Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

ChanBot i must have seen a different film!!

Kirandeep Yoder The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Josephina Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

kosmasp This is a really great movie, about how media can affect your point of view in a certain situation. In this case it's about a guy, who is being held in prison on some vague accusations. But the movie is also about human beings and their flaws and faults. And although it's the first movie for Leguizamo in Spanish (read the trivia section), he does a great job! The whole cast is great and this movie got praised (see awards section here at IMDb), to a point where the director is currently working on a Harrison Ford movie (due to release 2009, as is stated under his name/profile at IMDb).If you like drama shot in documentary style, as if this was really happening, than you should watch this movie. It's not a blockbuster, but it might change your way of thinking on some things ...

Dee *** SPOILER ALERT *** They lost me at the lynching scene which was about 15 minutes into the movie. I find it hard to believe the police couldn't break up that mob sooner. When they couldn't push thru the crowd, no one thought to fire a warning shot. The captain had on what appeared to be double holsters but he never used a gun for anything despite the chaos. They basically watched while a man was beaten, doused with gas and finally set on fire. The original (alternate) ending was also stupid. The police pushed back the cameraman instead of going after the mob. The captain was supposedly the last honest cop in Latin America so I guess he was just as dumb as a box of rocks instead of just corrupt. I believe the director wanted the audience to be outraged as the police, etc. were so ineffective and misguided, but it would have been better to just show the petite, pregnant wife struggling to get thru. She actually broke thru before the police - what a joke! Maybe I just don't get the culture, but I don't even want to visit anywhere that releases criminals immediately because of a sympathetic news story.

movedout As I watched the opening 10 minutes of this film with budding fascination, a maniacal lynching sequence and a torrid depiction of Ecuador starts to take shape. Slowly the set pieces are positioned amidst the self-possessed ethos of the crowd, with Manolo Bonilla (John Leguizamo) being the sidestepping knight along side his gutsy rook, Ivan Suarez (Jose Maria Yazpik) who rushes headlong into the mob on a mere command, while their queen, Marisa Iturralde (Leonor Watling) is being kept out of harm's way by the men. But this television crew is in essence, just pawns to the machinations of the news media's escalating demands.Bonilla dithers on the sidelines until he finally intervenes. All I'm reminded of is the tragic circumstances surrounding the award winning South African photojournalist, Kevin Carter when he snapped the Pulitzer Prize winning photograph of a emaciated Sudanese girl being descended upon by a ravenous vulture. He later described himself as yet another vulture, a predator in the midst of suffering. "Crónicas" is a depressingly cynical look at the state of affairs in a third-world nation and the ersatz concerns that the foreign news media shows in order to exploit its people. Everything that is done carries with it the terrible feeling of ulteriorities as a faux smile and a warm handshake (sometimes tucked in with a bit of cash) manipulates situations and opens doors that should have stayed closed. It is very much an unforgiving indictment on the news media and its dogged pursuit of a ratings goldmine.Threading on the same lines as "Network", it crosses its fictitious coverage with a compelling thriller involving the 'Monstruo de Babahoyo' (Monster of Babahoyo), a serial killer who has raped and murdered over a 150 young children. Bonilla, a self-involved tabloid television reporter and his crew belong to a Spanish language news network stationed in Miami that airs throughout Latin America. He walks about with a swagger, signing autographs and stays on the sidelines waiting for the right moment to turn on the spotlight. But he's not a hack by any sense of the word. He understands that duplicity is an asset in his line of work, a tool to dig out the information he needs. In this case, he wants to uncover the identity of the Monster for a scoop of a lifetime and potentially his own show. Leguizamo gives the best performance of the cast in his understated portrayal of a well-worn reporter haunted by his guilt and questioning the price of his celebrity. And that's saying plenty considering that every performance in this Foreign Oscar submission by Ecuador is worth its own weight in dramatic gold.With the backdrop of rampant institutional corruption and those only too willing to exploit it, it paints a harsh and gritty landscape of living in a country of poverty and injustice where everyone has slippery fingers when it comes to the truth. It's further amplified with a strong sense of visual authenticity, which does not accentuate the grungy dwelling areas, the shantytown slums and frenzied lawlessness of communal disagreements, but instead captures it with an unattached verite style technique.Director Sebastián Cordéro peels back the layers of verisimilitude to slowly reveal the grim, unsettling actualities of his thriller. It shocks and daringly pushes the boundaries of audiences in some ghastly scenes. He constantly pounds us with the ethical dilemmas of journalism such as the validity and protection of sources, the emotional involvement with subjects and brokering of deals that have more to do personal gain than journalistic integrity. The more complicit that Bonilla and his crew become, the more they lose of their conscience. The throwaway lines in particular, divulges much about the inner workings of television journalism and network politics. The conversations between subject and interviewer pose the most perplexity and intrigue, as their insinuations and silence reveal more than words ever could.

