Review: The Curse of La Llorona

by Tony Ruggio

Latino audiences are the leading demo for moviegoing so Hollywood ignores them at their own peril. Cynical though it is, somebody at Warner Bros said "no mas" and rang James Wan to add one more wrinkle to his ever-expanding Conjuring universe.

Serving as producer, Wan's fingerprints are everywhere. From swooping dollies and immaculate crane work, to an early scene of kids frolicking to 70's tunes, La Llorona often flatters the original with homage. The simple foreboding of a dark corner in the room or a hazy reflection in the mirror, it’s all there and it works for the most part...

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Oscar Trivia with the 91st Annual Academy Awards now a wrap

Now that the big show has ended let's talk trivia. Please do share any cool things you noticed in the comments.

PICTURE & DIRECTING

• With Alfonso Cuarón's win we are reminded that Mexico is completely dominant for Best Director prizes in Hollywood of late. Five of the past six winners have been Mexican directors (Damien Chazelle for La La Land being the lone non-Mexican winning). The US is really lagging, and not behind Mexico -- in the ten past ceremonies only two American-born directors have won: Chazelle and Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker

• Alfonso Cuarón is the first and ONLY director to win for directing a foreign-language film. Some trivia listings suggest he's the second after Michel Hanavicius for The Artist but that was a silent film, so language isn't relevant...

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Blueprints: "Coco"

Feliz Día de los Muertos! To celebrate, Jorge looks at how the script for Disney’s “Coco” mixes two languages the same way the movie interconnects cultures.

I’ve written a couple of pieces in this site before about Coco. It was an extremely intimate and touching experience to be able to see my native culture represented to accurately and lovingly. It is a movie that perfectly captures the spirit of Mexicanism, of our fragile and ever-present relationship with death, family, and tradition. 

I saw the movie twice in theaters: once in its original English, and once in its Spanish dub. While I consider the dub to be a better version (but that perhaps has to do with the way I’ve always experienced animated films), the English one made me consider a new aspect of the film: the way it handled Spanish. It’s a movie explicitly set in a different country; one where a different language is spoken (unlike say, Brave). How can the script incorporate this essential cultural element without making it seem unauthentic? It turns out, they do it muy bien.

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TIFF Quickies with Gael García Bernal, Paprika Steen and more...

Nathaniel R reporting from the Toronto International Film Festival

Herewith very quick notes on five new films from world cinema, some with stars you'll recognize, that deserve lengthier word counts. That said, we're a week behind with TIFF reviews so we have to crank them out somehow -- better short-takes than no takes at all! 

Museo
The ever prolific Gael García Bernal continues to be a gift to world cinema. He has a small role in The Kindergarten Teacher (which... more on later) but fully carries Museo, a restless gem from Mexico. The movie begins with a formative father and son memory and memorable newsreel footage of an ancient statue being hauled across Mexico as a prized museum acquisition. Years later in 1985, the son Juan Nunez (García Bernal), or "Shorty," as his often derisive family calls him, remains obsessed with the story and robs the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City of 140 more mobile pre-Hispanic pieces...

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Showbiz History: The Girl From Missouri, The Princess from Genovia

10 random things that happened on this day in showbiz history...

1904 Dolores del Rio born in Mexico. By 1925 she's a star in silent films, Hollywood's first Mexican movie star, but her time in Hollywood is short. She reinvents herself back home in Mexico becoming a huge movie star all over again and ushering in Mexican cinema's Golden Era. 

1926 Gordon Scott, future Tarzan beefcake born in Portland. He stars in one of the most interesting Tarzan films, Tarzan's Greatest Adventure (1959) which also features Sean Connery!

1934 The Girl from Missouri opens in movie theaters, a vehicle for Jean Harlow who was actually from Missouri...

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