FILM: Everything is Illuminated

 Elijah Wood plays Jonathan, an odd American man who collects artefacts from his dead relatives. He wishes to look further into his Grandfather's past.
Eugene Hutz plays Alex, the son of a man who runs a service for people to discover histories of their ancestors in Ukraine - most of the people are, inevitably, Second World War Veterans.

Alex collects Jonathan from the station and brings him to a car driven by his mad Grandfather who has a mad Collie called Sammie Davis Jr. Jr.

A quiet and reserved Jew from modern America, a mad dog, a mad Grandfather, and a young Ukrainian man in one car, travelling around to try to find Jonathan's Ukrainian ancestry - it's hilarious.
It plays on the difference in cultures and the difficulties with language translation, while also bringing together a group of very clashing characters.

Here is a brilliant example of the typical kind of conversations they have throughout the film.

Despite its comical aspects, the film grows darker by the end as it delves into the dirty history of antisemitic Ukraine, and the somewhat ambiguous but dark history of Alex's Grandfather.

It's funny, it's beautiful, it's hard-hitting...it's a fascinating film.

(My partner discovered it because Eugene Hutz is in the brilliant Gypsy Punk band, Gogol Bordello - check them out!)

FILM: Fitzcarraldo

Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald is an Irishman, known in Peru as Fitzcarraldo. Fitz has a dream to open an opera house in his town in Peru and will stop at nothing to get it. In order to raise money, he buys a boat and sails it down the infamous Pachitea River to begin work in the rubber trade. The untouched rubber trees are just off the Ucayali River which is blocked from the Amazon River by dangerous rapids. It becomes Fitzcarraldo's mission to get his large boat from the Pachitea River, over a mountain, and into the Ucayali River on the other side.

I really enjoyed this film. Not only does it involve the mad notion of dragging a boat over a mountain for the far-off goal of opening an opera house, it also involves a very interesting look at the clashing of two cultures as Fitz and his crew become entangled in a very ambiguous deal with a tribe of natives.
The story ends very unexpectedly, in a heart-warming way, which is unusual for Werner Herzog. I loved the ending - what a great entrance! I don't want to spoil it for you.
I love the fact that Herzog's films involve no special effects - there were no special effects to use when these were being made. This means that Herzog and his crew actually pulled a massive boat over a mountain with a tribe of natives (as Herzog tells in his documentary My Best Fiend). Totally mad.

FILM: Cobra Verde

Cobra Verde - Green Snake - is an enterprising outlaw (he murdered his previous boss when he discovered he was being financially exploited). He is taken in by a baron who owns a sugar plantation run by slaves. After impregnating the Baron's three daughters, he is sent to West Africa where he is to restart the slave trade.
An African king wants him killed and captures him. The king's nephew rescues him from capture and he is given an army of female warriors by who he trains to fight in order to overtake a king.
Having won the fight, the King's nephew turns on Cobra Verde who tries and fails to escape into the ocean on a large canoe.

This is one film in which Klaus Kinski doesn't play a mad man!
Characteristically for Herzog, the film doesn't involve a lot of dialogue, more an in depth look into the internal struggles of one character.

Do we like Cobra Verde? He is a murderer and a slave trader, but he's not nasty to his slaves like the other traders - he seems a more moral man than many of the other characters - perhaps a misunderstood man? He does like to disobey orders and refuses to pander to those with a higher station to him - qualities I tend to like in a character.
The film leaves one with their own individual opinion of the man, Cobra Verde, since it doesn't give it's own moral stance of the situation - it just shows the happenings.
In this way, the film is brilliantly a-moral: it doesn't have an opinion; that is left for the viewer.

FILM: What About Bob

After all of the serious films I've been watching, this one was a bit of a relief.
What About Bob is about a man with almost every mental disability there is (he's scared of everything) who gets terribly attached to his new psychiatrist, Dr Leo Marvin.
Bob is a lovely man, though clearly mad. He follows Leo Marvin who is on a family holiday in Martha's Vineyard. Leo's family befriend Bob against Leo's wishes, and Bob ends up spending a lot more time with Leo's family than intended and hilarity ensues - right?

Well, some of it is funny. Bob does manage to create some bizarre moments because of his strange collection of mental ailments.
Leo gets more and more stressed and angry due to Bob who - it seems - it actually doing a lot of good for the rest of the family. Leo ends up being more mad than Bob.
Bill Murray's character is funny and lovable and, in that sense, it's a sweet film about a misunderstood man. However, Dr Leo Marvin is, at first, a realistic representation of a typical working father - he wants his kids to grow up his way, and wants to lead his life his way. He's very stuck in his ways and surprisingly unkind for a psychiatrist...his character nearing the end of the film got a bit tiring. He just gets more stressed and more angry.
So I suppose it's a film about the negative businessman reading a book by its cover. A good enough message, I suppose.
This message is definitely better than the comedy - I chuckled a bit.

FILM: The History Boys

With a star-studded cast, this film made Dominic Cooper and James Corden famous.
Written by Alan Bennett, starring Richard Griffiths and Frances de la Tour, this film was always going to be good.
It's about the struggle of a group of school boys doing their best to get into Oxbridge.
It tackles issues like homosexuality, paedophilia, education (how one should be educated), elitism in schools, and the life of a teenage schoolboy.
It tackles quite a lot in one go.
The lead roles are brilliantly acted, though the film doesn't have much depth to the characters - you could either say this makes the characters easier to act, or you could say the acting was brilliant because there wasn't much character for the actors to use.
The film seems to laugh its way through really troubling topics - like the relationships between the boys and their teachers.
The question is, were the decisions made the correct ones to make?
When the headmaster discovers the paedophilic actions of Richard Griffiths' character, he quietly fires him and does all he can not to make a scene for the sake of his school's reputation. Shouldn't he have got the police involved? Considering it is set in the 1980s, when this sort of thing happened frequently, should we just take it on the chin or should we condemn the headmaster along with the teacher nonetheless?