Unbroken

This image shows my favorite part in the whole movie

Before I say anything else, let’s make an agreement, shall we?

Let’s pretend that I have been writing on my blog all along. I will not mention how I haven’t written a single word here for the past ten months and you will pretend that I have never stopped writing :)

No, I can’t do that lol

I’ve missed writing here so much!! And I have missed hearing from you so much that I’m nervous I might end up messing up this review and writing it all wrong.

But I’m going to try ok?

As some of you might have seen on my Facebook page, last week I went to the movies – to that nice movie theatre where the seats recline and the popcorn is free (yay!) – and I watched a movie that wasn’t talked about much, but that is so worth watching! It’s a movie called Unbroken.

It’s about this young man, Louis Zamperini, who when he was a child, never believed he could amount to anything, until his older brother encouraged him to join the track team in his school. He gave it a go and found out that he was extremely good at it. He started winning all the competitions and although he was still very young, he got to compete in the Olympics.

A few years later, he was sent to fight in the war in Japan. As he was leaving in the train, his brother told him something – now pay attention because it’s here you realize this is going to be a good movie. He tells him:

“A moment of pain is worth a lifetime of glory.”

And then his train leaves to go to war.

In one of his missions in Japan, his airplane crashes into the sea - killing 8 of his friends. Only he and 2 others survived. One of them, as soon as he entered the little boat that would be their house for the next 47 days, started saying, “We are going to die! We are all going to die!!” Guess what happened to him?

Louis and his friend survived 47 days at sea, eating raw fish and drinking rain water, but one day there was a very big storm and seeing he was probably going to die, he makes a prayer asking God to get him out of there and that if He did, he would serve Him forever and do whatever He wanted. So by now you know this movie is going to be REALLY good.

The storm passed and still they were stranded, no sign of rescue from anywhere. When all hope seemed lost, a ship comes and rescues them. But guess what? It’s the Japanese, the enemies they were fighting in the war!

He and his friend are taken to a prison camp and what happens after that is something beyond what I can describe here.  You have to watch it. All I can say is that I will never forget the messages given in this movie.

If I were to summarize all the messages in the movie in one word, it would be: Endurance.

The situations Louis went through and his reaction to them are just… You can see there was a Higher Power with him. You can tell God was with him in every one of them, otherwise he wouldn’t, couldn’t have survived.

This movie teaches us the importance of not letting other people’s actions change us; or the hard knocks life gives us, break us. It shows the power of not paying with the same coin but to hold fast to what you know is right and to remain strong in that faith. Yes, this movie is about faith and about believing until the very end.

You see, if this was just a regular movie, written by a talented writer, it would have already been good, but the great thing about it is, it’s a true story. A story about endurance, resilience, forgiveness, faith. It’s about an answered prayer made in a moment of desperation. It’s about how God never fails those who trust and believe in Him, even if for a long time it seems like He has.

I can’t say anymore, except that I love this movie and if you had no plans to watch Unbroken, you really, really should.

I will however leave you with this amazing quote from the movie, just to give you a little taste. When Zamperini said he wanted to kill his enemies, that he didn’t care if he died in the process; he just wanted to kill them, a fellow war prisoner said to him:

“This is not how we beat them. We beat them by making it to the end of the war alive. That’s our revenge.”

I mean… just awesome!

Freedom Writers

I wonder why is it that whenever I want to write about a movie I like a lot, I seem to get tongue-tied.

It is as if no matter how much I write or how well I explain, I will never be able to fully express to my readers why I like it so much, especially when the movie is based on a true story.

That’s exactly what happened to this week’s review. I’ve been meaning to talk about it for a long time, but I always find an “excuse” to postpone it and leave it for another day… until now.

I have watched this movie at least four times and it never seizes to amaze me.

It’s the story about a woman named Erin Gruwell (played by Hilary Swank), who after having followed a different career, decides it’s time to fulfill her lifelong dream of being a teacher. She applies in one of the schools and is thrilled when she gets the job.

She prepares herself in every way for her first day. She chooses her best outfit, arrives early and stands there eagerly and nervously waits for her students. You can see her happiness in her face. Her dream will finally come true. She will be able to teach what she knows to a whole class of young people and hopefully make them see the world a little bit the way she does.

