Children of Heaven

Children of Heaven takes place in Iran and involves a hard working poor family who live a honest, humble, and modest lifestyle. The Mandegar family has a hard time making ends meet. They’re a few months late on their rent payment, and even their groceries need to be put on a tab to pay later. Ali the young boy in the film, goes to the store to grab groceries. When he puts his sisters shoes down, they get picked up and they are gone for good. Ali goes home and tells his sister Zahara the bad news and tells her that they can share his shoes until he can get her another pair. Zahra soon discovers her lost shoes are worn by Roya, a student at her school. After school, Zahra brings Ali to Roya's house where they witness Roya's father is blind and that their family has the same economic hardship as they do. Ali, being the unselfish brother gives away anything he has to his sister Zahra. He talks to her with a great deal of respect, kindness and love. He is affectionate towards his sister and tries to make her as happy as possible. Ali refuses repeated invitations from the neighborhood boys to join them in a soccer match; he tells them his mother is ill. Ali is a hard working student and earns top grades in the class. Zahra is a responsible, hard working daughter and sister. She worries that she will be late to give the sneakers to Ali and runs to meet him for the exchange. Sometimes it doesn't work out and Ali is consistently late to school, where one of the teachers tells him he will send him home and eventually does before another teacher saves him. Amir, the father and the man that makes all the money of the Mandegar family, tries to seek a more reliable, higher-paying job. He currently serves tea at male gatherings, but the small income doesn't pay off the debt and bills. Ali goes along with his father to find a job at an upper class town. Amir dreams of a better life after finishing a yard job. He talks about items to purchase for his family. Ali only asks his father to purchase new shoes for his sister. On the way home, the brake to their bike breaks and getting Zahara a new pair of shoes is out of the question. Theres sign ups at school for a race where the third place winner get a new pair of shoes, Ali doesn't see it in time and misses the deadline. After begging and crying to his teacher he is aloud in the contest and finishes in first place. I didn't enjoy this movie as much as others because it has a small plot and is a very slow boring movie. It is definetly a quality family movie that i think a lot of families would enjoy. The movies is a heart warming meditation about real goodness in humanity—helping balance the negative prejudices that most Americans project towards Iranians.

Central Station

The 1998 film, Central Station is about Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) a cynical and selfish former schoolteacher who earns a living writing letters for the illiterate in Rio de Janeiro's busy railroad station. Viewing most of her clients as trash, she never even mails their letters. Nine-year-old Josue (Vinicius de Oliveira) comes to the station with his mother, who has Dora write a letter to his father in a faraway town. Then his mother is struck and killed by a bus. With nowhere to go, Josue sleeps in the station. Dora reluctantly takes him to her small apartment where he finds the letter with his father's address. But the next day, she sells him to some people who claim to be in the adoption business. She buys a new television with the money she recieved by selling Josue. Her friend Irene is horrified at her selfishness. The boy, she warns, is in real danger of being killed for his organ parts. Dora decides to rescue him and return him to his father. The two get on a bus and flee the city. Central Station depicts the slow opening of Dora's heart as she and Josue travel across Brazil. After she tries to abandon him once, and he loses all the money she gave him, they are picked up by a friendly truck driver. Dora becomes attracted to the man from her loneliness, but he rushes off once he realizes she is interested in him physically. The miraculous growing of Dora's heart occurs when they end up in the middle of a rural religious pilgrimage. Once again, the old woman becomes a letter writer, but now she approaches it differently. This movie is so powerful as it shows how one little boy could change everything that Dora believes in. Being a a drunk like the kids father, she knows that the chances he will come back are slim to none. She develops a bond with the boy that makes you believe she could mother him. Once they meet up with the boys brothers she realizes that the best thing for him is to stay with his brothers. She leaves the boy with a note and a little picture thing, the note saying whenever you need me just look through the picture view finder. Once the boy reads the letter he runs forever symbolizing him chasing after her. When he realizes that she's gone he stops and looks through the view finder and smiles. The movie is not that long so for a slow story it is the perfect amount of time. I personally loved the movie, kept me wondering if they will ever see the boys father, and if at the end Josue would go live with Dora. Both of those things didn't happen so it made for an interesting ending.

