in the way the movie shows, but I was puzzled that the film scarcely seems to get deeper into that than the casting.
And Jes' lover is not simply too good to be true, he's too good to be interesting. This is Jordan (Max Rosenak), who is clean-cut, wholesome, supportive and of course with loving parents. I would have liked him to be a little more complex. I don't even know how Jes and Jordan met; he's simply there because the story requires him.
Some crucial scenes take place in a hospital. These scenes, I think, overplay Che's feelings. I don't require acceptance and reconciliation, and “La Mission” is forthright in avoiding easy answers. But does the screenplay shortchange Che by painting him more broadly at the film's end than he seemed at the beginning? If experience does anything, it leaves us wiser.
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A Far Flung Correspondent weighs in on the MCU controversy.
An early review of Clint Eastwood's Richard Jewell out of AFI Fest.
Scout Tafoya's video essay series about maligned masterpieces celebrates Steven Soderbergh's Solaris.
This message came to me from a reader named Peter Svensland. He and a fr...