Amores Perros (2000)

Recommended

Mexico

Feature Film

Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu

Writer: Guillermo Arriaga

Cinematographer: Rodrigo Prieto

Composer: Gustavo Santaolalla

Cast: Emilio Echevarría, Gael García Bernal, Goya Toledo, Álvaro Guerrero, Vanessa Bauche, Jorge Salinas, Marco Pérez, Rodrigo Murray, Humberto Busto

A devastating car crash on a busy Mexico City street – in González Iñárritu’s visceral, ambitious debut – brings together three separate narratives, each exploring in some way the effects of loss: in the first, a young man from a poor district resorts to dog fighting in the hope of getting his sister-in-law away from her abusive husband; in the second, a famous model, who has just moved in with her boyfriend, who has just left his wife, loses a leg in a car crash: in the third, an ageing revolutionary turned hitman rediscovers his estranged daughter whilst preparing for a hit. Iain.Stott

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Silent Light (2007)

Highly Recommended

Mexico/France/Germany/The Netherlands

Feature Film

Original Title: Stellet licht

Writer/Director: Carlos Reygadas

Cinematographer: Alexis Zabe

Cast: Cornelio Wall, Maria Pankratz, Miriam Toews, Peter Wall

Reygadas’s third film, following the curious misstep of Battle in Heaven (2005) and the acclaimed Japón (2002), is a film of rare power; ostensibly about the effects of an extra-marital affair amongst Mexico’s German speaking Mennonite community, the exquisite camerawork, elegant pacing, beguiling, naturalistic soundtrack, contentious ending, and grand sense of landscape, would suggest that this masterful film’s real subject is somewhat more transcendental. Iain.Stott

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Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

Highly Recommended

USA/Mexico
Feature Film
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Writers: Gordon Dawson, Sam Peckinpah, Frank Kowalski
Cinematographer: Álex Phillips Jr.
Composer: Jerry Fielding
Cast: Warren Oates, Isela Vega, Robert Webber, Gig Young, Helmut Dantine, Emilio Fernández, Kris Kristofferson

Peckinpah pits traditional against modern, spiritual against material, and honour against greed, in this extremely violent yet strangely beautiful and often moving thriller, in which Oates’s bar musician chances upon a possible big pay day when a wealthy gangster, after his daughter has been impregnated by a subordinate, issues the titular demand for vengeance. Iain.Stott

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