800 Bullets (5 Stars)

Happy New Year to all my readers. I hope you enjoyed my blog last year, and I hope that I can recommend some good films to you this year that you might otherwise have missed. To start the new year I've designated January as my "Five Star Month". This month I shall only be reviewing my favorite films, films that I can give an unconditional five star rating. It won't be anything as crass as a top 20 countdown. The films won't be in any particular order. They'll just be my favorites.

I'm starting the month off with a dazzling film that has somehow slipped below the radar. It's the best Spanish film ever made, and it deserves to be ranked among the best films of all time. I'm not sure what the problem is, why it hasn't achieved the fame it deserves. It's not the language itself, other non-English films have achieved international fame. Maybe the problem is that the plot sounds so dull when it's described, so people don't give it a chance. I've talked enthusiastically to friends, only to get the reply "It doesn't sound like my sort of film". No words can do justice to the wild extragaganza that develops out of seemingly mundane circumstances.

Carlos is a 12-year-old boy who lives in Madrid with his widowed mother. He knows that his father died when he was young, but she refuses to talk about him. By chance he discovers that his father and grandfather used to be stunt men in spaghetti westerns. He runs away from home to find his grandfather, and discovers a western town called Texas Hollywood where wild west shows are enacted twice a day for paying visitors.

Sounds boring? You couldn't be more wrong. Carlos's arrival in the town sets off a chain of events that make national and international news. Although the film has comic elements, necessitated by the sheer absurdity of the situation, to call the film a comedy would be to do it injustice. It's a film about films, the change from the old world of cinema to the new. It's a film about changes in society. It's a film about family alienation. But most of all it's a film about a young boy trying to discover his roots.

Click here to view the trailer.