MOVIES

El Cantante

Through his partnership with bandleader Willie Colon in the 1970s, singer Hector Lavoe is credited with having popularized, if not invented, the hybrid Latin music style called salsa. This biopic says as much without really proving it.

Lavoe (Marc Anthony) arrives in New York from Puerto Rico in the early 1960s as an innocent, and almost immediately becomes part of the local Spanish language music scene. He's befriended by Puchi (Jennifer Lopez), a native New Yorker who educates him about life in the city and also introduces him to alcohol and marijuana.

They marry, and he becomes both a superstar and a hopeless drug addict.

Director Leon Ichaso does the milieu better than the music, showing the different types of Puerto Rican immigrants and how the record business worked in those days. Anthony, who himself is a salsa superstar, provides some wonderful singing, but Ichaso seems more interested in Lavoe's inner demons than in his artistry.

Directed by Leon Ichaso, starring Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez

Starting Saturday at Cine Switch Ginza in Tokyo followed by theaters nationwide

Fat Chance

Like Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock, filmmaker Yuka Sekiguchi places herself in front of the camera in this documentary about dieting.

Her purpose, however, is entirely personal. Overweight almost all her life, Sekiguchi aims to "humiliate" herself into actually losing weight.

It isn't easy. Sekiguchi, who in the movie is about to turn 50, moved from her native Japan to Australia in the 1980s and implies that one of the reasons was that fat people (she repeatedly refers to herself as "fat") are more acceptable Down Under than they are in Japan.

She brought with her a taste for Western junk food instilled in her by her father, who later developed diabetes and died from heart disease.

During her ordeal, she consults experts, including a psychiatrist whose advice seems to have more of an effect on the outcome than do the nutritionists and trainers she hires.

Despite Sekiguchi's self-deprecating demeanor and the overall lighthearted tone, the documentary is sobering in its implications about the physical and psychological toll that obesity takes on people's lives.

Directed by Yuka Sekiguchi

Starting Saturday at Uplink in Tokyo

Miracle at St. Anna

Spike Lee's epic is a belated tribute to the black American soldiers who fought in World War II, but it's also meant to be a lot more. When four survivors of an all-black platoon are caught behind enemy lines in Italy, one of them, a large, superstitious Southerner named Sam Train (Omar Benson Miller), adopts a seemingly homeless Italian boy (Matteo Sciabordi) who thinks Train is an angel.

That's only one plot thread.

Others include the bickering among the other three soldiers, a German officer who has come to realize the stupidity of his superiors, and an Italian village that has split along lines of loyalty to their fascist government.

There's also a bookending story that takes place in 1983 concerning the murder trial of a surviving soldier, as well as frequent references to the racism still institutionalized in America while it was fighting World War II.

Obviously influenced by "Saving Private Ryan" and even older Hollywood war movies, Lee nevertheless tries to put his individual mark on the material, but the results are corny and confusing.

Directed by Spike Lee, starring Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso and Omar Benson Miller

Starting Saturday at theaters nationwide(IHT/Asahi: July 24,2009)