Shanghai Triad

The Film Shanghai Triad in a chinese film directed by Zhang Yimou in 1995. Its a Drama that sets around a Mafia-style gang who controls the city which that takes place in the 1930s. It starts with a 14-year-old boy named Shuisheng from the countryside who comes to Shanghai and his uncle Liu introduces him to his Mafia family and he is to work as a servant for Jinbao (Gong Li) who is enjoying herself as the Queen of Shanghai because the Boss (Li Baotian) favors her. Through out the film she is called Miss. Shuisheng struggles alot to try and please her who is very against the new help and can't stand him.

This film only takes place over seven days through Shuishengs eyes under the Mafia upheaval. And focuses on the fate of Xiao "Miss". On the first three days, Shuishengs follows Jinbao through ordinary routines and encounters with the Mafia and the club where she sings and dances at. However , that night the Boss and his men are attacked by the Fat Yu Mafia, a man the Boss thought he could trust, and they relocate themselves to an island where only a widow and her daughter live on. Jinbao comes off very sphisticated and hard but she is a warm and lonely girl on the inside. After being on the islanf for a while she stumbles on and befriends the widow and her daughter. But this is when the climatic ending happens and Jinbo gets killed. And after all this the boss and his men Returen to Shanghai. I thought this Film was really really good, I loved the whole feel of the 1930s and how the director made you really feel what it was like to be in that time. It was also fun to watch a Mafia style movie that wasn't America , makes you think that there are Mafia and gangs out side the US. I also loved the music !

Yi Yi

Yi Yi is a Chines Film directed by Edward Yang, who picked up the best Director prize at Cannes 2000. Its a very very long movie about the daily life of a modern family in Taipei, Taiwan. This film starts with a wedding and ends with a funeral. It centers around a computor executive NJ ( Nien-Jen Wu) who is facing a midlife crisis from problems from work and from runing into his first love Sherry (Ke Suyun) who he had abruptly left with no explanation. She is married to an American, but stull remains heartbroken over NJ, and together, they see the possibility of rekindling their long-dormant feelings for one another.At the same time his mother-in-law has suffered a stroke and slipped into a coma, and his wife Min-Min (Elaine Jin) deals with her depression by turning to a religious cult.

While this is all going on his daughter Ting-Ting (Kelly Lee) is a teenager who starts dating her best friends boyfriend "Fatty" ( Yupang Chang), and his son Yang-Tang ( Jonathan Chang) finds his own ways of dealing with both life in general and a group of bullying older girls in particular.

As the film comes to a end NJ relized that his life wouldnt have been any different and is better that he didn't go run off wit Sherry. Min-Min comes to the realization that her life was just as empty and meaningless at the Buddhist monastery,making her life no more meaningful than it was before. And Ting-Ting's control result in her heartbreak.

This film is really long but its a film that you end up liking once its over. My favorite scene is when NJ and Sherry recall the excitement of holding hands on their first date, as the film cuts and we see Fatty and Ting-Ting holding hands on their own first date, while the voice-over continues. Over all its i give it a A-

Three Colors: Blue

Three Colors Blue is a french film Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski and was released in 1993, and was nominated for 3 golden globes. There are three parts of the trilogy Blue/Red/White and Blue is the first part of the set. Blue represents Liberty in the French flag.

The story is of a women named Julie played by (Juliette Binoche) who loses her husband, an acclaimed European composer and her young daughter in a tragic car accident. It shows her path from anguish to joy, the paths taken from pain and greif held in side her. During all this she is being questioned by a journlist about the rumors that she's the actual composer of all Patrice's work. She brushed it off but never denys it at all. She then tries to push her life away and cut off her self from the world and live completely independentlyin solitude in the parisian metropolis.

However she tries to destroys Patrice's final unfinished work: a huge symphony for twelve orchestras, to be played at a gala celebrating the upcoming unification of twelve European nations. Then another copy surfaces, and gradually, as Julie discovers some surprising secrets about her husband's life. This helps her get back into her music and heals Julie and irresistably draws her back to the land of living. I thought it was pretty cool how Kieslowski has mad three parts of like a series. This film was great and it showed the way someone can really just go from not caring about life to find there selfs even more and really do what they love to do.

Talk to Her

The Film Talk to her is a Spanish Film from Spain Directed by Pedro Almodovar. It stars Javier Camera, Dario Grandinetti, Leonor Watling, Rosario Flores. This Film is about two men who are both in love with women they don’t really know, but then are brought together by the tragedies that happen to these women.

One is Marco ( Dario Grandinetti) and Benigno (Javier Camera). Marco is a writer who is involved with Lydia, a female bullfighter (Rosario Flores) .He meet her as she was on the rebound from another relationship and then ridding her house of a snake. The relationship progresses from there but is doomed to fail because he lacks the ability to communicate with her. She is then Injuerd buring her bull fighting shows, and is in a como.

He soon becomes friends with Benigno, who tries to help him connect with Lydia through the como. Benigno suggests he just talk to her, though of course Marco telling Lydia about his thoughts and feelings was never the problem. As Marco trys to communicate with Lydia, Benigno communicates aswell with his patient Alicia as though she is fully cognisant of everything he says and everything going on around her. He is completly in love with her and has been since before her accident when he would stand at the window of the apartment he shared with his mother, and watch her in the dance studio across the street. He even tryed to talk to her in person but scared her away but once she’s in a coma he can talk freely to her about anything and everything and he convinces himself that by doing so they have developed a deep connection. He thinks there in the strong relationship that he violates the rules and sleeps with her while she is in the como. She ends up pregnet but loses the baby, and he is sent to jail. What he does is comptletly wrong but good comes out of it which makes it difficult to see Benigno purely as a villain.

