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Cannes — There’s a scene in “Bayoneta,” Mexican Kyzza Terrazas’ second fiction feature, where Miguel, played by “Club of Crows’” Luis Gerardo Méndez, is asked to sing a song. He does so, Chalino Sanchez’s “Nieves de enero,” a lovely spare ballad about heartbreak. Miguel knows something about that sentiment. An up-and-coming Mexican boxer, a Sydney Olympics medal winner who floors “Matador” Madrigal Ríos, Tijuana’s Miguel “Bayoneta” Galíndez’s prospects look bright until he kills his opponent in the ring.

Looking for atonement, even punishment and out of a sense of shame – as a father, he can’t look his daughter in the eye after failing in basic human ethics – he seeks exile in the snowy wastes of Tirku, a town in Finland, where he trains boxers. “Bayoneta” is a film about immigration, but for emotional need, not economic necessity. Picturing training as relief for Miguel, framing an affair...

DVD Playhouse December 2010

By

Allen Gardner

America Lost And Found: The Bbs Story (Criterion) Perhaps the best DVD box set released this year, this ultimate cinefile stocking stuffer offered up by Criterion, the Rolls-Royce of home video labels, features seven seminal works from the late ‘60s-early ‘70s that were brought to life by cutting edge producers Bert Schneider, Steve Blauner and director/producer Bob Rafelson, the principals of Bbs Productions. In chronological order: Head (1968) star the Monkees, the manufactured (by Rafelson, et al), American answer to the Beatles who, like it or not, did make an impact on popular culture, particularly in this utterly surreal piece of cinematic anarchy (co-written by Jack Nicholson, who has a cameo), which was largely dismissed upon its initial release, but is now regarded as a counterculture classic. Easy Rider (1969) is arguably regarded as the seminal ‘60s picture, about two hippie drug dealers (director Dennis Hopper...