In most biopics, the truth is often tangled, even fabricated. While I know many people already look at them as reality stretched to a breaking point, I tend to give the benefit of the massive doubt with cultural biopics I’m more entertained by.

And, like the snack food they epitomize, Flamin’ Hot is a real maltodextrin of a film, with the classic Cheetos taste reimagined for a new hungry audience. In other words: Latinos like movies based on our own snacks. (Hey, Bimbo: Your screenplay about the raisin pound cake is in turnaround!)

Born and brought up in a Southern California labor camp, Richard Montañez was a small-time businessman as a kid, charging students a quarter for a bean burrito. Of course, once he had the money to pay for candy bars, a cop said he was a thief, charging him with robbery. Fuckin’ cops, man!

As times change, Richard (now played by Jesse Garcia) and his girlfriend are petty criminals in the barrio. But with a kid on the way, they put that stuff behind them and look for work while white people call them “wetback” multiple times. Richard finds a job at Frito-Lay. With his only qualifications being a Ph.D. — “poor, hungry and determined” — he starts at the bottom: janitor.

While still pushing a broom (despite a stalling economy, thanks to Reagan) he learns all about the chip factory from “engineer maintenance leader” Clarence C. Baker (Dennis Haysbert), which leads him to develop Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and the whole Flamin’ line of products.

With actress Eve Longoria’s capable direction, Garcia is very affable as Montañez, playing a respectable former cholo who makes it to the top. I was also taken back by Annie Gonzalez as Richard’s supportive wife and, unsurprisingly, Emilio Rivera as his stern dad. I hope I never get on this cabron’s bad side!

Snack foods are forever dominant with Latin flavors. Even better, there really is a great story here, even though opinions differ regarding the truth of Montañez’s story; to be fair, I enjoyed the cinematic story anyway. Besides, for every businessman getting a biographical film — from Steve Jobs to Ray Kroc — what’s wrong with a movie based on the snack-work of Montañez? Growing up, not everyone could have a computer, but they always had a big bag of them in their Cheeto-dusted hands!

On it surface, much like the food it fully endorses, Flamin’ Hot looks like a good movie to snack on. But when you get to the meat disodium inosinate/disodium guanylate of the matter, it’s a five-star multicourse meal for many viewers, served Flamin’. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

For good reason, The Fisher King is one of the most heralded works of filmmaker Terry Gilliam, but one I had never watched before. Originally, I thought it was about some modern-day knights and the late Robin Williams cast as a chief Central Park bum. To be fair, I did own a previously viewed copy of it on VHS. Does that count?

I had embarked on a long-forgotten quest to find the time to watch it, which I finally did with the Criterion Collection edition last week. I realized the movie was so much more than another Gilliam visual feast for the mind, because of it has a soiled, ramshackle heart.

Jack (Jeff Bridges) is a stereotypical ’90s shock jock, putting callers through the metaphorical meat grinder. This all goes bad for him when a crazed fan shoots up a party of full of people (back when things like that weren’t everyday occurrences). Three years later, he’s a clerk at a rundown video shop. When a young boy gives him a Pinocchio puppet, it sends Jack into suicide mode. And when a duo of New York toughs try to immolate him, thank God for Parry (Williams) and his homeless cadre rush out of the storm to slay this murderous party.

From there, Parry charges Jack to find the Holy Grail, with comedy, drama and, most of all, the rusted heart. The film does this without being too cloying and superficial — something much of Williams’ work came to be in the late ’90s and early 2000s.

Sure, the artistic angles, the grating noise and the sheer claustrophobia are all there, but Williams’ performance stands out most as remarkable. Perry acts like a man out of time — the “janitor of God,” he puts it — with this quest helping to work out demons of his own. We learn the source of his mental anguish when all goes south.

Gilliam is masterful at nightmarish scenarios. Here, one with a bold-but-dirty face gets a happy ending, but it’s one this movie truly deserves. Also, out-of-the-norm actors like Amanda Plummer, Tom Waits and Michael Jeter are excellent in their supporting roles.

Fear of the unknown is one of Gilliam’s mainstays, but The Fisher King is about embracing it. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.