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<FONT FACE="Verdana"><B>This week at the Kenworthy-<BR>
</B><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#800000"><H2>Maria Full of Grace (R)<BR>
</H2></FONT><B>Friday, December 3<BR>
7:00 PM<BR>
Saturday & Sunday, December 4 & 5<BR>
4:30 & 7:00 PM<BR>
</B>Tickets: $5 adults<BR>
KFS passes accepted for Sunday movies<BR>
<B>(See Review below)<BR>
</B><BR>
<B>* * *<BR>
Next week at the Kenworthy-<BR>
<BR>
Prichard Art Gallery presents<BR>
a FREE lecture with<BR>
Pok Chi Lau<BR>
</B>Thursday, December 9<BR>
7:30 PM<BR>
<BR>
<B>It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)<BR>
</B>Friday, December 10<BR>
7:00 PM<BR>
Saturday & Sunday, December 11 & 12<BR>
4:15 & 7:00 PM<BR>
$5/adults $2/child 12 or younger<BR>
<BR>
<B>* * *<BR>
Also in December at the Kenworthy-<BR>
</B><BR>
</FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma"><B>I Heart Huckabees (R)<BR>
</B>Dec 17 at 7:00 PM<BR>
Dec 18 – 19 at 4:30 & 7:00 PM<BR>
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<B>Regular Movie prices</B>: $5 adults, $2 children 12 and younger. <BR>
KFS passes accepted for Sunday movies<BR>
<BR>
508 S. Main Street, Moscow, Idaho<BR>
For more information, call 208-882-4127.<BR>
<B>* * *<BR>
This week’s review-<BR>
</B><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#800000"><H2>MARIA FULL OF GRACE<BR>
</H2></FONT><BR>
Written and Directed by Joshua Marston<BR>
Rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian) for obscenity, violence, and scenes of drug use<BR>
Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes<BR>
<B><U>In Spanish, with English subtitles<BR>
</U></B><BR>
<B><I><U>As reviewed by Stephen Holden writing for the New York Times<BR>
</U></I></B><BR>
It's painfully understandable that the 17-year-old title character of would risk her freedom and even her life to be a drug mule. This gripping Colombian film, written and directed by Joshua Marston, follows the desperate plunge of Maria Alvarez (Catalina Sandino Moreno) from a dead-end job as an assembly-line worker in a Colombian flower factory into the drug-smuggling underworld.<BR>
<BR>
This treacherous territory, where young women, seduced by suave, sweet-talking recruiters, can earn large sums by smuggling heroin into the United States, is Maria's last resort when she finds herself unemployed and pregnant. Her ruthless new bosses make her former taskmasters look like angels.<BR>
<BR>
Before the story zeroes in on the harrowing details of drug running and its dangers, it depicts Maria's hopelessly circumscribed life in the rural village where she lives with her mother, grandmother and sister. She is expected to turn over to the family the minuscule salary she earns dethorning roses in a sweatshop atmosphere.<BR>
<BR>
Hounded by her boss to be more productive, she impulsively quits. Even when her family panics, she refuses to grovel to get her job back. She also becomes pregnant by her deadbeat boyfriend, Juan (Wilson Guerrero), who reluctantly offers to marry her. Because she doesn't love him, she turns down the proposal.<BR>
<BR>
The movie portrays Maria's story as a variation of the predicament that draws thousands of young Colombian women into the drug trade. Courted by Franklin (Jhon Alex Toro), a charming, motorcycle-riding recruiter she meets in a club, she is introduced to his ominously soothing boss, Javier (Jaime Osorio Gómez), who lays out the rules and invites her to try out for the role of illicit courier.<BR>
<BR>
If Maria's story is a template for countless others like it, what keeps your heart in your throat during the movie is Maria herself. In a performance that feels lived in rather than acted, Ms. Moreno's Maria is an attractive, smart, spirited young woman who faces the challenge of fending for herself with a fierce determination and an ingenuity that compromises but never undermines her essential decency and morality.<BR>
<BR>
"Maria Full of Grace" sustains a documentary authenticity that is as astonishing as it is offhand. Even when you're on the edge of your seat, it never sacrifices a calm, clear-sighted humanity for the sake of melodrama or cheap moralizing. Even the airport interrogators aren't monsters, just everyday officials efficiently carrying out their duties.<BR>
