Padre Nuestro (Sange De Mi Sangre)

A Sundance winner from fresh-from-film-school writer/director pair Christopher Zalla and Benjamin Odell, Padre Nuestro tells an unbelievable story while displaying America's immigrant cultural underbelly with poignance and compassion.

Pedro, 17, pays a coyote smuggler to get from Puebla, Mexico, to New York City. Illiterate and alone, he's traveling to meet his estranged father for the first time following his mother's death. Along the way, he befriends petty criminal Juan. The two fantasize about a successful new life in New York. But when Pedro falls asleep in the coyote truck, Juan snatches his letter of introduction and wins the race to Pedro's father's door. The contrast in fortunes continues as Juan's street smarts and mean streak serve him well while Pedro's naivette stands in his way - until the inevitable show-down between the real Pedro and the pretender.

Despite Juan's propensity to lie and cheat, there is something endearing about him too. The film's lack of truly "bad" characters is unusual; there is reason to identify and sympathize with each role. Pedro, the actual son, means well but can't catch a break. Juan, the impostor, finds the father's love he always craved even though he was initially seeking only money. The father still simmers over the betrayal by the woman he loved years earlier in Mexico, and is not eager to revisit that part of his life by accepting his son.

Many members of this cast can be seen in other movies about emotional awakening and cultural consciousness, including Todo Inclusivo and Entre Nos.

Jorge Drexler - Amar La Trama

Several years after re-inventing himself as a jazz-pop fusion artist, Jorge Drexler has changed the paradigm again. Gone are Campodonico and Cascobuerta, the DJ's who created the atmospheric textures on his previous 3 albums. Now he brings in an all-star cast of studio jazz musicians.

That's the first thing to take into account about Amar la Trama. This is not "Disneylandia" or even "Todo Se Transforma." It's a more polished version of his rootsy beginnings, a mature extension of Llueve and Radar.

Of course, Drexler's last album, 12 Segundos de Oscuridad, was quite brooding by his standards owing to his divorce from Ana Laan. Now he's remarried to Leonor Watling (surely one of the world's most beautiful women, I might add) and all is well in Casa Drexler.

The second important aspect of Amar la Trama is that it was recorded live in session. Usually for a project like this, all the musicians would track separately to ensure note-perfect takes. Not so here. It's a full band, in a room, taking cues from the maestro. This lends the album a wonderful warmth and spontaneity. Hey, it worked for the old-time jazz greats. Why not?

If you want one song to convince you, try "I Don't Worry About A Thing." That's right, English!