AFI Fest Highlights
Following are capsule reviews of today’s screenings in the American Film Institute Los Angeles International Film Festival at the Cineplex Odeon Century Plaza Cinemas: ‘Macho Dancer’
The Philippines, 1988, 100 minutes 7 p.m. Filipino film-maker Lino Brocka is a minor master of violent, sentimental melodramas, usually with left-wing political undercurrents. That description fits this movie, but what makes it unusual is its milieu: the twilit Manila world of gay bars, male hustlers and “macho dancers”--whose soapy, hip-rolling, nude and quasi-nude routines make up a lot of its footage. Brocka spins a typical young-man-from-the-provinces gangster plot, but he doesn’t stint on depicting the underworld nor the political and police corruption that fuels it; if he falls at last into gun-toting melodramatics, its probably the price of knowing one’s metier. RECOMMENDED.
Only good movies
Get the Indie Focus newsletter, Mark Olsen's weekly guide to the world of cinema.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
