The Fountain

I had the great pleasure of watching Darren Aronofsky's briliant "The Fountain" tonight. Great acting work by Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz made good but the film excels in its cinemathic beauty and glorious interplay of reality and fiction, a theme used by many of this years' filmakers. Aronofsky makes us walk away from this movie in a total philosophic output. He pushes us to question love, fantasy, life and death in a metamorphisis of romance and unconditional beauty. Jackman plays a doctor looking for the cure to save his beautiful partner, played by Weisz. He tries many ways to cure her; with his medical knowledge, with his aid to Spain and his ferocious love. Weisz tries to be realistic about her death , telling him to leave to Spain, to finish the book, to give up. His wanting of her to be alive is conflicting with her willingness to let go. This conflict goes through centuries of time. He tries to save her with the tree of life but she tells him to let go, by finishing the book. Anyways, this is just one way of seeing this film!!!! I loved it no matter what way i can spin the plot. A great grade.

Sophie Scholl

Sophie Scholl is one of the best films dealing with the turmoil of ideology at the end of the Nazi occupation in Germany in the 1940's. It deals with three individuals' "communist" ideals which "offend" the Nazi power. Siblings Sophie and Hans Scholl, as well as their friend, Christoph Pobst distribute leaflets of anti-Hitler ideology in a university and get caught and sentenced to death by the Nazi regime. The three characters deny everything until they cannot any longer, and then stand by their convictions, even though their persecution is near. The script is masterfully poignant especially the scenes with Sophie and the Gestapo. This is a truly inspirational story and director Marc Rothemund does a great job. A great, subtle script by Fred Breinersdorfer. This film stars Julia Jentsch as Sophie Scholl, the woman who wants to spread the ideology of doubt and question. Jentsch is a marvel in this performance. Great foreign film.

The Da Vinci Code

This film is extremely confusing and deserves a second look by me. However, with my first screening, i felt that this was a solid film, with an interesting ending. Although i feel that this film had some flaws. i believe that it was a smart story, which creates great levels of thought on Religious affairs. I did however feel that both the directing and acting were very conservative, meaning that they didnt take any risks. Overall, i cannot give a perfect review because i didnt comprehend the story as much as i wold like. Maybe i should have read the book but i spend too much time watching movies.

Accepted

Even though i thought this film would be a complete stupid was of a film, it surprised me a bit. Not with its acting or directing but its plot. This was an extremely inviting script with a continuously innovative social critique of the status quo(the conformist College experience). I believe that Justin Long has a future as a comedic actor. I saw some glipmses of his hilarity but at some points, he was just average. The rest of the cast was below average but they did have some funny moments. I thougt that the end was way too predictable but overall, this was a smart script, with its context pretty original.

The Last King of Scotland

This was a good, solid filmmaking work by Kevin MacDonald, great acting with James McAvoy and oscar favorite Forest Whitaker and a smart script. A young Scottish doctor(McAvoy as Nicholas) moves to Uganda to help the Ugandites from disease and illness. He runs into newly appointed President Didi Amin. Amin aks him to become his personal doctor and "closest advisor". Nicholas soon finds out that Amin is not the charismatic, helper of Uganda. The story moves on with a battle between Amin's dictatorship and Nicholas' ethics and love of people. The struggle ends bad for Nicholas, when Amin finds out about his affair with Amin's third wife. This was a pretty original script but it did have some flaws. I did not feel that the flashbacks were necessary. I thought it was cheap for the editing team to use the flashback. Overall, it is definately a good film, with its acting as its greatest quality.