Paranormal Activity Truly Frightening

Paranormal Activity (2007) is one of the most genuinely frightening films I have ever experienced, and having reached middle (if not older middle) age and devoured a ridiculous volume of cinema, it takes a lot to scare me. The gore genre films such as Saw, Hostel, bore me, or worse (House of 1000 Corpses), are disgusting and unwatchable. While the more respectable Carpenter films (Halloween) and the best of the zombie films (Dawn of the Dead) are fun in a certain respect, they don't evoke the slightest fear at all. None.

Films that truly frighten, such as Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973), Scott's Alien (1979), Kubrick's The Shining (1980), The Blair Witch Project (1999), the Ring (2002), and The Descent (2005) provide far greater experiences. Nothing produces fear like an unknown, barely seen, and clearly not understood evil menace lurking from a place beyond one's grasp. Paranormal Activity successfully employs these elements in a way that patiently escalates a growing malevolence terrorizing and stalking a couple with clearly evil intent.

Shot for a song (about $15K), the film now has the distinction of generating the greatest return on investment in motion picture history. Yes, there will be a sequel probably as horrible as most sequels, but the original is indeed original and worth a watch. Afterward, you might find yourself sleeping with the lights on.

Carnival of Souls

Shot for a song by relatively unknown director Herk Harvey and featuring totally unknown actors, Carnival of Souls (1962) is a strangely compelling film that at first comes across as a mediocre B-flick. However, it plants seeds that produce an entirely different result, and despite some of the awkward acting and a few marginal scenes, this is no B-movie. There is a reason this film acquired a cult following and is frequently shown and discussed in university film courses. Very short at only 76 minutes, the story follows a woman who crawls out of a river after the car she is in crashes from a bridge and falls into the water below.


Skipping the plot, the film features a granularity that puts the audience right into 1962. You see the traffic, the car dashboard and radio, the advertising, and the background in a way that truly paints an atmosphere you can almost smell.

Things are not what they seem for this oddly cool yet drawn church organist who, in the most compelling scene of the work, falls into a sort of trance while playing the organ, the music drifting from standard church fare into notes and energies that are anything but. (The music required the use of a theater organ instead of a church organ.) Her hands and fingers, as well as her bare feet, acquire an escalating energy that does not belong in church, and hearing her, the minister rushes in to interrupt, deeply disturbed and shaken. Clearly under duress, he terminates her on the spot. What is that energy and where is it coming from?

She leaves, and we soon learn about the carnival that has been haunting her since she crashed into that river.

Framing the Professional

Most have probably seen The Professional from the perspective of watching a movie. I invite you to see the film again from the perspective that this is Natalie Portman's first film at the age of thirteen. This picture offers a deeply compelling example of how a development at its time has no idea of the context that can be created for it in the future.

To understand what I am saying requires a true understanding of context. At the time the film was produced, Portman was completely, totally, utterly unknown. This was six years before her leading role in Star Wars, her further advancement in V for Vendetta, her escalating career as an advocate for animal and human rights.

Yes, you've already seen the film, but I invite you to watch again through the lens that the film is totally about Natalie Portman. Learn about Portman, her roles in pictures that include the above as well as Closer, Cold Mountain, and Heat, and then see this gem again. At thirteen, she plays a twelve year old going up against the likes of Gary Oldman and Danny Aiello in a creative and completely original piece of not only must see cinema, but must see again cinema.

Trucker (2008)

James Mottern wrote and directed his first film, Trucker (2008), a surprisingly sharp, street smart, and touching story of young woman who ekes out a living as a truck driver. Still living a life of meaningless one night stands, she must face a son she had eleven years earlier now that the father is dying. The film provides one of the most powerful examples of cinema rooted in reality that I have seen in a long time. It is so real, so grounded, so solid, that it almost occurs as a documentary diving into the real interactions of actual people.

The performances are top of the line with Benjamin Bratt perfect as the dying father and Jimmy Bennett as a very compelling child. Michelle Monaghan won a Best Actress Award from the San Diego Film Critics Society, and the movie won several awards at the Festivals. As a first time director, Mottern's work already surpasses that of most established Hollywood hot shots.

Nine Terrific Bad Movies

One Million Years BC (1966) Having no dialog other than some grunts and semi-words, this movie is really bad, but 27 year old Rachel Welch running from dinosaurs, ferocious beasts, and beastly men, climbing over rocks and through crevices wearing a little piece of fur is not to be missed. The creature features in this classic – now that's entertainment. This film is a pleasure to watch.

Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959) This film is seriously, truly BAD. I mean just awful, "I don't like hearin' noises, especially when there ain't sposed to be any." As if made for Mystery Science Theater, it has classic Bela Legosi chasing the lady in the white nightgown through the cemetery. The aliens send a message which includes, “You didn't actually think you were the only inhabitants of the universe? How could any race be so stupid?” Also, at the Pentagon, “We have reports of saucers flying so low the exhaust knocked people to the ground.”

At one point the alien shouts at the human, “You're stupid! Stupid! STUPID!!”

Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity (1987) is just butt awful bad. It's terrible, but virtually naked voluptuous babes expose copious amounts of eye candy as they run around with big ray guns in a fierce battle with fully clothed men and ugly mechanical robots. North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms condemned the film as "indecent" on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 1992. Uh, Jesse, how do you know? Watch it for the plot.

Bride of the Monster (1955) Bela Legosi plays the standard mad scientist out to conquer the world by using radioactivity to create an army of monsters that will do his bidding. He keeps an octopus in a large tank beside his laboratory, and as the hungry beast occasionally devours passers by, both police and a cute newspaper reporter start investigating. The lines, the acting, and the scenes are consistently bad enough to provoke almost continuous laughter.

J-Men Forever (1979). This film became popular on late night television's Night Flight and is not a film, per se, but a collection of stock footage assembled from hundreds of films. The evil disk jockey known as The Lightning Bug seeks to rule the world by brainwashing it with marijuana and rock and roll music. Fortunately, our J-Men heroes respond to the threat to humanity and save the day. Almost non-stop laughter.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978) This hysterical film has jokes embedded inside of jokes saturating its reeking badness. Prepare to laugh until it hurts. Tomatoes go on the rampage until it is discovered that the song “Puberty Love” played at sufficient volume destroys all of the tomatoes. To defeat the one killer tomato protecting itself with ear muffins, our hero gets sufficiently close to the beast holding up the song's equally fatal sheet music. How do people think of stuff like this?

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). Not much need for comment here. If you think this was actually a good movie, uh, yes, good, but good as bad. If you haven't seen it, you are missing a lot. My daughter did the whole routine at the theater. I watched at home.

Teenagers from Outer Space (1959) features the memorable scene where the bad teenager "skeletonizes" an innocent doggie and then rips the flesh off the bones of a woman in a swimming pool. What adds to the film's electricity is the teenager perspective where teens both know and matter more than the old folks. The need to destroy a giant lobster and the dramatic music are a hoot.

Billy Jack (1971) Some might argue that this is not a bad movie, and it really is worth seeing. Still, it's bad, but the alternative school and the exercises and discourse that occurs there provides a stirring if not longing for that brief period in history, entirely unlike today, where people actually did ask questions and listen when others replied.

The Elements Trilogy

Deepa Mehta’s Elements Trilogy consists of three extraordinary films, Fire (1996), Earth (1998), and Water (2005).

Fire is the first Indian film with an explicit depiction of homosexual relations, somehow managing to squeak through India’s censor board untouched. After a few weeks of screening before sold out audiences in November 1998, word got around, and homophobes, usually religiously affiliated, started storming and vandalizing the theaters. Beautifully, brilliantly, and powerfully illustrating the escalating electricity between two neglected wives, erupting into passionate female sexuality uncontrolled by men, the film provoked quite the ruckus, with all sorts of screaming, mayhem, arrests, trials, and noise before things settled down and people could watch it (still uncensored) without incident.

Earth: In 1947 Lahore, India a small crippled Parsee girl, Lenny, smashes a plate on the floor and asks her puzzled mother, "Can you break a country?"

The answer is yes, and this masterpiece unfolds the ensuing brutality through the eyes of Lenny, her beautiful nanny Shasta, and Shasta’s suitors, the Muslim “Ice Candy Man” Dil Navaz, the Hindu Hasan, and his Sikh friend. Lahore, in the Punjab, was an ancient cosmopolitan city where Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Parsee lived side by side in reasonable harmony until the partition, when unspeakable violence broke out, as it did in many other parts of India. Over a million people died in the sub-continent and perhaps 12 million people fled their homes.

