Robert:

Regardless of your political leanings, a good movie is a good movie. So while I would never allow anything partisan in our blog, out of respect for the differing viewpoints of our readers, this is worth passing along for its pure entertainment value. Many of these films are superb, and will never appear at the local multi-screen cinemas here.

The Vallarta Chapter Democrats Abroad is launching its third annual film series at Paradise Community Center, Pulpito 127 in the Puerto Vallarta Romantic Zone beginning December 4, 2012. 

Twenty films are scheduled through April and, as was true last year, there will be a special week of Academy-Award-nominated films as well.  Tickets are available for 60 pesos prior to the movie at Paradise Community Center or 70 pesos at the door. We invite moviegoers to come early to enjoy ordering from the food venders at the Center before the show.

 

A Better Life.  December 11, 2012 7:00 pm.

A 2011 American drama film directed by Chris Weitz.  The screenplay, originally known as The Gardener, was written by Eric Eason based on a story by Roger L. Simon. Demi‡n Bichir was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor.  Shot in the landscape of Mexican immigrant LA with a large Hispanic cast, Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that "the performances are pitch perfect" and he gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4. The New Yorker critic Amy Biancolli, writing in the Houston Chronicle, said "It's straight, true and heartbreaking, a masterstroke of raw emotional minimalism.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  December 18, 2012 7:00 pm.

A joy for those who love veteran thespians who can act up a storm. A group of English retirees decide to relocate to a seniorsÕ hotel in Daipur, India, to live a relaxing life of leisure. Unfortunately, the hotel turns out to be a dive -- rundown, dreary, and depressing.  The characters are a lot more colorful and interesting than the plot. Tom Wilkinson plays gay magistrate Graham Dashwood, who has returned to India to find the boy he loved and left when he was young. Bill Nighy is retired bureaucrat Douglas Ainslie with an irritating, constantly complaining wife (Penelope Wilton), whose savings have been lost by a daughter's careless investment. Judi Dench is recent widow Evelyn Greenslade, who has never before looked after herself. Maggie Smith is Muriel Donnelly, an unapologetic racist in need of a hip replacement. And Celia Imrie is Madge Hardcastle, a gold digger still very much on the prowl.

Where Do We Go Now?  January 8, 2013 7 pm.

This film tells the story of a remote, isolated unnamed Lebanese village inhabited by both Muslims and Christians.  The village is surrounded by land mines and only reachable by a small bridge. As civil strife engulfed the country, the women in the village learn of this fact and try, by various means and to varying success, to keep their men in the dark, sabotaging the village radio, then destroying the village TV.  The village is slowly drawn into violence, but the women get along beautifully and conspire together to keep their men from fighting, even hiring Ukrainian dancers to entertain their men and other tricks to quell the hostilities.

Flowers of War.  January 15, 2013 7 pm.

Nominated for a Golden Globe Award for best picture and directed by Zhang Yimou, this film takes place in the streets of Nanjing during the Japanese invasion. It throws together a group of opposites—a flock of shell-shocked school children, a dozen courtesans, and a renegade American (Academy-award winning Christian Bale) posing as a priest—all seeking safety behind a walled cathedral.  Trapped by marauding soldiers, over a few days the prejudices that divides them falls away as they unite around a last-ditch plan to protect the children from impending catastrophe.

 Cats of Mirikitani.  January 22, 2013 7 pm.

This film has been called A miracle by New York Magazine. Eighty-year-old Jimmy Mirikitani survived the trauma of WWII internment camps, Hiroshima and homelessness by creating art. But when 9/11 threatens his life on the New York City streets, a local filmmaker brings him to her home. The two of them embark on a journey to confront JimmyÕs painful past. An intimate exploration of the lingering wounds of war and the healing power of community and art, this film has won awards at some 20 festivals including Best Documentary, Philadelphia Film Festival and Best Picture, Tokyo IntÕl Film Festival.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, in Turkish with English subtitles.  January 29, 2013 7 pm.

