Stranger than fiction

Some movie...!

Stranger than fiction (imdb link) caught me and kept me awake, what a twisted story! I can't help being a little bit in love with Emma Thompson, she plays an impressively screwed up author and her elegant voice almost acts in its own role as "the narrator". Dustin Hoffman plays, well, himself almost? He seems to be typecast this way nowadays, but quite a pleasant professor in this film. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a very attractive "ornament" (not fair, I know, but) without her the movie would've been horribly dull and colourless. Her character's person and home made absolute perfect sense as the "new life" of Harold Crick, played by Will Ferrell.

Initially I almost found it hard to watch Will Ferrell, but the capturing thing was to realise that the character developed as the film continued its way - probably almost like most fictional characters must develop in their author's minds...

I found myself wondering "how the heck?", "what the..?", "how are they going to..?" all through the film, and the answer - they did! They really pulled it off. :-)

Go watch.

	Will Ferrell	...	Harold Crick
	Maggie Gyllenhaal	...	Ana Pascal
	Dustin Hoffman	...	Professor Jules Hilbert
	Queen Latifah	...	Penny Escher
	Emma Thompson	...	Kay Eiffel

Apocalypto

Epic, is not quite an appropriate word to describe this film, although it has an "epic" quality to it because of the historic events it borders to.

I would rather like to describe it as "amazing" and "fantastic". :-)

I liked it a lot because of the time they took to communicate emotion, they really managed to develop the characters. I loved the amazing rainforest environment and the action. There was two or three instances of gore which they could have spared us, but other than that - fantastic!

Apocalypto (imdb link)

Little Miss Sunshine

Take the most depressing individuals you can find and bundle them up into a family and add a typical (horrible) American beauty contest for children. Then add a shortage of money, a long way to drive in a short time, a pinch of bureaucracy and the result: LURV!

I can't help it!
I cringed, I was embarrassed, I was ready to give up. But it came around, believe you me. :-)
It's a thing of beauty.
(imbd link)

	Abigail Breslin	....	Olive
	Greg Kinnear	....	Richard
	Paul Dano	....	Dwayne
	Alan Arkin	....	Grandpa
	Toni Collette	....	Sheryl
	Steve Carell	....	Frank

Pan's Labyrinth

Original title: "El Laberinto del Fauno" (imdb link).

A fairytale for grownups. A fantasy story weaved into second world war Franco's Spain, with resistance fighting against government soldiers.

A monstrous bully of a general brings his pregnant wife and adoptive daughter out to the frontier to have his sun born "where true men live". The magic in the story starts unravelling during the very first minute of the film, so for us fantasy-buffs there is enough magic from the start to keep us interested.
However it is _rather_ gory and extremely violent, so _do not_ be tempted to let your kids watch this movie (unless they're 15 years old or so). It's quite scary, but all that is "good scary" (tolerated by me, the biggest scaredy cat ever). The only borderline thing is the violence. But then again, war is and evil people are violent. The film only illustrates it in a very natural manner.

Fairytale-fantasy = go watch! :-)