The Fill Fall in Love

I really loved this movie because it put me asleep.  This film was filmed in Iran, using real Iranian actors and actresses.  The synonpsis revolves around a family that converts their household into a restaurant, in which they prepare meals of fish to its patrons.  The main themes consist of drama and love and remorse and regret. This movie sucked. We need to watch an American movie with tons of action.

Little Otik

Little Otik is a film about a fairytale about a couple that can't have children, but they find a gruesome alternative to having a child.  This movie was made in the Czech Republic in the year 2000.  The couple, Karel (husband) and Bozena (wife), are unable to have a child due to Czech laws that restrict couples from having kids.  Bozena is especially distraught over this and literally goes mentally insane, while Karel tries to think of something that will help Bozena feel better.  Karel dug up a tree stump in the backyard of his apartment building and carved the stump to make it look like a baby.  After he gave it to Bozena, she treated the tree stump like it was a baby of her own.

Bozena started treating the tree stump like it was her own child, which drove Karel mad.  She also decided to name the carved tree stump "Otik".

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.

     Tsotsi is a foreign drama film that takes place in the slums of Soweto, which is near Johannesburg, South Africa.  This film is about a young man named Tsotsi, who is known as a street thug that robs people, and even sometimes committing murders.  One of his heists goes wrong, in which he steals a woman's car and shoots her when she tries to plead with him to not steal her car.  As Tsotsi is driving off, he notices that there's a baby in the backseat of the car.  This makes him feel really scared about his current situation, but he decides to bring the infant with him to his home.  He makes the decision to care for this child, but goes through a lot of trouble to do so.  Later in the movie, he pulls a gun on a mother with her child, in which he demands her to breastfeed the stolen infant.  She complies and the infant, which Tsotsi named "David", develops a bond with the mother's child.  As a result, the mother eventually develops a bond with David and it was especially tough for her when Tsotsi had to take David and give it back to the infant's original family.

Please Vote For Me

Please Vote For Me is a Chinese documentary about democracy.  This movie is filmed at the Evergreen Primary School, which is located in the city of Wuhan.  This is a fictional movie, where a 3rd grade class in the Evergreen Primary elementary school must vote on a class monitor.  The student that gets selected as the class monitor acts as the teacher's helper, or 'student aide.'  The main characters in this film are Luo Lei, Xu Xiaofei and Cheng Cheng.  Luo Lei is the favorite among his classmates to win the election since he was the class monitor for the past two school years.  Cheng Cheng is represented as Luo Lei's main competitor and arch rival.  There was a heated argument between them during a campaigning session in front of the class, where Cheng Cheng descibed Luo Lei as being equivalent to a dictator, stating that Luo Lei beats his classmates for disobeying/not following the teacher's instructions.  Cheng Cheng believes that a good leader and class monitor will help people instead of punishing them for their mistakes.  The last candidate and the lone female out of the three candidates, Xu Xiaofei, is shown to be the 'underdog' in the election, which made it very tough for her to gain support from her classmates.  At one point, she has an emotional breakdown (crying) because Cheng Cheng told the class to disrespect Xu Xiaofei during her speech.

I can very much relate my life to the movie, Please Vote for Me, because It's all about competition, and I enjoy competing against other people a lot.  Elections in the United States have a similar competitive atmosphere to this film.  The overall lifestyles portrayed in this movie seem to reflect some type of middle-class society, resembling the lifestyles of a middle-class society in the United States.

I really enjoyed watching this film.  I thought the humor used in the script was funny, and all characters were acted very well.  I think the makers of this film did a good job on developing the storyline and providing viewers with an accurate point of view of the Chinese culture.  I would recommend this film to anyone who enjoys foreign films.