Xixax Film Forum

I just interviewed him.

...by the way he hates hollywood but loves pta. pdl is his favorite. has great stories about buñuel too.

You sold me on him but give me until next paycheck.

well apparently risptein is not very popular yet. but i guess as his films come out on better dvds he will get some sort of new following.

this guy is mexico's most celerated director, even now wi the three amigos kicking asses he still gets a lot of respect. his films are very sordid and borderline surreal regarding that aspect. he usually focuses on the weird, sad, poor side of the mexican spectrum.

his best films were made during the 70's and 80's, some of them are mexican art classics like The Castle of Purity (about a father so scared of the sinful world he locks up his entire family forever) and Empire of Fortune. He had a good streak during the 90's too. A pretty nicely done adaptation of Naghib Mahfouz's novel Beginning and End, followed by the delicously and darkly funny and depressing Deep Crimson (a remake of The Honeymoon Killers as only he could have come up with) and his acurate adaptation of Gabriel García Marquez's The Coronel does not have someone to write him).

Then his 00's output has been going from uneven to not very good. First came The Wonders Gospell (El Evangelio de las Maravillas), which is all in all a pretty weird movie that works in parts. Then two very nice, again darkly funny and kind of only for fans digital video productions: Así es la Vida (Such is Life), basically Medea adapted to modern low life Mexico City, and La Perdición de los Hombres, a black and white "comedy" about a crime motivated by a baseball game in some little town in the desert. After that, he has moved to Spain where he can get the money for his films and has made a coupe of very uninteresting yet beautiful to look at hd movies: The Virgin of Lust and the last one, which's title I don't remember at the moment. He usually works from screenplays written by his wife, Paz Alicia Garcíadiego.

Definetely worth checking out.

i can't wait for his next film, "The Something of Something"

seriously tho i'll check him out.