Richard Levien's COLLISIONS: an up-close-and-personal, narrative look at the current havoc being wreaked by Trumps's ICE-men

UPDATE: Collisions is now available 

via streaming and DVD here , 

and thefilmmakers are partnering with the 

National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) 

to support its Immigrant Worker Safety Net Fund, 

which provides immediate financial support 

desperately needed by workers and their families 

during this current pandemic. 

Immigrant workers are among the most vulnerable 

at this time, and they are largely excluded from 

government programs. From now through 

April 30, 2020, 50% of proceeds from sales 

of "Collisions" will be donated to this fund.

Remember La Misma Luna, that lovely Patricia Riggin/Ligiah Villalobos movie from 2007? In it, a young boy travels from Mexico to the USA to try to unite with his mom, an undocumented worker laboring here and sending money home to her mom and her kids.

That's the movie of which this new one -- COLLISIONS, written and directed by Richard Levien -- most reminds me, in which two children, an older sister and younger brother, desperately try to find their missing mom, who has, while waiting for her green card, suddenly been arrested and detained by ICE (U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement) and is in danger of being quickly, if not immediately, deported back to Mexico.

Both films, their respective director's (Mr. Levien is shown at right) first full-length effort, tackle a subject that remains unfortunately a hot-button issue, and while each relies a little too much on coincidence to be taken as seriously as its filmmaker might wish, La Misma Luna, boasting a starrier cast, along with a good deal more incident and narrative drive, is by far the more entertaining and moving movie.

Still, Collisions -- with its ripped-from-the-headlines central event and consequent plot line -- proves worth a watch, as well. Despite your knowing where the film is going (together with how it will get there), it is, for the most part, well-written and -acted and directed decently enough to pass muster.

The film's four central performances are especially good -- that of the beleaguered mom (played by Ana de la Reguera, above), her smart-as-a-whip and twice as determined twelve-year-old daughter (Izabella Alvarez, below),

her younger sibling (a sweet and slyly scene-stealing Jason Garcia, Jr., shown below),

and finally mom's estranged-and-none-too-happy-to-be-here brother (Jesse Garcia, below, right, in the film's standout performance), who is roped/guilted into helping his niece and nephew locate their mom. You'll quickly figure out that this crotchety uncle will soon bond with his sister's offspring, but Garcia plays it all very well indeed.

Despite the seemingly too-easy locating of mom and the happenstance that allows this, one of the film's strengths is in depicting the ICE-men and other bureaucrats shown along the way who try to aid the two kids. As writer/director, Mr. Levien -- despite the current drastic and unnecessary actions of ICE (under the despicable leadership of Trump and his sleazy minions) -- allows some humanity in these various individuals to shine through, if only briefly.

This helps save the movie from seeming completely one-sided and obvious. And while the film's finale offers certain amount of feel-good, Collisions is smart enough to know that there are no easy solutions available here.

You may wish the movie were a better one, and indeed it might have been. But TrustMovies suspects that you won't be entirely able to shake off either its timeliness nor its commitment to "family."

Running just 82 minutes, Collisions has its U.S. theatrical premiere in Los Angeles tomorrow evening, Thursday, October 3, at 7:30pm at Laemmle's Ahyra Fine Arts, with the cast and filmmaker in attendance. The film opens for a week-long run on Friday, October 4, at Laemmle's Music Hall 3 in Beverly Hills, with a limited release in selected cities to follow.

Immigration, close-up and ironic, in Lindsey Cordero/Armando Croda's I'M LEAVING NOW

By this time most of us have seen a plethora of films about the immigrant experience -- narratives and documentaries -- here in the USA. And these days, with immigration still the hottest of hot-button issues, thanks to that uber-twat Trump and his base base (no, that's not a typo), what might yet another immigration tale have to tell us? When it's a story as unusual and compelling as the one in I'M LEAVING NOW (Ya me voy), as a certain Mrs. Loman once insisted, "Attention must be paid."