Based on the autobiographical novel Cracking India by Bapsi Sidhwa, the film explores how civil turmoil affects personal relationships. Politics brings out the worst in everyone; submerged resentments and trivial jealousies fuel shocking atrocities. The film’s ending is gut wrenching, profoundly disturbing, and utterly unforgettable.

Water captures conservative India's brutal oppression of women who are expected to set themselves on fire when their husbands die. Blamed for their husbands' deaths, surviving wives have to enter "widow houses," often forced to turn to prostitution in order to survive. Mehta chose the holy city of Varanasi as the location of her film because widow houses still exist there. By this time, however, her reputation for making extraordinary, powerful, and influential films was well established. Now, adversaries truly feared her work.

Before production could begin, two thousand protesters stormed the ghats, destroying the main film set, burning and throwing it into the holy river. Three main political/religious parties led the angry mob: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHU), and the Kashi Sanskrit Raksha Sangharsh Samiti (KSRSS). Considering themselves the guardians of the culture of Varanasi, protesters burned effigies of Mehta and sent her death threats. Following the protests, the Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee intervened and allowed the filming to continue. The filming was moved to West Bengal in Sri Lanka.

The Prime Minister intervened. Think about that. Hard to imagine in the United States, but this work is not about making money. This is the work of a soul that isn't for sale, serious cinema the likes of which almost never gets made in America. By this time, the world of cinema had discovered Mehta's work. Water received 10 awards and 11 nominations including the Oscar for Best Picture in a Foreign Language.

Deepa Mehta is a brilliant filmmaker who uses a feminist perspective and 20th century India to address the human condition applicable to everyone. Individuals outraged by the injustice of oppression, be it on account of gender, of race, or of status, will find her work a moving and compelling voice for the dignity of all people. Each film in the trilogy is a solid Five (out of Five) star gem. Bring the brain, the heart and the soul. You will need all three. Expect to be stirred in places Hollywood couldn't reach even if it had the courage to try.

After the Wedding

Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture in a Foreign Language, Susanne Bier's After the Wedding (2006) probably would have won had it not been for Von Donnersmark's profoundly thought provoking The Lives of Others. Restricting remarks on the plot to the most basic, a troubled man finds peace by working himself to the bone at an African orphanage, immersing himself in helping kids in desperate need. Not surprisingly, the orphanage is always on the brink of financial extinction, and suddenly he is contacted by a wealthy executive in Europe, whose corporation appears eager to support his cause.

If it sounds too good to be true.

What distinguishes the film is its mastery of capturing the angst and spiritual trauma associated with family and parent and child and what these relationships mean. I have experience in this area, and the film is brilliant. Situations include a man learning he is a father, facing a daughter he didn't know he had, and the daughter, thinking her father dead for her entire life, seeing him while he sees her. Some people have some explaining to do, and souls are engaged, and more often than not, everyone cares. I've been there. This film gets it as demonstrated by an intelligent, insightful script and the attention given to the acting with extreme awareness of the facial expressions, the energy behind the eyes, and the states expressed by the characters.

The “Before the Wedding” motifs have been beaten bloody six ways to Sunday through Saturday including leap year. Virtually every possible concoction of what connects to what and how under which circumstance has been explored. We love the love story of the two, separated by the drama and circumstances of choice, overcoming outrageous barriers, embracing for imminent bliss, roll credits. In reality people do get married. In reality the wedding is not the end of the story.

Divided We Fall

Czechoslovakian director Jan Hrebejk's Musíme si pomáhat (2000) offers a compelling and realistic depiction of a WWII Czech couple who take in a former employer of their community, David, a Jewish businessman who had escaped the Theresienstadt concentration camp and knew any capture meant death. They allow him to live in their secret closet for two years. Without getting into the plot, I will share that the film masterfully sets up a final 30 minutes of very moving and realistic sequences where individuals face imminent death and maneuver a turn of events requiring personal risk and sacrifice to save the life of another. The final scene with the baby carriage is cinematic genius.

Divided We Fall deserved its nomination for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The film is must see cinema.

No Britain - No USA

After ousting Winston Churchill for precisely the issue of health care, Britain created its Single Payer National Health Care System (NHS) in 1948. The country is now ranked 18th in the WHO health care rankings (metrics include longevity, infant mortality, medical mishaps, acute care beds per capita, etc).