She is very inexperienced but oh how she hopes she will be able to inspire them somehow!

And then one by one, the students start to come in room 203, where they will have their English classes with the new teacher and as they do so, she smiles at them… she wants to make them feel welcomed.

But she wasn’t prepared for what she saw in their faces. Nobody returned her warm welcome; instead she saw coldness, anger, disinterest, hatred, racism, resistance, prejudice, conflict, anguish, fear… and all that on the first day! Each student sat with their own “group”, turned their desks away from the front of the class and just did their own thing. All they wanted was for the bell to ring so they could go to the next class and then go home. Nobody cared about her, nobody cared that she was there.

Needless to say her first day as a teacher was a complete disaster and the following days were no different. She would try and teach them but nobody paid any attention. She then started to learn that most the students in her classroom and in the whole school were gang members; they carried knives and guns into school, they fought among themselves, they fought outside school, many were poor, some were homeless and none, not one, believed they could be somebody in life.

They didn’t respect her and didn’t care about anything she had to say or teach.

So, maybe wanting to be a teacher wasn’t a good idea after all.

Maybe some dreams never come true… maybe making a difference somewhere or in somebody’s life is not for everyone. And by looking at everything that is going wrong in your life, you realize that maybe… maybe you are just not good enough.

Who has never faced a difficult situation or a great disappointment that left you felling exactly that way?

I know I have.

And so after reading this you might ask, “How can this movie be any good? If this is the story, why should I watch it?”

Well, here’s when the story starts getting really interesting…

I haven’t told you the best part yet.

Come back here next Friday and I will ;)

Despicable Me

* This review is for the first movie. For the second one, come here next week.

“Rapha, did you know that you talk just like the Minions?” – said my friend.

“Minions? What are Minions?” – I replied.

“You know, from the movie ‘Despicable Me’? The yellow creatures?”

“Really? I never watched that movie. How do they talk?”

“They don’t talk. Well they do, but you don’t understand them.”

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha…

If you’ve seen the movie you will know that my friend wasn’t insulting me. And if you have ever talked to me, you will know that what she meant is that I’m very expressive when I talk…  that sometimes when I talk I am better understood by my expressions and gestures than by my actual words :)

Needless to say, her comment made me extremely curious to watch it, even though I’m a not a huge fan of animated movies, but I did.

And I LOVED it!

It’s the story about this man who, since he was a boy, dreamed of going to the moon and making his mother proud of him. He craved for her approval.

But nothing he ever did made an impression on her. So since being good didn’t work, he decided to be bad and become a famous villain. He seems to be heartless and care about no one, except the scientist who helps him in his inventions and the Minions (the yellow creatures we were talking about) who help him in his plans.

Then he crosses paths with three little girls who live in an orphanage.

He doesn’t care about them, but because they are the only ones who can help him with his latest plan, he decides to adopt them. And now you have to watch it to find out the rest ;)

The whole movie is very nice and so, so funny! I laughed so much! And I simply fell in love with the Minions hehehe… But what I liked the most about it is the message it conveys. Even though it’s a movie made for kids, it seems to me that the message was more directed to parents.

It clearly shows the importance of a family.

Some of us are brought up in a nice and caring family, others unfortunately are not, but it’s us who decide what we are going to do with that. Are we going to be cold, angry, bitter and treat our own family the way we were treated? Are we going to give more importance to the things in our lives than the people in it?

Whether you received a lot of love or not when you were growing up, someday you will have to make a choice of who YOU want to be for your family and your kids.

There are many things that are important and necessary in our lives, but everyday we have to choose what’s MORE important. For some people, it’s their studies, their careers, establishing themselves as a professional in the field they chose. For others is making a lot of money or being famous. Some others consider their family the most important thing in their lives and for some, God is the most important One.

But it doesn’t really matter what we say it’s the most important thing. We may think it’s something when in fact it’s something else. So how do we know for sure?

It’s not what we say that shows what we REALLY want. It’s what we do. Everyday.

Then you may ask: “And you got all this from a cartoon??”

Yep!

Believe it or not.

Man of Steel

Who has never seen a Superman movie? Who does not know the story?