The immigrant here is Felipe (on poster, right, and below), an undocumented Mexican who has spent 16 years living in Brooklyn, NY, working various low-paying jobs, one of which is collecting those for-deposit bottles from other people's trash.

As captured by filmmakers Lindsey Cordero and Armando Croda (shown below, with Ms Cordero on the left), Felipe is an energetic, handsome, thoughtful fellow who clearly works hard and saves most of what he earns. That money still goes where it has always gone -- to his wife and family who remained behind in Mexico, a place Felipe longs for and intends to return to ASAP. (He left his youngest child when the boy was but eight months old and not been able to visit him since.)

We get to know Felipe, mostly via his conversations with friends -- and he has made some very good ones over the 16 years -- and from phone calls to that family back in Mexico. Little by little, however, some unsettling information and ideas begin to emerge. Would he really be all that welcome back home? And is that story we hear about a failing family business actually true?

We see and hear all this in bits and pieces and, while I think we rarely if ever doubt the honesty and integrity of Felipe, we're not so sure about how wise some of his decisions have been. And how has he managed to live and stay so positive and upbeat for so long? Has he no romantic or sexual life?

Yes, as we learn, he pays for sex now and then. Later in the documentary, we see an actual and quite interesting relationship begin to bloom between him and a kindly, charming woman. We meet the friend and fortune teller Felipe turns to when in need, and we hear some lovely and wise pronouncements along the way, one of which come from Felipe himself -- "Thanks to god and to the cities I've lived in. They've allowed me to support my family" -- and another from one of his good friends: "All problems have a solution. Except death."

I'm Leaving Now is a short film -- just 75 minutes -- but it packs in a lot, including an almost subversive look at an immigrant who actually wants to leave the USA for Mexico (statistically, this is what appears to happening more and more of late). And if Felipe's story seems ultimately a very sad one, do hang on for the end credits, during which you'll see and hear things that turn the tale on its ear.

From The Cinema Guild, in English and Spanish (with English subtitles), the documentary opens this Friday, September 6, in New York City at the Mayles Documentary Center, and on September 13 in Chicago at the Facets Cinematheque. Click here and scroll down to view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

Matthew Heineman's multi-award-winning and Oscar-nominated documentary, CARTEL LAND

TrustMovies is not certain why, but there does seem to be a hex on making an acceptable film about what some people call the "drug wars" and the country of Mexico -- whether that film be a narrative (like Oliver Stone's crass, slick and sleazy violence-porn Savages, Ridley Scott's ludicrously pretentious The Counselor, or the Denis Villeneuve's more recent starts-out-well-then-turns-ridiculous Sicario) or documentaries from Bernardo Ruiz's limited-in-scope and somewhat shallow Kingdom of Shadows to the film under consideration here: CARTEL LAND. Is this because the subject is simply too awful, crazy, ugly, impossibly huge and hydra-headed to even begin to pin down? Or perhaps it is due more to the fact that so much dishonesty, venality and betrayal is embedded here that any film tackling the subject runs the risk of embroiling itself in the very culture it depicts.

Whatever, this latest drug cartel documentary via director Matthew Heineman (shown at left), which has found its way into the five films nominated for Best Documentary "Oscar," though one of the better examples TrustMovies has encountered in all of these docs and narratives, still ends up making one question what has been left out of the movie as much as what is actually in it. The film blends two narrative strands, one of which involves an American-set group of para-military vigilantes who say they are trying to stop this violent Mexican drug war culture from entering our country (hello: It has been here for decades now) and is much less interesting and important than the second strand.

That would be the tale of a "noble," small-town Mexican doctor, José Mireles (shown above), who appears to have determined to rid the area surrounding his town of Michoacán of these drug lords and their crews. Why this is so necessary is explained early on, as townfolk tell of the slaughter of a particular family of fruit-pickers. We do not see this but only hear of it, but the telling is particularly horrible. (It was enough to prevent a good friend of mine from even continuing with the film.)

