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 ;)

Zero Dark Thirty

When I saw the trailer for this movie, I was very curious to watch it. Did you know that depending on what they show in the trailers, you can tell whether it's going to be a nice movie or not?

For example, if they show a lot of the story, a lot of scenes; if they give a lot of the plot away, then it’s probably not a good movie and they are trying to convince you to go watch it by showing you the whole story in the trailer.

When a movie is good, they usually show only bits and pieces of it. They give you just an idea, a small hint of what the movie is about and that’s exactly what makes people want to see it… they want to find out what happens next.

But that can be quite tricky sometimes. It could also be that they don’t show you a lot because the movie is just plain garbage and therefore they don’t want you to find out before time hahaha…

So when I saw the trailer for “Zero Dark Thirty”, I was a bit divided. They don’t show a lot of things, just that a woman was probably responsible for the capture of Bin Laden.

Ok, so let me tell you a bit about the story of the movie.

It’s about a team of CIA agents who were assigned to track down the hiding location of Osama Bin Laden after the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11. In the beginning all the agents were working tirelessly to hunt him down, but after using numerous strategies and investigating all the leads they had, they started accepting the fact that they might never find him.

Until a female agent was hired to work on the investigation and boy, did she make a difference!

There are lots of nice things about this movie, but if I tell you then I will be saying too much. So instead let me say what I liked the most about this movie.

It shows how strong, determined, efficient and influential a woman can be when she decides to.

It clearly illustrates how sometimes in life people will not believe in you or your ideas, sometimes no one will, but that shouldn’t be a reason for you to give up.

And here’s my favorite: The power of focusing and investing on something you believe in.

There’s a scene in particular that I really liked and that got stuck in my head since I watched it.

One of the heads of the CIA came to speak to the agent I was telling you about, and trying to make small talk, he asked:

“What else have you done for us in these 12 years you’ve been working for the CIA?”

Her reply was:

“Nothing. I’ve done nothing else.”

This sums it all up for me. This is the scene that spoke louder that all the others, but in order for you to understand it, you will have to watch it ;)

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.

Flight

I’ve never really been in between two opinions when it comes to a movie. I either liked it or I didn’t. It was either good or bad.

But the movie “Flight” managed to put me there… I’m not yet sure if I recommend it or not hahaha…

So, let’s do something here, shall we?

I’ll list the things I liked about it and the ones I didn’t like and then you decide for yourself whether it’s worth watching or not ok? That’s right… Based on the information I’ll give, YOU will be the movie critic today ;)

Let me start by what I didn’t like:

* A scene of nudity. I mean, why do they do that? You know those scenes where it makes no sense to show someone naked? Not that it ever makes sense, but sometimes it’s just ridiculous! And such is the case in this movie. There is the guy talking on the phone and them bam, there goes someone naked. GIVE ME A BREAK! I DON’T WANT TO SEE THAT!

* Cursing. Oh my! They curse quite a few times in this movie. It’s becoming rare when you see a movie when they don’t curse at all, but I still don’t like it.

* Drug use and drinking. Again, very common in movies nowadays. Unfortunately.

* For a good while, you think you are going to hate the movie. I was like ‘No, I can’t believe that that’s the message they are giving! I can’t believe that this will be the story’. But no, something changes and you see where they are getting at.

And here’s what I really liked:

* It gives a very powerful message, a life lesson really. It shows the reality of many people and how many people are living/destroying their lives.

* To me, among many other things, it speaks specifically about temptation, how you should not play with it… You should flee from it instead. Not consider it, not give it a second thought, but flee, run for your life, otherwise it WILL destroy you.

So, what’s your conclusion?

Is it worth seeing all the bad stuff so you can see the good? I don’t know…

You decide ;) 

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…