Mexican Cinema 2023

A list of five movies from this journey, a few honorable mentions, and some other thoughts

NOTE: Most of these movies have been around for a while so assume there will be spoilers throughout.

Earlier this month, I put out a top ten list of my favorite movies from 2023 that was fifty percent The Pope’s Exorcist. I bring it up to not only plug it again but to assure you, if you’ve been reading for a while now, that this is not a bit I will be deploying every time I make a list. It’s one I’ve done two years in a row with that end-of-year list so that’s where it’s staying. And if this is your first time reading anything I’ve written…

I’d been kicking around the idea of diving headfirst into Mexican Cinema for a while and in 2023 I finally pulled the trigger. It was a highly-organized process where I wrote a bunch of random names and titles on my Notes app. I was already familiar with the Three Amigos (Iñárritu, del Toro, and Cuarón). As far as classic Mexican movies were concerned, one time my dad bought a Cantinflas DVD out of a bargain bin when we were at a Walmart in Texas (I think) and told us he was like a Mexican Charlie Chaplin. Before that, I remember seeing wall-to-wall news coverage of María Félix’s death when I was eleven. I hadn’t seen any María Félix movies before last year, but she was the only other name from Mexico’s Golden Age of Cinema (Época de Oro) besides Cantinflas that I knew off the top of my head.

Half of the list below is made up of Golden Age titles and a good number of them are available to stream in various places, like Vix—Univision’s streaming channel¹—and ad-supported services like Tubi and Pluto TV. If you have a library card, there are more modern titles on Hoopla and Kanopy.

As for the rest, I ended up using a Tube where You can stream surprisingly high-quality Mexican films from the 40s and 50s. Some have English subtitles, most do not. If you’re looking to throw yourself into the deep end of the Spanish language, I have great news. I do know that titles like Macario and Victims of Sin have had screenings recently in places like Not Oklahoma City, so I’ve been keeping an eye out for when they do make it over to Oklahoma City.

The other thing that happened last year is that I joined a Discord server full of other movie nerds and because Discord servers have made it into the news recently, I’ll stop here and say that no one in this server to my knowledge is planning anything illegal. The worst thing you might see from me in there is something like “Wonka good tho?” If any classified government documents ever pass my eyeballs, I will print them out and walk them down to the Pentagon myself. And if there’s even of a hint of child trafficking, I will call Jim Caviezel on his personal cell or whatever it is that movie says you’re supposed to do, I haven’t seen it.

So, this Discord is for Patreon subscribers of the 70mm podcast. You wouldn’t know it from the name, but it’s a podcast dedicated to covering movies. Films, if you will. It’s hosted by three men I’ve never met in my life—Slim, Danny, and Proto—but they host a really fun, engaging show and I’ve met some really cool people through it as a result. I took a chance and met up with Jared, a fellow Oklahoman, to see a movie and had a great time. We caught a screening of William Friedkin’s Sorcerer, which made me never want to drive in the rain again.

During one of the episodes, I heard Slim mention Reel Latinos, a podcast dedicated to covering Latin American movies. That’s when I found out the three hosts of that show—Ismael, Guti, and Ron—were all in the same Discord and when I mentioned the Mexican Cinema journey in there, they basically helped me create a roadmap for the rest of the year. Their podcast was also a resource, not only for putting more movies on my radar but to hear the guys discuss these movies in a way that gave me a deeper appreciation for them, as well as filling in context that I might’ve missed.

By end of year, I’d watched a total of 150 movies from Mexico and/or by Mexican filmmakers. Just to be clear, this is not my definitive ranking of Mexican Cinema as a whole; that’s a different newsletter that’s coming out sometime in 2057. This was something fun I decided to pursue in my free time, so it’s the five Mexican films I enjoyed the most last year, plus a handful of honorable mentions. Gracias por leer y hasta la próxima.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Doña Bárbara (1943)

Available on Vix or YouTube, unsubtitled.

Besides coverage of her death on Mexican news, I hadn’t seen anything with María Félix until this past year. I more than made up for it with twenty of her movies, my favorite being Doña Bárbara. She was someone who relished playing morally complicated women, jokingly declaring herself at one point the “number one enemy of the Mexican family morals.” Whatever people’s perception of her was, she gave these characters a humanity that may not have been entirely on the page. Especially here playing a ruthless land owner who makes Kevin Costner’s character on Yellowstone look like a pu

The Abandoned (1945)

Available on YouTube, unsubtitled.

Dolores del Río was one of the many Golden Age names I locked in on early in the year and this is my favorite of hers. She was known for playing refined, elegant women and here she gets to show more range as a single mother making different kinds of compromises to care for her son. It’s a great movie with a gut punch of an ending. He’s in more of a supporting part here, but there’s also a great turn from Pedro Armendáriz, another Golden Age star. To see both of them as co-leads, I recommend María Candelaria.

Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022)

Available on Netflix

I went long on Bardo in a Lett—sorry, Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths in a Letterboxd review so I’ll link to it here. Iñárritu is doing some incredible work here, maybe the best of his career.

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THE LIST PROPER

5. Canoa: A Shameful Memory (1976)

Available on the Criterion Channel

If you have the Criterion Channel, there are two movies concerning the same time period in Mexican history you can watch right now. The first is The Olympics in Mexico, a documentary directed by filmmaker/retired Olympian Alberto Isaac. It’s mostly a celebration of the event and the athletes that participate in it. It’s understatement to say that 1968 was a politically fraught time in a lot of countries and the only moment you catch in the doc reminding you of that is witnessing Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising the Black Power salute during the “Star-Spangled Banner.”

