Sleep dealer (2008)

a fascinating futuristic film by Alex Rivera that delves into the life of a young Mexican from Oaxaca who unwittingly brings down drone-death from the skies and then flees to Tijuana to have black-market nodes surgically implanted into his body so as to be able to provide “virtual” sweat-shop labor.

Memo Cruz (Luis Fernando Peña) lives in a small Mexican village and dreams of escaping his poverty by working for hi-tech factories that service the big cities of the U.S. He uses his homemade radio to eavesdrop in on conversations between other people like him who’ve made the transition. His radio also intercepts a communication by the patrolling security forces involving “Aqua-Terrorists” and this results in a remote-controlled drone being dispatched to blow up his house.

A fascinating web of interconnections follow this deadly act. It leads to literal connections between Memo and wires that plug his nervous system into a network that controls robots laboring on the other side of the border. This is because the prosperous big cities want the cheap labor without having to deal with the actual people who provide it. But the “virtual” work is dangerous stuff, and the people connecting into the system are often pushed to the point of collapse; ergo the factory employers being dubbed “Sleep Dealers.”

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Blue Valentine (2010)

Light on plot and heavy on expression, Derek Cianfrance’s “Blue Valentine” is a study in extremes. Essentially the anatomy of a break-up, it places exclusive focus on a young couple (Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams) as their marriage disintegrates. Cianfrance, whose directorial debut “Brother Tied” premiered at Sundance in 1998, spent over a decade working on this lyrical follow-up; his efforts come through in every artfully composed frame. Aided by Andrij Parekh’s bright, complex photography, images trump story in the best of ways.

The narrative follows a two-pronged approach, shifting back and forth from the birth of their relationship to its inevitable demise. As Williams and Gosling repeatedly clash and embrace, their ritual becomes a hypnotic process on which viewers can project their own experiences. It’s an all-inclusive portrait.

Let the right one in (2008)

Let the Right One In (Swedish: Låt den rätte komma in), also known as Let Me In, is a 2004 vampire fiction novel by Swedish writer John Ajvide Lindqvist. The story centers on the relationship between a 12-year-old boy, Oskar, and a centuries-old vampire child, Eli. It takes place in Blackeberg, a working class suburb of Stockholm, in the early 1980s. The book focuses on the darker side of humanity, dealing with issues such as bullying, drugs, theft, pedophilia, prostitution and murder as well as the obvious supernatural themes.

La France

Occasionally a movie comes along that defies easy categorization and doesn’t cater to audience expectations of any kind. And when the director’s intentions and directorial choices are also never made obvious or explicit, it can result in a baffling but memorable viewing experience. Welcome to Serge Bozon’s LA FRANCE (2007), which has been widely praised at various film festivals, but is receiving its first wide release in the U.S. now on DVD through Kino International.

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