Film, film, film!

Last Friday we examined several exhibitions in the U.S. highlighting Latin American art ranging from Fernando Botero to miniature nativity scenes. With the weekend upon us we provide you with several films from the Americas that are airing in theaters around the U.S. Enjoy!

* Cautiva is a thriller from Argentina that is reminiscent of drama La Historia Oficial, a 1985 film that I viewed several years ago on the orphaned children of those “disappeared” during the Dirty War period. In the case of Cautiva, Cristina is a teenage girl has her world turned upside down when she is forced to live with the relatives of her biological parents years after they “disappeared” in the early-1980s. One critic observed “a film initially gripping in its moral shades of gray turns black-and-white, devolving to its final, less than bold statement: Mass murder is bad”. More than anything Cautiva deftly analyzes the psychological repercussions of mass murder from a victim’s perspective.

* Cocaine Cowboys is a documentary that examines how Miami channeled the Old West by becoming a hotbed of violence as the drug trade blossomed there during the 1970s and 1980s. Numerous key figures in law enforcement and drug dealing were interviewed for the film such as former Medellin cartel hitman Jorge Ayala who is currently serving three consecutive life sentences in a U.S. maximum security prison. The documentary goes beyond the aura of Miami Vice and Scarface by showing how several factors came together to transform Miami into a center for the narcotics trade.

* The U.S. immigration debate tends to focus on illegal immigrants making their way into and living in the U.S. Mark Becker’s documentary Romantico does examine that but also looks at how Mexican immigrant Carmelo Muñiz returned to his homeland to visit his ailing mother after desperately trying to eke out a survival in San Francisco. Romantico not only provides a hard look at the difficulties of being an immigrant in the U.S but also the tough decisions one must make to help one’s cherished family.

* The Magic Gloves is an absurdist comedy centering on Alejandro, a Buenos Aires taxi driver who adores disco dancing and undergoes several unusual adventures after a pair of yuppies mistake him for someone else. His whole life is flipped upside down yet Alejandro (played by Vicentico, the leader of famed rock group Los Fabulosos Cadillacs) still trudges through it with nary a complaint. Reviews for The Magic Gloves have been mixed though they praise Vicentico’s acting as the film’s protagonist.

Any other films that should have been included in this list? Tell us in the comments!