Change Your Image
Martin_G
Reviews
Hotaru no haka (1988)
A must-see
This film is all you've read in the other comments, and more. Think of the saddest thing you've ever experienced; think of the hardest criticism of human inhumanity you've ever seen; think of the best animated drawings you've ever watched. Add all that up and multiply by ten. Don't miss this film.
Three Fugitives (1989)
A gentle and amusing comedy
This is a remake of Les Fugitifs (1986), also made by Francis Weber with two very well-known French actors. The American remake is less amusing and moving, but if you haven't seen the original, the mishaps and misunderstandings, the growing friendship between the loser and the reformed robber, the seduction of the little girl, will let you watch this gently amusing comedy without boredom.
La vita è bella (1997)
Dithyrambic
This is the best film I have seen in a long time. Don't be put off by anything you have heard, or because you think "it's impossible to laugh at the Holocaust"... This film asserts the power of love, life, and humour in the face of unimaginable adversity. It's *not* a realistic film, but it's a real tragedy - narrated in comic mode. It's gentle, amusing, and touching. Folk were weeping at the end, and I nearly was myself. I went unwillingly to see it (because I *hated* Benigni's The Monster), but I'll see it again soon.
Among Giants (1998)
Give it a miss.
This film is truly awful. Its intention is to be in the vein of Raining Stones or Secrets and Lies or Brassed Off. It only skips the surface, never digging into the lives of the characters. The guy who cries in the campfire scene must have a problem, but what is it? Can you imagine Rachel Griffiths falling in love with Pete Postlethwaite? Excerpt: "Somewhere under those clothes there's a woman... Get 'em off." That _ridiculous_ scene in the silo or whatever it is, the two of them nude in the falling water? Postlethwaite looks like the village idiot.
Heaven knows why he got mixed up in this film. Don't you make the same mistake.