I like Black Panther, but I didn't like this movie.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

'Mala Noche' is a classy movie, mostly filmed in black-and-white, about an Oregon young gay shop worker, Walt, who falls in love with a vagrant and illegal migrant, a young Mexican lad, Johnny. And how does he fall in love! He gets run in by the scheming young man and his other illegal migrant Mexican buddies, but is blinded by his feelings for the lad. They move in with Walt, taking over his apartment. To make matters worse, they don't speak English and nor does he speak Spanish. While he chirps pleasantries to his new (one-sided) love, they make fun of him, the "puto (queer) Grinko". That while they are happily abusing his hospitality. But how would it end for our naive lover?The acting by Tim Streeter as Walt and DougCooeyate, Ray Monge and Sam Downey as the Mexicans is excellent. The cinematography is particularly good and some of the best I have ever seen with any black-and-white film. The contrast between dark and light is stark and enhances the film's art-house qualities.I had a look at the interview made with Van Sant (20 years after completion of the film) that accompanies the DVD, and it is quite illuminating. Van Sand made this movie, his first serious attempt at film-making, on a meagre $20,000 budget. He could not afford the much more expensive colour film, and had to settle for black-and-white. He could not afford the large numbers of expensive lights needed and had to settle with only one light for his many indoor shots. That explains the stark contrast between dark and light, with little gray in-between. Although not intentional, it, in my view, made the photography even better. I score this impressive indie film an excellent 8/10.

Some time ago, like two years ago to be more or less exact, I was into the films of director Gus Van Sant. I got to see a few of his, not counting his latest film Milk that was released just last year, 12 feature films. I got to see Drugstore Cowboy, Finding Forrester, Elephant (my favourite of him so far), Last Days and Paranoid Park. As I often remark in my IMDb comments, I'm one of the fans of the truly amazing Criterion Collection and two Van Sant films are part of the collection, two of his first ones: Mala Noche (his very first one, released in 1985) and My Own Private Idaho (released back in 1991, two years after the release of Drugstore Cowboy). It was about time to finally check out the Criterion Van Sant titles and while not on the Criterion DVD today I saw Mala Noche (and I will renting as soon as I can the Criterion DVD of My Own Private Idaho, which is one of the most acclaimed films of Van Sant. And by the way, if you go to the website of Criterion you will find the lists of favourite Criterion titles of people like Richard Linklater, John Lurie,. "Idaho"is part of the list of Steve Buscemi, James Franco, so is more acclaim, more for me to finally check out that 1991 film).

Mr. Van Sant, I just watched your film "Mala Noche" and I found it really sad and appalling that such a spectacular piece of art was so blatantly racist and bigoted. I was at first enthralled by the dark images and experimental camera work, style, and transitions. I loved the way you played with space on the screen- forcing the viewers to search for the flickers of light that would break up the pitch black- searching for information, letting oneself be guided by the narration to make sense of the powerful images. I liked how the camera, like the viewer, would slowly pan and search the space for meaning, finally resting on a subject and slowly revealing meaning. However, no matter how great a piece of art, it could never justify racism and bigoted statements. I was deeply offended how the character of your film would spit out these horrible statements like 'The Mexicans were stupid, that's why they were there on the corner looking for work,' just to mention one example. I was really upset not just by the bigoted statements of the main character, but also how the characters were displayed as buffoons; constantly making fools of themselves; with no real character depth. All characters of color in your film were portrayed as sub-humans who's purpose in life was merely as distractions to Walt, the intellectual and the only responsible, reasonable and cultured person in the film. To justify the racism of film by saying that your character Walt is the racist and you were just trying to portray the reality of the time period in Organ is no excuse. It was no excuse for skin heads and the Nazi film makers in the 40's and it is no excuse today. The only way a film maker could legitimately portray the reality of racism in a film is to either provide feedback through other voices or through actions and behavior of other characters in the film to negate the racist statements and show the reality that the characters views are just racist views of the character and not statements made by the film. You do non of that in Male Noche, and the actions and behaviors of the characters of color only prove the racist statements of Walt as truth. I watched your interviews and searched online to find interviews where you would at least acknowledge or apologize for overt racism of the film, but I was further disappointed when I found nothing. Your film Mala Noche, in my book, will be remembered in film history as the first bigoted and racist gay film, and not as a true piece of art.

OK, granted: The movie was filmed in the early or mid 80's I think, and you might even claim that the latino talent pool was not as big back then as it is now. But C"MON! The guys who were cast as the young Mexican homeless boys were HORRIBLE! Spanish is my first language and I could tell that the actors who portrayed JOhny and Robert were not fluent at all in Spanish which for this film it is a MAJOR point since they re supposed not to speak English. I guess that explains the reason why when Johny had dialogue, the camera was not on him, and the times when he spoke and the camera was on him there was no sync. I am 100 percent sure that they used someone else's voice ( a bad actor's at that) to do the voice over for Johny. For someone who speaks Spanish it was PAINFUL to listen to the monotone, emotion-deprived delivery of the lines. I don't know under what circumstances these two horrible actors were cast but I am sure the director did not do a thorough audition process to get the best actors. The actor who played Robert was better at ATTEMPTING to sound better in Spanish. I still don't know if he was fluent in Spanish, which it sounds like he was. And if he was then he was just saying the grammatically incorrect lines given to him by the director without complaining about not being correct. One of the examples is when he is being harassed by the white guy. Roberto says:" Para. No me molesto". Translated that means: " Stop. It doesn't bother me".or " Stop. I don't get bothered". Im sure the intention of the writer was: " Stop. Don't bother me" which should've been: "Para. No me molestes". The only character that spoke good Spanish was the guy who was telling the story of how they crossed the border. And I could bet the reason that being is because probably he really went thru that and he was just being interviewed ( he did not NEED to act)I doubt that was scripted. That part when he's talking, it totally threw me out of the movie, because it had a documentary feel to it and then to go back into the bad acting was like, disconnected. Among other things,it was torture when they had the Spanish speakers dialogue on the background. They kept on repeating the same dialogue over and over and over again! same lines over and over! I guess it would work for non-Spanish speakers, because they just hear a foreign language and they have no idea whats being said. But when you understand the language you get so frustrated that you wanna throw a shoe at the TV and make it shut up. I really like Gus Van Sant's directing but I have no idea, and im very curious to know what pressed or forced Mr Gus Van Sant to cast these horrible actors. Was it pressure from the producers, or did he honestly think these guys were the BEST?