Le scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) (2007)

Today's film is Le scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly).  At first I wondered what a diving bell had anything to do with a butterfly.  Butterflies don't go underwater.  But as I watched the film, I saw that it was a metaphor a man had created for his body and his life.  An extraordinary event changed him forever and trapped him.

Jean-Dominique Bauby (Jean-Do to his friends) was once a promising editor at the glitzy fashion magazine Elle, based in France.  For some unknown reason, he suffered a stroke at the young age of 43 which attacked the function of his brain stem.  The doctors described it as locked-in syndrome and told him it was a very rare occurrence which trapped him inside his own body.  Jean-Do no longer had function of any part of his body.  He couldn't walk, move his arms, turn his head, nothing.  The first part of the film is shown through Jean-Do's point of view, as he discovers what is going on.  He is sad to learn he can no longer talk.  His brain functions work perfectly fine, as he can still think.  So even though he is awake and completely aware of what is going on around him, he really can't interact with the world.

Jean-Do's super hot speech therapist, Henriette, teaches him how to communicate using the only control he has: blinking his left eye.  The doctor had to sew up his right eye because he couldn't blink.  If he didn't, then it would dry up and get infected.  Henriette tells Jean-Do to try to tell her something.  She uses a series of letters, and he blinks when he hears the letter he wants, spelling out his words. He spells out "I want to Die".  Henriette is shocked and insulted because she is trying to help him, but I can't blame him.  He can't move or anything.  Poor guy can't even use the bathroom.  He's not really living, he's being kept alive by other people and artificial means.  He's moved around by people everywhere, in the pool, in a wheelchair, all to prevent bedsores and exercise him, and he's fed by a feeding tube.

I wonder if he would have benefited by learning Morse code with his blinking eye.

After a while, Jean-Dodecides to write a book about his plight.  He originally wanted to write a book based on The Count of Monte Cristo, that book we were forced to read in high school.  But he wants to tell his own story.  He feels he is trapped in his own body, like a big diving bell, unable to move himself and just floating along down in the ocean.  But, like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, his spirit breaks free from his useless body and he finds happiness.   He called his book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

There are so many beautiful moments in this movie as Jean-Do basically lives in his imagination.  Ten days after the book was published, Jean-Do passed on from pneumonia.  He was never able to break free from his body in real life.  I found this film to be inspiring and powerfully sad.  Nobody deserves a fate like Jean-Do, to see the world pass him by and not be allowed to join in.  I will give this film a 9 out of 10.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

It's fun to watch action movies, but sometimes it's hard to write about them because they contain little to no substance.  Today's film is Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, and it was filmed in Mexico.  It's near nonstop gun violence and holds very little interest for me.

A Mexican rancher wants the head of Alfredo Garcia for impregnating his young daughter and promises a $$ reward.  So everyone is after him.  Problem is, he's already dead.  We follow Bennie, an American living in Mexico, and his girlfriend, Elita as they travel to the graveyard and to the ranch to deliver the decaying head of the dead body.

Every few minutes someone is killed by gunfire.  That's the entire movie, people being shot.  Pretty much every character in this film gets shot and killed.  Except Elita, who gets whacked with a shovel.  Even though it's violent, it's far from exciting.  It's not an action movie, more like a drama with too much violence.  I felt it was boring.  I'm giving it a 4/10.

The Pirate Fairy (2014)

There's a new Tinker Bell movie out! Yay!

Today's animated feature is the newest installment in the Tinker Bell series: The Pirate Fairy.  We are introduced to Zarina, a dust-keeper fairy who is more interested in performing experiments on the dust rather than simply keeping it.  She is successful in her experiments, but is kicked out of Pixie Hollow for not following the rules of the dust-keeper fairies.

However, she finds some people who are far more appreciative of her talents.  Problem is, they're pirates- the enemy of the fairies.  Zarina uses her dust experimenting skills to claim a title of Captain of a pirate ship.  She returns to Pixie Hollow to steal their blue dust (we learned in Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure how important blue dust is to them, as it regenerates the Pixie Dust Tree)

Tinker Bell and her friends chase after her to retrieve the blue dust, but Zarina has tricks for them.  She uses her dust to switch all their talents!  Vidia is especially angry that she is now a Tinker fairy.  How can Tinker Bell and her friends use their newfound talents to stop Zarina and get their dust back?

Oh, and bonus:  It also stars Tom Hiddleston as Captain Hook.  

So there's finally a movie that doesn't involve Tinker Bell screwing everything up and then having to fix it.  It's a different sort of pixie movie than we are used to.  So we are giving this film a 7/10.

Back to Reviewing Films

Hi!  Azalea and I are back after a 10 day hiatus.  We traveled from our home in Florida, to Alabama for a funeral (which takes 6.5 hours) and then to Louisiana for the burial (another 7 hours).  My husband's grandmother passed.  It's fine though, because I've been trying to help get her clean for 5 years, and she ultimately chose the drugs over her own life.  You can't help drug addicts unless they want to be helped.  Then, we helped clean out her apartment, and there were drugs and random papers Everywhere, so that was fun.  Now I am back to the relaxing art of film reviewing and work (school for Azalea).

