Category: movie

Based on the journal of a World War II survivor from the Warsaw Ghetto this movie gets my highest “WWII holocaust movie” rating since Shindler’s List. It’s done very tastefully and at the same time isn’t so depressing that it’s impossible to watch.

Whether I agree that Adrian Brody deserved the best actor Oscar for his performance is beside the point (I don’t by the way — I think Daniel Day Lewis should have gotten it for The Gangs of New York.)

The Warsaw ghetto, as far as I understand, is the one place that the Jewish population fought back against the Germans who were shipping them off to death camps. I would have preferred to see more about the resistance itself, but because of the situation that the protagonist, Spielman, was in, we only get to see a little of the fighting and hear about through rumours and word of mouth from those around him.

I highly recommend this movie because of the importance of remembering the holocaust but in particular because this story was based so closely on Spielman’s journal and also some incidents were taken right from the directors own personal experiences. He was a holocaust survivor as well.

If you rent the DVD I also recommend that you watch the special features disk — the story of survival.

Last night Mom, Dad, Anna-Maria, her sisters, and I all took in the new Disney Movie, Holes (Official Site / trailer). I didn’t love the Matrix, but I loved Holes. Let me tell you why Holes is such a great movie. First of all let me give a little background. Based on the enormously popular novel by Louis Sachar, Holes illustrates the misfortune of Stanley Yelnats IV (Shia LaBeouf) after he is sent to Camp Greenlake, a juvenille detention camp, basically because of some bad luck. It also explains the history of misfortune befallen upon the Yelnats’ family after a curse was put on Stanley Yelnats the first when he didn’t live up to a promise made to a certain European fortuneteller. This movie seems to have everything including family fortunes, family curses, a turn-of-the-century interracial romance, train robbers, buried treasure, ghosts, onions, peaches, sneakers and Texas Yellow Spotted Lizards, – then ties them all into the resolution. Despite being a movie filled with “holes”, this movie is funny and touching and more logical than you’d think possible. I recommend it even if you aren’t taking your girlfriend’s younger sisters with you.

Whoa! Last night I went to see The Matrix Reloaded (Official Site | Trailer) with Anna-Maria and some of her friends. As expected The Matrix Reloaded was filled with really long fight scenes, a bunch of bad dialogue, a boatload of amazing special effects, oh and did I mention some really long kung fu fight scenes? Overall I thought it was a cool movie but I was hoping for something more. It had the potential to go in all sorts of new directions but instead they just waste time in meaningless kung fu battles. When I say meaningless – I mean exactly that, the fight scene where Neo takes on hundreds of replicated agents ends when Neo gets bored and flys away. How stupid is that? What was the point?

In case it’s not self-evident, this movie is not for Mom and Dad. As much as I thought you might like the first one, (I don’t know what I was thinking) you will absolutely hate this movie.