The USA is ranked 37th.

Annual per capita cost in Britain: $2500.
USA: $6000.

While health care is not a good example, it is impossible to overstate the influence of British history on the United States. Columbia University Professor Simon Schama's 15-hour A History of Britain (2000) provides an easy to watch presentation that not only offers the novice a decent overview of the subject, but it also enriches an appreciation of what made the United States of America possible.

All too often those in the US think democracy and the ideas behind it were invented by the founding fathers of this country and those involved with writing the US Constitution. While obvious, more than a few lose sight of the simple fact that the US Constitution was crafted by those deeply embedded in British thinking. Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, Washington, & Co. weren't samurais from Japan. Their ideas and philosophies regarding government, governance, and citizenship were rooted in Britain's bloody struggle from monarchy to republic and democracy, a struggle that involved brutal clashes between king and parliament and the eventual emergence of "Prime Minister" Robert Walpole before they had a name for the office.

More out of natural political economic developments than design, Britain developed the two party system with the Whigs, supporting aristocratic families, and the Tories friendly to the monarchy. Diametrically opposed, they went to different taverns and had different social circles. Tories accused the Whigs of being fanatics. Whigs accused the Tories of being puppets. Think cats and dogs and boatloads of vitriol back and forth. I know, difficult to imagine.

The series was probably wise to only briefly mention the intellectual machinery under the hood of all this history, but it does note the influence of philosophers (most of them Scottish) like David Hume and, in particular, John Locke, without whom events would have unfolded very differently. As industrialization and economic expansion continued, Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (Full Online Text) suggested the best thing the government could do was get out of the way and let the "invisible hand" of the market do its work. Despite ample mathematical refutation of this model (not to mention the recent financial meltdown), a lot of folks are still worshiping Smith's invisible hand.

Those with a casual sense of British history will find the series useful for improving the organization of their understanding of the various names and events including 1066, Thomas Becket, Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots, William of Orange, of course William Wallace (made famous by the film Braveheart), Bonnie Prince Charlie, Oliver Cromwell, William Pitt and so on.

The series followed with Howard Zinn's remarkable People's History of the United States really connects the dots regarding the founding fathers and the creation of the US Constitution.

Judy, one of the most spiritually advanced beings I have ever encountered, once noted, "No Jews - No Christians."

Christians are good at forgetting that.

Know the tune "My Country Tis of Thee"?

The original song (same tune):

God grant that Marshal Wade
Made by thy Mighty Aid
Victory Bring
May he sedition hush
And like a torrent rush
Rebellious Scots to Crush
God Save the King!

No Britain - No USA.

On Sunday the USA showed it is starting to understand what Britain understood about health care over 60 years ago.

Extraordinary Films You Probably Haven't Seen

The Edukators
Hans Weingartner's masterpiece about three rebel oriented youth who break into mansions to scare the rich. They don't steal anything, but they rearrange furniture and toss expensive art into the toilet, leaving a note warning, "your days of plenty are numbered." Events take a dramatic turn when wealthy businessman Hardenberg returns home early to find them, one of whom he recognizes, so they kidnap him, sort of. Burghart Klaußner's performance as Hardenberg makes the film an unforgettable gem.

The Tunnel
Loosely based on the true of story of the 1961 tunnel dug under the Berlin wall by Hasso Herschel. What starts as an effort by four people to rescue five or six expands to a project involving dozens all seeking to rescue loved ones trapped in East Berlin after the wall was built. The story offers a pulse raising nail biter as the GDR State Security (Stasi) race to learn the details and thwart the effort before the tunnel can be finished.

Winged Migration
A stunningly brilliant documentary where filming took over four years and occurred on all seven continents. They used in-flight cameras to obtain aerial footage that has the viewer flying alongside birds of successive species. In the context of all this migration, it is painful to watch when some birds end up in the wrong place at the wrong time and the shotguns start.

Y tu mamá también
Luisa gives the film its poignancy and power. Julio and Tenoch are the "bestest" of friends who take Luisa on a road trip while their girlfriends vacation in Italy. On the road, Julio confesses he had sex with Tenoch's girlfriend. Screaming and fighting ensue. The next day, Tenoch admits he had sex with Julio's girlfriend. Screaming and fighting ensue. The sex in this film is realistic and hilarious. At the bar scene near the end, alcohol fueled confessions inform us that just about everyone has had sex with just about everyone, thus the title of the film, “And your mama, too!” A great film for Republicans.

