"Bella" Movie Review - Celebrating Life!
"Bella" is a reminder of the beauty and sacredness of life. It is a heart warming story between Jose, a handsome and former soccer pro, now turned chef, and Nina, a waitress he meets at a restaurant. After Nina confides to Jose that she is pregnant, Jose talks her out of having an abortion. This movie will leave a sweetness and lightness in your spirit, as it celebrates families, friendship and life. Go rent it.
"Bella" won the People’s Choice Award at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival.
"The Visitor" Movie Review :: Of Immigration, Love and Friendship
This weekend I saw the movie "The Visitor", and it is one of my favorite films ever. "The Visitor" is a reminder that one's life can be forever altered in a moment, simply by meeting people in the most unlikely of ways. The main character of this movie, Walter, is a Professor of Economics who, upon making a business trip to New York, stumbles upon unlikely friendships. The film is about relationships, love, friendship, cultural differences, and the underworld of illegal immigrants. It is a touching film that will surely make you laugh, cry, and speak out against deportation of some illegal immigrants. The cast of characters are wonderfully crafted, intertwined, and unusual.
Many illegal immigrants are simply seeking political asylum or a better economic future for themselves and/or family. Should we deport every illegal immigrant? No, only those who commit crimes and/or have ties to terrorist activity. Often, illegal immigrants risk their lives to come to the United States, with the hope that they will have a better life. Let's provide ways for illegal immigrants to earn a legal income and gain education, so they can have access to a better life.
That being said, the "bad ones", those illegal immigrants who commit crimes, need to return to their home country, where they can be locked up in prison. Why should our prison system be burdened with illegals, while our tax dollars are spent supporting their incarceration? Send them home. On the other hand, as I've stated, let the moral and law abiding immigrants flourish and prosper.
Remember, somewhere down your line, your family immigrated here too, legal or not.
"Life After People" - A World Without Humans
Have you ever wondered what the world would look like without people? This coming Monday night, January 21st, the History Channel will premier "Life After People", a 2 hour movie painting such a scenario. Similar to "Earth Before People", an article in Discover magazine (2005), the movie portrays a world where people disappear and, as a result, nature and wild animals take over. In order to create a realistic setting, the movie was produced with the help of expert engineers, archeologists, geologists, botanists, ecologists, climatologists, and biologists.
Over the course of centuries, civilizations have disappeared because of diseases, like the Ancient Maya in Guatemala, or because of "accidents", like Chernobyl. In fact, the area around Chernobyl is a strong illustration of what the world would be like without humans, even after 20 years. "From a distance, you would still believe that Pripyat is a living city, but the buildings are slowly decaying," says Ronald Chesser, director for the Center for Environmental Radiation Studies, "The most pervasive thing you see are plants whose root systems get into the concrete and behind the bricks and into doorframes and so forth, and are rapidly breaking up the structure. You wouldn't think, as you walk around your house every day, that we have a big impact on keeping that from happening, but clearly we do. It's really sobering to see how the plant community invades every nook and cranny of a city."
I find the concept for this movie a bit harrowing and pessimistic, though there seems to be growing rhetoric that the world would fair better without so many humans populating the earth.
What do you think?