Roberto Gavaldón.

Roberto Gavaldón's "work was enhanced by savvy choices of collaborators, including the novelists Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel García Márquez, the great cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, and the mysterious writer B Traven (author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre), whose stories inspired a trilogy of Gavaldón's films," writes Steve Dollar in the New York Sun. Wounded Pride, Simmering Passion: Roberto Gavaldon, a series at the Film Society of Lincoln Center today through Thursday, "[rounds] up nine of Gavaldón's best films in a weeklong retrospective that is consistently eye-opening."

"Macario is a landmark in Mexican cinema; Lincoln Center says so, and so do I," announces Vadim Rizov at the House Next Door. "If I'm let down by the film's ending, it's because it retreats back to where it began: away from satire and back into the mystic, refusing to validate Macario's all-too-understandable impulses. It's like Ace in the Hole got garbled with a sincerely told folk tale, but the sheer audacity of the experiment makes it well worth attention."

Posted by dwhudson at August 22, 2008 9:25 AM