... a fine example of how the new technologies enable filmmakers to tell stories hard to capture before.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 26, 2007

There's nothing extraordinary about mariachi singer Carmelo Muiz Snchez, and nothing extraordinary about Mark Becker's documentary profile Romntico. At times, that seems to be the point.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Jan 19, 2007

Romntico would be nothing if it were just a hard-luck story. The movie is something else: the revelation of a way of life, of a whole area of human experience going on right under our noses -- or standing over our restaurant tables.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 19, 2007

Romntico is a quiet, admirable slice-of-life documentary, giving us insight into the human condition without claiming universal knowledge of larger questions involving immigration or family responsibility.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 19, 2007

The movie's interests tend more toward the personal than the political. Cultural differences notwithstanding, Snchez is the archetype of the overachieving dad, sacrificing his present to provide for his family's future.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 11, 2007

If this terrific documentary doesn't adjust your idea of what it means to have a hard life and a good attitude, you haven't been paying attention.

Full Review | Jan 11, 2007

Snchez's songs might be interrupting your supper. But he is singing urgently for his.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 5, 2007

No one would pick Carmelo Muiz Sanchez, itinerant mariachi singer and champion of his own lost cause, as a romantic movie hero. Yet, in Mark Becker's beautiful, intimate Romntico he is exactly that.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 3, 2006

It will be a long time before you forget the deep pain etched into the weary face of Carmelo Muiz, the mariachi singer at the center of Mark Becker's immensely moving documentary.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 3, 2006

Carmelo, the central figure, returns home when his mother's health begins to decline, and his love of family, something of an abstraction in the first part, leaves him deeply divided.

| Nov 1, 2006

Romantico is muy bueno.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 1, 2006

This modest, unassuming documentary about an illegal Mexican immigrant living in San Francisco is a case study of a life defined by poverty.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 1, 2006

Following a hardworking, goodhearted man as life beats the hell out of him, this documentary is moving almost to the point of exploitation.

| Oct 31, 2006

Mark Becker's Romntico may be the documentary of the year.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 23, 2006

Unjustly overlooked at Sundance by both auds and jurors, Mark Becker's Romantico is a beautifully lensed -- on actual film -- docu about illegal Mexican immigrants.

Full Review | Mar 4, 2006