Father Figure

Film: About a Boy
Format: HBO Go on rockin’ flatscreen.

I still have a large number of movies that I need to watch, but the number is getting smaller and smaller. What this means for me is that availability at any given time is far reduced from what it used to be. I used to have tons of available movies to watch on NetFlix, but that’s no longer the case. What this means is I need to find targets of opportunity when I can. As it happens, I own a copy of About a Boy, but scrolled past it tonight, and didn’t have a host of other options. Nothing against the film; it’s just not what I was in the mood for, but I persevered.

Actually, it’s kind of a sweet movie. Will Freeman (Hugh Grant) lives the most carefree life that can be imagined. His father, years before, wrote a Christmas song that turned out to be incredibly popular, and Will has more or less lived off his father’s royalties that he has inherited. He has no job because he’s never needed one. What he’s really interested in is women, and even then he’s interested for just a few months before wanting to move on. Through the auspices of some friends, he’s set up on a blind date with a woman who turns out to be a single mom.

Immigration Reform

Films: A Better Life
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

I think making a drama about a current, real social issue is potentially fraught with peril. It has to be easy to slide into melodrama or to be so polemic that the plot of the film becomes something immediately accepted by one side and immediately dismissed by the other. A Better Life, which in its own way looks at immigration in the United States, certainly had the opportunity to walk over that line. It manages not to cross that line in most cases for one simple fact: it tells a believable, good story of which the idea of illegal immigration is a driving part, but which is not the real focus.

Carlos Galindo (Demian Bechir) is an undocumented alien in California working as the assistant to a landscaper named Blasco (Joaquin Cosio). Blasco has made his money and is ready to go home to Mexico and is hot to sell off his truck, tools, and all of his contracts to Carlos. Carlos, lucky to have a regular job and knowing that he’ll lose that job if Blasco leaves, isn’t really sure he wants to buy the truck and the contracts. Eventually, he contacts his sister Anita (Dolores Heredia) to borrow $12,000 in the hopes of building the business up and moving to a better neighborhood.