<BR>
Maria's desperate decision may be reprehensible on one level. But on another, deeper level, it is an act of courageous self-assertion. You applaud every step of her scary lunge toward personal liberation.<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<B><I><U>As reviewed by Steve Persall writing for the St. Petersburg (FL) Times<BR>
</U></I></B><BR>
The late film critic Gene Siskel often complained that too few movies take time to explore the central characters' jobs. He believed that understanding the occupation a person chooses, and how well or poorly he does it, is vital to understanding that person. On that standard, Siskel would have greatly admired Joshua Marston's film, Maria, Full of Grace.<BR>
<BR>
Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno) is 17, a citizen of Colombia, supporting her family by bundling roses for export. Her work would be considered a sweat shop tragedy except that it's so common in her society. Each day she has quotas that won't be met if she rests at all. A heartless boss looks over her shoulder, urging her beyond personal problems that might distract her. The pay is meager compared to the pain.<BR>
<BR>
At the center of this tableau is Moreno, a newcomer discovered through auditions. Despite her inexperience, this is one of the better performances of 2004, with its steadily measured arc of character. Maria is initially naive, then steeled by determination to live her own life, then fearful of what may happen if she does. But she's always driven by tragic necessity, a potent hero who we're never certain will come out ahead. <BR>
<BR>
Marston's chief strength, however, is his attention to details that American audiences - and filmmakers, for that matter - rarely care about. He takes time - too much on occasion - to describe the smuggling technique visually. The third act is a bit overloaded with new characters, crises and resolutions, but we're so hooked on Maria's problems that we don't mind much.<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<B><I><U>As reviewed by Mark Holcomb writing for The Village Voice<BR>
</U></I></B><BR>
Like a super-concentrated plot thread from <I>Traffic</I>, only without parallel story lines for pressure-relieving diversion, Joshua Marston's <I>Maria Full of Grace</I> sheds modest but intense light on the shadowy underbelly of globalization in the narcotics trade. Yet despite a reliance on the kind of "ripped from today's headlines" Marston brings a potentially sensational subject—Latin American "mules" who sneak opiates into the U.S. in their digestive tracts—down to street level without resorting to gaga earnestness or cynical attempts at oversimplifying the inherent complexities. It's a remarkably assured and humane feature debut. <BR>
<BR>
The film's success owes much to the New York–based Marston's deft weaving of sociology, anthropology, and journalism; his curiosity and intelligence are obvious in every frame of the film, yet they're tempered by a focus and suspicion of sentimentality that are unusual for a tyro. This also stops him short of being just another neorealist wannabe, and keeps Maria from devolving into an <I>El Norte</I>–style white-liberal-guilt tongue-clucker. <BR>
<BR>
But the film really belongs to Moreno, whose untutored immediacy, impeccable restraint, and watchful reticence (she truly smiles only once, and it's like seeing a rare flower bloom) underscore Maria's inner turmoil without making the character into a mawkishly soulful or smirkily postmodern madonna. It's to Marston's credit that he's artist enough to get out of Moreno's way and let her carry his movie. <BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<I>Film reviews researched and edited by Peter A. Haggart<BR>
</I>* * *<BR>
<BR>
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</B></FONT>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<BR>
PAMELA PALMER, <B>Volunteer<BR>
</B>Mailto:ppalmer@moscow.com<BR>
Film and Events Committee <BR>
Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre<BR>
<BR>
http://www.kenworthy.org<BR>
To speak with a KPAC staff member, <BR>
call (208) 882-4127<BR>
Mailto:kpac@moscow.com<BR>
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