Movie Review: The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Mexicans as people, oh my (9/10)

MelquiadesYou want to understand the real meaning of immigration control?  Then I suggest you check out this movie and watch it multiple times.  A few weeks ago I reviewed The Visitor, an exquisite dramatic statement on the unique process the federal government (as any other leviathan-state) uses to crush citizens of Earth who happen to find themselves inside US boundaries with defective paperwork.  In that Oscar-worthy movie, the unfortunate paper-deficient world citizen was from the Middle East. In Three Burials, our victim is a ‘border’-crosser from the south.

Written by Guillermo Arriaga
Directed by Tommy Lee Jones

Tommy Lee Jones … Pete Perkins
Barry Pepper … Mike Norton
Julio Cedillo … Melquiades Estrada
Dwight Yoakam … Belmont
January Jones … Lou Ann Norton
Melissa Leo … Rachel
Irrfan Khan … Police Inspector
Saurabh Shukla … Sergeant Srinivas Continue reading

Movie Review: The Company Men (2010)

Home companion to Inside Job ____ 7.5/10

The Company MenPhil Woodward (Chris Cooper): My life ended and nobody noticed.

It seems to me this film makes the perfect companion to another film I reviewed recently, Inside Job, an investigation of the so-called Bailout of 2008. It simply seems that if one knows who raided—and continues to raid—the Great American Cookie Jar, one has a fair notion of fundamental causes of economic malaise… the kind that causes credit contraction, widespread business failures, and massive layoffs such as the one that afflicts the lead character in The Company Men: Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck). Continue reading