dominican cinema | The Last Movie Guy

Bionico’s Bachata (2024): A Raw Urban Chronicle

Posted on 19 Days Ago by Hugo Pagan Soto

Bionico will do anything to please his Flaca. Calvita refuses to accept losing his friend over a woman, while I can’t stop imagining Bionico’s Bachata as the Dominican Trainspotting. The cold streets of Edinburgh dissolve into the sweat of a Santo Domingo neighborhood, and we no longer have Danny Boyle’s Renton, but Bionico from the Mentes Fritas crew. From its opening sequence, the film signals a singular, frenetic journey that pushes us to the edge of the absurd.

A Film About Couples (2021)

Posted on February 9, 2022 by Hugo Pagan Soto

Reality was revealed, and I collapsed. It’s like a dream. Anything can happen. Anything.
Through a Glass Darkly (1961)

When the camera is turned on and the lens absorbs what lands in front of it, it is impossible to separate fact from fiction. What we accept as reality is inevitably tinted by the glass of our preconceptions and prejudices. Bergman’s allusion in As in a Mirror (1961) goes down the same path and deepens how we understand reality by seeing our own lives reflected in the world around us. The new film by Natalia Cabral and Oriol Estrada (Miriam Miente, El Sitio de los Sitios) or should I say Oriol Estrada and Natalia Cabral? A Movie About Couples (2021) plays with narrative tones and satires the eagerness of filmmakers and viewers for pigeonholing cinematographic works.

Santo Domingo Waltz (2021)

Posted on January 28, 2022 by Hugo Pagan Soto

Lads do football… or boxing… or wrestling. Not friggin’ ballet.
Billy Elliot (2000)

Santo Domingo does not move, it dances. It’s a curse not to have the hip looseness or the rhythm to devour any melody that gets in the way. Worse still is being born with two left feet, a group in which I include myself, and for which I imagine there is a special place in purgatory. Before Santo Domingo Waltz (2021) shows the lines of the speech, it has already tanned us with music and folklore. It sets the stage perfectly; the frame of reference is powerful and sustains the narrative from start to finish.