到不了的都叫做远方

Summary: In a small village in Colombia, the pregnant seventeen years old Maria supports her family with her salary working in a floriculture. She is fired and with a total lack of perspective of finding a new job, she decides to accept the offer to work as a drug mule, flying to USA with sixty-two pellets of cocaine in her stomach. Once in New York, things do not happen as planned.

Thoughts: I found this film very poignant. It's a very straightforward film about a Colombian girl who becomes a drug mule and her journey as one, but Maria, as a character, is superb. Her actress makes her into an empathetic character, and the film unflinchingly portrays people as people, who have flaws and hopes and who try to do their best and make mistakes. I didn't find this film moralizing or victimizing; rather, it told a story about a girl who struggles for agency within her constraints.

Summary: A man continually trying and failing to get his wife to stay dead; a self-absorbed ad agency creative director who comes up with one unworkably inane idea after another; a British hitman who only wants to know everyone's function in life; and an unfortunate office worker and father whose brain is left scrambled after a stage hypnotist is murdered in mid-performance. Starting off as unrelated plot lines, they intertwine with each other as they continue on their respective ways.


Thoughts: This is...awesomely trippy. The colours are really vibrant, which is part of it. The storylines, though, are really what makes this film such a fun experience. At times surreal, usually hilarious, and yet, at the core, still very poignant, they relate together in very tangential yet still very important ways. Ultimately, this is a film about people who eventually realize very important, meaningful things about their lives, perhaps dressed in lurid colours and brazen situations but always always with a point.

Summary: The story of folk legend Ishikawa Goemon, a ninja bandit hero who stole valuables from the rich and gave them to the poor.

Thoughts: I really enjoyed this film, although certain things bother(ed) me. The CG was unexpected, and it was a struggle for me to adjust during the first hour of this two-hour movie. It's a mixture between a Final Fantasy atmosphere and wuxia grandeur and splendour, which just made me go WTF at the beginning. I prefer straight historical to fantastic historical, so I was :| about that. I found myself adjusted during the second half, though.

This is an interesting reimagining of some major figures in Japanese history and folklore: Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Tokugawa Ieyasu, Ishikawa Goemon, Sarutobi Sasuke, Kirigakure Saizou, etc. I read a lot about the historical figures on Wikipedia once I realized this, in order to gain some background. The portrayals of certain characters, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, for one, is really against the grain of history - it worked in this, but I'm not sure I like it. I really like the reimagining of Goemon's story, though.

The romance subplot really annoyed me, but that's because I tend to prefer...straight historical productions. I don't mind romance at all when it happened in history and was crucial to it, and although the subplot wasn't irrelevant to this reimagining, it wasn't exactly crucial, either, and I wasn't sure if this was meant to be something genuine that allows us to better understand the characters or if this was just the usual romance subplot inserted into action to appeal to a wider audience.

Despite this, I really did enjoy it, although I'm a bit tired of the fantastical nature of wuxia CGI (especially when it's set in Japan, which is just no for me. The mixing of Western and Japanese elements bothered me for the same reason - I just don't like fantastic history, I suppose). I still recommend it, though, for the experience if nothing else. It's an exhilarating tale and a great adventure.

(Also, shit, some times I do have things to say about the things I read or watch! I don't just absorb like a mindless sponge!)

Summary: By tying thousands of balloon to his home, 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen sets out to fulfill his lifelong dream to see the wilds of South America. Right after lifting off, however, he learns he isn't alone on his journey, since Russell, a wilderness explorer 70 years his junior, has inadvertently become a stowaway on the trip.


Thoughts: I really really enjoyed this. The beginning was slow, but when the movie picked up with the magical realism, just wow. This is a perfect blend of cute and heart-warming and awesome, and even though I managed to predict quite a bit of the movie, watching the process still gave me a thrill. It's possibly my favourite Pixar film so far (although I don't really get all the people who cried while watching it...but maybe it's just because I'm too callous :x)

Summary: Alex (Inés Efron), a 15-year old intersex person from Buenos Aires lives secluded with her parents in a fishing village in Uruguay. At birth, her parents decided not to have her operated on, in order for her to choose her gender. Therefore she still has both her sexual organs. However, she takes corticoids and is raised as a girl.

Her parents have moved several times before settling down in Uruguay in order to live a quiet life and keep her from the mockery Alex previously experienced while living in Argentina. One day, however, Alex's mother, Suli (Valeria Bertuccelli), invites a couple and their 15-year old son, Alvaro (Martín Piroyansky) for the week-end. Alvaro and Alex start a friendly relationship and spend a lot of time together under the scrutiny of their parents...


Thoughts: This film is just...fab. It explores Alex's intersexed reality and what stems from that very well. It's a bit of a coming-of-age story that explores what Alex's lived reality means for her and her family, how it complicates things and can be dangerous, and through it all, Alex is still portrayed as a human, as someone with valid feelings, as someone who just wants to live life the way she wants. It's really quite sensitive about stuff, and I really recommend this. It's absolutely gorgeous.

Summary: In Treasure Town, life can be both peaceful and violent. This is never truer than for our heroes, Black and White - two street kids who claim to traverse the urban city as if it were their own. But in this town, an undercurrent of evil exists and has its sights set on the pair of brothers, forcing them to engage in battle with an array of old-world Yakuza as well as dangerous assassins vying to rule the decaying metropolis, Treasure Town.


Thoughts: I really really like this. The animation, first of all, is stunning. Very detailed, colourful, beautiful overall. I thought I wouldn't really get into the movie at first, but as I watched, I found myself super immersed into the relationship between Shiro and Kuro. They are basically...each other's other half, and so it's riveting to watch the way they interact together and apart. This relationship, in fact, made the movie for me, but there are other touching things in this as well. And the ending is just beautiful. <3 I highly recommend this. ;o;

Summary: The US President and UK Prime Minister fancy a war. But not everyone agrees that war is a good thing. The US General Miller doesn't think so and neither does the British Secretary of State for International Development, Simon Foster. But, after Simon accidentally backs military action on TV, he suddenly has a lot of friends in Washington, DC. If Simon can get in with the right DC people, if his entourage of one can sleep with the right intern, and if they can both stop the Prime Minister's chief spin-doctor Malcolm Tucker rigging the vote at the UN, they can halt the war. If they don't... well, they can always sack their Director of Communications Judy, who they never liked anyway and who's back home dealing with voters with blocked drains and a man who's angry about a collapsing wall.


Thoughts: This was brilliant. The satire hits very close to home because this is the way it could have happened, and that gives the humour a bit of an uneasy edge that just lurks beneath the surface. So while the viewer is laughing quite frequently...the laughs are also edged with uneasiness and tension, and that's what I love about this.

Summary: Marion wants more out of life. She want to marry Sam, but he has very little money and cannot afford a wedding. She feels herself stuck in a no-win situation, until one Friday her boss asks her to deposit a large sum of money.


Thoughts: Truly a classic. Even though I have like ten movies by Hitchcock, this is the first one I've actually seen by him...And it was totally worth it. I understand why he's so acclaimed now. The suspense in this film, I can't even describe it. I guessed the ending (probably because I read too much fic lol), but the lead-up to it made me go :333 :ooooo a lot, even second-guessing myself at times. Just really a wonderful film that everyone should watch at some point.