To achieve this riddance Mireles organizes a group of vigilantes who become surprisingly successful in their task. The police and elected officials, corrupt as ever, not only offer no help but actively try to dissuade these "Autodefensas" from bearing down on the particular drug cartel involved in the Michoacán area. So far so good. But when an accident involving a plane crash derails Mireles, and the good doctor turns over the running of the Autodefensas to a cute little gnome-like fellow known as Papa Smurf, things begin to fall apart.

How and why we see glimpses of,  and this is enough to make us question the reliability of just about everyone involved -- including the filmmaker. Director Heineman managed to get enormous access to Mireles and his Autodefensas, so much so that we finally discover things about this good doctor and loving family man that begin to call into question quite a lot. As usual, it appears that power corrupts, and the more powerful a man or group becomes, likewise the more corruptible.

Given what Heineman has chosen to show and tell us, we can't help but wonder what more damning tidbits he may have left out. Clearly, Mireles had control over what he allowed the director to see, hear, and maybe report on, so we wonder why we're discovering certain things but not some others. Ah, it's a conundrum, and the question of who is betraying who consistently crops up.

As for the American set of vigilantes, early on its leader explains that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled his group "extremists" -- and than proceeds to unintentionally explain why this is true. While it is clear that the filmmaker wanted to show us vigilantes on both sides of the borders, it seemed to me that those on the American side were much less interesting or productive (but perhaps more trustworthy?) that those to the south.

As usual with these drug movies, any kind of understandable truth proves so elusive that the viewer's patience eventually wears thin. That's the point, I guess. Of course, "truth" is always problematic. But where Mexico, America and the drug cartels are concerned, it is so multi-layered and out of reach as to seem non-existent. And that, dear reader/viewer, is fucking depressing.

Cartel Land, distributed theatrically by The Orchard and running 100 minutes, is available for streaming now via Netflix and elsewhere. 

Hell on earth for folk without a country--Charles Shaw's dark EXILE NATION: The Plastic People

The filmmaker's name is Charles Shaw (don't mix him up with that "famous" brand of wine sold by Trader Joe's). His film -- his first full-length documentary -- is an unsettling one about those men and women without a country, mostly Mexican illegals, many of whom have been in the USA for decades, who, after 9/11 and with Obama's disgusting "take" on our immigration policy, were suddenly deported to Mexico.  Mexico, unfortunately, does not want them, either. So they are dropped off in Tijuana with no money or any source of income, only to learn that local authorities and the police will harass them day and night, steal the clothes off their back and shoes off their feet, destroy their makeshift homes time and again, beat them and sometimes ever murder them (is there anything quite so wonderfully reliable as a Mexican cop?).

The documentary, titled EXILE NATION: THE PLASTIC PEOPLE, is homemade in the extreme. From its too-long and too-confusing title to its poorly designed poster (above, in which the sub-title seems to be replacing the title), to its intentional and necessary use of cell phones as video cameras (the police crack down on anyone seen filming) -- Mr. Shaw (shown at left) tracks a perilous creative course but still manages to end up with a relatively brief film worth seeing and thinking about. As the movie's narrator, Edward James Olmos (below), explains early on, because these sudden "immigrants," though born in Mexico, are now American by culture and nurture (sometimes they don't even speak Spanish well enough to get by), they do not at all fit into their new environment and thus are referred to by the locals as a term that translates to "plastic people."

We get to know briefly and anything-but-completely several of these newly deported people, especially one fellow, Javier Godinez Mondragon, who goes by the nickname of Dragon (below) and acts as our tour guide to this new environment -- a kind of hell on earth into which you would want to see no one you care about have to enter. Little wonder, given what they must endure, that so many of these immigrants end up on drugs (the cartels are an ever-present fact of life here) -- or dead.