Totsi

Totsi is a South African film by Gavin Hood which is an adaption of the book "Totsi" written by Athol Fugard. The film won the 2005 academy award for Best Foreign Language Film. The movie is about David who goes by the name Totsi. He is the leader of a gang which includes his friends Butcher, Aap, and Boston. After committing a murder, Totsi and Boston get into a fight which leaves Boston badly injured. After that Totsi runs away, when he realizes how far he has run he decides to hijack a car driven by Pumla. When he gets into the car he realizes that there is a baby in the back, so he decides to strip the car and take the baby. This is the first sign we see from Totsi that he does have a caring heart because he doesn't leave the baby to die. Pumla survives the attack and while being treated at the hospital she gives a police description of Totsi.

Realizing that he has no idea how to take care of a baby, he sneaks up on Miriam who is a single mother who he holds up at gunpoint and brings her back to her place where he forces her to breast feed the baby. When he visits her a second time she talks him into letting her take care of the child and he can visit whenever he wants. Totsi decides to take care of the injured Boston. Boston is called Teacher Boy by his friends because they believe he took the teacher's test. Boston explains to his friends that he never took such a thing. The gang decides to raise some money so that Boston can take the test, meaning they will have to commit another robbery. They go to Pumla's house, following her husband John as he leaves the hospital. They tie him up and raid the house. When John activates the alarm, Butcher attempts to kill John but Totsi kills Butcher and the rest of the gang heads out before the alarm company arrives. When Totsi goes back to Miriam's house she tells him she knows where he got the baby and begs him to return it. When Totsi goes to return the baby, the officer assigned to the house calls for backup and Totsi is arrested as the movie ends. I liked this movie alot because it begins as a Gangster film but it develops into a coming to age film where you see the heart of Totsi grow because of the smallest thing, a baby. Having all the trouble he had as a kid with his mom being extremely sick and his dad being a drunk who kills Totsi's dog right in front of him; he develops this new state of mind that i believe ultimately saves his life. A dark but uplifting movie that i would watch again and again.

Amores Perros

Amores Perros, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu in my opinion is an absolute masterpiece whose only weakness is the length of the movie. The movie has three different story lines that intertwine together as the movie goes along. One of the story's is about a young mother who is in a abusive relationship with a thug and a odd relationship with her brother-in-law. The second story focuses on a businessman Daniel who leaves his wife and daughters for a beautiful model named Valeria. The third story focuses on a bum who obsesses about his lost daughter Maru, while taken part of his criminal trade. In the first story "Octavio and Susana" the young mother is in an abusive relationship with Octavio's brother. Octavio becomes upsessed with Susana and wants her to move away with him. To get money to do this he enters his dog Cofi into dogfighting where he wins loads of loads of money. They save it all up but Susana and the brother in law take it all and move away. Octavio than risks the rest of his money on a fight but its a set up as the other dogs owner shoots the dog and Octavio than kills the owner. The owners friends chase after him and that causes a crash with the model Valeria, which intertwines their two stories. In "Daniel and Valeria, Daniel has been in a quiet relationship with Valeria and he decides to leave his wife and kids to live with her. That's when things go all wrong and she gets into the accident which leaves her in bad condition. As they lose their dog in the new house, the relationship grows very badly and Valeria ends up having to get her leg amputated. Daniel finally finds the dog who has been badly hurt from getting picked on by hundreds of rats. In the third story "El Chivo and Maru" we see El Chivo is a bum who just lives with all his dogs and when he is paid to kill someone he gets the job done, but he is also very bothered by his lost relationship with his daughter Maru. He constantly follows her everywhere. The day of the crash he is right at the scene and takes the dog Cofi with him to take care of him. He nurses the dog back to full health but than the dog kills all of Chivo's dogs which helps him realize what he has been doing his whole life. When he is paid by one brother to kill their brother he just takes his the money and lets the two figure their problems out. With the money he places it with a message under his daughter's pillow. I was very entertained by this movie i thought it was a very good script that i followed from start to end. I was also very impressed with the acting of Gael Garcia Bernal who plays Octavio. By far this was one of my favorite foreign films that i ever seen!

