movie reviews – Page 59 – Unhealed Wound

“The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom”: A Day of Carnage

Written by diana on September 2, 2012. Posted in movie reviews, Unhealed Wound. 1 Comment on “The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom”: A Day of Carnage

Nominated for a Best Documentary Academy Award this year “The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom” is also a powerful narrative as vibrant as any dramatic cinema, an extraordinary, mesmerizing tribute to the resilience of human nature. More than an epitaph of mourning and loss, this film interviews ordinary residents whose philosophical attitudes toward the day of carnage are not easily dismissed. Their amazing faces humanize this catastrophe of nature. The ten-minutes of home-video taken from a hill overlooking the explosive black waves surging towards the coastline of Sendai will...

“Between the Folds”–Origami as Scientific Art

Written by diana on August 6, 2012. Posted in movie reviews, Unhealed Wound. 1 Comment on “Between the Folds”–Origami as Scientific Art

Vanessa Gold, producer of the film, “Between the Folds” (winner of the 2010 Peabody award), chronicles origami, literally, “folding paper”. Many American children have attempted this Japanese craft in elementary school, making an origami crane or simple fish. However, origami is much, much more and has become something of a manic hobby among a number of Silicon Valley engineers. And, this film explains why–through filming the stories of ten origami artists/scientists, who have developed origami “technology”, in engineering, industrial design, and...

“The Stoning of Soraya M”–Let He Who Is Without Sin….

Written by diana on July 23, 2012. Posted in movie reviews, Unhealed Wound. 3 Comments on “The Stoning of Soraya M”–Let He Who Is Without Sin….

“The Stoning of Soraya M. (2009) cuts into the soul with its fierce, unflinching narrative of Soraya Manutchehri, a 35-year-old woman stoned to death in a small Iranian village in 1986 after being convicted of adultery. Her death was the subject of Freidoune Sahebjam’s 2009 novel, La Femme Lapidée, a book banned in Iran. This award-winning indie film lovingly caresses the beautiful, wounded face of Aunt Zahra (breathtakingly played by the luminous Shohreh Aghdashloo) who is devastated by the stoning of her niece Soraya (perfectly portrayed by Mozhan Marno). Zahra pleads with a...

“Scottsboro”–The Inexcusable

Written by diana on July 10, 2012. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews, Unhealed Wound. 2 Comments on “Scottsboro”–The Inexcusable

“Scottsboro: An American Tragedy” is a 2001 PBS documentary in the American Experience series about the notorious trials of nine black teenage boys accused of rape in Scottsboro, Alabama in 1931. The landmark trial magnified rampant racism, denial of a fair trial, and the continued North-South animosity that existed almost 70 years after the Civil War had ended. The miscarriage of justice on the part of several judges, jurors, and witnesses belies the assumption that justice will prevail in the face of truth and obviously false testimony, including the recanting by one of the...

“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”–For the Elderly and Beautiful

Written by diana on June 30, 2012. Posted in movie reviews. 9 Comments on “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”–For the Elderly and Beautiful

Adapted from a novel, These Foolish Things, by Deborah Moggach, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is a finely nuanced film portraying seven British retirees: a widow (Judi Dench) whose late husband drove her into debt, a bigoted nanny/bookkeeper who is resigned to get a discounted hip replacement in India (Maggie Smith), retired judge (Tom Wilkinson) looking for his long lost lover, a sex fiend bachelor Norman (Ronald Pickup), a Blanche Dubois-type femme fatale (Celia Imrie), and a married couple who do not want to live in reduced circumstances in “senior living” (Bill Nighy and...

“Memory of a Killer”–Losing One’s Mind

Written by diana on June 18, 2012. Posted in movie reviews, Unhealed Wound. 4 Comments on “Memory of a Killer”–Losing One’s Mind

Memory of a Killer (De Zaak Alzheimer) is a 2003 film that defies description– about an elderly hired assassin, Angelo Ledda (the wonderful Belgian actor Jan Decleir), who is recruited for one last assignment: to kill a twelve-year-old girl. The story moves in almost black-and-white footage through the sunless streets of Antwerp where whores, wives suffering from their husbands’ infidelities, slutty widows and worn out city detectives share the territory of corruption, heartlessness, and the murderous misuse of power. Two cops (Verstuyft and Vincke) are assigned to random murders...