UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

Kinley This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

KobusAdAstra 'Mala Noche' is a classy movie, mostly filmed in black-and-white, about an Oregon young gay shop worker, Walt, who falls in love with a vagrant and illegal migrant, a young Mexican lad, Johnny. And how does he fall in love! He gets run in by the scheming young man and his other illegal migrant Mexican buddies, but is blinded by his feelings for the lad. They move in with Walt, taking over his apartment. To make matters worse, they don't speak English and nor does he speak Spanish. While he chirps pleasantries to his new (one-sided) love, they make fun of him, the "puto (queer) Grinko". That while they are happily abusing his hospitality. But how would it end for our naive lover?The acting by Tim Streeter as Walt and DougCooeyate, Ray Monge and Sam Downey as the Mexicans is excellent. The cinematography is particularly good and some of the best I have ever seen with any black-and-white film. The contrast between dark and light is stark and enhances the film's art-house qualities.I had a look at the interview made with Van Sant (20 years after completion of the film) that accompanies the DVD, and it is quite illuminating. Van Sand made this movie, his first serious attempt at film-making, on a meagre $20,000 budget. He could not afford the much more expensive colour film, and had to settle for black-and-white. He could not afford the large numbers of expensive lights needed and had to settle with only one light for his many indoor shots. That explains the stark contrast between dark and light, with little gray in-between. Although not intentional, it, in my view, made the photography even better. I score this impressive indie film an excellent 8/10.

RainDogJr Some time ago, like two years ago to be more or less exact, I was into the films of director Gus Van Sant. I got to see a few of his, not counting his latest film Milk that was released just last year, 12 feature films. I got to see Drugstore Cowboy, Finding Forrester, Elephant (my favourite of him so far), Last Days and Paranoid Park. As I often remark in my IMDb comments, I'm one of the fans of the truly amazing Criterion Collection and two Van Sant films are part of the collection, two of his first ones: Mala Noche (his very first one, released in 1985) and My Own Private Idaho (released back in 1991, two years after the release of Drugstore Cowboy). It was about time to finally check out the Criterion Van Sant titles and while not on the Criterion DVD today I saw Mala Noche (and I will renting as soon as I can the Criterion DVD of My Own Private Idaho, which is one of the most acclaimed films of Van Sant. And by the way, if you go to the website of Criterion you will find the lists of favourite Criterion titles of people like Richard Linklater, John Lurie,. "Idaho"is part of the list of Steve Buscemi, James Franco, so is more acclaim, more for me to finally check out that 1991 film).

