January 2010 Archives
Gattaca (1997)
I really loved this movie, and I’ll tell you why. It follows a guy who does whatever he needs to do to follow his dreams. People tell him he can’t and that he’s not perfect or he doesn’t have the potential to do what he wants to do, and he just does it anyways.
It is starring Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman and Jude Law. They’re members of this futuristic world where everyone’s genes have been chosen for them before they are even born. Some people’s parents have the money to make perfect kids with their doctors, and some parents don’t. People who don’t have perfect genes are discriminated against, like how today there is racism or xenophobia. Ethan Hawke is named Vincent, and he has always dreamed of being an astronaut at the space station called Gattaca. He can’t get in even though he works very hard because he wasn’t born perfect. He has a high percentage of risk for heart problems and no one would take that risk on training him if he was going to have health problems.
So, he becomes a “borrowed ladder.” He takes on the genetic identity of another person who has a perfect genome. That person is played by Jude Law and his name is Jerome Morrow. So, Jerome gives Vincent samples of his blood, fingerprints, urine, hair, skin, and everything Vincent needs to pass substance tests and to make people think he is Jerome Morrow. Then, when he has someone else’s genes, he can use his own brain and talent to move up and follow his dreams.
But that’s just the beginning of the movie. The movie is about how Vincent almost loses his dream of going on a mission in space because the police think he has committed a crime. And also he falls in love with Uma Thurman, so there is a lot of drama that he has to go through but he has to stay focused on his dream and make it a reality.
I like to watch this movie whenever I get discouraged about something, because it helps me to see that you really can do whatever you want to do, if you just work hard enough and stay focused on what you’re doing. My favorite quote of the movie is:
Director Josef: “We have to ensure that people are meeting their potential.”
Investigator: “Not exceeding it?”
Director Josef: “No one exceeds his potential.”
Investigator: “If he did?”
Director Josef: “It means that we did not accurately guage his potential in the first place.”
It’s something we should all think about.
-Plum
picture from extraneousflickassery.files.wordpress.com
This is England (2006)
I loved this film — It’s the best British film I’ve seen in a long time. It follows a young boy named Shaun (who is a lot like the director Shane Meadows) in the 80s in England who is trying to find himself and fit in, and he somehow gets into situations and hangs out with people that are a bit older and more complicated than he should be involved in.
The movie begins with Shaun getting teased for how he dresses and getting into a fight becuase someone makes fun of his dead father who died in the war. On his way home, he meets some friendly skinheads that make him feel like he’s a part of something. He has fun with them, including getting to date a girl, dressing cool, hanging out and fitting in. He gets to finally have some good experiences.
Through his friends, Shaun meets more skinheads, and they turn out to be very different from his first friends. They tell him that to make his dad proud, he should stand up for England by being racist and xenophobic. Somehow, through trying to make his dad proud of him, Shaun gets involved in hate crimes, violence and hatred.
I think that it’s interesting that all Shaun wanted was to feel like he belonged and he was sad because he lost his father and he was trying to deal with it. I think it’s interesting, and it kind of reminds me of Tyson– how young men get involved in activities to try and deal with their hurt and pain and somehow it can go wrong when they were just trying to feel better and a part of something and feel loved. I definitely recommend the movie. The song at the beginning of this post is a great song from the soundtrack; it’s the song Louis Louis by Toots and The Maytals.
-Plum
AVATAR (2009)
I figure I should do what everyone does who has a movie blog and review Avatar. The reason I want to review it is because I think it is actually a really good movie.
Of course, the main thing about this film is the technology. I was watching some interivews online, and the actor Laz Alonso, who played a Na’avi warrior, said that there were 197 cameras filming each scene, so the actors could mix in their performance with light and motion detectors, and then they could feed that into CGI and make them into aliens who move and talk and have the same facial expressions as the actors. Hopefully if the movie is successful, it will be the first of a 3-D revolution that will change the way that we watch movies.
Everyone also says, and I think so too, that the story isn’t anything special. It’s basically like Pocohontas. However, the acting is really great. I feel like Zoe Saldana for example was completely in character and committed to her performance, and I appreciated that. Everyone was giving it their all, I felt.
If you want to know my recommendation, I would say watch the movie, but make sure that you have an open mind. A lot of people don’t like it beacuse they say it’s too simple and obvious. I think if you’re making a movie with 200 cameras and all new technology, and you’re making a world that no one has ever seen before, you should make the story more simple so people can get used to it. Then, in the second and third movies, they can branch out even more in terms of the storyline.
-Plum
picture from northshoremovies.files.wordpress.com
Tyson (2008)
This movie was about Mike Tyson’s life to try and get people to understand who he is. I think it’s a good lesson not to judge a person because you don’t know where their life has taken them and you don’t know how you would react if you were in their shoes.
The things that I had heard about Mike Tyson before the movie were:
- He was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.
- He was married to Robin Givens who was an American actress and who he was abusive towards.
- He bit off Evander Holyfield’s ear while he was boxing with him.
- He was accused and convicted of raping a woman named Desiree Washington.
All these things make him seem like a really bad guy. I wasn’t sure if I would like the movie but I read a review of it on the website Sunset Gun, and I got really interested in the movie. There were a lot of things I didn’t know about his life though. Here are some of those things:
- He didn’t have a good relationship with either of his parents, which makes him very sad even now. His dad left the family when he was really small, and his mother died when he was only 16.
- He started fighting because he kept being bullied. He was always overweight and he had a high pitched voice as a little kid. His first fight was because he had lots of pet pigeons and some older boys were killing them in front of him. He just got really upset because they were pulling their heads off – he went for it and won the fight.
- He began boxing in a juvenile detention center that he was in because he was arrested over 30 times before he was 13. His trainer said he wanted him to do something with his life, and he was Tyson’s hero and he said he’d do anything for him. All his old friends from when he was growing up are either dead, on drugs or in jail.
This just goes to show for me that you can never condemn someone outright, because you never know what their life story is, the things they’ve gone through, and the choices they’ve had to make.
-Plum
picture from collegian.psu.edu