God Grew Tired of Us
Based upon John Bul Dau's hard hitting memoir as one of the lost boys of Sudan, this deeply powerful documentary shows Africans from Sudan who emigrate to the United States and struggle with their efforts to integrate into American society. Watching them shop at grocery stores, live in apartments, deal with employment, and learn about money is powerful enough, but what delivers the jaw dropping and heart stopping impact is the flawless distinction of the isolation ingrained into American culture as compared to their own.

Every single one of these films is serious cinema by serious artists who have something to say, say it, and say it well. Films such as these and the people who make them are what give me hope for the species when the news makes me think all is doomed and I was born on the wrong planet.

Eleven Great Films Few Have Seen

Yesterday

Yesterday (2004) is the first Zulu language film to be released internationally. It is the only film in the history of cinema to be nominated for both an Academy award and an Emmy award. Set in a remote South African village, it's maturity and realism make it a deeply moving and heartfelt drama. Yesterday is a woman with a young daughter. Becoming increasingly sick, her attempts to seek medical attention fail because she can't walk to distant clinic and arrive soon enough for a good place in line. A school teacher she befriends pays for a taxi, and Yesterday learns that she is HIV positive. When she travels to Johannesburg to tell her husband, he beats her, in denial that he is infected and the one who has transmitted it to her.

From the film:
Doctor: Your body is strong. It is keeping the disease in check.
Yesterday: It is not my body. (She points to her temple) It is here. I have made up my mind.
Doctor: How so?
Yesterday: Until my child goes to school, I'll not die. My daughter starts school next year. I can't wait for that day. Only then can this "thing" take me away. No, I will not die till that day.

When her husband's health begins to deteriorate, it does so quickly, and he returns to the village. Village gossip leads to the same hysteria we've seen in the states. Despite her own decaying condition, she builds a shack for her dying husband so he doesn't have to stay in the village. The sequence where the husband leaves the village for the shack, barely able to walk, a crutch on one side, Yesterday on the other, will fill the eyes of anyone with a pulse.

Although clearly dying, she lasts through the first day of school, buying her daughter a new school uniform. She tells the school teacher, "I have never been to school."

The school teacher replies, "I will love your daughter as if she were my own."

From an IMDB review:
As a South African, this is the first time I've seen any media portray the HIV/AIDS crisis in our country in a way that makes it real, without political agenda or moralizing the issue. For that I commend the film. What also impressed me was the film's simplicity and the fact that it was unpredictable in its character portrayal. For cinematography, it is definitely one of the best movies ever to have come from our shores. Then there is the brilliant acting by Khumalo. The film is not without fault, but it shows that our film industry is capable of producing quality films. Just a pity that most South African audiences do not give the local industry the support it needs.

From Nelson Mandela's endorsement of the film:
The HIV/AIDS and Education projects will be able to allow communities to interact with the film, engage with the circumstances it presents, and with specific responses to the characters portrayed. We are confident that this will assist in spreading the message of prevention, caring for and supporting those infected and affected by the pandemic and most importantly highlight the need to remove stigma and discrimination.

Blood in the Snow

Based on the bestselling novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In represents a truly exquisite and touching cinematic achievement that masterfully combines the frameworks of budding youth and sexuality with perhaps the most realistic treatment of vampirism yet to occur on film. A motion picture of maturity and intellect, its pace takes its time perfectly content to lose the action addicted in exchange for creating truly terrifying sequences for the astute. The film is not for dummies.

The weakness, vulnerability, and innocence of lonely and bullied 12 year old Oskar provides the perfect character to meet and befriend a strange girl new to town, one with a dark secret. Not adhering to horror formula, the film is a story of human interaction, compassion, and fear played against the screen of what is human and what is not, yet is. The film has the sophistication to produce more with less and stretch out on the skinny branches. See the film, and the distinction “skinny branch” will become clear.

As the pre-teen girl "who is not a girl" Lina Leandersson delivers one of the most compelling vampire performances I’ve ever seen. The viewer truly feels the developing relationship in the poignant and moving reality of what it is to be one individual connecting with another. The film is a touching and thought provoking love story.

It ain’t no Twilight.

