Los Paranoicos

I'm just going to title this post for my favorite movie that I've seen thus far: Los Paranoicos

It's kind of hard to describe what's so nice about it, minimalist and subtle as it is, but as the movie progressed I found myself moved from interested to really captivated. The acting is great from the lead male. It's basically a portrait of his character Luciano Guana a struggling, 30-something, coarse-feeling writer who appears somewhat socially isolated and wrapped up in his own neuroses. The supporting characters play into the story pretty significantly, though it remained a portrait mostly about him. The most significant of these is an old friend, a successful former classmate of Luciano's. Luciano comes to find out that the old classmate, who has since moved to Barcelona, has based his successful TV show there on Luciano and his neuroses. The main character of the TV show is named Luciano Guana.



I don't want to spoil much more except to say that there's a tension watching the film as you see Luciano's inability to speak up for himself. The tension gets released during the movie at times in the form of rage and at times through somewhat intense and raw dance sequences. Also, the soundtrack is great and should be sought out on its own.

My Buddy Josh is making a short film involving unexpressed feelings and dance. I can't wait to see it. He and I actually got up really early this morning to get in line for another film called Made in China. A roaring comedy about a naive guy with a dedication to making his great business idea happen in China with the help of their cheap manufacturing.

Yesterday I saw another movie worth mentioning called 45365. The title is the name of the zip code where this documentary feature takes place. The film makers spent 9 months filming the environment and people of their hometown. The result is open ended and sort of like having a web cam setup on the town and certain people. The filmmakers are conspicuously absent from their own film which leads one to think that perhaps they're trying to be objective or portray objectiveness.



The filmmakers were there to speak afterwards and it was hard to discern their agenda in making the film other than to be observers. The film was enjoyable to watch though stuff like this, stuff that implies the achievement of objectivism or pure observation about/on a topic, always has very basic problems. The obvious part is just that it's impossible to be objective; what you turn your camera on to film, what you decide to edit and who even allows you to follow them and thus be in the film are all realities that preclude it from being as all encompassing as the title and description would lead you to believe. If three siblings of a different heritage attempted to make the same film about the same town with the same method it would probably paint a very different picture of the culture and people that live there. It's inevitable and, you know, no big deal but I was suprised (but I guess ultimately glad since it didn't look like good answers would have come out of it) that the discussion didn't go there. Anyway go see it--whatever issues the sociologist in me has, it was a pretty and decent film.