Harold and Maude: Star-Crossed Lovers

A romance scrutinized by social rules. Love truly is boundless and lawless and it is sad that we cannot trust this. Age was nothing. Class was nothing. They were both just humans who were happy with eachother. What a blessing that is. In a way, they are both more free in the end. Maude was free in her life but I think she felt so connected to the earth that she believed that at the end of her life she would be released into nature. Harold sees life as beautiful after Maude. Good story, kind of boring movie.

All About My Mother: A Beautiful Story About Women

An effective and compelling piece of art. Both male and female characters in the film display and remind us of the strength of a woman. The colors and the Spanish language are entrancing as well.

You Can Count On Me: No, No You Can't

Just as I suspected, any movie with Laura Linney is a piece of crap. Okay, not including Love Actually but thats just because the other characters are great. In the beginning, I thought, maybe she's got something going for her. Then her brother came back and it was the same boring bull that I expected. I turned it off thirty minutes in. I suggest you don't even bother.

After the Wedding: Are all Swedish Films this Sad??

The only other Swedish film I remember seeing is Lilya 4 Ever and it was incredibly depressing. This one isn't nearly as bad but still very sad. Both good films though.

After the Wedding has a deeply involved and personal story. It covers life and death, love, family bonds and bonds we create with non-family just through being human. The main character has to decide whether to leave the orphanage he built along with all the orphans that he loves or to stay in Sweden and help take care of the daughter he never knew he had along with her mother and her mother's two young boys. Their dying father leaves 12 million to the orphanage if he stays with them because he wants someone to take care of his family. Now I know the love of family (blood relations) but I also know that I wouldn't be able to up and leave the family that I had found elsewhere. He even raised a boy there in the orphanage. The little boy, in the end, says that he is happy staying in India and seeing him on visits. But really...I guess you could argue that the boy, growing up in a situation where one must deal with the reality of no parents to love them that they grow accustomed to this, but he was still young enough not to be ok with losing such an attachment. I would never leave that little boy even if I had just found out I had a child elsewhere. But I've never been in that situation and I am sure it is a tough one. And that is just one aspect of this drama.

I might also add that I could do without the music. Its quite obnoxious.

Did You Hear About the Morgans? Yes, and it was Surprisingly Not Bad

Of course it was superficial, Sarah Jessica Parker is in it. But the problem is real. no, not the part about being in the witness protection program, but the part about being with your spouse or life partner or significant other and expecting perfection. Hugh Grant's character cheats on Parker's and regardless of the many excuses, he is truly sorry and wants to be with her. She thinks she has expected too much from him and is now overly disappointed. In the end, they understand that if both strive to be the best partner and trust each other at doing this, then any mistakes are forgivable because no one is perfect. I like that message. Also, her character is a a neurotic chatter-box and I can relate to that. Never, ever thought I would like that movie apart from finding Grant entertaining. In the end, I'm glad I watched it.

The Sixth Sense: A Mystery Thriller that Actually Works

Of all the movies where the end brings a complete surprise that makes you want to see it, this is the best one. Throughout the movie there are no loose ends in the details or story line. Toni Collette is by far the best actor in the movie and is really fun to watch. Maybe I was emotional already but when I watched the movie I cried a little bit with her scene in the car when she realizes the problem her son has been dealing with. I hope my kid never tells me that...

Apocalypse Now: Not Sure I Get the Title, But Great Movie

As with all Coppola films, there is excellent cinematography and creative shots. The story telling is slow but captivating. Humanity is almost alive in his films, therefore making the violence even harder to watch. I read 'The Heart of Darkness' over a year ago and finally re-watched this film in order to make comparisons. The script eloquently replaces the time and place into this amazing story of humanity without rules to confine our actions or to tell us what is morally right or wrong. Apocalypse Now shows how close war comes to the border of 'insanity' just as Joesph Conrad uses colonialism in his book. In the book though, it seems like the orderless mayhem would be prevalent with or without Kurtz. Maybe this is true of some early civilizations, maybe this is how people of Conrad's time saw early civilizations, or maybe all civilizations are really this way and only use law to mask our inhibitions. This would mean that Conrad and Coppola already get what we pretend does not exist: we will always be animals, no matter how 'advanced' our technology becomes or how pervasive our species is. Great movie.