We also meet and see the work of Chris Bava (below), who photographs many of these people and offers them help when he can, and Jonathan Espinoza, a newly married young deportee who has spent his life since five years old in America and is suddenly deported. According to the film, the 9/11 attacks began a long period of anti-immigration policy, most of which (97 per cent) has been taken out, as it ever has been historically, on Latinos, most of which have been Mexican-Americans.

These new displaced persons (we don't need another Nazi Holocaust to produce a mini-nation of DPs) are fighting for their very lives in front of us, and although the film often looks and sounds as if the filmmaker simply tossed aloft all his materials and let them fall where they may (we sometimes aren't sure who is speaking at a certain moment), the result remains unsettling and disturbing. At times the film may remind you of John Carpenter's They Live, in which the police have become "legal terrorists."

We learn of the Tijuana prison (from a fellow who was incarcerated for awhile), and discover how Mr. Bava helped Jonathan and his extended family (and also what happened to Bava himself). There is a little joy amidst all the horror, but mostly this hell-on-earth tale points up the staggering cost to illegals caught in this vise. Perhaps Obama's most recent moves on immigration will relieve the situation for those still here in America. But for those already condemned, there seems little hope.

Exile Nation: The Plastic People was released to Digital VOD this past December 16 and is now available via iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, PlayStation, Xbox, Vimeo on Demand, VHX, Gumroad, Google Play and elsewhere. That pretty much covers it -- except for Netflix, on which it might eventually appear. 

Can Mexico get any worse, movie-wise? View Amat Escalante's HELI and then we'll discuss....

If Oliver Stone's glossily over-the-top (and-up-through-the-asshole) Savages, followed by the more recent every-single-character-is-a-fucking-philosopher The Counselor didn't quell your desire for a visit to Mexico, then by all means take a chance on HELI, the new film from Amat Escalante (he's a Spaniard, actually), which has one scene of such shocking power and torture-porn possibili-ties that I think I can safely say you'll have seen nothing like it in either an arthouse or mainstream movie.

While this scene singles out the film for a queasy remembrance, Señor Escalante, shown at left, offers a tale of a poor and relatively uneducated family residing in the Mexican stix and characters who seem only marginally acquainted with the place in which they live and the people -- including their family, co-workers and friends (if they have any, that is) who live there, too. Perhaps this is exactly how it is in this area of Mexico. Still, at times, the movie's main character, the eponymous Heli, seems woefully unintelligent, at other moments, he's sharper than you'd expect. Ditto everyone around him, from his wife, his father, his younger sister, her older (but still a child) policeman-in-training boyfriend, and the police officers who "investigate" the slaughter that soon occurs.

You either, I think, accept all this and move on with the film, or you simply shut down as you wonder why you should pay attention to characters this dumb. You want to care for Heli (Armando Espitia, above) and his crew, but Escalante makes it more than a little difficult. His movie raises again the question: How do you make the lower classes real without seeming slow and/or boring? Ah -- just toss in a little uber-violence!

Do these folk know what cocaine is? Of course they do. Do they know about the drug cartels and the power these have. Most certainly. So why do they behave so stupidly, first to last? And why does not the cartel kill Heli when it has the opportunity? Well, then there would be no movie -- which, in the shape it's in, lasts too long by maybe fifteen minutes. I'd have been willing to sit even longer, though, had Escalante given me more genuine specifics.

As for the venal and corrupt police officers, at least the female of the two seems to want sex more than money, which is a switch of sorts -- while allowing us to view some very appealing cleavage, fully exposed: This filmmaker knows well what will sell his film. Despite his heavy-duty nods to the marketplace, I suspect Escalante is trying to be truthful to the behavior of someone like his main character, and so does not give him much of a backstory filled with undue exposition. Unfortunately, he doesn't give him much of a current story, either.

We're made privy to very little here -- not the younger sister's conversa-tions with her school mates, in which the boyfriend and cocaine tale would certainly come out and she'd be thoroughly warned about him and his actions. (If I know that local police officers and drug cartels are connected, I'd wager these kids do, too.) Likewise, Heli seems to have no friends at all -- on the job or elsewhere -- with which he'd share parts of his life.