Some people apparently don’t… one of my friends didn’t until this last one came out (I know… shocking lol) O_o

But I’m not here to tell you about the story; it’s the same as the ones before. I’m here to point out the reasons why I liked this one so much, why I would definitely watch it again and why, in case you haven’t yet, it might be good fun to go see it.

Superman’s real father is quite the warrior himself. I remember in the previous movies, sending his son away involved a lot of emotion. In this one however, he is more decisive and courageous. He even fights!

I think they chose the perfect actor for the role. He portrayed it very well :) Not to mention that they finally got rid of the curl on superman’s forehead. It was ok back in the 80’s but they still used it in the 2006 movie… come on!

I really like the relationship between Clark and his adoptive father. He believed in him so much! And even though he didn’t understand his son’s powers, he always made him see it as a positive thing. He made him feel especial and not “weird”. He believed in him, in his potential, in what he could become. It would be nice if all kids received such treatment from their parents nowadays. It would make it easier for them to believe it themselves…

Superman is not as confident as in the previous movies. He doesn’t think he was all that. And this is one of the things I liked the most about it.

There’s a scene in the movie where he doesn’t know what to do. He is not sure if he could trust and then someone tells him:

“Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith.  Trust comes after.”

Confidence was something he had to build up with each step he took, with each decision he made and with each enemy he faced.

So to sum it all up, I liked this version of superman because it shows more than just an alien who had super powers. It shows his indecision, his vulnerability, his fears and most importantly, his decision to believe despite all that.

Now, there’s something we can all relate to ;)

And to finalize, there is a sentence his biological father says in the beginning of the movie. He says:

“You will give the people of Earth an ideal to strive towards…”

This sentence stayed with me ever since. I really like it, but the reason I do has nothing to do with superman ;)

Fast and Furious 6 – Two reviews and a question

                     

Since I watched this movie I’ve been thinking on how to best express my opinion about it, and I came to the conclusion that it is quite difficult to do it in one review only.

So I am going to write two: A good and a bad review.

Good Review

I’ve watched all the Fast and Furious movies, except the Tokyo one (for some reason I still have no interest in watching it) and when I watched the trailer of Fast 6 I immediately wanted to watch it. They were bringing the whole team back. They were even “resurrecting” Letty, which in my opinion was quite a stretch but a smart move nonetheless.

So I went to watch it and this is no doubt an action movie. It has action from beginning to end. From one scene to the next you find yourself at the edge of your seat or biting your nails, or wondering what’s going to happen next.

And it has a lot of funny parts, which is a plus in any movie. I laughed quite a bit throughout.

Everything else is the same as the previous five movies, fast cars, races, fights, you know…

That’s it for the good review, now moving on to the bad.

Bad review

The movie has no plot, no interesting story. The “plot” you see in the trailer is the one you will see in the movie. Nothing more, nothing less.

But there they are living the good life, enjoying all the money they stole in their last “job”, until the police comes knocking at their door asking for their help. These criminals are so “good” at what they do, that not only do they get away with whatever crime they commit, but they are also needed by the police, who apparently is not competent enough to do their own job. So now it’s criminals trying to stop other criminals… uh huh…

They portray the team of “good” criminals in such a way that they make them look good in the audience’s eyes. As if they have principles, as if who they are justifies what they do.

The guy says, “Everyone has a code. Mine is family”. Meaning that stealing, killing, breaking the law and whatever other crime you might commit is ok as long as you do it for family. Are you kidding me?

And the funny (for lack of a better word) thing is, after all their wrongdoing, they gather together at the table to have a meal and they all join hands and thank God for everything they have. WHAT? I’m not even going to say anything about that.

The Question

 Fast and Furious has a lot more wrong messages. It has wrong messages all over the place. Everywhere. All the time.

If you’ve already watched the movie, can you guess what they are?

If you do, just leave your comments below.

Sure it’s a cool movie, fast cars, tough guys and all, but the core message? All wrong.

