filmbriefs
Actor · Voice actor · 1947

Edward James Olmos

4
briefs
13:00
average
52 min
in total
On film.briefs4
13:00

Alambrista!

Robert Milton Young · 1977

Alambrista! (1977), written and directed by Robert Milton Young, follows Roberto, a Mexican farmer who crosses into the US to find work. Shot on location with non-professional actors, it observes his journey with minimal dialogue, no exposition, and sustained attention to physical detail. The film avoids drama, psychology and commentary, instead building meaning through repetition, duration and quiet encounters. Inducted into the National Film Registry in 2023, it remains a rigorous, unsentimental portrait of endurance.

13:00

The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez

Robert Milton Young · 1982

Robert Milton Young’s 1982 biographical Western follows Gregorio Cortez, a Mexican-American farmer wrongly accused after a fatal misunderstanding in 1901 Texas. Starring Edward James Olmos and shot on authentic locations—including the real Gonzales courthouse—the film unfolds with documentary restraint, charting twelve years of trials and imprisonment. Its strength lies in structural clarity and historical fidelity; its limitation, in emotional distance. Preserved by the Library of Congress in 2022, it is a rigorous, unsentimental account of jurisdictional violence on the US-Mexico border.

13:00

Blade Runner

Ridley Scott · 1982

Ridley Scott's 1982 science fiction film, adapted from Philip K. Dick's novel, sends former police officer Rick Deckard after a group of fugitive synthetic humans, or replicants, hiding in a decaying future Los Angeles. Shot by Jordan Cronenweth with a score by Vangelis, it underperformed on release and split critics over its pacing, only to be reissued in seven different versions and become one of the defining works of neo-noir and cyberpunk cinema.

13:00

Coco

Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina · 2017

Twelve-year-old Miguel, banned from music by his shoemaking family, is pulled into the Land of the Dead on the Day of the Dead and has to win his deceased great-great-grandfather's blessing before sunrise or be trapped there. Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina's Pixar feature, developed over years of research trips to Mexico and a cultural consultant group formed after a trademark controversy, builds its fantasy rules around a specific, sourced idea: that the dead persist only as long as someone living remembers them.