November 22, 2009
UTNE READER

Film Reviews: May / June 2007

(Page 2 of 3)

May / June 2007
by Staff, Utne Reader 
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Romantico

(Kino International; on DVD)

"I'm doing this for my family," says 57-year-old Carmelo Muniz Sanchez. "No other reason." In this beautifully observed documentary portrait, Sanchez sings his heart out as a mariachi in the Mexican restaurants of San Francisco -- when he's not washing cars along with other illegal immigrants. Eventually, Sanchez returns to his hometown of Salvatierra, Mexico, where it takes him two weeks to earn what he can make in a single weekend in the United States. In between performances, he pedals the streets selling ices to children and worries about the fate of his daughter: For many girls, economic hardship leads to prostitution. Refreshingly photographed on 16 mm film and interspersed with evocative slow-motion images, Rom‡ntico is not just a poignant commentary on the plight of illegal immigrants, but also a poetic elegy for the hardworking man. -- Anthony Kaufman

Wholphin No. 3

(McSweeney's; on DVD)

There's a place where God wields a rifle; ants hurtle skyward, propelled into flight with a snap of their jaws; and a debonair man, lost at sea, shares a raft of suitcases with a vacuum cleaner and a pregnant chicken. It's a place where whales and dolphins mate, and for $40 a year you can find it in your mailbox. Welcome to Wholphin, McSweeney's quarterly DVD magazine of oft-ignored films. The third release holds 12 shorts, from a three-and-a-half-minute clip of four men using a fence at the U.S.-Mexico border as a volleyball net ("Yeah Yeah. We Speak English. Just Serve.") to a 49-minute Alexander Payne drama first screened at Sundance in 1991 ("The Passion of Martin"). Take that, Netflix. -- Kristen Mueller

Music from the Inside Out

(Emerging Pictures/Docurama; on DVD)

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