Change Your Image
mago4
Reviews
Sing Street (2016)
Possibility. Your own path. Risk being ridiculed. "Happy sad".
It's a few days before the end of May, 2016, and the year in film might already be over as far as I'm concerned. It did not seem that way to me after the first time I saw this film - the "Mary Sue"-ism of the band's progress in quality, the strange appearance of a 1987 song in a 1985-set film (Starship's track at the party towards the end - from the movie 'Mannequin'), me asking myself which characters were responsible for editing the music video for 'Riddle of the Model' so decently / well?, and a couple more quibbles. These minor details became less important by the second viewing, and completely unimportant by the third and fourth viewings. They were replaced by: the girl that inspires your work, the work that allows you to ignore your current circumstances, the "adults", however few they may be, that actually notice what you're doing and encourage you / help you / are happily there for you, the friends you make as a result of putting yourself "out there", the joy of coming up with new material, "who are you, Steely Dan?", the fantastic storyline with Barry - the 'bully' who is incorporated into the group as the roadie with M's "Pop Musik" playing in the background, Brendan and Raphina meeting towards the end of the film, Eamon's mother (hahah), Flash and the Pan's "Waiting for a Train", The Cure on a film soundtrack, "Depech-E Mode", cookies between kisses, and Raphina... and Brendan. When even Adam Levine works perfectly for the film's ending, you know things are clicking.
On a side note: my profile has my location as San Juan, Puerto Rico, but I did not see this film there... since it has not been shown there, and I unfortunately would not be surprised if it ended up not showing there at all before home video (hope I'm wrong).
On a second side note: while in early high school, we tried to make a music video to compete in MTV's make-a-video contest for Madonna's track 'True Blue'... and failed impressively. Hence my immediately noticing the editing in 'RotM' :)
La Operación (1982)
Still remains, as of 2018, the most important documentary ever made about Puerto Rico.
All empires need at least one laboratory. That is what Puerto Rico has been to the United States since mid-1898. Any doubts you might have of this are completely eliminated in this very painful, searing documentary. The reason I have marked this review as a spoiler review is that I feel like I must mention that, while this documentary seems to be only about the benevolently-coerced sterilization of thousands of Puerto Rican women, "for their own good", it is about much, much more. This year alone, our newspapers have been using their front pages to lament how Puerto Rico is undergoing a massive population drop every month. This 1982 documentary not only mentions that, at that time, this had already been going on for decades (let me write that word one more time: d-e-c-a-d-e-s, plural), but casually mentions that this migration was not only encouraged by our "government", but also had yearly minimums of people leaving as goals. Have any doubts as to whether 'Operation Bootstrap' was a sham? You will no longer have them after watching this film. Think that becoming a state would be the most wonderful thing that could happen to Puerto Rico? Stay away from this documentary as if your life depended on it. In closing, with its final images, you might never think of the phrase 'Made in P.R.' the same way again.
Party Time: The Movie (2009)
Earnestness goes a long way in making this film worth your while
In an age of overtly cynical attempts at "moviemaking", I found this movie to be quite refreshing. As somebody who grew up here in Puerto Rico in the 1980s, I thought it got many, many things right. Do not be expecting a perfect film (it runs out of gas towards the end, and if you know the music of that era, you will soon realize that some of the songs are original versions, and some are not - you might find the quality of the 'cover' versions to be annoying). It's got its heart in the right place. I hope that, over the next few years, this film is appreciated much more than what it has been so far. I believe it deserves it.