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DVD Maria Full of Grace
When a movie can blend passionate social concern with good old-fashioned suspense, it must be doing something right. Maria Full of Grace scores high on both counts. Maria is a Colombian teenager who, for a large paycheck, agrees to be a mule for drug-runners: she has to swallow dozens of thumb-sized capsules of heroin and smuggle them into New York. This debilitating process is painstakingly described, and of course not everything goes as planned when Maria and her fellow mules land in America. Director Joshua Marston is working on a low budget, which explains the film's narrow, single-minded focus--but this may be a strength, not a weakness. The trump card is the lead performance of Catalina Sandrino Moreno, who won awards at the Seattle and Newport Film Festivals. Her empathetic face carries us along on Maria's journey, and humanizes a problem that is too easily relegated to a headline. --Robert Horton
Desperation, Hope and Love Must Live Together In the Human Heart
There could be a melodramatic midday movie centre to a film about a young, pregnant, Colombian girl who becomes a drugs courier in order to leave her the crushing hopelessness of life at home. Instead of saccharine coated answers, this story is told with a naturalistic, almost documentary style that is maintained throughout the film.
In her debut film Catalina Sandino Moreno plays Maria with an unforced honesty. Moreno has a luminous, natural beauty you can see been worn away by the hardships in her life. Maria's family depend on her income from a soul-destroying job working in a Bogotá cut-flowers factory. Her life gets so bad, Maria's choices begin to run out and she risks everything becoming a drugs `mule'
The most dramatic scene in the film is when Maria is forced to swallow more then sixty pellets of heroin. The gritty details about the swallowing and later excreting of these pellets are excruciating to watch. It is Maria's grace in spite of this you begin to hold onto, and becomes the anchor of the film.
Making the journey to the USA with Maria is Lucy (Giulied Lopez), a woman who has made the trip before. Unlike Maria, she can swallow a drug pellet with ease. The only pain Lucy shows us is the sadness in her eyes. On the flight they take into New York's JFK are several drug mules. The idea is if the customs officials capture one, they will be pre-occupied enough for the rest to slip through unnoticed.
When disaster does strike, Maria is forced to take steps to protect her family back home in Colombia and her unborn baby by reaching a decision that, one hopes, will mean a better life. Like the rest of the film, even this potentially emotive part of the story is given a direct, and in a way beautiful, honesty.
Although director John Marston cast Colombians to plays Colombians, none of the film was shot in that country. The drug trade has made it one of the most dangerous places on Earth. To portray this upheaval, a big budget Hollywood effort may have been more effective. Maria Full of Grace is instead a personal story about the deadly combination of drugs and dire poverty, which observes, without providing any simplistic answers.
First Half - 4. Second Half - 2
An excellent portrayal of how, after being given several opportunities to back-out, a volunteer drug-runner gets into the U.S., accepts the pay for her crime and then chooses to stay in the country illegally. The movie was very strong until the scene in U.S. Customs. It was there that it began to break down for me.
It is a well acted and a thoughful movie, but it is, in a nutshell, the story of a criminal. The character could very well have been formulating the start-up of her own drug smuggling operation as she walks through the airport at the end. Sure, she most likely was not but I feel that the film ignores personal responsibility for her own actions, and made her out as too much the victim.
Stirring & Provocative
This is one of the better films of 2004. Well acted, well written, and very unique in its story. From beginning to the end Joshua Marston chooses to present the story in a way that has us relating and sympathizing with Maria in her plight to find her place in the sun.
The beauty of the South American landscape and of Gael Garcia Bernal (Y Tu Mama Tambien, Bad Education) gives The Motorcycle Diaries a charisma that is decidedly apolitical. But this portrait of the young Che Guevara (later to become a militant revolutionary) is half buddy-movie, half social commentary--and while that may seem an unholy hybrid, under the guidance of Brazillian director Walter Salles (Central Station) the movie is quietly passionate. Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado (Rodrigo de la Serna, a lusty and engaging actor) set off from Buenos Aires, hoping to circumnavigate the continent on a leaky motorcycle. They end up travelling more by foot, hitchhiking, and raft, but their experience of the land and the people affects them profoundly. No... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Walter Salles DVD Release Date: Released the 15 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Solidly built around a subtle yet commanding performance by Don Cheadle, Hotel Rwanda emerged as one of the most highly-praised dramas of 2004. In a role that demands his quietly riveting presence in nearly every scene, Cheadle plays real-life hero Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager in the Rwandan capital of Kigali who in 1994 saved 1,200 Rwandan "guests" from certain death during the genocidal clash between tribal Hutus, who slaughtered a million victims, and the horrified Tutsis, who found safe haven or died. Giving his best performance since his breakthrough role in Devil in a Blue Dress, Cheadle plays Rusesabagina as he really was during the ensuing chaos: "an expert in situational ethics" (as described by critic Roger Ebert), doing what he morally had to do, at... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Don Cheadle - Sophie Okonedo Director(s): Terry George DVD Release Date: Released the 12 April 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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With Sideways, Paul Giamatti (American Splendor, Storytelling) has become an unlikely but engaging romantic lead. Struggling novelist and wine connoisseur Miles (Giamatti) takes his best friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church, Wings) on a wine-tasting tour of California vineyards for a kind of extended bachelor party. Almost immediately, Jack's insatiable need to sow some wild oats before his marriage leads them into double-dates with a rambunctious wine pourer (Sandra Oh, Under the Tuscan Sun) and a recently divorced waitress (Virginia Madsen, The Hot Spot)--and Miles discovers a little hope that he hasn't let himself feel in a long time. Sideways is a modest but finely tuned film; with gentle compassion, it explores the failures, struggles, and... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Alexander Payne DVD Release Date: Released the 05 April 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Jamie Foxx's uncannily accurate performance isn't the only good thing about Ray. Riding high on a wave of Oscar buzz, Foxx proved himself worthy of all the hype by portraying blind R&B legend Ray Charles in a warts-and-all performance that Charles approved shortly before his death in June 2004. Despite a few dramatic embellishments of actual incidents (such as the suggestion that the accidental drowning of Charles's younger brother caused all the inner demons that Charles would battle into adulthood), the film does a remarkable job of summarizing Charles's strengths as a musical innovator and his weaknesses as a philandering heroin addict who recorded some of his best songs while flying high as a kite. Foxx seems to be channeling Charles himself, and as he did with the life of... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Jamie Foxx - Kerry Washington - Regina King Director(s): Taylor Hackford DVD Release Date: Released the 01 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Four extremely beautiful people do extremely horrible things to one another in Closer, Mike Nichols' pungent adaptation of Patrick Marber's play that easily marks the Oscar-winning director's best work in years. Anna (Julia Roberts) is a photographer who specializes in portraits of strangers; Dan (Jude Law) is an obituary writer struggling to become a novelist; Alice (Natalie Portman) is an American stripper freshly arrived in London after a bad relationship; and Larry (Clive Owen) is a dermatologist who finds love under the most unlikely of circumstances. When their paths cross it's a dizzying supernova of emotions, as Nichols and Marber adroitly construct various scenes out of their lives that pair them again and again in various permutations of passion, heartbreak, anger,... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Mike Nichols DVD Release Date: Released the 29 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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