Sonia Braga
Occupation
Actor
Wonder Trailer
August 'Auggie' Pullman is a 10-year-old boy born with Treacher Collins syndrome which has caused facial birth defects and he's had no fewer 27 surgeries. He has been homeschooled throughout his childhood but is about to enter his first year of mainstream school at Beecher Prep. His parents are, of course, worried that he'll be the subject of bullying - no matter how much they assure him that he's special. Unfortunately, that's just what happens to him, but there are at least some school kids that are determined to build a friendship with him and make him feel welcome. Some kids are reluctant to associate with him, but after hearing some revelatory things, realise that the people they want to be are the people that will love Auggie for who he is.
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Matt Damon seen arriving at the 30th Annual American Cinematheque Awards Gala held at The Beverly Hilton Hotel, Beverly Hills, California, United States - Friday 14th October 2016
Sonia Braga at the 30th annual American Cinematheque Awards Gala held at The Beverly Hilton Hotel, Los Angeles, California, United States - Friday 14th October 2016
Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School Review
OK
So here's the scoop: In 1990, a novice director named Randall Miller made a 30-minute short film called Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing and Charm School, about the titular academy for young children who learn to dance and be polite, etc. An amazing 15 years later, after paying his dues on films like Houseguest and H-E Double Hockey Sticks and TV shows like Popular, he figured he'd take that short, add an hour to it (which takes place 40 years later), and mix it up into a film called Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School. (You see, he lost an apostrophe and an "and" but gained an ampersand.)That's some dedication to your story, but it turns out that neither the original Hotchkiss nor the updated one merit that much consideration. The short is your expected coming-of-age tale: A kid named Steve hates girls, but over time (and thanks to Hotchkiss) he comes to love them, particularly a gal named Lisa.
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Testosterone Review
By Don Willmott
OK
Here's the thing: When your lover goes out for a pack of cigarettes and doesn't come back, it's probably best just to let him go. If you start to chase after him, the ensuing drama will probably start to look like a two-and-a-half-star movie, and you wouldn't want that, would you?
Testosterone opens with graphic novelist Dean (David Sutcliffe) and his devastatingly good-looking Argentinean boyfriend Pablo (Antonio Sabato Jr.) leading a perfect L.A. life. But suddenly Pablo disappears, and Dean simply can't let him go. When he bumps into Pablo's mother (Sonia Braga, having a great time playing the dragon lady of Buenos Aires) at an art gallery, she informs him that Pablo has returned to Argentina, and that's the end of that.
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Empire Review
Good
When you stop and think about it, the similarities between Italian mobsters and urban gangsters -- as filmmakers commonly portray them -- are really quite astounding. For every gold chain stuck in a mobster's chest hair, there seems to be a corresponding gold medallion slung around some gangster's neck. For every Cadillac, there's a Lincoln Navigator. In place of the Tommy gun, there's the Glock. It's a comparison that writer and director Franc Reyes is all too keen on making in his debut film, Empire.
Played by John Leguizamo, Victor Rosa is a Latino gangsta with all the ambition of a young Godfather and all the attitude of a taller Joe Pesci. He spends his days violently whacking errant drug dealers and monitoring the sales of his own designer "street pharmaceutical" not so subtly labeled Empire -- which is exactly what Vic thinks he's building in his little bit of the South Bronx. But when his girlfriend (Delilah Cotto) announces that she's pregnant, he thinks it might be time to go legit.
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Empire Review
Weak
Any chance that "Empire" might be all that different from other drug- dealer- trying- to- go- straight movies is lost with the opening voice-over, in which heroin mini-kingpin Victor Rosa (John Leguizamo) rattles off a dozen street life clichés in 60 seconds, starting with the line, "Damn, if I'd known then what I know now! It's all about making money, baby."
Never mind that the plot includes the hero losing his shirt and his boss's drug money in a Wall Street scam perpetrated by a savvy, Caucasian, uptown con artist. That only serves to prove that Victor is a sucker, not that his story is any different from those of drug dealers depicted in scads of other movies from the last 15 years -- October's "Paid In Full" or 1994's "Sugar Hill," for example.
Universal Pictures even admits as much in the film's press kit, which compares it "in theme and execution" to a "list of urban gangster films" but goes on to trumpet the fact that "Empire" is the first time this recycled story "has been told from the point of view of a Latino character."
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