The Debt Collector

     The Debt Collector is a foreign film from the Philippines about gambling.  This film is about a woman who goes around her village stealing people's money by collecting lottery numbers from people.  The people give this woman their lottery numbers, in which she charges a price for their bet.  What the people don't know is that the woman isn't collecting their money for a lottery raffle, but actually stealing their money.  The woman intends on using the stolen money for paying her debts, in which she states that she's trying to just "make a living".  Eventually, the cops catch her gambling for other people's money on the streets, and she's brought in to talk to the main police chief.  Rather than being sentenced to time in jail, the police chief actually places his own bet with the woman (this occurs with another police officer, as well).  As a result, the woman walks out of the police station with more money in her pocket.  At the end of the movie, two men get into a fight in the middle of the street because one guy crashed the other guy's car, in which one of them pulls out a gun.  One guy tries to run away and the other guy attempts to shoot him, but misses and kills the woman's son.  She also realized that she has been shot in the shoulder, which makes her cry.

Run Lola Run

     'Run Lola Run' is a German action movie that portrays the importance of being on time, literally.  My main plot of the film is that Lola has to gather enough money and bring it to her boyfriend, Manni, so he can pay his boss.  At the beginning of the movie, Manni drops a large bag of cash in which a homeless man finds it and decides to keep it, which is why Lola has to hurry and get money from her father and bring to Manni by noon.  This film is broken up between three different runs, in which she makes three attempts to get the money to Manni on time.  In the first run, Lola runs to her father's bank to ask for a bunch of money.  Her father refuses, so Lola had to demand the money from him at gunpoint.  He obliges and gives her the money, but she doesn't make it to Manni on time, in which she encounters him robbing a supermarket (Lola decides to join in and help).  In the second run, Lola takes a different route to get to Manni.  She arrives at her father's bank and robs him at gunpoint, demanding 500,000 marks.  As soon as she steps out the door of the bank, it appears that the police have surround her.  Lola gets really scared and thinks that the police were going to arrest her since she was carrying a bag full of the stolen money.  She gets confused when the police tell her to move out of the because they are responding to the bank robbery, but what they didn't know is that Lola was the one who stole a bunch of money, obviously.  On her third run, Lola avoids any obstacles that she encountered in her past two runs, but her father and a colleague get into a car crash and get killed.  She also decides to go to a casino and gamble for the money.  She ends up winning the jackpot two times in a row and walks out with ample amounts of cash.  At the same time during her third run, Manni find the homeless guy that stole his bag of money, so he chases him down and takes the money from him.  Lola arrives at the destination on time and finds Manni getting out of a car, shaking hands with his boss because Manni brought the money to his boss on time.  As an added "bonus," the money that Lola won from the casino is their's to keep, but she is shown crying at the end of the film because of the death of her father.

     This movie is very action packed and provides a great thrilling movie-watching experience.  I highly recommend this film to anyone who enjoys a high-paced action-thriller movie.

Persepolis

Persepolis is an animated film from France, made in the year of 2007.  The main character is named Marjane, who was born and raised in Tehran.  Her middle-class family participated rallies again the Tehranian government regime.  Because of this, she experiences violence at a very young age.  Her parents eventually sent her off to a school in Austria because of the civil unrest happening in Tehran.  At first, Marjane has trouble fitting into the new environment since she has no friends.  Throughout her time in Austria, she moves to many different houses, in which she finally settles in a place owned by a group of nuns.  The first friends that Marjane makes are a group of punk rockers that believe that the government is corrupt.  The group of these rebel potheads introduce the music genre, heavy metal, to Marjane and bring her to a concert.  She eventually settles in and starts to enjoy her new "rebel" life.  This new Marjane started to get into trouble in school, as well as on the streets.  She also dates a couple of guys during her stay in Austria, but she breaks up with both of them.  Marjane starts to feel depressed and lonely, and she misses her parents.  As a result, she decided to move back to Tehran so she could live with her parents.  But this doesn't last long, since it was dangerous to live in Tehran because of war and protests against the Tehranian government.  Her parents then send her off to America so she could start a new life.

Marjane's life in Tehran doesn't really relate to life in America since there haven't been any wars on American soil, as opposed to Tehran.  Her stay in Austria, however, could relate to American life.  Some key similarities include the heavy metal music that was portrayed in this animated film, her group of rebel Anarchist friends and the catholic school that she attends.  This movie used a lot of great humor and narrative storytelling, which made it really enjoyable for me to watch.