So we go from event to event, most of them damned huge and life-changing (or ending). We're shocked, certainly, disgusted and frightened, and end up feeling, as we usually do, that Mexico is one of the larger cesspools of the world, for which there's no clean-up scheduled (or even possible) anytime soon. The cast, made up of mostly newcomers, achieves as good a likeness to reality as possible under these circumstances. (One of the investigating cops is played by the film's co-writer, Gabriel Reyes.)

From Outsider Pictrures, Heli -- which won the Best Director prize at last year's Cannes Film Fest and was nominated for the Palme d'Or -- opens this Friday, June 13, in New York City (at the Cinema Village), Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Playhouse 7 and Noho 7), and San Diego (at the Digital Gym Cinema). In the weeks to come it will hit Seattle, Chicago and San Francisco. To see all scheduled playdates, click here and then click on Now in Cinemas near the top of the screen.

EL INFIERNO: Luis Estrada & Jaime Sampietro's black, comedic portrait of the state of Mexico

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EL INFIERNO (the title literally means hell, and the movie metaphorically takes us there) is a very long, straight-ahead tale of a middle-aged man named Benny (played by the well-known Mexican actor Damián Alcázar) who returns from the U.S. (he's been deported) to his little home-town in Mexico and begins to fit right into the completely sleazy, horrific, drug addled, greedy, murderous, lascivious life-style of the place. Even his old mom, who initially berates her son for never having written to her over the 20 years he was gone -- "We thought you were dead!" -- soon enough capitulates to the pricey gifts he offers her. In fact, she asks for more.

To anyone who remotely follows current and past Mexican history, none of this will come as a shock. The real surprise of the movie is how thuddingly obvious it is from first to last in presenting us this tale of an already venal and uncaring guy who becomes even more so when offered the least opportunity. The tone taken by Luis Estrada,(shown at right) the director /co-writer (with Jaime Sampietro), is one of only slight exaggeration, which produces the comedic sense, while the events parading in front of us quickly turn that comedy pitch black.

Alcázar (above and on poster top) is a very talented actor, here given little chance to shown his range or abilities. He's perfectly OK so far as he is allowed to go. But this is no great distance, and it's traversed in mostly baby steps. For a much better example of Mexican black comedy, see the terrific film Herod's Law (from 1999) to discover what Alcázar -- along with Estrada and Sampietro, who, with a couple of other writers, also made this movie -- can accomplish.

In that earlier film, they gave us something at once rich and strange, while also shocking and surprising. Here, perhaps in order to reach the lowest common denominator, they cross every "t" and dot each "i" -- resulting in a screenplay and finished movie that you can pretty much write-as-you-go. At one point, our "hero" asks his friend Cochiloco (Joaquín Cosio, above, right) "Aren't you afraid of going to hell?" Comes the reply: "Hell is right here." Ay -- profound!)

What Benny finds in his home-town is a dead brother, along with the brother's widow and son; his best friends now all working for the local drug lord; and only one person (his kindly godfather) remains free from the taint of Mexico's manure. (As to how this nice guy managed to avoid the smell, we're not made privy.)

As Benny negotiates his new role as "enforcer" for the drug cartel's main man (and his dysfunctional family), he thrives on its perks, while trying to retain his "humanity." Sure. Along the way we note the collaboration of the local police, the Church, politicians, and all else -- with betrayal, somewhere along the line, forever the name of the game.

There's a lot of violence here, though it barely begins to compare with Oliver Stone's Savages, to cite but one of our recent super-violent films. And because the tone is somewhat comic, that violence is somehow made easier to take, which is exactly the effect that it should not have. The darkly funny conclusion promises, undoubtedly correctly, that poor Mexico will continue to experience, down the generations, more (and more and more) of the same.

You can view El Infierno (known in some quarters as El Narco), running two hours and 29 minutes, on Netflix streaming, and you can also view Herod's Law (under its Spanish title, La ley de Herodes, on DVD, also from Netflix and/or other sources.