Tuesday was my birthday and I am still working on my goal of completing the 2012 list of the 1001 films you must see before you die.  So far I have written 315 reviews, but not all of them have been list films.  So far I have seen 398 list films.  That's pretty good for someone with no attention span.  My daughter helps me with my somewhat weekly animated movie review.  This week we watched The Pirate Fairy.  It was okay.  As for my New Year's goal of watching 40 films from 40 different countries, right now I am about halfway through.  We are both glad to be back in Florida.

District 9 (2009)

Today's film comes to us from South Africa.  It's District 9  and it is mostly awesome.  It took me a few tries to get through the first half of it.  The first part is presented documentary style.

Aliens have landed in South Africa, and are rounded up by the humans and placed in government housing.  And we all know how nice those are.  In the documentary portion, we see the main character, Wikus Van De Merwe, as he and the other humans mistreat the aliens, known as prawns.  They even stomp and kill their eggs.  They have no respect for them. Throughout the film, we see how the prawns and humans interact with each other and it is apparent that this film is a thinly veiled metaphor for apartheid.  

How can the humans and aliens understand each other if they can't speak each other's languages?  Because, the aliens have been on Earth for 30 years.  Even though we can't replicate their clicking noises, and they apparently can't form words,  30 years is more than enough time to understand someone's language.

Later, Wikus touches a prawn's weapon and his arm starts turning into a prawn's arm!  How does touching an alien's weapon turn you into an alien?  That makes no kind of sense!!  I know that Wikus's transformation is central to the plot, but it does throw me off a bit.  It allows him to emphasize with the oppressed prawns and generally become a better person.

All of the action happens as we watch Wikus try to escape the South African government, who want to use him for experiments for their weapons, and the evil Nigerian thugs.  Ironically, his best allies turn out to be the prawns, the very people that he scorned earlier.

This movie is fast paced, full of action, and provides a glimpse of life in South Africa, even though it's sci-fi'ed up a lot.  I thoroughly enjoyed watching this movie.  It also had a nice mixture of special effects and CGI.  I will give it an 8/10.

Great Expectations (1946)

This weekend I had an all night long horror movie marathon, so I will write about that soon enough.  Today's film is Great Expectations.  I remember watching portions of this in high school while we read the book.  I greatly enjoyed the book, and the film does a fine job of going along with it.  My problem is that if I hadn't read the book, I might not have been as interested in this movie.

I was relating everything I watched with everything I read.  I don't think I would have understood Miss Havisham or what she was trying to do with Estella.  It was difficult to tell that she was wearing a wedding dress.  However, since we read the book in class before, the movie was spoiled for us.  I already knew who Pip's benefactor was, so that knowledge definitely affected how I perceived the movie.

I think that even if someone had not read the book before, they would still enjoy this movie, especially if they enjoy period pieces and Charles Dickens' stories.  The costumes were very nice, the acting was great (especially the child actors) and the action was never too slow.  I will give this film a 7/10.

The Red Shoes (1948)

Hi!  We're back from our vacation.  We had a really great time.  And now we are back reviewing films.  Today's film is The Red Shoes.  I am especially looking forward to watching this because I love ballet films.

The film is inspired by the ballet of the Red Shoes, which is loosely based on the fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson.  When I say "fairy tale", I don't mean a cute bedtime story for kids.  I mean a cautionary tale where the main character dies.  Moira Shearer plays the star ballerina, Victoria Page.  She is fantastically beautiful.  The director of the ballet troupe, Lermontov, sees great promise in her and helps her to become the very best dancer she can be.  You can tell he has feelings for her but I don't know if Victoria sees that.

The actual ballet in this film is amazing and beautiful.  The backdrops are painted and there's a combination of the stage, the fields, and the ocean that is mixed nicely.  The ballet took over 6 weeks to film.  I think that even people who are not fans of ballet will enjoy this particular scene.

Vicki falls in love with the ballet's composer, Julian Craster.  Lermontov gets jealous of him and kicks him out.  Unfortunately, Vicki goes with Julian and marries him.  I think Julian is jealous of Vicki's artistic talent.  She was a great ballerina star and he was just a composer that was known for writing her first ballet.  That's it.  Vicki goes back to Lermontov's ballet troupe and begs to dance again.  Of course he's going to let her because he still likes her.  But jealous Julian can't have that.   He refuses to let her dance in any ballet and blackmails her feelings by telling her that if she dances, she doesn't really love him and he'll leave.  What kind of asshole does that?  Vicki wants to be able to pursue her dream, because it is just as valid as Julian's dream to be a composer.  But she just cannot handle it and leaps from a balcony, wearing her red shoes.  The symbolism of the red shoes in the ballet has shown itself again in Vicki's death.  I thoroughly enjoyed this film, not just for the ballet, but for the jealousy, the drama, and the art.  I will give it an 8/10.