Oh and one last thing, does it bother anyone else that no one really cared about what happened to Gisele at the end apart from the Japanese guy, or is it just me? O_o

Iron Man 3

I had never heard of Iron Man before the first movie came out. I actually thought it had to do with the “The Man in the Iron Mask”… I know, I know… complete different movie. But anyway… Back then I wasn’t as interested in super-hero movies (that has changed) because they were usually all the same thing. There was a villain, there were the innocent people and there was some kind of super-hero that would save them all. But that has also changed.

The basics continue the same, but now it’s so much nicer than before. They have better especial effects, they plot is usually very good, they have the action, the romance, that some of us just can’t go without, and in the case of Iron Man, they have Robert Downey Jr. who, in my opinion, brings the entertainment to a whole new level in any movie he is in.

I enjoyed the first two Iron Man movies, but this third one is just very nice!

And the best thing is that it is so funny. My goodness! I laughed the whole time! It was very, very entertaining indeed.

So, if you also like super-hero movies, you definitely have to watch this one.  And watch out for the Mandarin, he is really, really dangerous. The worst villain in all the movies I’ve watched O_o  

However if you haven’t watched any of the Iron Man movies, you should watch them in the right order so you can really understand the story. Here’s the correct order:

Iron Man

Iron Man 2

The Avengers – if you don’t watch this one, you don’t understand why he mentions New York so much in the movie. He keeps saying “Since New York things are not the same”, “I can’t sleep since New York”… but this is just a tip ;)

Iron Man 3

I wanted to discuss something about the last fight between Iron Man and his enemy, but I can’t because if I do, I will spoil it for you. All I can say is that it has something very much in common with the last fight between Batman and his enemy on the last Batman movie.

If you’ve watched both movies, my question is, do you know what I’m talking about?

Let’ s see who paid attention… hehehe.

Les Miserables

In last week’s post I promised to tell you my story about the “Les Miserables” movie. So here it is:

A few years ago I was living in London and if you’ve been there or live there, you know that London is big on musicals. There’s a quite a diversity for you to see and Les Miserables is one of them.

I remember seeing the posters in the subway and wondering what it was all about. But it was only when one of the songs from the musical became very popular that I became interested in watching it. But I never did.

After I moved from London I found out that there was a Les Miserables book and movie, but it was old, so I didn’t want to watch it. But then a few months later a trailer was released with the new “Les Miserables” and it had a great cast. So of course I was going to go see it!

When it finally came out, my husband didn’t really want to watch it but I insisted. Then one of my friends tweeted that it was beautiful, that she even cried, so I insisted with him some more. Then another friend also watched and said I should go, that I would love it. So after that I convinced him to go with me J

There I was, early as usual so I could watch the other trailers, sitting comfortably on my seat, eagerly waiting for the beautiful and moving story of the Les Miserables.

But…

I didn’t like it. AT ALL!!

It was a musical, so of course I already knew there would be a lot of singing, but I didn’t expect THAT much of singing. I had watched a movie/musical before and I loved it! Sure the actors sang quite a lot, but they also spoke. In this movie, they don’t speak. EVER. They just sing!

They sing and sing. From beginning to end. All the time. The whole time.

So yeah… not my kind of thing. I like music and I like musicals but I found this one very boring. You leave the theatres feeling quite miserable indeed.

If you ask ME if this is a nice movie, I’ll say no, I don’t think it’s a nice movie. If your taste in movies is similar to mine, then you will probably not like it either.

But hey, my friends liked it and I’m sure many other people did too. So it really depends on what you are into ;)

Oh and remember I mentioned last week, that I only watched “Die Hard” because of “Les Miserables”? Yes, after making my husband watch such a boring movie, he decided that he would choose the next one, so guess which one he chose?

Die Hard O_o

But if I had to choose between one and the other, even though I liked neither, I’d choose “Die Hard” hands down. This is for you to see how much I “liked” Les Miserables.

A Good Day to Die Hard

Remember my review about “Jack, the Giant Slayer” last week?

You haven’t read it yet? Ok, so read that one first before continuing with this one.

Think of everything I said about “Jack”. Now imagine the complete opposite…

That would be my review on “A good day to die hard” lol.

I have not watched the previous “Die Hard” movies, but this one… is something else.

It has no plot whatsoever, the acting is quite poor and the story just doesn’t go anywhere.

