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More than just music, the sport of competitive mariachi has inspired generations of youth across Texas. At Edinburg North High School, the underdog band Mariachi Oro embraces this tradition, striving for glory on stages both humble and grand. Documentarians Sam Osborn and Alejandra Vasquez immersed themselves in the group’s experiences over one milestone-filled school year. Their film captures close-up the triumphs and growing pains of students pursuing their musical passions.

Rooted in the proud folk culture of the Rio Grande Valley region, over 100 Texas schools field mariachi squads competing for state supremacy. Mariachi blends trumpet flourishes, guitar strums, and violin strains into rousing performances. Edinburg North isn’t privileged with lavish funding like frontrunner schools, but determined director Abel Acuña works magic on a shoestring. Though inexperienced, the band shows pluck under his devoted tutelage.

We meet spirited captain Bella, a violin virtuoso seeking scholarships for pharmacology. Fellow string...

In the opening sequence of “Going Varsity in Mariachi,” a high school mariachi band takes the stage of a dramatically lit an auditorium. Just as the violinist raises her bow, the camera cuts away. We don’t hear what she’s going to play until about an hour and a half later. It’s a frustrating tease that serves as a good example of some of the shortcomings of Sam Osborn and Alejandra Vasquez’s otherwise .

Osborn and Vasquez’s feature plays like a mashup of Netflix’s “Cheer” and Fox’s “Glee” but set in the Rio Grande Valley, where the primary competitive endeavor is mariachi music. Centering on the underdogs of Edinburg North High School’s Mariachi Oro, “Going Varsity in Mariachi” is a thoroughly enjoyable if formulaic narrative that also fails to closely examine the subculture its proclaims to introduce. That is to say: I wish “Going...

Criterion refreshes a bona fide classic with a new remaster and makes their release especially attractive with some well-chosen extras that give us first-person input from writer John Patrick Shanley and star Cher. The show isn’t technically a holiday movie but it plays really well at family gatherings. Heck, even Cher says ‘she can watch this movie’ which from her is a high compliment. The answer to ‘who needs to see this? is that a lot of people have been born since 1987.

Moonstruck

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1056

1987 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 102 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date November 17, 2020 / 39.95

Starring: Cher, Nicolas Cage, Vincent Gardenia, Olympia Dukakis, Danny Aiello, Julie Bovasso, John Mahoney, Louis Guss, Feodor Chaliapin Jr.

Cinematography: David Watkin

Film Editor: Lou Lombardo

Original Music: Dick Hyman

Written by John Patrick Shanley

Produced by Norman Jewison, Patrick Palmer

Directed by Norman Jewison

John Patrick Shanley has a...