El Mariachi

Dir: Robert Rodriguez, 1992, Mexico (8.8*)

Audience Award, Sundance

Indy Spirit Award for Best Picture

This terrific action film put Rodriguez on the map, and he made the entire film using credit cards for an amazingly low price, something like $50,000 (his friends acted for free!); it went on to gross millions. The movie concerns an out-of-work mariachi guitarist on the road looking for work. At the same time, a drug gang war erupts, and they hire an assassin who carries his weapons in a guitar case. Gee, guess what? The guitarist becomes mistaken for the assassin and has to defend himself, and the ensuing massacre makes him a frightening legend to everyone in his path, as he must flee both gangs and the police! Rodgiguez' camerawork is very inventive and fresh, and even though this is lightweight, it's still far better than his big budget sequels, Desperado and Once Upon a Time in Mexico (which had Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayak!) On the dvd, be sure to check out "Robert Rodriguez' Ten-Minute Film School". Brilliant stuff and on a "shoestring".

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Babel

Dir: Alejandro González Iñárritu
, 2006, Mexico (9.0*)

Best Drama Picture (GG)

Terrific story of a rifle, and the three families worldwide connected to its story. A shepherd in the middle east receives the powerful hunting rifle from a Japanese tourist, but his sons use it to fire on a tourist bus on a highway far below, wounding American Cate Blanchett, whose husband Brad Pitt must now try to save her life in the middle of a desert village. We are shown snippets of the life of the Japanese owner of the rifle, and his daughter's travails (trying to find love and acceptance in spite of a handicap), as well as the nanny taking care of Pitt and Blanchett's kids in the states while they vacation in North Africa.

Innaritu delicately balances all these stories, filming Babel on three continents with different film crews and casts. Both Adriana Barraza, as the nanny in America, and Rinko Kikuchi, in Japan as the deaf-mute daughter of the original gun’s owner, were nominated for Supporting Actress. You won't get a tidy Hollywood story here, just great filmmaking. Of 7 nominations, won one Oscar (music.) Interviewed on the red carpet at the Oscars, Innaritu jokingly said "I think we are perhaps nominated for too many awards"

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