It’s just… I have no words.

There is however, something you will find A LOT in this movie: Destruction.

From beginning to end.

There are a lot of explosions, fights, people going through windows, falling from the highest buildings but never dying, more explosions, gunshots, buildings getting destroyed, more explosions and the main characters still come out of all that alive!

I guess that’s why it’s called “Die Hard”, because no matter what happens, they just don’t die!

So to summarize: “A good day to die hard” is not a movie worth spending any money on. I would not watch it again. I wouldn’t have even watched it if it weren’t for “Les Miserables”.

Oh I haven’t told you about my “Les Miserables” story, have I? Come back next Friday and I will tell you all about it. Oh my! 

Skyfall

Since Skyfall is coming out on DVD now, I thought I’d take the opportunity to talk about it.

007 movies huh? What do you think my opinion is going to be?

Let me start by saying that I was never interested in these movies. All I remember from when I was a kid was that the things James Bond could do were just too much, too unreal and as my dear father used to say, it was just “uma mentirada danada”, which translated means “just too many lies”.

After I grew up I wanted to give it a chance and see for myself what the deal with James Bond was. So I watched “Die Another Day” with Pierce Brosnan… O_o

My goodness! What a terrible movie!! It was just… ridiculous. The whole plot was awful and that did it for me. No more 007 movies!

But when they released the first trailer of “Casino Royale” I couldn’t resist and went to watch it.

Loved it!!

Yeah… I’m into these secret agent movies hehehe.

I like it a lot because, apart from the fights, which I also like by the way (no, I’m not a violent person, I just happen to like watching choreographed/fake fights), it usually has an interesting plot, a mystery to be solved. And that’s exactly the case with “Casino Royale”. In my opinion they chose the perfect actor for it.

Anyway, needless to say I changed my opinion about 007 movies… as long as they keep the same actor, that is. After that, I don’t know.

So, I watched the next one, “Quantum of Solace” and obviously I just HAD to watch Skyfall as well!

And I really, really liked it :)

It’s quite different from the previous two. It doesn’t have a lot of fights or car chases, but there’s A LOT of story. A lot of unanswered questions throughout the movie and the plot develops quite nicely. The kind that makes you want to solve the mystery.

I know this is more of a guy’s type of movie (or so I’ve been told) but I just love the whole “my name is Bond, James Bond” thing lol

So if you are also into movies like this, this is the movie for you to watch this weekend.

But if you are not… hey, here’s your chance to try something new ;) 

The Painted Veil

When I watched this movie almost seven years ago, I thought it was an ok movie but definitely not one I would recommend. However one of my friends requested that I write a review about it and so I decided to watch it again… you know, just to refresh my mind (as if I needed an excuse to watch a movie hehe).

And boy, did I change my opinion about it!

The story is set in 1925 and it’s about this woman who rejected every marriage proposal thrown her way. She wanted to be independent and enjoy her life as much as she could, until the pressure  from her parents was too hard to take.

She then decides to marry this doctor who had fallen in love with her and had asked her hand in marriage on the second time they talked.

He loves her and wants to be with her.
She marries him just to get away from her parents’ house.

Can you see where this is going? Not going to work, right?

This is one of the most beautiful romantic movies I’ve ever seen. It’s no chick flick or the superficial kind or romantic story. It’s about what true love really is and how it is born. And that was beautiful to watch!

It shows how love is not a feeling but really a decision you take to commit to the other person, the efforts you make to really know the other person.

Watching this movie was kind of like seeing in real life a few examples Cristiane and Renato Cardoso teach in The Love School. It was really, really nice!

I must warn you though… there’s something in this movie that you are not going to like very much (have some tissue ready)… and no, I can’t tell you what it is. But it’s absolutely worth watching.

It teaches you about true love, commitment, forgiveness and the importance of having and giving second chances and not mentioning the beautiful scenery throughout the movie.

I wish I could tell you more but let me just summarized it all like this:

Beautiful! Simply beautiful!

The Twilight Saga – Breaking Dawn Part II

It’s over people! After 4 years, the Twilight Saga is over.

But hey, we can still talk about it ;) Do you know how?

Through the Twilight Series I started here on the blog sometime ago but never got to finish.

