SXSW09 – Sin Nombre (2009)/Drag Me To Hell (2009)

After work, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do. Should I try my luck at trying to get into see Adventureland? Fight the crowds for a movie that opens in about a week? Or should I stick around downtown to check out a little foreign film that I might not get to see again?

Guess what won.

SIN NOMBRE

Directed by: Cary Fukunaga
Written by: Cary Fukunaga

This film was the darling of Sundance and I figured that I should do my best to see it before it disappeared.

Caspar (Edgar Flores) is a young gang member in South America who has done some terrible things in his short life. But when his gang leader tries to rape and then kills Caspar’s beloved girlfriend, he has one terrible thing left in him. And now he’s on the run.

Sayra (Paulina Gaitan) is a young girl who is trying to get to America to find her family. She’s traveling with a couple of protective older men who, since they watched Caspar commit his last violent act, don’t trust him at all.

Smiley (Kristian Ferrer) is a 12 year old boy who wants to be in Caspar’s gang so bad that he’s willing to do anything for it. He’s with Caspar for that last adventure, but goes back to the violent cradle of his gang. Now he’s after his old mentor. Will he have the stomach for the deed?

This is an incredibly harrowing portrait of three children stuck in the middle of violence and death. And through the entire movie I couldn’t help but keep thinking, “Goddam, gangs are ridiculous.” All the signs, secret handshakes and killing for no fucking reason just shows off their sheer stupidity.

Anyway, enough ranting about that. This movie was pretty amazing. The young actors were all very good and writer/director Cary Fukunaga managed to create characters in a strange world that a lot of us don’t get to see and he makes us care about them. The movie reminded me a bit of Y Tu Mama, Tambien. We see a lot of what is going on in South America and Mexico while these kids are traveling. It’s a pretty amazing portrayal of a country at odds with how to feel about these people who are trying to get out of it. It’s very interesting how some of the kids in the villages see the immigrants as a sign of hope and others see them as a sign of a life that they will never have.

I loved this movie. It’s hard to watch at times and very depressing, but it, in the end, is an amazing experience.

DRAG ME TO HELL

Directed by: Sam Raimi
Written by: Sam Raimi/Ivan Raimi

I’m a big Sam Raimi fan, so when I heard that his new movie was playing the Festival, I didn’t care that it wasn’t finished. I knew that I wanted to see it.

Christine (Alison Lohman, looking cuter than ever) is up for a promotion at her job as a loan officer at a bank. Normally a very nice person, she sees an opportunity to impress her boss when an old Gypsy woman (Lorna Raver) comes in looking for another extension on her mortgage. She turns her down and gets a curse put on her for her trouble. And this is a very old curse. One that involves sending the recipient’s soul to hell in three days.

She and her husband, Clay (Justin Long) set out on a quest to find out what’s going on. Is she crazy? Or is there actually a shadow demon after her soul? (Clay, by the way, never sees what’s been going on, but he is extremely supportive of his wife’s possible insanity.)

Raimi has once again brought us a really fun horror comedy that is basically Evil Dead 4.

I know, I know. We’ve all been waiting for that movie since 1992, but I really think that this is it. Alison is a pretty good replacement for Bruce Campbell (who is conspicuously missing from this movie) and is definitely a good sport about getting spewed on…because this movie is just all kinds of gross. Bodily fluids fly and a few limbs get hacked. And it ALL gets thrown at Alison. It’s amazing. She’s a good actress and so damn cute that it’s kind of hard to see all of this horrible stuff happen to her.

It’s just as campy, gross and fun as any of Raimi’s other films. I can see where some people might liken it more to The Quick And The Dead than some of his better films, but everyone really seemed to like it at the screening. It was a lot of fun, and that’s all I ask of Sam Raimi.

And it was definitely better than Spider-Man 3.

Sam was at the screening and he did an appropriately funny and pratfally intro, tripping his way onto the stage and reading an eviction notice from the Four Seasons instead of his speech. And, yes, he was wearing a full suit.

It was pretty obvious that the CGI was not finished yet…at least I hope it wasn’t. It was pretty bad. Sam didn’t really have any kind of explanation for the movie, just a funny intro and his brother/co-writer, Ivan.

If you’re a fan of Mr. Raimi, go see this movie. See him beat the shit out of a cute girl and not get in trouble for it.