The Red Violin:
Who'd ever have thought the life of a violin would be more interesting than a human? The Red Violin follows a violin through its many centuries and many owners. The movie is in English, French, Italian, Chinese, and German so it is fun to watch and test your language skills. The use of flashbacks and time changes are superb. It is like watching 5 short movies, but at the end it all comes together. The violin music is lovely except for one part where a little boy is suppose to play it super fast and it is obivous that they sped up the film to create that illusion. (Cindy)
Life is Beautiful:
In Italian, with English subtitles.
Oh, what a sad and beautiful movie! If you spend any money going to see the terrible films that are out right now and don't see this moving story you should be barred from movie theaters forever. This is a two-part story. The first part is a beautiful love story about a Jewish Italian man around the time of WWII who courts his bride through a series of, well, silly encounters. The second part of the story centers on the man and his young son. The family is taken to a concentration camp where father and son stick together. The father creates a fantasy for his son, telling him they are playing a game in order to win a tank, and that to finish they must stick through the horrible conditions of the camp. The man turns survival into a game to keep his son from suffering. This is a beautiful tale of sacrifice and love. (Ellen)
Il Postino: In Italian, with English subtitles.
This movie did make me cry at the end, but most of it is funny. It's the story of a man who's got a job delivering mail to Pablo Neruda, who's in exile in Italy. At the beginning, he can barely read, but he becomes friends with Neruda, who teaches him about poetry so that he can win the girl he loves, a foosball-playing barmaid. (Carly)
The Best Man: In Italian, with English subtitles.
The only bad part about this movie is that the girl, who's really pretty, winds up with a much older man. He's nice and all, but really, why isn't it ever the other way around?
Italian movies are so beautiful. The plot really isn't anything special, but I didn't much care. I just wanted to listen to the Italian and look at the scenery.(Carly)
Eat Drink Man Woman: In Chinese, with English subtitles.
A GOOD movie about eating and food -- NO cannibalism. This movie made us laugh so much we were almost rolling in the floor. It's about three women in Taiwan who are, at least in the beginning, living with their father, a master chef. Each of the daughters discovers what she wants to do with her life. The movie, though,is not some boring introspective journey where they find themselves through yoga and drugs; it's a generally hysterical and occasionally poignant tale with lots of shots of really yummy looking food. (Carly)
301/302:In Korean, with English subtitles.
A VERY BAD movie. We can't emphasize this enough -- unless you really like cannibalism, don't watch this movie. It's not campy, it's not funny, it's disgusting and revolting.It's the story of two women who are neighbors, one who loves to cook and is obsessed with eating (she gets divorced because she cooked her husband's dog) and the other who, for unpleasant psychological reasons, refuses to eat. The first woman tries to force the other one into eating by using various methods, and finally the second woman ends up missing. Hmmm, where might she be? (Carly)
Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love: with English subtitles.
What a letdown. I thought I was going to watch a really good smutty movie, and all I got was the dance of enticement. Kip from The English Patient is in this, but he's not the good guy. Anyway, I thought this was going to be serious and beautiful, but it was just silly. If you watch it with that expectation, you might like it. There's lots of women-being-subservient-to-men stuff in here, as you may have guessed, given that the Kama Sutra is sort
of about how to catch your man and other such stuff. So if that kind of thing really gets your blood pressure up, you might as well skip this for another viewing of Thelma and Louise, because the cinema is nothing special. (Carly)
Shall We Dance? In Japanese with English subtitles.
This is the story of a married Japanese man who starts taking ballroom dancing lessons. Every day on his way home from work, he sees through a window a girl teaching dancing lessons. He finally gets up the courage to sign up. He keeps it a secret from everyone, though, and his wife thinks he has a mistress or something. At first he's very awkward, but then he gets to be pretty good. It sounds cheesy, but it's really a very sweet story. The man just seems so vulnerable, and the dance lessons give him so much confidence. The other people taking lessons are funny, too. (Carly)Der Schleckliche Madchen: In German with English subtitles.
German movies just don't have the same charm that Italian ones do. This movie, The Nasty Girl in English, is the story of a girl who begins to question her town's involvement in the Third Reich when she is asked to enter an essay contest. Everybody's always thought she was great, but after years of researching this and overcoming obstacle after obstacle, the townspeople turn against her. They don't want people to know that they weren't resistance fighters. Along the way, she marries one of her high school teachers, has three kids, and goes to college. The story's alright, but the cinematography's weird. Her family is frequently in what looks like a float made to look like their living room that drives through the town, and I think there's supposed to be a bunch of imagery/symbolism stuff about this one tree and her religion and stuff, but I'm not too sure. Strange. (Carly)The Marriage of Maria Braun