While Juanita takes advantage of her new-found freedom in the city, Bravo struggles against the indifference of a city and government more often than not resigned to the situation, and inevitably the lives of the two women intersect. People like Bravo and radio host Peralta (Joaquin Cosio) try to effect change, but find themselves in an impossible situation and are challenged to stop anything without sacrificing their own morals in the process.

Backyard is a powerful film that explores a number of the postulated theories and causes of the soaring crime rate without seeming unfocused. Crimes initially go unsolved, because of an undermanned, underfunded, and at times corrupt police force, and this leads criminals to believe they can act with impunity. The government is reluctant to act for fear of jeopardizing foreign investment that is more than willing to move on to the next country with even cheaper labour. People’s lives are reduced to a matter of how many cents per day they cost the companies. All this leads to a moral vacuum where regular people are emboldened to act how they want without fear of consequences, and women more often than not become the target.

The film doesn’t take the easy way out and reduce the problem to a simple mystery or crime story; it’s a challenging social, economic, and political problem as well, with no neat, tidy ending or resolution. While Bravo’s storyline shows the institutional side, Juanita’s reveals a very personal view of the same issues. Ana de la Reguera is very good as a professional who has a job to do in a very patriarchal organization and society, yet can’t help but be moved as a woman to the situation around her.

El Traspatio (Backyard) was Mexico’s submission to the Foreign Language category of the 2010 Academy Awards.

Various cabinet ministers who served under democratically elected Socialist Salvador Allende – overthrown by Pinochet’s military (with the help of the CIA) in 1973 – were imprisoned on Dawson, a desert island at the tip of South America.

Based on Sergio Bitar’s 1987 autobiographical book Isla 10, Littin’s film chronicles the stories of a group of men, played impeccably by an excellent cast.

Dawson: Isla 10 was Chile’s submission to the Foreign Language category of the 2010 Academy Awards.

Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Tenoch (Diego Luna) are two bored friends looking for trouble. Their girlfriends went to Italy for the summer, and they do little except drink, get high, and mess around. They come from different socioeconomic classes; Julio from the lower end and Tenoch from the upper end. Tenoch’s father is fairly high in the Mexican government. Their current object of lust is Luisa (Maribel Verdu), the wife of Tenoch’s cousin. They convince her to accompany them on a road trip to Heaven’s Mouth, a beach they made up. Luisa agrees to go only because she discovered her husband was cheating on her. Luisa is older, and more experienced sexually and in the ways of the world. Julio and Tenoch are merely disaffected youth, who soon realize they are out of their league.

Frequently, the sound mutes and an omniscient narrator provides some commentary or background on a situation, or highlights the history of some passing landmark. This is where Cuaron (veering wildly in tone from his prior two movies) wants to show how the road trip parallels the tumultuous recent history of Mexico. Corruption is rife, and the trio passes unimpeded through abject poverty and police checkpoints. This is completely different from the lives they live in Mexico City, especially for Tenoch and Luisa. Mexico is undergoing new experiences just as Julio and Tenoch are. Cuaron wants to say that not all of these experiences may be good, but overall, they are for the better. The fact that Cuaron is able to combine both the lewdness with the political overtones says something about his ability as a writer and director.

However, as mentioned previously, this narrator intones his points subtly, almost obliquely at times. They are easy to miss, especially in light of the fairly explicit sex, nudity, and adolescent humor. And unlike many of its American counterparts, Y Tu Mama Tambien is really funny. It is gleefully crude, and not ashamed of anything, and this feeling easily jumps off the screen and infects the audience. All three principals are relatively young and not called upon to do much more than goof off, so they all come across as fresh and eager. It seems that reaching the beach is not the ultimate goal, it is the trip there that is important.

As with the question of who is sending the tapes in Michael Haneke’s ‘Hidden,’ Martel spends the remainder of the film cultivating a mystery whose solution, it transpires, may be extraneous to the actual story she is trying to tell. Casually dispensing with exposition and formal character introductions, she instead burdens us with an intimate, first-hand experience of Vero’s temporary discombobulation. Vero’s tragic attempts to bluff her way through a life that has lost all meaning are perfectly realised by Martel’s brand of ambient, almost dreamlike social realism, where each shot demands a swift decoding to reveal its ulterior purpose.