This Film was very twisted it had its Crazy moments and its ok ones. in the film it talks alot of Relationships and the strange way people develop them as well as friendships. Shows how someone so lonely can make up this crazy idea in there head and really believe its going to go somewhere.

Strawberry and Chocolate

Strawberry and Chocolate is a Cuban film that was released in 1994 by the late Tomás Gutiérrez Alea. It’s a funny comedy set in Havana and I believe the first Cuban film with a gay character. The Film starts off with a young man named David played by Vladimir Cruz, David is a virgin student who is showed in the beginning with his Girlfriend Vivian (Marilyn Sontana) to a cheap motel to have sex for the first time. But things don't go as plan and he promises to not have sex with her until they are married. Time goes by and we see David at Vivian’s Wedding where she’s is not marrying him, which sucks for him because he promised to safe himself for her and has not the one she’s marrying.

David soon meets Diego played by Jorge Perugorría, who does an amazing job. Diego is a witty and sympathetic gay man who lures the confused David back to his apartment. Telling him he has photos of David. David being a real straight edge guy who at this time in the film would have nothing to do with someone like Diego. David then attempts to spy on Diego and entrap him into political heresy, soon David instead by Diego's free-thinking, free-loving brilliance. Diego is this man who thinks what he likes and reads what he pleases. He also tries to seduces David through out there time together but David makes sure he lets it known that he has no interest in Diego. Diego plans soon fails, and he realizes that David has never even been with women so this is when he asks his Neighbor Nancy to sleep with him. Nancy who is an unstable woman that has tried to kill herself more than once. She is upset that he would even ask her that but she starts to feel little something for David as the film goes on.

David and Nancy end up sleeping together and David falls in love with her right after. We also see how amazing David and Diego's friendship as grown, from David being basically "disgusted" by Diego orientation to them loving each other as friends. It’s at the end of the film we see them hug and even joke little bit about the first time they met at the Ice cream shop. This film was really good I definitely feel this film was challenging the system in Cuba just from the fact with having a gay character and the whole communist situation.

Amores Perros

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5Z88NBMYEI

This Flim Amores Perros Which means "Loves a Bitch" a Mexican film Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu in 2000. It is a three-part story in one,with three total strangers, whose lives are forever changed by a devastating car crash. The film opens with a chase through the crowded streets of Mexico City. Octavio one of the drivers played by Gael García Bernal, a good-natured young man desperately in love with his abusive brother Ramiro's who is played by Marco Perez wife, Susana (Vanessa Bauche). Things start to change when Susana finds out shes pregnant again with Ramiro's baby, Octavio then suggests they run away together. They enter Ramiro;s dog into a dog fighting competion to raise money.

The driver of the other car is Valeria played by Goya Toledo, a successful fashion model whose career is cut short when Octavio runs a red light. She is then Confined to a wheelchair with a smashed leg and cared for by her married lover. Valeria begins to unravel then her little dog follows a rubber ball through a hole in the floor of her apartment and disappears.

The third story centers on a former revolutionary turned assassin known only as El Chivo played by Emilio Echevarria — "The Goat" — who lives with his pack of stray dogs. El Chivo rescues the seriously wounded Cofi from the scene of the accident and nurses him back to health, an act of kindness he'll live to regret.

Besides the Crash the stories dont really interwine,but you can see character pop up once in a while in the background of the others Many people would compare this movie to Puple Fiction due to the ultra-violent story about hitmen, stickups, a fixed fight and a car crash told in fragmented time. I didn't really enjoy the whole dog fight scenc the movie was great !

TSOTSI

The Film Tsotsi is a South Africa film, it is also the winner of the 2005 Oscar for best foreign- Language Film. Directed by Gavin hood this film is based on the novel "tsoti" by Athol Fugard. Tsotsi takes place in the slums near johannesburg South Africa, its centers around a young man named David who goes by the name Tsotsi. Tsotsi is a a man who doesn't have a care in the world , he steals whatever he wants and it doesn't even matter if anyone gets hurt along the way. Untill he goes out one night and steals and car from a women. He shoots her and drives away but doesn't realize that there is a baby in the backseat. Instead of running away from the car after he notices the baby, he decides to take the child with him to his apparentment. Tsoti tries to take care of the baby like it’s his own but soon realizes that he has no idea what he’s doing to the point he makes a dipper out of newspaper.

After days of this he forces his self in a young women’s home and demands that she feeds the baby, after doing this a couple of times she offers to help take care of the child for Tsotsi. Soon word and newspapers get out with a drawing of a guy on it and an article that a woman was shot and a baby is missing. Tsotsi gang friends think it may be him but aren't sure. Since Tsotsi doesn't know how to drive anyway. But toward the end of the film he gives in and knows that it’s the best thing to do to give the baby back to the family.

Tsotsi grows alot in this film I think for him having the baby made him feel like he could make this baby love him and have a family that he never had. Because he grew up with really nothing, his mother died when he was about 7 and his dad wasn't a good father and plus he ran away and had nothing. So i think the baby was there to help him see that there are better things in like them robbing/killing or being a bad ass. I think the Film was great ! I would watch it again .. The music featured Kwaito music performed by Zola who is a popular South African artist. This film didn’t really feel like a foreign film besides the different language you couldn't tell. I guess from the way it was edit and directed it was very modern, because when I first read we were watching a South African Film I thought it would be very authentic but it really wasn't at all. Over all a great great film