Ten days before Olympics officially began in Mexico City, the Mexican Armed Forces opened fire on a group of unarmed civilians protesting the event in what came to be known as the Tlatelolco massacre. The protest was one of many demonstrations organized by what was known as the Mexican Movement of 1968, a short-lived coalition of university students pushing back against PRI, the political party that had been controlling Mexico since 1929. There was a lot of anti-student propaganda comparing them to communists and if there’s anything I’ve learned from living in the states, no one really knows what “communism” actually means. But it doesn’t really matter by the time a mob has formed.

The month prior to Tlatelolco, another act of violence happened in the village of San Miguel Canoa which is where the second movie I watched, Canoa: A Shameful Memory, gets its title from. In September of 1968, five university employees from Puebla went on a hiking trip and stopped in Canoa during a rainstorm. Filled with anti-communist/student rhetoric and whipped into a frenzy by the local priest, the town attacked the five men, killing two of them and gravely injuring the other three. Canoa is a narrative feature shot documentary-style which makes it all the more gripping. Throughout, one of the townspeople regularly addresses the camera filling us in on the social and economic conditions of Canoa and warning us of what could come if people get too desperate. It’s an effective, harrowing look at how quickly a lynch mob can form.

4. Roma (2018)

Available on Netflix

Of the Three Amigos, Cuarón is my guy. I wrote about Children of Men last year, one of my favorite movies of all time. This, like Iñárritu with Bardo², feels like an achievement he’s been working toward his whole career. Not that this is their last movie, but one made by an experienced filmmaker in full command of his craft, literally writing, directing, and shooting the movie himself in this case. I couldn’t find it in a theater when it was released so I watched it at home on Netflix and was still in tears by the time the final credits started rolling.

Yalitza Aparicio’s performance as Cleo is one of my favorites. She has an inherent magnetism that makes watching her do mundane tasks and go about her day compelling when combined with Cuarón’s camera. Her daily routine includes morning calisthenics and it’s that detail I thought about on my second watch when she’s doing a group exercise where everyone is in a row trying to stand on one foot. Up to this point, we’ve seen a lot of things Cleo does without being noticed or appreciated for them. But it’s these mundane tasks and routines that keep everything in balance. When it comes time to stand on one foot, Cleo’s able to hold a perfect pose while everyone else shakes and trembles.

3. You’re Missing the Point (1940)

Available on Vix or YouTube, unsubtitled.

This was the Cantinflas DVD my dad found in a Texas (?) Walmart and I have a distinct memory of laughing so hard I was crying during the final courtroom scene. Mario “Cantinflas” Moreno plays my favorite kind of protagonist, the unassuming person who stumbles their way into a big conspiracy because of a small misunderstanding. The movie starts with Cantinflas putting down a dog with rabies named Bobby as a conman named Bobby Lechuga is killed breaking into the mansion where Cantinflas’ girlfriend (and Bobby’s ex-lover) Paz works as a maid. It’s that misunderstanding that makes the courtroom scene in this 84-year-old movie still so funny. Is there a better name than Bobby Lechuga?

2. The Exterminating Angel (1962)

Available on the Criterion Channel

This was also a movie I’d seen before a couple of years ago and really loved. When I first got my Criterion Channel subscription and was trying to watch more Serious Films, I watched a handful of Luis Buñuel movies including this one.

Buñuel was a Spaniard, but had an incredible run in Mexico working with Gabriel Figueroa, the cinematographer on almost every Mexican movie ever made. Movies like The Young and the Damned, Nazarín, and The Exterminating Angel which is a satire where wealthy dinner guests are unable to leave the house they’ve been invited to. At a certain point, you think the rich might just start eating themselves. I spent the last half of the movie, as I did a few years ago, wondering how awful that smell must be getting in there and that’s the magic of the cinema.

1. Macario (1960)

Available on YouTube with English subtitles.

This is a movie I’ve seen referenced in The Book of Life, Coco, and most recently Blue Beetle. I watched for the first time in early October and watched it again a few weeks later on Day of the Dead, which I may try to do every year going forward. Día de los Muertos is something I was obviously aware of growing up in Mexico but never really took the time to understand or appreciate it until I was an adult living in Oklahoma.

Macario, the titular character played by Ignacio López Tarso, is a poor indigenous man living in Colonial Mexico who dreams of eating a whole turkey by himself. His long-suffering wife (Pina Pellicer) steals a turkey for him and when he goes to eat it alone, he ends up on a journey that gives him more than he bargained for.

This was the first Mexican film to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The final scene in the cave where all the candles are lit is one I had seen stills of and it’s emotionally powerful in a way I wasn’t expecting seeing it in context. This one is very accessible and I recommend it to everyone, especially if you loved movies like Coco.

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If you think I missed a movie, A) it’s probably here on this list I kept for all of 2023 or B) I have yet to watch it on this journey. I’m always open to new suggestions so if there’s a corner of Mexican Cinema you think I haven’t rounded yet, drop me a line. Maybe this will be the year of El Santo.

1. I know it’s TelevisaUnivison now, which is weird because I always thought Televisa and Univision were two separate stations. I’m also occasionally a moron.

2. Sorry, Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.