Eat Drink Man Woman

Eat Drink Man Woman, is a wonderful tale that uses an old man's culinary artist to examine his life and his relationship with his three daughters. A widower, Chu through out the movie seems like he is questioning the meaning of life. He begins to show less pleasure for his love of cooking and even worse seems as if he is loosing his sense of taste. His daughter, all three, still live at home and do nothing at all to improve their fathers spirits. The oldest, Jia Jen is a high school teacher whose heart was broken nine years ago by her college boyfriend and seems to show signs of becoming an old maid. The middle oldest, Jia Chien, is a executive at a major airlines and wants to do whatever it takes to move out of her house. The youngest, Jia Ning, is so caught up in her boy craziness that she has no clue of anything else going on. Evan though they all live in the same house, their paths only cross once a week when they have a family dinner on sundays. Nothing ever goes right though because the girls make faces after every dish their father brings out and than they say their "little announcements." The lives of all three daughters is crazy, Jia Jen has developed a secret crush on a fellow teacher, Jia Chien learns of a promotion that will send her to America, and Jia Ning has picked up her friends discarded boyfriend. As the relationships develop there seems to be a surprise at every corner. Jia Jen and Jia Ning end up getting pregnant and move out the house, while Chu decides to sell the house. Jia Chien decides not to take the promotion and becomes the new owner of the house, and as things all seem to get better Chu finally gets his sense of taste back. This movie is so unique because its all about relationships. We have the relationship through family, the relationships of the daughters and their men, and we have Chu's relationship with food. At the end it seems as if everything comes together for nice satisfying ending. The movies strong part has to come from director Ang Lee who just put the movie together perfectly avoiding no gaps of confusion at all. Known mostly for his directing of "Brokeback Mountain" and "Hulk" this oscar winning director and writer shows us what it takes to piece a script like this together. From the appetizer to desert this movie is very delicious!

Not One Less

Not One Less, is a beautiful piece of work that includes non-actors who play there part to perfection. When the schools regular teacher Gao has to leave the school for a month to be at the side of his ailing mother, the village mayor selects very young Wei Minzhi to teach the class for a salary of 50 yuan. If she is able to keep all twenty-eight students in school she will earn an extra 12 yuan. She is so overwhelmed by the assignment that she begins by letting the kids do whatever they want, while she writes the notes on the board and guards the door till the end. Through this time she develops a problem with a student in the school, Zhang Huike who is very disruptive and breaks the schools precious chalk. When he decides to drop out of school to try and make money in the city for his family is when Wei Minzhi finally transforms into a teacher. She decides to go into the city to look for him and uses real life problem solving to teach the students at the school. After trying few ways to get money, Wei finds herself in the city relentlessly looking for Zhang. With no knowledge of city life she has to depend on strangers, often asking them questions. She tries to get into a TV studio, where the receptionist stubbornly doesn't allow her to get in because she has no form of identification. She than resorts to hanging outside by the studio asking strangers relentlessly if they were the studio manager. The movie seems so real when during a Tv interview she freezes up in front of the camera, giving the movie a real sentimental value. This movie is real straight up with every thing depicting poverty's effect on rural China. The movie primarily focuses on the heroine who is determined to carry out her adult duties. Yimou Zhang is the director of this movie, he is a notorious great chinese director who has directed such great chinese films such as, "Hero" and "The House Of Flying Daggers." A very slow movie with such a great story deserves every accolade it receives, not one less.

Le Femme Nikita

Le Femme Nikita-the story of a young woman who is turned from a cop killer in the streets to a government assassin. This thriller stars Anna Parillaud as Nikita and Jean-Hugues Anglade as Marco. The movie is directed by Luc Besson who is known for writing and directing the movie "The Fifth Element." Over the years he has been nominated for and won plenty of awards for the films he both writes and directs. He was also involved in the show "Nikita" that was a spin off of his movie "Le Famme Nikita. In the opening scenes you can see that Nikita is a drug addict who is hanging out with the wrong crowd. Her group decides to hold up a drug store, when cornered by the police, she takes advantage of the cops lapse and shoots him point blank in the face. She has no chance of escape because she's a non social, strung out girl who doesn't care if she kills or dies. She is sentence to death in court, but a strange thing occurs as her death is faked and she awakens in a government building. She is given a whole new life style, and her mentor tries to help her adapt to it, but she is filled with so much anger that she would rather hit him than listen to what he has to say. She even shows a little of affection for him, when she learn to trust the man that sparred her life, but she is than disappointed. After three years it is time for her graduate and rejoin society. This is where she meets a grocery check-out clerk who is very nice and she falls in love with him. From there on out the movie concludes with her carrying out her deadly assignments while she doesn't cheat her emotions of love. Parillaud is a very good in this role, from the beginning to the end you see her transform from someone who is so strung out she don't know how to act like a woman, to a girl who has figured it all out. That is one of the movies strongest points, seeing this woman transform throughout the movie. Le Femme Nikita is a surprisingly touching thriller which keep you on edge till the end, as the viewers watch this woman learn love and sweetness but has to deal with a job that will ultimately make her pay the price for her freedom.