El Norte

A lovely, sad and simple tale told by director Gregory Nava about a brother and sister who escape the persecution of the indigenous population by the junta in Guatemala in the early eighties. After their father is murdered and mother taken prisoner, they travel across Mexico to "the North" (El Norte) - the USA. They enter the country by taking a harrowing journey through a disused sewage pipe. They eventually reach Los Angeles where they become part of the large number of illegal workers and find that they have escaped one form of suppression just to become trapped in another. Its a sad and ultimately not very hopeful tale, particularly from the current perspective where almost thirty years later not all that much has changed. Immigrants continue to enter the US illegally in the hope of finding a better life and general find life pretty tough even if they manage to avoid being sent back. True, conditions in Guatemala appear to have improved to the extent that it seems to be a well-functioning democracy, but it still suffers from a great deal of crime, fuelled by the drug trade. Nonetheless, El Norte is well-made and its sad theme is lifted by some beautiful cinematography using the broad palette of Mexico and Central America.

Bruno

Bruno is very, very funny, but not as funny as Borat and therefore a little bit of a disappointment. I watched Borat again to try to figure out why. I think the answer is twofold. One, Borat is a funnier character in his own right. You laugh at him even before he begins to draw out funny reactions from his hapless victims. Two, the satire in Borat is more shotgun than laser. He baits religious nuts with as much enthusiasm as red-neck college students. Bruno is focussed primarily on trying to elicit reactions to his gayness. He is looking for homophobia and the bad news (from the standpoint of wanting to make a funny film) is that, on the whole he doesn't find very much of it. The funniest Bruno victims are the parents who will agree to anything to get their babies a film role and the crowd at the climatic bare-knuckle fight. The least successful are the reactions of Ron Paul and the self defence expert. You feel sorry for them in their efforts to politely deal with this weirdo. Even the anti-gay protesters just seem to want to get away from him. Nonetheless, this is another expansion of the boundaries of what can be shown in main-stream cinema and what people will laugh at. Sacha Baron Cohen remains a comic genius and a very brave one. I can't wait for his next incarnation.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Episode 6 of the continuing Harry Potter saga. It's amazing to look back at the DVDs of the previous episodes and see these children grow up to young adulthood before our eyes. I enjoyed this one, its long at 153 minutes, but manages to fit a lot in. The series has grown increasingly darker and more suspenseful with each episode and for this first time this one has some real adult scares. The first romantic inklings that cropped up in Goblet of Fire are of course expanded further as the older Hogwarts students, including Harry, become interested in a bit of snogging (or snoggling as Ebert calls it). If anything, I miss some of the enchantment of the earlier movies that revolved more around the "routine" of school days at Hogwarts (if there can be anything routine about a school for wizards) and less around the battle with Voldemort. I remember reading Enid Blighton's Famous Five novels growing up (which by the way I am rereading to my young sons now) and liking the opening chapters that set the scene, usually of some idyllic English summer holiday, more than the later chapters when the focus would shift to some adventure or other. By the way, Harry Potter owes a real debt to Blighton and other novelists who wrote so prosaically about English school day adventures.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I discovered Douglas Adams at around the end of high school. Probably the perfect time to read his highly imaginative and wildly funny Hitchhiker “trilogy”, which actually consists of five novels starting with the Hitchhiker’s Guide in 1979 and ending with Mostly Harmless is 1992. I loved, absolutely loved, the books. When I saw Douglas speak in Sydney just before the Millennium (he was here to promote his excellent PC game Starship Titanic) he spoke about the forthcoming movie and I remember being a little doubtful about how well the books would translate to film.

Fortunately, thanks to CGI nothing is unfilmable and the movie is by no means a disappointment. It is very well cast. Martin Freeman is perfect as the bemused Arthur Dent, whose house is bulldozed to build a bypass just minutes before his entire planet is demolished to make way for an intergalactic express way. The delightfully cute and quirky Zooey Deschanel is great as Trillion and no one could have done the Guide voiceover as much justice as Stephen Fry. Some of the visuals are quite strikingly beautiful and awe inspiring such as the scenes in the planet factory with Slartibartfast, well played by Bill Nighy. It’s such a shame that Douglas Adams died before this movie was released. I think he would have liked it.