Chris Knipp Young Ecuadorian director Sebastián Cordéro's "Crónicas" begins and mostly sustains itself as good intense fictional coverage of what can happen when corrupt, sensationalistic journalists in Latin America cover a crime wave far from home base and encounter what even for them are obvious moral conflicts when they attempt to exploit it.A Mexican news team out of Miami goes to cover the search for "the Monster of Babahoyo," a pedophile serial killer in the province of Los Rios in a remote part of Ecuador. A violent incident in the street when the team arrives in Babahoyo puts their reporter in contact with somebody who may be a victim of public hysteria, or may be the killer. Crónicas never gives you time to think and screws up its suspenseful situation into a tight knot and then lets go and drops you. Somewhat ironically the result feels very like the first episode of a sensational TV miniseries. The film would have been better if it had stepped back occasionally and let us and the story breathe. A haunting opening sequence of a man alone bathing and washing clothes gives a hint of how that might have happened.The news people are serviceable stereotypes: photogenic lead reporter Manolo Bonilla (John Leguizamo); his sexy female producer Marisa (Leonore Watling), who soon hops into bed with him; his raunchy, substance-abusing cameraman Ivan (José María Yazpik), who has to keep pointing out that they're all supposed to be a team. To lend cred and support to the movie and give them a boss there's Alfred Molina in the background phoning in as Miami anchorman Victor of a fictitious news show, "Una Hora con la Verdad," seen and heard only on tiny TV screens and ever-present cells. Haunting the news team as it prances around and threatening a confrontation that never really materializes is "the only honest cop in Latin America," who happens to be the local police captain and seems to have a lot of time on his hands which he spends tracking the news team and reminding them they're not following the rules. Such reminders are feeble since they're free to fly out whenever they want and have plenty of money to bribe low level cops. Besides that Manolo is asked for his autograph constantly and greeted as a hero for things he now wishes he hadn't done.Director Sebastián Cordéro's best move in "Crónicas" is to try to build a serial killer who's not a spooky Hannibal Lector type super-villain but a human being whom his victims trust and other people like. Cordéro makes real headway at achieving that goal by choosing the pitiful, sweet-faced Damián Alcázar to play Vinicio Cepeda, the "witness" in prison who may be the suspect. Where Vinicio fits in winds up being too clearly telegraphed, but the best scenes are still the ones where Vinicio gives creepy, insinuating testimony to Manolo (away from Ivan's camera) and bargains for his life.What also makes "Crónicas" worth watching, if you can stomach the theme and don't mind the simplifications and lack of modulation in the sequences, are the grittily authentic local backgrounds: messy hotel rooms, grungy prison cells, chaotic streets, shantytown dwellings. These give the in-your-face story a sense of authenticity that isn't entirely undercut by the stereotypes and the pumped-up action. What doesn't quite work is a screenplay that gets everything going full speed from the first reel and never lets up till it just walks away leaving you waiting for the next gripping episode.(Seen at the San Francisco Film Festival, May 3, 2005)