In line with the director’s previous films, there’s an incisive political subtext lurking under this ostensibly interior drama. While Vero’s loss of memory adds a level of discomfort to her daily life, it also allows her a spell of self-reflection and moral rejuvenation. Her anxiety awakens a mindfulness of her bourgeois complacency which in turn makes her reassess the connections she has with her own family. The bitter closing shot, though, suggests that you can never change those accustomed to a life of privileged conformity. It’s a supremely disconcerting kiss-off to a cinematic head-trip like no other.

In its minimalist approach to language and gesture and its non-judgemental stance towards its characters, Whisky has drawn comparisons with the films of Aki Kaurismäki, but there are important differences. There is none of Kaurismäki’s striking colour design and little of the kitsch (there is some – the three of them sitting resolutely silent while lit by a mirrored disco ball is perfect). Instead, Rebello & Stoll present a world of naturalistic deadpan. Their minimal approach also means that small details stick in the mind – Marta patting her hair, Jacobo’s habit of turning lights off too quickly. Sometimes these details lead to possible hidden narrative threads and motivations – how calculated is Marta in moving the oxygen bottle into Herman’s room and what role does it play in later events?

Its visual design is also quite sophisticated. Jacobo leads a disordered, ramshackle life and the first part of the film reflects this well, not allowing the eye any comfortable resting points or compositions, instead making his world drab and dissatisfyingly bitty. The relief to the eye when Marta puts his flat in order is palpable.

Now and again, laugh-out-loud sequences punctuate the long – very long, silences, but then the uncanny sensation takes hold that as viewers, we are more embarrassed with the trio’s situation than they are themselves. They certainly don’t need our pity. By the end – and this is a mark of the film’s success – we actually care about Jacobo and Marta, and what, if anything, happens next.

The 93-minute documentary is part ‘Our Daily Bread,’ with a dash of ‘The World According to Monsanto’ and a liberal mixing of ‘Fast Food Nation’ and ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ by Michael Pollan.

The result is a haunting look into the North American food system – one of the most corporate controlled, unhealthiest, cruellest food systems on the planet.

If you don’t know much about how most of the food in supermarkets gets to your table, you need to see this film. If you’ve already educated yourself on the horrific practices of America’s food industry, this film will inspire, empower, enrage and connect you with the unsung heroes who are out there doing something about it.

You can too by voting with your mouth three times a day.

El Secreto De Sus Ojos has been nominated for best foreign language film at the upcoming Academy Awards (Oscars).

The film features renown physician and anthroplogist Paul Farmer, President Aristide himself, actor and UN goodwill ambassador Danny Glover, Political commentator and linguist Noam Chomsky, Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Expert James Dobbins, John Shattuck and many Haitian Voices.

In the wake of Argentina’s dramatic economic collapse in 2001, Latin America’s most prosperous middle class finds itself in a ghost town of abandoned factories and mass unemployment. The Forja auto plant lies dormant until its former employees take action. They’re part of a daring new movement of workers who are occupying bankrupt businesses and creating jobs in the ruins of the failed system.

But Freddy, the president of the new worker’s co-operative, and Lalo, the political powerhouse from the Movement of Recovered Companies, know that their success is far from secure. Like every workplace occupation, they have to run the gauntlet of courts, cops and politicians who can either give their project legal protection or violently evict them from the factory.

The story of the workers’ struggle is set against the dramatic backdrop of a crucial presidential election in Argentina, in which the architect of the economic collapse, Carlos Menem, is the front-runner. His cronies, the former owners, are circling: if he wins, they’ll take back the companies that the movement has worked so hard to revive.

Armed only with slingshots and an abiding faith in shop-floor democracy, the workers face off against the bosses, bankers and a whole system that sees their beloved factories as nothing more than scrap metal for sale.

With The Take, director Avi Lewis, one of Canada’s most outspoken journalists, and writer Naomi Klein, author of the international bestsellers No Logo and the Shock Doctrine, champion a radical economic manifesto for the 21st century. But what shines through in the film is the simple drama of workers’ lives and their struggle: the demand for dignity and the searing injustice of dignity denied.

The Cove is also directed by Louie Psihoyos, who brings confidence and precision to his insider’s account of this life-or-death covert operation. A celebrated photographer who has created images for National Geographic for 18 years, Psihoyos captures the magnificence of the dolphins themselves and the ocean that surrounds them.

The Cove is such a powerful and effective piece of advocacy filmmaking that we had to make it our movie of the month (January).