Vicky Cristina Barcelona

For the moment, Woody Allen has left behind his native New York and his recently adopted England to venture off into the more passionate turf of Spain's Barcelona. Just as London inspired him to some of his best work in recent years (Match Point), Barcelona has gotten Allen's creative energies turning to new themes. So he leaves behind the moral dilemmas he began investigating in Crimes and Misdemeanors and more recently in Match Point and Cassandra's Dream, and instead turns to more romantic notions in Vicky Cristina Barcelona (opening August 15 in select theaters including AMC Fashion Valley 18, Grossmont Center, Horton Plaza 14, Landmark's La Jolla Village, Ultrastar Mission Valley at Hazard Center, AMC Mission Valley 20 and Edwards Mira Mesa). You can listen to our discussion about Allen's latest work on the KPBS Film Club of the Air.

Elsa y Fred

Elsa y Fred (DistriMax)

Last year, KPBS, V-me and the San Diego Latino Film Festival hosted a screening of the charming Argentinean/Spanish film Elsa y Fred (now opening for a theatrical run on July 18 at Landmark's La Jolla Village Theaters). Screened at 2006 Palm Springs International Film Festival, Elsa y Fred features two Spanish language veterans, China Zorrilla and Manuel Alexandre, as seniors who have lost their respective spouses and who unexpectedly strike up a romance. Despite the film's popularity with the Latino Film Fest crowd, it has taken more than a year to gain a theatrical release here in San Diego.

Fred (Manuel Alexandre) is a hypochondriac that Elsa (China Zorrilla) diagnoses as more afraid of living than he is of dying. Elsa, by contrast, has a lust for life and dreams of visiting the Trevi Fountain in Rome, the site of Anita Ekberg's famous dip in Fellini's La Dolce Vita. The film succeeds essentially on the charms of its two leads and the contrast their characters strike on screen.

Director Marcos Carnevale co-wrote the screenplay with Marcela Guerty and Lily Ann Martin. Together they craft a feel good film for the senior crowd. The basic message is that it's never too late to start living.

Elsa y Fred (rated PG for some mild thematic elements and language) displays mature appeal with Zorrilla bringing a joyous lust for life to the film.

Companion viewing: La Dolce Vita, Harold and Maude, Where's Poppa?

FilmOut

A Four Letter Word opens this year's FilmOut.

FilmOut San Diego celebrates its tenth anniversary this month, expanding for the first time to a full week of films. The festival was created as a showcase for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender works. The event kicks off April 11 at Landmark's Ken Cinema with the San Diego premiere of A Four Letter Word.

Vantage Point

Do you see what I see? Vantage Point (Columbia)

Vantage Point (opening February 22 throughout San Diego) does a good job of insulating itself from criticism by embedding it's stupidest moments in plot twists that are difficult to discuss without spoiling the film. The film banks on the fact that if it moves fast enough and employs a distracting gimmick, maybe no one will notice its flaws.

The trailer and ads for the film play up the gimmick - eight points of view, one truth. This means that the film opens with a TV producer (Sigourney Weaver) on location in Spain, doing a live feed about the appearance of U.S. President Ashton (William Hurt) at a peace summit. But while they are broadcasting, the president is shot and a bomb goes off. This is not a spoiler because it's information prominently revealed in the trailers. But once the bomb goes off, the film rewinds and we find ourselves back in time to 11:59am that day. But each time we rewind, we then move forward from a new and different point of view. We rewind multiple times during the film: after the TV producer, we hook up with a rattled secret service agent (Dennis Quaid) who had taken a bullet defending the president in an earlier assassination attempt; a Spanish cop (Eduardo Noreiga); an American tourist (Forest Whitaker); the president himself (William Hurt); and then everyone else from the terrorist to a little girl who loses her ice cream are lumped together in the final rewind.

The Orphanage

If you have ever seen or met Guillermo Del Toro at the San Diego Comic-Con, then you know he's a filmmaker who is sincere about two things: championing the horror genre and helping young filmmakers. I was meeting up with Del Toro at the Comic-Con for an interview a few years back and was impressed by the fact that he took time to speak with filmmakers who came up to him after his panel. He also willingly accepted DVDs of their work. In fact, at one point he turned to his assistant and asked, in reference to the DVDs that had just been handed to him, "where are my treasures?" Now I've seen filmmakers toss the DVDs handed to them at the Comic-Con, but not Del Toro. And he apparently even watches them as well, although he says it may take some time before he gets to each. Now Del Toro shows his support for both horror and neophyte filmmakers by producing the feature debut of Spainish director J.A. Bayona and writer Sergio G. Snchez, El Orphanato/The Orphanage (opening January 4 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas).

If you are familiar with Del Toro's work then you can immediately see why he would be eager to support Bayona, Snchez and The Orphanage. Snchez' story has much in common with Del Toro's The Devil's Backbone. Both deal with orphan children and the supernatural in unexpected ways. Both Bayona and Snchez then approach this ghost story with the same kind of humanism as Del Toro. But The Orphanage does not come off as a Del Toro imitation. Bayona and Snchez imprint their own unique stamp on the film and reveal themselves as promising filmmakers.

Pan’s Labyrinth

Ofelia ventures into a nether world in Pan's Labyrinth

This awards season Guillermo Del Toro is one of three Mexican directors stirring Oscar buzz. Del Toro delivered the Hollywood hit Hellboy in 2004. But this year his film Pan's Labyrinth (opening January 12 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas) is Mexico's official submission for the Best Foreign Film Oscar.

Guillermo Del Toro represents a new breed of Mexican filmmaker, one who straddles multiple cultures and works globally. Take his new film. Pan's Labyrinth is a co-production of Mexico, Spain and the United States. It's set after the Spanish Civil War, but Del Toro says it was inspired by the political climate in the U.S.

The Devil’s Backbone

Guillermo Del Toro's The Devil's Backbone

When Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro was four-years-old, he had a life altering experience. After watching an episode of The Outer Limits, Del Toro's brother dressed up like the bug-eyed monster from the TV show to scare his younger sibling. "Then," the adult Del Toro recalls, "I woke up and had an urgent need to pee. I looked around and saw monsters everywhere. There was this fluffy carpet and I thought every single strand of the carpet was a finger and in the closet I saw a big monster. I was so scared that I resigned myself to pee in the bed. That happened almost every night for a couple of weeks and my mother said ‘If you pee in your bed again, I'm gonna really give you a good one.' That night I woke up and wanted to go to the bathroom so I spoke to the monsters in the room and I said that if you let me pee, I will be your friend forever.' They allowed me and here I am peeing happily and making monster movies."