Extra this week: Movies to watch at home.

I started the week with a travel book on the town of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, which led me to a spate of foreign and mostly Hispanic movies, until I had to lighten up with something a bit more summery.

MOVIE 81

Get Smart
(Peter Segal, 2008, 110 m.)

Just like a James Bond extravanza with several exceptions. First, it's funny on purpose. Second, Maxwell Smart (Steve Carell) really loves Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway), so she's the only woman in the story and gets to stay alive all the way through. Third, it's slightly shorter than a Bond flick.

Smart's funny, 99's hot, it's PG-13. More popcorn?

MOVIE 80

Amores perros
(Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Mexico, 2000, 153 minutes)

One of the movies that first announced the presence of great young Mexican filmmakers at the beginning of the decade. Inarritu's film swept honors at film competitions around the world to become a quick classic of design, danger and love. While 153 minutes sounds long, the movie doesn't feel that way. The first three minutes create a central event more frightening and compelling than the opening gambit of any James Bond stuff.

Then we live through three fully developed stories that all keep circling back to the beginning. The title (in English, "Love's a Bitch") smoothly covers two elements: the destructive power of love -- and dogs. Each plot strand is powered by the presence of a dog, revealing underlying stresses on the characters. What's more, all the characters are inherently interesting: a penniless younger brother who loves all that his petty criminal brother neglects (including his fighting dog), a lovely supermodel coping with changes that nobody could or should have to face with calm (including her dog, trapped beneath her apartment), a dangerous ex-revolutionary (who takes in homeless dogs).

Set in modern Mexico City, Amores perros presents not one single cliche of Mexican life, none. The story might be happening in New York or Hong Kong, except that it's thoroughly grounded in the poverty, the class gaps, the machismo of Mexico. What strikes me most about this movie, nearly a decade after first seeing it, is that it's not only compelling and strangely uplifting, and not only beautiful despite the painful plot turns, but it's also one of the most frightening films in recent times -- genuinely frightening, not movie-scary -- for over two hours. Then a slick tonal shift allows for some insight into all that pain that comes of love. That's when the weird uplift kicks in.

MOVIE 79

City of God
(Fernando Meirelles, Brazil, 2002, 130 m.)

I turned to this film after Pan's Labyrinth for some strong external action. The movie features hard raw color, brilliant camera work that you probably don't notice at first because it never shows off, only operating in service to the story. The plot is based on real people from Rio de Janeiro's slums, including Alexandre Rodrigues, who lived in the City of God slums himself and plays Rocket, the main character, trying to get out. The movie won literally dozens of international awards.

Three features make it automatically positive or negative, depending on who you are: One, the script is so rich you lose track of all the stories going on. Two, the depicted violence is relentless and graphic. Three, it's in Portuguese, so you will have to read it.

Whether you find such features positive or negative is for you and Dr. Rorschach to decide.

MOVIE 78

Pan's Labyrinth
(Guillermo de Toro, Mexico/Spain, 2006, 119 m.)

This is a movie with a bad guy. Actor Sergi Lopez is unquestionably intended to be the bestlooking person on the screen. He plays the villainous Capitan Vidal, stepfather of the main character, a girl named Ofelia, maybe 10 or 11 years old. She is sweet, innocent, but nearly as tough as the brutal capitan, and the picture belongs almost entirely to those two.

In Spain in 1944, handsome Capitan Vidal is still waging brutal war against the local rebel underground. He has his "new" pregnant wife and her imaginative daughter sent to him, probably to maintain control over the birth of his son. While he murders and tortures, little Ofelia meets fairies and an eerie 7-foot faun. Gruesome and disgusting events ensue in two parallel stories. While el capitan is horrifying the locals, Ofelia is sinking deeper into a series of mystical tasks presented by the faun, so that she can leave the world of humans to become a "princess" again. I know, I know, it's weird. Her story sounds so strange for reasons that dovetail with her stepfather's misdeeds at the very end.

This little movie opened in the U.S. on 17 screens but swept the country within a month. It went on to win three Oscars and major awards around the world. Maribel Verdu is also excellent as Mercedes, one tough rebel hero. You may remember her as the very sexy center of attention in Y Tu Mama Tambien. None of that here, but be advised, this movie would probably scare the bejeebers out of any child under 12 and maybe a few over 12, too.

MOVIE 77

The Fall
(Tarsem Singh aka Tarsem, 2006, US/Italy, 117 m.)

I have just seen The Fall, and I encourage you to do so, too. This movie is nearly stunning in its strange and imaginative plot and scenery, which seem not to be presented for mere novelty -- as in so many ambitious movies -- but as part of a little girl's surreal imagination. Watching this story is like re-watching Pan's Labyrinth but with the crazy, happy hope that things will work out better this time. And you're right.

Basically, this is the story of a little immigrant girl in a 1920s L.A. hospital who listens to the wildly fabulous stories of an injured young stunt man who has a sad ulterior motive. His deep, warm voice and storytelling win her over. And she wins him over. Her English is imperfect but she's a thinker, pretty slick but still learning, so her imagination works on his story. And so she wins us over.

I do not know why this two-year-old movie, which already has two European awards, is opening just now in the U.S. I do not know how much money it must have cost, but it was not cheap. I do know that the locations include many stunning places in countries around the world. Ask yourself afterward, what is more lovingly extravagant -- the plotting, the locations or the costumes?

I would call The Fall unique except that it is based on a 1981 movie (Yo Ho Ho) I never heard of before, by a Bulgarian named Valeri Petrov. Varying sources claim the production is from the U.S., Italy, India, UK, and/or the Netherlands.

Just go, go see it.

MOVIE 76

Mongol
(Sergei Bodrov, Kazakhstan/Russia, 2007, 126 m.)

Any movie set in the late 1100s and early 1200s is going to offer some questionable history. Let's just say that according to some sources, some of this story did happen. We see the childhood and the young adult ascent to power of Temudjin (Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano) who became the famous Genghis Khan. In this movie, he is no butcher but a mystic, a warrior, a lover and occasionally a diplomat. The locations and photography in Kazakhstan are quite beautiful. The costumes and battles are elegant though clearly primitive. I have to say it felt long-ish to me and I never quite understood why Temudjin was so fixated on his woman. Nominated for the best foreign film Oscar.

In Mongolian with English subtitles. 

Nick Otten is assistant director in the Theater Program at Clayton High School and adjunct professor in the graduate Communications MAT Program at Webster University. He consumes vast quantities of books and movies. In his description of Nick's List, he says,  "For every single work, I’ll quickly post a brief commentary — each week, at least 1 book and 2 movies, usually more. Maybe a paragraph, maybe a page. Sometimes, not often, I may go crazy and write some kind of extra, a page or so, on some movie or pair of movies or some genre, actor, or something else, or how one book relates to another or a movie or you or me or us. Such stuff will be just one click away, guaranteed." If you want to reach Nick, rather than comment on the articles, contact Beacon features and commentary editor Donna Korando.

To read the previous Nick's List posts click June 23 , June 16, June 9 , June 2 , May 26 , May 19 , May 12,   May 5 , April 28 , April 21 , March .