bennyp81

This was the first truly bilingual film I have ever seen. No, it's not merely a film where people talk in two languages. It's the first I've seen where the events unfold in two languages and the audience processes them accordingly. I didn't know what effect it would have on me at first, despite knowing both English and Spanish. However, after watching "Compadres", I saw that, if anything, it gave the film a richness that made it fun to watch.

Alas, after watching the film, I couldn't help but feel as though I just sat through a six-month telenovela hastily condensed into an hour-and-a-half work: The scope was clearly a grand one, but director Enrique Begne's execution suggested he was well out of his depth, since he botched quite a number of elements along the way. To wit, the editing appeared rushed and scattered, with some scenes leaving out plot-critical shots of items and people that are normally taken for granted in other films. The music was all over the place, ranging from twisted to tender, while an equally erratic score filled the crevices. Additionally, there were actions by the characters in certain scenes, such as Garza randomly kissing the waitress at the diner, that felt out of place; they were probably inserted just to extract a laugh from the audience when, truth be told, they didn't need to. Even the opening title credits looked half- baked, as though they came straight out of a student copy of Adobe Flash. These factors converged to derail the film's tone, leaving one convinced that Begne simply could not decide what flavor of story he wanted to tell. Maybe a glance at Quentin Tarantino's "Jackie Brown" could have helped.

And yet... you can't help but immerse yourself in the experience, despite the above lapses in judgment. Omar Chaparro (as the stoic Mexican cop Garza) and Joey Morgan (as the bumbling but good-hearted computer hacker Vic) make for an enjoyably discordant duo, showing that strong characters backed by capable actors do matter. The desolate landscapes and grimy city scenes add to the alienation that slowly grates on Garza and Vic. In the face of relentless backstabbing and setbacks, their budding friendship is the only thing left that they believe in, and that modicum of hope is just enough to push them forward, to search for the truth, to save each other's lives. Said tribulations have their own share of twists and surprises (with competent explanations on the side) to mystify but not confuse. The story that pierces through the poor choices made by the filmmakers successfully keeps the audience in the game and endears the lively cast of characters to the moviegoers.

By the end of the film, you'll want to see Garza and Vic head out for another adventure, one you would gladly pay a matinée ticket for. Hopefully, some better production personnel will be in tow.

I caught wind of Mr. Whitney's work while learning about slit-scan photography, the technique used to create those engrossing images that form the "stargate" sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It never occurred to me that this kind of motion photography was possible in 1961. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how slit-scan is done, but this experimental short film demonstrates other tangentially related techniques. Whitney employs techniques such as extended exposure, optical manipulation, kaleidoscopic mirroring and some frame-by-frame editing, all with the aid of an analog computer Whitney built for this purpose.

The image effects in this short still fascinate even after decades of ever-improving special effects and the advent of computer technology. Even the most spoiled connoisseur of special effects would find appreciation from the work Whitney and others, of which Catalog displays for our wonder.

I have found it! This is the real deal, the bottom of the barrel, the absolute worst, the nadir of cinema. Ben & Arthur made me do the unthinkable by "honoring" it with a 1 rating on IMDb, something I have never done in the 11 years I have been rating movies on this site. Normally, I try to find at least one redeeming point in any bad film I see, if only to rationalize its merits and save myself face: Even the horrendous "Titanic: The Animated Musical" had at least decent still drawings at the very end. Alas, "Ben & Arthur" was beyond redemption and any hope that one could walk away from the film with something to justify the experience.

The fact that IMDb even has an entry for this audiovisual equivalent of excrement frightens me. I believe it did get a screening at a movie theater, it is a feature-length work and its DVD is readily available at several online stores, so I guess it technically qualifies as a "film". Whatever you wish to call this work, everything in it is bad: Acting, writing, direction, editing, music, photography, sound recording, set design, continuity.... I could go on, but other reviewers on this site have already elaborated on this film's numerous flaws, with far better grace and humor.

My goodness, even the first few seconds tells you how badly this film will devolve: It features an irrelevant and disgusting background animation for an opening sequence and the use of a gingerly MIDI-recorded rendition of "The Entertainer" for an otherwise ostensibly tragic love story. Scott Joplin should simply come back from the grave and toss the filmmaker into a vat of liquefied iron, which closely resembles the red fluid flowing across the screen. It would've made the opening credits seem more proper.

Oh, but the filmmaker, Sam Mraovich. Let me add something that no reviewer has addressed as of yet: Considering he did nearly all of the production duties in this film, he is technically also an "auteur" in the same vein as, say, Stanley Kubrick or Wes Anderson. However, those last two, while often writing and producing their own material, nevertheless saw the benefit of sharing the workload with people that are experts in their respective fields of film production, while also staying involved and informed of progress. Mraovich on the other hand quite literally does all the work in piecing together this wreck, almost surely because he fancied himself as capable of such and not because a lack of appropriate personnel. Fact-checking is non-existent, with Mraovich going as far as screwing up basic Bible facts that even cold-hearted Atheists would recognize. The fact that he also stars in Ben & Arthur as the central protagonist (nudity and all), while providing what is hands-down the worst performance by any actor I have ever seen, reinforces what everyone here already knows: That Mraovich has lost much of his grasp of reality and has no idea of how humans function.

(Additionally, even Kubrick usually had his name in only a few credits at most or, in the case of "A Clockwork Orange", in just one card. Mraovich's name is everywhere in Ben & Arthur.)

And just what were the actors in this movie thinking of when they signed on to this thing anyway? Anyone with a brain cell would have backed out after reading the first page of the script. Were they doing it out of duty? Maybe they were blackmailed. Were they even paid well? (I would imagine SAG would frown upon paying actors in graham crackers.) Maybe they simply pitied the hopelessly delusional Mraovich.

In any case, Ben & Arthur was quite the discovery for me. Wider awareness of this movie could easily set the gay rights movement back to the stone age. Once you are done with this abomination, if you dare brave it, you'll conclude that it belongs in the great Pantheon of Bad Ideas like the Great Leap Forward and The Baseball Network.