Movie rundown, part I.

Hello. Hola. Bonjour. Konnichiwa. Etc...

Lately I've been watching movies as if on a marathon. See a couple or so every week instead of other things, such as: do homework, clean up the house a bit, go to school, make something worthwhile out of myself, etc. Osea, la hueva total.

Tons, here goes a brief list of some of the things I've seen these past couple of weeks. May have some spoilers, but whatever.

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Hotel Rwanda-

The plot revolves around a luxury hotel in Rwanda, which served as a sort of temporal sanctuary during the mid-90's genocide of the Tutsi people and it's manager's heroic struggle to see all refugees -and his family- to safety.

The movie is well done. Nice and inspirational. Gives the general idea of mass-murder horror without being overly graphic, even giving a "happy end". I specially liked that whole "Hello sir. We're about to be murdered by a bunch of trigger-happy soldiers and machete-wielding rioters, but I just called to thank you for all you've done for me and my family" speech.

However, aside from it's take on such a difficult subject as genocide, it's not a film one can't miss. I also get the feel that the main character is seen on too keen a light. Kind of like Schindler, who later turned out not to be as heroic as portrayed in Shindler's list.

Hard Candy-

A cute and smart fourteen year old girl meets with a thirty something year old photographer she met on a chatroom and convinces him to take her back to his house, something any kid should know better than to do. However, little Hayley is not as naive as she first appears to be and the roles of predator and prey are reversed.

I actually liked this movie a lot. The girl is absolutely psychotic, but in such an intelligent, bitchy, even bad-ass way I just couldn't help but root for her. Go Hayley, unleash your righteous wrath upon that pedophile! Oh, and please do wash your hands after you are finished, if you don't mind. You don't know where that has been.

While the plot is quite nice, in my opinion, but there are a couple of drawbacks, the main three being:

1) The movie takes too long to set the story into motion, so the beginning does drag on for a bit.

2) Some things in the plot are kind of predictable, such as the castration stint.

3) Ellen Page's performance is much stronger than Patrick Wilson's.

The Last King of Scotland:

A young Scottish doctor becomes Uganda's president Idi Amin's personal medic. While at first captivated by Amin's strong, likeable personality, the doctor is witness to Amin's transformation into a ruthless, erratic and paranoid dictator.

This movie is actually very captivating. Withtaker's performance is very strong, giving such force to his Amin. McAvoy's character is also well done, acting the part of a fun-loving, superficial and sometimes decidedly stupid young man (really, everybody knows you just don't screw the mad dictator's wife).

Though there are a couple of strong visuals, it's nothing too overbearing. It's a good enough movie, though not excellent.

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Bueno, first part done. Will move onto the next when I get some free time. As it is I'm using my homework time at the moment.


Ta.