Adrian Grünberg's GET THE GRINGO brings back the Mel Gibson we know & love/hate

It says something about Mel Gibson's American career that his latest film, GET THE GRINGO (formerly carrying the cheekier title, How I Spent My Summer Vacation) was released theatrically all around the world -- in nearly 40 countries, Argentina to the Ukraine. Here in the USA, however, it went straight to video: first to VOD, then to DVD/Blu-ray, and now you can stream, as I did, it via Netflix. You should -- if, that is, you enjoy smart, fast-moving action with a with violent, occasionally gory, black-comedy bent.

As directed and co-written by Adrian Grünberg, shown at left (Mr. Gibson also had a hand in the screenplay and as a producer), the film starts with a bang and seldom lets up until its 90 minutes have come to an end. (Yes, there are six more minutes of credits, but with no outtakes nor surprises therein, you can rise from the couch, once that screen goes black and the names start rolling....) Mr. Grünberg's career includes assistant directing or acting as second unit director on films from Amores Perros and Perdita Durango (in his native Mexico) to the much-better-than-expected Collateral Damage, Master and Commander and The Limits of Control, not to mention several Gibson-directed movies. He's clearly learned a lot on the job, and it all shows up in this, his first solo directing job.

Swiftly moving and well-plotted from first scene onwards (as a couple of clowns, above, try to make their escape via auto along the border between Mexico and the U.S.), the movie portions out its exposition as it goes along, keeping us hooked, as well as most of the other characters, who would dearly love to know more about all this "clowning." Mr. Gibson turns out to be one of those clowns and he quickly ends up in a Mexican prison that makes most other Latin American prison movies (Carandiru, anyone?) look at least a little more enticing.

Prison is often said to be a microcosm of its society outside those walls, and this one seems even more so, as Gibson's character (credited only as Driver) comes into contact with everyone from super-corrupt police and prison "officials" (Spanish star Daniel Giménez Cacho, above, getting the needle) to a smart-ass kid and his sexy, caring mom (young Kevin Hernandez and Dolores Heredia, below) and even gets involved in a rather unique take on organ trafficking.

The dialog is clever and intelligent without calling too much attention to itself, as does that in most of the Bond movies, and Grünberg's visuals are often smart and detailed in small ways that keep us ever alert and watchful, in exactly the manner one needs to be while in prison. Gibson himself, below, is as good here as he has been since Conspiracy Theory, in which the actor was wound tight to just about perfection. Here, he's loose, relaxed, and about as far from the pomposity of garbage like The Patriot or Signs as would seem possible.

The character Gibson plays narrates the movie and so keeps the tone both comedic and dark. Get the Gringo offers one super-violent mob scene (below) of pretty much mass slaughter, which is handled as well as something like this can be, I suppose. And the plotting includes a delightful use of Clint Eastwood (well, his monker and a nice impersonation of his voice), resulting in an enjoyable bit of violent, explosive action.

In the well-chosen international cast are plenty of Mexican actors, plus Americans like Peter Gerety (below) and Patrick Bauchau (shown at bottom). The film's finale is one of those everything-at-once barrages of shoot-out and coincidence that the director manages fast enough for us to forgive our quibbles. And if there is one single line that might outlast this movie's own life span, I vote for "Put it back," which resonates here as never before. The film's final, violent joke, having to do with a particular name, is the best of them all.

As a man, Mel Gibson remains whatever he is or was and may win no awards on that front. But rather than Get the Gringo's providing some kind of schadenfreude about how the once-mighty have fallen, instead it's proof positive that the guy can still perform just fine in front of the camera, while working things well behind it by assembling a good crew and director and letting them go to town on a project worth any action-film lover's time.

Filmed in Mexico, and according to the credits (unless I mis-read), using union workers, Get the Gringo, an Icon Production, is available now on DVD, Blu-ray and streaming.