Posts tagged Tragedy
Amour – Movie Trailer
Feb 5th
Amour represents an honest, heartwrenching depiction of deep love and responsibility. Georges and Anne are in their eighties. They are cultivated, retired music teachers. Their daughter, who is also a musician, lives abroad with her family. One day, Anne has an attack. The couple’s bond of love is severely tested and the other must assume the role of the caretaker in this compassionate yet unsentimental drama from director Michael Haneke.
Rust and Bone – Movie Trailer
Jan 21st
A struggling single father helps a beautiful whale trainer recover her will to live following a terrible accident that leaves her confined to a wheelchair. Lonely and destitute, Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) leaves the north of France for his sister’s house in Antibes after becoming the sole guardian of his estranged five-year-old son Sam. When Ali lands a job as a bouncer in a nearby nightclub, things quickly start to look up for the itinerant father and son. Then one night, after breaking up a fight in the club, Ali meets the radiant Stephanie (Marion Cotillard), and slips her his number after dropping her off safely at home. Though Stephanie’s position on the high end of the social spectrum makes romance an unlikely prospect for the pair, a tragic accident at Marineland robs her of her legs, and finds her reaching out in desperation to Ali. Her spirit broken by the same tragedy that took her legs, Stephanie gradually finds the courage to go on living trough transcendent moments spent with Ali — a man with precious little pity, but an enormous love of life.
“127 Hours” Don’t Try This on Your Own
Feb 2nd
“Don’t Try This on Your Own”
127 HOURS received a number of Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, and Best Actor for its star, James Franco.
Franco, of course, plays Aron Ralston, the hiker who in 2003 was hiking by himself in a remote area in Utah when his right arm got pinned underneath a boulder, which he wrote about in his book, BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE.
The most interesting part of the story, of course, is that after failing for days to be able to dislodge the boulder, Ralston amputated his arm with a small knife in order to save himself from dying.
So, if you already know the whole story, you might think, why bother seeing this movie?
Well, because of all those Academy Award nominations, of course, and the way that the story is told on screen by director Danny Boyle.
The story begins on a Saturday with Ralston arriving in the area where he is going to start hiking.
He encounters two young women who are lost, and he tells them how to find the place they are looking for, but they look at him with suspicion.
Realizing why, Ralston removes the bandanna from his face and says, “I’m only a psychopath on weekdays. Today is Saturday.”
While the three of them spend some time together, Ralston tells them that he is an engineer, but hiking in areas like this is what he really wants to do, and he considers this his second home.
The girls invite Ralston to a party the next night at the place where they are staying, they say goodbye, and then the interesting part of the story begins.
Ralston falls in a crevice, and a large boulder dislodges and traps his arm against the rock wall.
The girls are out of shouting distance at this point, and now, you might ask, how can the story be interesting for the rest of the movie?
It might not be if the rest consisted of just grimacing, struggling, frustration, more struggling, more grimacing, even more struggling, and even more grimacing, but don’t forget all those Academy Award nominations and the talents of the writers, director, and actor.
127 HOURS is worth all the awards it receives, but don’t try this on your own.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