doctorsmoothlove It has been more than twenty years since Gus Van Sant released his first full-length feature film. For a first film, Mala Noche avoids many of the pitfalls other first films usually exhibit. The screenplay is realistic and the camera work is impressive. So, despite its age, the film is still worth a viewing.Mala Noche is a social realism-inspired drama about the life Walt Curtis. Curtis is a shopkeeper from Portland, Oregon and he falls in love with a Mexican immigrant named Johnny. The film covers Walt's effort to befriend Johnny, his brother Roberto, and his brothers. Walt is never able to sleep with Johnny as he wishes he could, but, ironically, has sex several times with Roberto.The most striking feature of Mala Noche is the realism of its lead character and the main supporting cast. Walt exhibits the characteristics of a poor young man. He works in a remedial job and lives in a run-down apartment. His attraction to Johnny is not romantic but visceral. His voice-over narration describes his anguish as he fails in seducing Johnny. This adds a provocative flair to Walt's character. It allows us to sympathize with him because he is so frank about his problem that we wish for him to succeed. Similarly, Johnny and Roberto also act appropriately given their roles. Johnny uses his status as an immigrant and his knowledge of Walt's homosexuality to manipulate him into giving away products at his store. Roberto also manipulates Walt, but for sexual purposes. Perhaps the best example of the incredible realism of the film is Roberto's inability to admit to his affair with Walt. I cannot recall another film which portrays a secret homosexual relationship as earnestly as this one does. Most films, including those in support of homosexuality, display it in a sensationalized way. Mala Noche earns marks for originality by showing that homosexuality is just a part of life, even though it isn't public.For a budget of $25,000, Van Sant has created a well-constructed film. The lighting is from practicals (or appears to be), but this adds to the film's realism. This may interfere with your ability to see the characters, but at least a portion of an actor's face is always visible. There are no special effects beyond the lighting. There are several shots of nature which appear beautiful despite the lack of color. Budget constraints prevented more elaborate effects, and Van Sant probably stretched his stipend out filming the few colored scenes. This doesn't affect the film's quality, and adds appropriateness to it.All isn't perfect with this debut. With its paltry running time, the film isn't able to develop a real exposition. The first sequence is Walt narrating his attraction to Johnny. This is representative of a larger concern in the film's plot progression: the episodic nature of its events. However realistic it appears to a viewer, he may find it difficult to understand what is happening in subsequent sequences. It warrants another viewing. A noteworthy example is when Johnny temporarily steals Walt's car. We are given no plausible explanation for the specific reason why he wants to confiscate the car at that moment. Again, this is a byproduct of a 78-minute running time and not the direct fault of Van Sant.Mala Noche has become a cult classic, especially in youth culture. While most cult films are exploitative, Mala Noche has achieved its status for the opposite reason. This is an optimistic film about the possibility of people to interact without bias for country of origin or sexual preference. While the film is highly reflective of the sexual anguish of the young, it is challenging to connect the disjointed sequences into a coherent film. The film has no direction and moves continuously forward like a Magical Realism novel, but lacks the characterization to keep the story afloat. Still, Mala Noche is worth watching for the purposeful lack of chemistry between its protagonist and his love interest. Walt cannot become Johnny's lover regardless of how much emasculating effort he makes. Despite their shared minority classification, they are still able to befriend one another. The film presents a faux relationship between two young men in a non-traditional way, and this makes it an excellent candidate for Netflix.The newest DVD edition of the film is worth a purchase if you enjoy Van Sant's work. It features an interview with him and a trailer of the film. The subtitles are only sporadically placed when Spanish is spoken, and they remain on screen only briefly.

findoutwho OK, granted: The movie was filmed in the early or mid 80's I think, and you might even claim that the latino talent pool was not as big back then as it is now. But C"MON! The guys who were cast as the young Mexican homeless boys were HORRIBLE! Spanish is my first language and I could tell that the actors who portrayed JOhny and Robert were not fluent at all in Spanish which for this film it is a MAJOR point since they re supposed not to speak English. I guess that explains the reason why when Johny had dialogue, the camera was not on him, and the times when he spoke and the camera was on him there was no sync. I am 100 percent sure that they used someone else's voice ( a bad actor's at that) to do the voice over for Johny. For someone who speaks Spanish it was PAINFUL to listen to the monotone, emotion-deprived delivery of the lines. I don't know under what circumstances these two horrible actors were cast but I am sure the director did not do a thorough audition process to get the best actors. The actor who played Robert was better at ATTEMPTING to sound better in Spanish. I still don't know if he was fluent in Spanish, which it sounds like he was. And if he was then he was just saying the grammatically incorrect lines given to him by the director without complaining about not being correct. One of the examples is when he is being harassed by the white guy. Roberto says:" Para. No me molesto". Translated that means: " Stop. It doesn't bother me".or " Stop. I don't get bothered". Im sure the intention of the writer was: " Stop. Don't bother me" which should've been: "Para. No me molestes". The only character that spoke good Spanish was the guy who was telling the story of how they crossed the border. And I could bet the reason that being is because probably he really went thru that and he was just being interviewed ( he did not NEED to act)I doubt that was scripted. That part when he's talking, it totally threw me out of the movie, because it had a documentary feel to it and then to go back into the bad acting was like, disconnected. Among other things,it was torture when they had the Spanish speakers dialogue on the background. They kept on repeating the same dialogue over and over and over again! same lines over and over! I guess it would work for non-Spanish speakers, because they just hear a foreign language and they have no idea whats being said. But when you understand the language you get so frustrated that you wanna throw a shoe at the TV and make it shut up. I really like Gus Van Sant's directing but I have no idea, and im very curious to know what pressed or forced Mr Gus Van Sant to cast these horrible actors. Was it pressure from the producers, or did he honestly think these guys were the BEST?