Schindler's List (1993) Review

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(More customer reviews)Meet Oskar Schindler. A German living in occupied Poland during World War II. A member in good standing of the Nazi party. A womanizer, a war profiteer...and ultimately a man of conscience. A man who became one of the great unsung heroes and humanitarians of the war.
"Schindler's List" chronicles Oskar Schindler's spiritual odyssey from war profiteer to humanitarian and hero. Winner of seven Academy Awards® in 1993, including Best Picture, this harrowing and heart-rending film is Steven Spielberg's masterpiece, and perhaps one of the finest and most important movies ever made. It depicts Schindler's ultimately successful attempt to rescue 1,100 Jews from Hitler's "Final Solution" by getting them to safety outside Poland.
Dynamic performances abound in this beautiful movie, Especially noteworthy are Liam Neeson as the suave Schindler, Ralph Fiennes as the monstrously depraved Nazi colonel, Amon Goeth, and Ben Kingsley as the dignified, principled Jewish prisoner Itzhak Stern.
"Schindler's List" is definitely not light entertainment! This beautiful movie allows viewers to feel like they're actually a part of one of the darkest, most horrific periods in history. (I'm sure this is the reason the film was shot in black-and-white, with only minor "colorized" bits included.) The story of the Holocaust needs to be told over and over again, in hopes that future generations can understand the horrors perpetrated on an entire race of people and prevent future occurrences. "Schindler's List" is perhaps one of the best and most effective vehicles for telling that story I've ever experienced.

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The English Patient (1996) Review

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(More customer reviews)This rare and beautiful film, based on a book that is felt as much as read, transcends the medium to become art. Painted on a vast desert canvas with deep rich oils, its beauty is felt as much as seen. This film will find your heart and remain there forever. If love had a face, it would look like this.
Director Anthony Minghella's screenplay shifts the center of Michael Ondaatje's story slightly in order to capture on film the essence of his beautiful prose. Ondaatje's novel is one of poetic beauty, a potrait of a rose beneath the water's surface. The film brings that beautiful rose out of the water and into the sunlight. The book and the film are so deeply intertwined you can not watch this film without wanting to read the book, nor can you read the book without wanting to see the film. The story itself centers around three people either in love with, or haunted by ghosts they have loved and lost to war.
Juliette Binoche gives an Oscar winning performance as Hana, a kind nurse with a gentle spirit but a damaged heart. She latches onto the burned and charred body of a man known only as the English patient, and ends up caring for him in a shell ravaged Italian villa in Tuscany where she feeds him plums and reads to him. When a man named Caravaggio with scars of his own arrives, the mystery of who the English patient really is begins to unfold via flashbacks. In the present, Hana begins to let her heart heal when she falls in love with a Sikh who disarms bombs left by the Germans.
It is the memories of the English patient, however, which are at the heart of this film. Ralph Fiennes gives a subtle performance as the introspective Almasy, part of an international expedition mapping an unending desert with both the romance, and the danger of the sea. Kristin Scott Thomas is wonderful as Katherine Clifton, the stunningly beautiful and enigmatic wife of a fellow mapper. An instant but unspoken attraction between she and Almasy finally becomes too unbearable to ignore and the affair that holds the key to the mystery surrounding the English patient begins.
This is one of the most romantic films ever made and is filled with the joy and anguish of love and war. It shows that while war may create logistical lines that can not be crossed, the heart has no boundaries. Anyone who has ever experienced a love of such emotional intensity and physical longing that love and need became one will understand the love affair of Katherine and Almasy.
Cinematographer John Seale has given this film a grace and beauty seldom seen on film. A haunting score full of mystery and romance from Gabriel Yard accompany scenes never to be forgotten, and will not be described here in case you have not yet seen them. Director Anthony Minghella explores the mystery of the desert, and the heart, which according to the "The Histories" by Herodotus, a book the English patient clings to, is an organ of fire.
If there is but one ounce of romance in your soul, you will love "The English Patient." It is a well charted and romantic map of the human heart, as wide and treacherous as the unending desert. This will be one of your favorite films once you see it. I promise.

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Sunshine (2000) Review

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(More customer reviews)It is too bad that so few people saw this film -- one of the best films of 2000. It focuses upon several generations of an ambitious Jewish family in Austria-Hungary. Its message is sad: in 20th century Eastern Europe, the Jews had no hope integrating -- not with the Emperor, not with the Nazis, and not with the Communists. This Jewish family certainly tried. They fought in World War I, the family gave up its Jewish name, one of them married a Catholic and converted to Catholicism, etc. But nothing was ever enough, and anti-Semitism led to tragedy after tragedy. The film ends while the Communists control Hungary. The youngest member of the family naively had worked for the Communists but became disillusioned. He reclaims the family's Jewish name and walks away from politics and the public realm altogether. We know that he sees the socio-political situation much more clearly than did his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. He knows that he has a choice: endorse official anti-Semitism (and even then risk being accused of conspiring with Zionists) or be a Jew and take the diminished stature in Hungarian society that comes with it. There is no middle way -- the family's multigenerational drive to accomodate Judaism with financial and political success has failed.
This film has a sweep like few others today. It spans generations, tackles big historical events, and wrestles with serious themes. It is well worth seeing if you like serious cinema. Highly recommended.

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