Here’s what I wrote so far:

So the lion fell in love with the lamb

Mind over Matter

You are my life now

I’m nothing if not traditional

Here’s what’s still to come starting next Thursday:

You are only human

Edward X Jacob

Do I dazzle you?

Twilight - The conclusion

But going back to Breaking Dawn – Part II, here are my thoughts on the last movie of the saga:

I think it ended well. Of course there’s no comparison between the movie and the book but I thought they still did a good job.

I’d like to have seen a little bit more of acting though. It seemed to me that there were more demonstrations of what kind of super powers people had than actually people having conversations.

I didn’t like the fact that Jacob is almost nowhere to be seen in this movie. I say this because, well if you read the book you know that good part of this story was told through Jacob’s perspective and not Bella’s. I was really looking forward to hearing him saying all the funny things he says in the book, but no… they didn’t include that. Pity.

I loved the twist at the end though. Very clever!

What else can I say?

It was good. I liked how it ended and I’m happy that it did…

It was time :) 

* The crazy twilight fans probably don’t agree with this last statement… but what can I do? It’s true hehehe

Argo

Answer fast: What’s the one thing that happens to all big blockbuster movies right before they premiere?  

Promotion.

There’s usually a lot of buzz around the movie. They create websites, teasers, trailers. They send the main actors on talk shows and international tours, hold premieres in different countries, etc, etc. And all with one single objective: Get the public interested in watching the movie. But I don’t remember a lot of promotion being made about ‘Argo’, which immediately made me think that it was probably not a good movie.

Besides, what kind of movie is titled “Argo”?

I watched the trailer and it seemed interesting, but the question was, was it interesting enough? But I went to watch it anyway.

VERY GOOD MOVIE!!!

The story happens in Tehran, Iran. People were working normally and going about their day on the US Embassy in Tehran, until lots and lots of protesters invade the Embassy and take everyone hostage, except six Americans who escaped through a back door and hid in the Canadian Ambassador’s house.

Now the CIA must devise a plan to rescue the six Americans and bring them back safely to the United States. But how can they do that without anyone in Iran finding out? How can they even pass through immigration without being recognized as Americans? It was quite an impossible mission. 

Lots of agents present their ideas, some good, others ridiculous, until one agent, Tony Mendez (played by Ben Affleck) has the idea of using a movie to rescue them.

That’s right. They were going to produce a fake movie, use the excuse that the best place to shoot the movie was Tehran, go there and come back with the six Americans with the pretense that they were part of the movie crew.

I don’t want to tell you anymore otherwise I will end up spoiling it for you. But let me tell you what I like about the whole movie:

·     It’s a very intelligent plot. It makes you think, ponder, pay attention.

·      It gives a nice message about responsibility, commitment and honoring your word.

·      The outfits and glasses are hilarious.

·      And my favorite: It gives you the idea of how everything in Hollywood is a big lie. They show what they want you to see and they make you believe in whatever they want you to believe.

That’s why I think it’s so important for us to choose carefully the movies we watch and most importantly, understand the message behind it and separate the good things from the bad.

I recommend Argo because it is quite a nice movie, except for all the cursing (well, it’s Hollywood after all, what do you expect?).  It has a message, it has something we can take from it and it’s very entertaining.

I tell you, if I had the habit of biting my nails, I’d probably have left the theaters with no fingers… it makes you really tense hehehe…

Moneyball

I didn’t really want to watch this movie when it came out… it looked very boring. Some people recommended it to me, but still, I don’t know why, I just didn’t think it was a good movie. Boy, was I wrong!

This movie has no action, it doesn’t have a lot of emotion, there are no fights, no drama, but I liked it a lot!!!

It’s a story based on true events about the baseball manager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt). I don’t understand anything about Baseball, but the movie shows that if compared with other teams, the one managed by Billy was quite poor and therefore had no conditions to buy the best players and as a consequence, they could never win a game, let alone compete in championships.

So, Billy’s goal was to find a way to use the limited financial resources he had to put together a team that was good enough to start wining some matches and take the whole team out of the awful situation they found themselves in.

