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Frost/Nixon (2008)
Stunning
A brilliant showing of the Frost Nixon interviews. Great acting all around and a stunning case study of Nixon at his finest. Controlling everything till confronted with the simple truth. Frost a "talk show host" confronting what was, for those of us on the left, the boogey man of politics. The man who pulled no punches against his opponents even when those punches were sent below the belt and seemed to be the most distanced and arrogant of men. An Interview for the ages that leaves one almost feeling sorry for Nixon as he spends his remaining years despised by the world for actions that he, it seems, honestly felt were for the greater good.
This is not a Nixon pardon, far from it, it's a call to realize that Presidents need to be held accountable for their actions regardless if they are done for the greater good, when those actions result in the greater evil as it were. The final scenes of these interviews are stunning and powerful, the looks and the feeling that went in are what pushed this film from good to great in my opinion. Definitely one of the top must see movies of this year.
Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
Beautiful Made but a script a teenager could make.
This movie is beautifully made with an amazing look at the slums of India and I'll be going out tomorrow to see if I can't find the soundtrack somewhere. That said i found the script had the feeling that it was written by a love sick teenager with some absolutely cheesy lines and a cast of characters that feels so clichéd it's just annoying. Every Indian is either rich/powerful and a complete asshole or poor and trying to screw everyone over, including the host of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire who is played with the evil malice of a man looking to crush Jamal beneath his heel. That is except, of course for our two lovers, who it seems are the only honest, kind and decent people people left around.
I can understand that the movie is trying to show the dark side of growing up poor but adding a couple of different styles of characters would make the whole thing more realistic I would think. I am quite disappointed as I had only recently heard of the movie (I live in China so I don't get to see many trailers) and everything I heard had been good. I would have enjoyed the movie more if they had just left out the talking as as I said, visually it's stunning and the music was absolute wonderful.
Mei Lanfang (2008)
That was it?
I went in not expecting much as my Chinese isn't perfect yet and I knew it was going to be a chore trying to keep up with the words but I found it wasn't too bad to understand. In the end though I just didn't really see it as that good of a film, the script was mediocre and the acting was at times overly dramatic, even for Chinese films. I thought it was just me at first as the girl next to me was crying during the film but my friend who was also watching turned to me and said "That was terrible..." and she is Chinese so i think it really was just not very good. My Chinese is coming along and I've started to really enjoy watching Chinese movies in Chinese if only for the interest of testing my language skills but this was just not worth it. I would have preferred to go see one of the others I've already seen than to sit through this one.