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.