Scooby-Doo! and the Monster of Mexico (2003)

This year’s Best Picture front-runner, La Bola Negra (also known as The Black Ball in English), is overwhelming.  It is in Spanish, takes place in Spain, and was a co-production of Spain and France.  It is two-and-a-half hours long, and tells three interconnected stories.  Whereas it was popular in the silent age to make films that were a collage of thematically related stories, such as Fritz Lang’s Destiny, the stories of La Bola Negra are actually connected in terms of their content. 

These are not the only distinguishing characteristics of La Bola Negra.  Each of the main characters of the three stories is a young gay man, and that is not by coincidence.  This movie, in part, is intending to contrast the way that gay experiences tended to play out in three radically different settings, while weaving in numerous other social issues and illustrating how they are all connected (just like these stories).