Get the Gringo

This is a new Mel Gibson film, but was released in May through video-on-demand via DirecTV and not traditional theatres (at least for now).

The plot involves an American lifetime criminal played by Gibson, who is unnamed (but known in the credits as The Driver) who with his partner has apparently stolen a huge amount of money right by the Mexican border.  He crashes his getaway car through the fence dividing the U.S. and Mexico. Mexico is well-known for its corrupt police forces, so the Mexican officers see the stacks of money and innocently state they will take this case, now that the robbers are on their soil. They throw the Driver into a prison called El Pueblito (modeled after real prisons in Mexico). El Pueblito, as per its name, is a little town, where you can buy anything, has many services--even illegal ones, and as a character says, “the world’s worst mall” is an apt description of this setting. Prisoners can also pay to have their families live with them, so that the family unit can stay together (yeah, I don’t know who thought this was a good thing nor how it punishes the prisoner). 
Driver bides his time to make an escape, by observing everyone and studying the hierarchy in El Pueblito.  Despite its restrictive setting, there is a lot of money moving around El Pueblito, much of it passing through the hands of a big shot criminal, Javi (Daniel Gimenez Cacho), who gets to come and go as he pleases and takes his cut off every deal that goes on. His lackeys are his brother and cousin.

Another guy, Bill (Dean Norris), some sort of shady government lawyer, tries to get Driver out of prison in trade for a cut of the money that was stolen. But Driver is not interested in working with anyone but himself.

Other key characters are a widow and her son (Dolores Heredia, Kevin Hernandez, known as the kid and the kid’s mother). The kid sees Driver observing everyone, as well as Driver's ingenious robbery of a drug dealer during a fire, and the Driver grudgingly takes the kid under his wing. The kid reveals a hatred of Javi due to Javi having his father killed for a despicable reason, that threatens the kid’s life too, but ironically Javi protects the kid’s life, at least for now. The Driver eventually mentors him as a father figure and helping him defeat Javi. 

God Bless America

A gentle man is tired of how rude and crude American has become. When Frank (Joel Murray) is told he has a tumor, he decides to take a last stand against those crude Americans, such as reality show stars, people who cell/text during movies, trash talk show hosts, etc. and goes on a cross country road trip with his gun. Along the way he finds he has a hanger-on, the teen Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr) who shares his attitude. At first they kill one person here and there who have personally offended Frank, but soon it becomes scapegoating rude people they see in the news.  Frank's moral "standards" become more lax and he finds it easier to kill others for offenses to society. It seems everyone's behavior can have some facet that Frank and especially Roxy finds objectionable. Although Frank still comes off as a nice guy and often admonishes Roxy on not going too far, the duo become seen in the media as Bonnie and Clyde types.

Past seven days

I saw two interesting documentaries this week. The first was David Wants to Fly. A David Lynch fan found out he was seriously into transcendental yoga and wanted to find out more about it--which he certainly did! Conan O'Brien Can't Stop certainly shows that--the comedy talk show host can't seem to shut off his need for attention, and the word "addiction" is actually brought up in one of the special features on this DVD. Otherwise, a broken DVD player has seriously cramped my style lately, driving me to my PC which is not a prime viewing space. I've also watched some older TV shows on DVD, continuing with the sketch comedy show The State, Veronica Mars, and some old TV I had recorded on VHS--Remember WENN (only bootleg copies available on DVD) and Whose Line is it Anyway?, the improv comedy show hosted by Drew Carey (which is the American version of a long-running British hit).

Conan O’Brien Can't Stop
David Wants to Fly
The Eagle
North & South (BBC miniseries)

Bernie

Bernie is a new film with a pretty good performance by Jack Black, who is probably equally famous now for being a comic musician as well as a comic actor.  Although this film has some ironically comic moments and black humor due to the content of its plot, Black's performance is played as straight drama.

Based on a real life story, Black plays Bernie, a Southern mortician with such a a gentle and generous friendly manner that he is beloved around town.  This is personified by several talking heads of real citizens who are interviewed in the film, speaking about the event the film is recounting--the murder by Bernie of a widow whom he befriended.

Marjorie, the widow, is known as the meanest woman in town.  She is played here by Shirley MacLaine, an actress who has played this type of woman pretty well.  Bernie, as he has done with many other grieving widows, helps soothe Marge after the death of her husband, following up several times afterwards even despite her curt attitude towards him.  She warms to Bernie, and their relationship is increasingly dependent upon each other--she values his opinions in her personal matters, he welcomes the lavishness of gifts she bestows on him.  But--as her gifts get more lavish, so do her demands, so much so that one day, out of the blue it seems, Bernie picks up a gun and shoots her four times, killing her.

This brings the district attorney onto the case (played a little greasily by Matthew McConnaughey).  He seems to be the only one able to see beyond the town's love of Bernie to the undeniable facts of the killing, which is also supported by Bernie's confession.  Everyone else either disbelieves the facts or repudiates the confession and sticks by Bernie.  Or is the district attorney trying to hammer through this case to increase his political power?  It is touch and go as he has to move the trial to another city, not to protect the defendant as is often the case, but to protect the state.

Meet: Barbara Vancheri

Meet Barbara Vancheri, film critic and reporter for the Pittsburgh Gazette.

I ran across Barbara's reporting and film blog, Mad About the Movies, in a news alert.  I like that her reporting covers a range of movies from blockbusters to smaller films or those that might fall in between, and especially that she always points out when a film has a Pittsburgh connection, whether it was filmed there or if the story takes place there or if an artist grew up in the area.  Recently she reported about the renovation of a local theater and a couple of new indie films.

Her columns also appear to be syndicated to other papers, so her work is not just shown to a local audience.

Here is her bio from the Pittsburgh Gazette website:

Pittsburgh native Barbara Vancheri learned to love the movies at the Bellevue and North Hills theaters, McKnight Cinemas and Wexford Drive-In, now all fodder for a "Things That Aren't There Anymore" documentary. A journalism graduate of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, she worked at newspapers in Ashtabula and Columbus, Ohio, Beaver County and Rochester, N.Y., before joining the Post-Gazette in 1984 as a feature writer. She has chronicled a wide range of subjects, from the recovery of two brothers badly burned in a fire and Fred Rogers' puppet diplomacy to the end of "Seinfeld," the opening and closing of local movie houses and Pittsburghers with Hollywood connections. She previewed Universal Studios theme park in Florida before its 1990 opening and has reported on the Academy Awards from the fabled red carpet and the independent-minded Spirit Awards from a tent at Santa Monica Beach. Vancheri also attends the Toronto International Film Festival and keeps readers apprised about Pittsburgh's many homegrown film festivals.In 2005, Vancheri was named movie editor of the Post-Gazette.