So What's Up with All the Old Movies, Tonio?

And why are you always asking yourself all these questions on your blog?

Okay, seriously, I am quite aware of the irony of being a young -- okay, not-so-young -- Hispanic half and half who spends so much time writing about and praising movies that were made at least a decade or more before I was born. And yet every time I try to write about more recent films, I have difficulty finding the same enthusiasm that comes when I write about some of my favorite old movies.

Perhaps it's because I'm burnt out on recent movies and no longer find them capable of surprising me in the manner I have become accustomed to. Perhaps it's because I'm genuinely interested in old movies and welcome the chance to give some of my favorites the same publicity that the newest releases get. Perhaps it's because certain old movies remind me of the type of old movies I used to watch with my late father.

I don't kid myself that the filmmakers of yesteryear were more politically correct than today's filmmakers. After all, it was a time when Jim Crow was the law in many states and even a liberal northern city like Detroit was not above passing a law in my paternal grandmother's youth restricting Mexicans from sitting outside the balcony at a local theatre. However, I'm not convinced that today's filmmakers are all that liberal, either -- especially when it comes to people like me -- and I weary of the endless combinations of bad storytelling and stereotypes that pass for filmmaking today.

Perhaps the last straw came a few years ago when I had bought a ticket to see a much-praised movie called Sideways, only to realize that the movie wasn't all that entertaining and, in fact, quite dull. Halfway through the movie, a female character starts giving a speech about her wine and how it makes her think of where it came from and all the people who worked on it. It's a very inspirational speech -- but unfortunately, it's also an unwelcome reminder that movies like that were never going to concentrate on the type of people the woman was talking about, especially the migrant workers.

And when -- like me -- you're the grandson of a migrant worker and you're watching a highly praised movie that seems to have no problem dismissing migrant workers except when they're needed to provide material for the so-called "important" people -- who, surprise, surprise, are never Hispanic -- and no critic who reviews it seems to have a problem with that, you start to realize how unlikely it is that so-called "liberal" Hollywood is ever going to make movies about people like your grandfather -- well, there was La Bamba but nobody seems in a hurry to imitate that flick -- and it's hard to avoid losing all faith in the modern movie business.

Not going to bother with people like me? Then fine. Perhaps I'll find more entertainment among movies that don't even pretend to depict the modern world. Most of the modern movies I see get life all wrong anyway.

And yes, I realize movies are fiction and they're not supposed to be 100% percent accurate at depicting reality. But it would be nice if so many of them didn't automatically exclude people like me and my late grandfather. And even nicer if so many people didn't act as if they had no problem with such exclusion.

I don't expect all movies to be about people like me but it would be nice if movies that were weren't as rare as unicorns.