A metaphysical road movie about life, death and the limits of knowledge, directed by the Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan ("Distant," "Three Monkeys"), who in recent years has emerged as one of the consistently most exciting directors on the international scene. His latest, which shared the grand prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, takes the unassuming form of a police investigation that, as miles and words mount, evolves into a plangent, visually stunning meditation on what it is to be human.  The story is direct, if the journey less so. A man has been murdered, and a small battalion — a doctor, a prosecutor, a few policemen, several soldiers, diggers with shovels and a transcriber with a laptop — has invaded the countryside with the suspect to dig up the body. The trouble is that the accused, Kenan (Firat Tanis), claims to have been drunk when he committed the murder and can't remember where he buried the body. And so off the men go in two cars and a Jeep, driving up and down the sensuous, rolling hills of Anatolia, the enormous peninsula that constitutes most of Turkey and which the ancient Greeks called the land of the rising sun.

Intouchables.  February 5, 2013 7 pm.

Phillipe is a rich quadriplegic living in a mansion in Paris. He is interviewing for a live-in care-giver. Driss is just looking to get a signature to show he has been looking for work. Driss, however, is given the job for a trial period. Phillip learns of his criminal record for robbery. But, he states that he doesn't care as long as he does his job properly.  As time passes, the two develop an incredible friendship. This movie, based on a true story, will warm even the coldest heart.

Hope Springs.  February 12, 2013 7 pm.

Starring Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones in a latter-year marriage, Kay and Arnold are a devoted couple, but decades of marriage have left Kay wanting to spice things up and reconnect with her husband. When she hears of a renowned couple's specialist (Steve Carell) in the small town of Great Hope Springs, she attempts to persuade her skeptical husband, a steadfast man of routine, to get on a plane for a week of marriage therapy. Just convincing the stubborn Arnold to go on the retreat is hard enough - the real challenge for both of them comes as they try to re-ignite the spark that caused them to fall for each other in the first place. The greatest pleasure is watching these two old hands at movie magic in star roles together! This film is a great intro to ValentineÕs Day.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. February 19, 2013 7 pm.

Based on the novel by author Jonathan Safran Foer, director Stephen Daldry's post-9/11 drama follows the journey of a nine-year-old boy as he attempts to solve a family mystery. Two years after his father is killed in the September 11th terrorist attacks, the curious boy discovers a mysterious key hidden in a household vase and begins an exhaustive search for the matching lock. Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock star.

Monsieur Lazhar.  February 26, 2013 7 pm.

Academy-award nominee for Best Foreign-language Film and a CriticÕs Pick by The New York Times, Monsieur Lazhar tells the moving and poignant story of a Montreal middle school class shaken by the death of their well-liked teacher, and the 55-year-old Algerian immigrant who offers his services as a substitute teacher and aids the process of collective healing.

A Separation (an Iranian film). March 5, 2013 7 pm.

The film is a fascinating look at the motivations and behavior of modern Iranians and provides a compelling examination at what goes on behind a particular curtain that almost never gets raised. The early front-runner for the foreign-language Oscar and a rare triple prize winner at the Berlin International Film Festival, this is a movie from Iran unlike any we've seen before. Written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, "A Separation" is intense, focused and narrative-driven. Imagine Alfred Hitchcock's intricate attention to plot joined to the devastating emotional impact of Ingmar Bergman: The result is so exhilarating, the movie was the first foreign-language film to win the screenplay award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.  Gradually, bit by bit, like drops turning into a flood, the plot shows that the ordinary can get devastatingly out of hand, and minor misunderstandings, confusions and evasions morph into a slow-motion nightmare that threatens to destroy everything and everyone in its path. This incisive look at Iranian society reveals, without calling any special attention to it, divisions over class, over religious observance, over political philosophy. But what's so inspired here is the directorÕs decision to ground them all in the most personal of all separations, that between a husband and wife.

In a Better World (Danish 2010).  March 12, 2013 7 pm.

This film tackles the global theme of bullyingÉfrom the personal stage of your own home to how countries bully. It takes place in Denmark and Africa.