Year: 2014

“In a Better World”—Or Is It?

Written by diana on October 7, 2014. Posted in movie reviews, Unhealed Wound.

“In a Better World” (winner of the 2011 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film) takes place in a beautiful village in Denmark where Anton is a doctor who travels between his home and a Sudanese refugee camp where he performs surgery for the most heinous of crimes in a bloody civil war. He and his family are faced with conflicts of...

“Words and Pictures”–Graphic Dullness

Written by diana on September 29, 2014. Posted in movie reviews. 3 Comments on “Words and Pictures”–Graphic Dullness

This movie’s central theme asks the question: “Is a picture worth a thousand words?” In a contest between art and literature, a high school teacher of English literature and a teacher of painting are determined to prove that their specialty depicts the reality of experience more effectively than the other. English teacher...

“Incendies”–Scorched and Fiery

Written by diana on September 24, 2014. Posted in movie reviews, Unhealed Wound. 2 Comments on “Incendies”–Scorched and Fiery

Incendies “Incendies” was nominated for a 2011 Best Foreign Film Academy Award and also named by the New York Times as one of the 10 best films of 2011. A French-Canadian drama adapted from Wajdi Mouawad’s play of the same name, “Incendies” tells the family saga of twenty-something twins, — brother (Simon)...

The Book Thief–Not to be Shelved

Written by diana on September 16, 2014. Posted in movie reviews. 3 Comments on The Book Thief–Not to be Shelved

A pre-teen girl, Liesel Menninger (the extraordinary Sophie Nelisse) is handed off by her mother, who no longer can care for her , to a middle-aged couple. The time is pre-Kristallnacht Germany, 1938. Her foster home is simple and impoverished. Her foreboding foster mother, Rosa Hubermann (the extraordinary Emily Watson) shows little...

“Happy Valley”-No One’s Idea of Happiness

Written by diana on September 10, 2014. Posted in Television reviews. 4 Comments on “Happy Valley”-No One’s Idea of Happiness

This compelling and addictive police drama stars Sarah Lancashire as the middle-aged Yorkshire police sergeant Catherine Cawood, who struggles daily between remembering the suicide of her teenage daughter and developing love for the young boy her daughter left behind. Divorced and estranged from her son partly because of that tragic...

“Boyhood”–Childhood is Never Easy

Written by diana on August 30, 2014. Posted in movie reviews. 3 Comments on “Boyhood”–Childhood is Never Easy

Filmed over 12 years with the same cast, “Boyhood” is like no other movie made in Hollywood. This groundbreaking story feels like a documentary, not a scripted narrative written and directed by Richard Linklater (of “Slacker” fame), who films intermittently for five days each year over an eleven-year period...