Home Media Magazine - February 3-9, 2008 - (Page 16)

REVIEWS I ESL: ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE Street 2/12 Allumination, Drama, $29.98 DVD, ‘R’ for language, some sexuality, violence and brief drug use. Stars Kuno Becker, Danielle Camastra, Maria Conchita Alonso, John Michael Higgins, Sal Lopez. www.homemediamagazine.com D on’t let the opening scenes fool you. ESL is not a typical immigrant story. Sure, Bolivar (Becker of Goal!) is a Mexican immigrant who comes to Los Angeles in search of work. But he is countered by Lola (Camastra), an intelligent but spoiled young woman more interested in partying than about her future as a lawyer. Their worlds literally collide when Lola is driving drunk and plows into Bolivar’s car. She is charged with a DUI and must do community service as part of her sentence. So she signs up to help teach an ESL class and again meets up with Bolivar, who is one of the students. Meanwhile, Bolivar is working as a stripper. He doesn’t like the work, but feels pressured to make money any way he can to support his expectant wife back home in Mexico. However, the lifestyle takes a toll on Bolivar. And Lola’s own reckless lifestyle is taking a toll on her as well, as she tries to live up to her parents’ expectations of her becoming a lawyer. Though they come from different worlds, they both struggle to figure out what they want out of life all the while trying to make their respective families happy too. Becker gives a moving, sympathetic performance, while not giving in to a lot of Latino and immigrant stereotypes. This gem of a movie takes a refreshing approach to Latino films that speaks not just to U.S. Latinos but to all audiences. It also includes a hot soundtrack of such Latin artists as the Nortec Collective, The Pinkertones, Fulanito, Go Betty Go and Andrea Echaverri. Writer-director-producer Youssef Delara may not be Latino, but he certainly gets it. – Angelique Flores I WRESTLEMANIAC Prebook 2/7; Street 3/11 Anchor Bay, Horror, $26.97 DVD, ‘R’ for nudity, disturbing violent content, graphic images and some language. Stars Rey Misterio, Leyla Milani, Irwin Keyes. M I EXPERIMENT Prebook 2/5; Street 3/4 MTI, Thriller, $24.95 DVD, NR. Stars John Hopkins, Georgina French, Clive Ashborn. I n the British sci-fi thriller Experiment, two Brits awake in a strange foreign city with their memories completely erased. Anna (French) is dumped on the street traumatized, fighting off frightening flashbacks and delusions. Whatever happened to Anna has reduced the young woman to a childlike state — leaving her barely able to speak — and has left her suffering from uncontrollable bouts of pain and rage. Then there’s Morgan (Hopkins) who finds himself floating face down in a river. Despite his amnesia and being a little beaten up and confused, he’s in much better shape than Anna. He also is left with a woman’s photo that has the message “Morgan find Anna” on the back, giving him some hope that this nightmare will be over soon. What Anna and Morgan don’t know, as they wander the streets aimlessly, is that an underground agency has implanted a device in their brains that can monitor and control their every move via an advanced computer system. This engaging film, which unfolds like a disturbing combination of The Bourne Identity and The Manchurian Candidate, takes viewers on an unsettling psychological journey of trust and self-rediscovery as Anna and Morgan are fed clues that bring them together as they try to gain back their memories and their sanity. Working against them is a covert group using the couple as subjects in a mindcontrolling experiment to see to what extremes they can push the pair. Experiment is an exceptional first effort from director Dan Turner, who made the film for a reported $250,000, although you could never tell by the way it is shot. He also took a chance by casting fresh faces such as Hopkins (The Path to 9/11) and French (who makes her debut) in the lead roles. Fortunately, they were able to rise to the occasion and deliver gripping performances. The film has won several well-deserved film festival awards, and its arrival on DVD is overdue. – Matt Miller exican wrestling has had further exposure in North America thanks to Jack Black’s Nacho Libre and World Wrestling Entertainment’s Rey Mysterio Jr. That masked wrestler, who is extremely popular with Mexicans and Americans alike, comes from a lineage of lucha libre. His uncle, Rey Misterio, a living legend in the sport, plays the masked killer, El Mascarado, in this low-budget slasher flick. Wrestlemaniac traps six twentysomethings on the way to Cabo San Lucas in the middle of a ghost town haunted by a crazed wrestling experiment by the Mexican government. As legend goes, El Mascarado was the result of a Frankenstein-type project that built the ultimate luchador out of the pieces of professional Mexican wrestlers. He went crazy and killed his opponents, ripping their faces off. Three characters are scantily-clad girls who are part of an amateur porn movie shoot. This premise allows writer-director Jesse Baget to get two of the girls naked pretty quickly before the killing starts. This low budget movie works. It’s quick, running at 71 minutes, and there aren’t many victims to last for much longer. It’s not easy to come up with something new in the slasher genre, but we get it with a crazed luchador who rips the flesh off his victims’ faces and hangs them on the wall like masks. The real star of this film is El Mascarado, and he will likely be back for more in a sequel. Timed to release just weeks before WWE’s Wrestlemania 24 in Orlando, Fla., Wrestlemaniac should find a decent audience. The official WWE movies from Lionsgate, especially See No Evil, have done brisk business. Although not directly tied to the WWE, this flick will certainly capture the attention of WWE fans and lucha libre fans. – John Gaudiosi 16 Home Media Magazine February 3-9, 2008 http://www.homemediamagazine.com

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Home Media Magazine - February 3-9, 2008

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