It’s a lot to explain here, that’s why you should watch the movie and pay very close attention :), but to summarize it, he chooses to use a strategy created by a man everyone deemed to be crazy. Instead of looking at a player’s appearance and at everything the other teams looked at when buying a player, he starts looking at the statistics… how much a specific player could score points.

He faces a lot of difficulties because no one believes in his new strategy, the coach does not make things any easier for him, no one believes in him, only another guy whom he hired to work for him, who by the way started the whole idea.

Am I saying too much?

Let me try and summarize more lol. So, he starts doing some crazy things… he fires the “best” players he had, forces the coach to change the positions of the players on the team, he changes the way he treats the players; he does everything he knew and could, for he really believed in it.

And what happens??? It works!

This movie teaches us that if you want to make the difference, you will have to be different and not go by what everybody is already doing. It shows the story of a man who really knew how to make lemonade out of the bitter lemons in his life!

And that to reach success or to solve a problem is just a matter of faith, proper planning and mathematics.

Awesome movie! I absolutely recommend it! 

Good oldies Tuesday - The Mirror has Two Faces

I watched this movie quite a while ago. I had always heard of how good it was and so one day I prepared a snack, bought ice cream, invited a couple of friends over to watch it in my house and we had a very pleasant afternoon together.

This is what I remember every time I think about this movie :)

The movie tells the story of a woman and a man. Both are professors in a University. She is very smart and very good at what she does. He is very smart but his students don’t really like his classes.

When he saw how everybody seemed to like her teaching methods, he asks for her help and from then on they develop a friendship.

She is the type of person everyone wants to be around and although she has family and friends, she never really found someone to love.

He is the more loner type of man but has had many experiences with women who left him heartbroken.

She believes in true love, the kind that makes your heart race and takes your breath away.

He believes true love doesn’t exist and that you don't need love to get married. All you need are two people who are friends and enjoy each other's company.

So after a few months he makes a proposition to her. What if they got married so they could be each other’s companions? They would get married, live in the same house but sleep in separate beds. They would enjoy each other’s friendship but would not have any kind of physical contact.

She accepts it and that's when the story really starts… Can’t really say any more, otherwise I’ll give the whole plot away.

I recommend it 100% and would watch over and over again if my dear, dear friend Aline Munhoz hadn’t borrowed it  a few years ago and kept the DVD for herself (you still owe me for that by the way) lol.

This movie is very funny, very entertaining and truly a nice movie!

A romantic comedy like you don’t see nowadays anymore. 

The Help - A follower's review

This is the beautiful Bruna. She's been a faithful follower of my blog since I started writing. She recommended this movie to me last year when I hadn't yet watched it and so I asked her to write a review for me and here's what she has to say about it:

During the 1960’s women got married, and with a husband came children, and with children came a maid…

Black women in those days were expected to clean up after their employer’s kids and take care of them from the time they were babies, until they were grown, got married and got a maid of their own. The mothers didn’t really take care for their kids; instead they would hand that responsibility to the maid, together with all the cooking and cleaning.

However, our main character Skeeter (Emma Stone) is a single woman in her 20’s and was looked upon by her mother and friends as someone not fit for the society at the time. She was not married and didn’t have any children because instead of going for the norm, she opted for studying and getting a degree in writing.

The story turns even more interesting when Skeeter comes back home from college, and finds out that the maid who raised her and cared for her better than her own mother, was no longer working at her house. After that she started noticing more how other African-American women were treated and perceiving how their life as a maid was really like, she decided to start a book based on the maids point of view.

This movie is very inspiring. It shows us not to be scared to stand up for what’s right. 

In the movie we see how the maids were scared to tell their stories, afraid of the punishment they might get from their employers. But through her attitude Skeeter shows them that no one should be afraid to be different and make the difference, regardless of their color, culture or background.

Emma Stone did a wonderful job portraying a girl who goes against the flow and does not accept the rules and concepts of a society where the color of one's skin dictated how they were treated, what they had and how they lived.

I totally recommend this movie; it has something to give and the story is truly captivating.

Bruna Araújo

I agree 100 % with you Bruna! This movie is very good, funny and entertaining! I had a lot of fun watching it.

I just didn’t agree with what the boyfriend did. He was an idiot...