Watch this film, and I promise you will never forget it. Equally unforgettable:

The Cement Garden
Spanking the Monkey
Pan's Labyrinth

A Tale of Two Stories

In 1970, Howard Minsky produced the film Love Story with Erich Segal's screenplay adaptation of his own novel.

The film starred Ryan O'Neill and Ali MacGraw as the star crossed lovers who undertake risk in order to marry and then face imminent separation because one of them is dying. With a stellar musical score based upon the song Where do I begin? the picture ripped the tears out of millions and set the fantasies of heart throbbing romantics sailing. I won't attempt to articulate what images of the serious, intelligent, and melancholy Ali MacGraw ignited in a just shy of ten year old psyche starting to get a sense of at least one component of what matters in life. Ohh.

The film forged into seldom (at the time) trod territory regarding character vulnerability and risk in romance. While pain on the screen was nothing new, the particular tenderness and simplicity of the anguish in the film accompanied by its music unlocked the hearts of the 1970 audience. Remember when Oliver confronts Jennifer about admitting one's feelings?

"It's a risk, isn't it, Jenny? At least I had the guts to admit what I felt."

She slows down and looks at him, "I care."

She notes her fear, "You're the preppie millionaire and I'm the social zero."

I've tasted the reality of that conversation (as the social zero) and have seen the wall slam across a face when my non-millionaire status came to light mid coffee. In the fictional film they transcend the SES barriers, but sparks fly, and after a particular blow up she bolts and he runs everywhere to find her. After an exhaustive search, he returns home to find her freezing outside their door, her face cinematic gold, "I forgot my key."

MacGraw is then priceless, forever etching "Love means never having to say you're sorry" in motion picture history and pulling tears through your ducts from the moisture under your toe nails. Shot on location at Harvard, the institution ritualistically screens the film to its incoming freshmen, socializing them to ridicule the story. Me thinks thou dost protest...

Another actress with a more prominent trajectory, Farrah Fawcett, now faces in reality the fiction portrayed by MacGraw. While at an older age, Fawcett is dying of cancer. What does this have to do with Love Story? Farrah Fawcett is the for real partner of Ryan O'Neill. Almost forty years after playing the man losing the ultimate love of his live, Ryan O'Neill now gets to see the situation in reality up close and personal. My heart goes out to him, and good for him for finding someone to love so deeply in such terrain.

Her medical records were leaked, resulting in the upgrading of the computer systems of hospitals across the country as well as legislation regarding the security of medical records, legislation with teeth signed by California Governor Schwarzenegger. The result - the tabloids aren't talking much about Farrah these days.

I am inspired by the courage displayed by Fawcett and O'Neill and their willingness to produce their own publication, Farrah's Story.

The critics have raised issues with the production, but frankly I find them infantile in light of the big picture. Until convinced otherwise, I interpret the work as an effort to contribute to others in a profoundly personal way as one faces one's own death. This ain't Little League, and the critics are spiritually dead F-heads that can pound salt. I wouldn't go critical in this terrain with nerf balls lobbed from 30 feet. Neither should anyone else.

Love Story addressed the heart. Farrah's Story addresses the soul, and yes, What a journey.

Word is that her time now consists of days and not many. God speed, Farrah Fawcett. We're all behind you in the queue and closer than we'd like to admit. I pray I can face the music with the courage you have demonstrated. Should I have the opportunity to meet you on the other side, for what it's worth, I'll approach with admiration.

The Reader

Based on a novel by Bernard Schlink, Stephen Daldry’s extraordinarily compelling film, The Reader, features one of the most outstanding performances in the history of cinema. Kate Winslet more than deserved (and won) the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2008. The film masterfully explores moral ambiguity with rarely seen maturity, just nailing the terror of the situation:

"What would you have done?"

I can think of few films that explore such a wide spectrum of human emotions, from shame to guilt to rage to affection to confusion to compassion to doubt to pain to sheer terror. They are all there and not superficially. A father myself, I find the Ralph Fiennes scenes with his daughter particularly touching, especially in the graveyard at the end. The Reader is first rate, top notch cinema that should not be missed.

The experience of watching the film provided an insight regarding the Academy Award program. Without having seen the performances and films being recognized, one can’t understand the context of the awards. I think I saw Winslet win the award. If I had seen her performance before hand, there would be no doubt. Few experiences are more moving than watching the truly gifted perform their mastery.