Turtles can Fly: A Comment on Iraq

A boy on the Iraqi and Turk border takes on the task of being a leader of the children in this no man's land. His name is Soran but he is known as Satellite. He uses the money from installing satellite dishes and the collection of mines to take care of the children.

The scenery is at times quite beautiful and uncharacteristic of what is thought of when thinking of Iraq from an America's point of view, While at other times, where war and the government has touched the environment, it is either mud or in decay. This stresses the effect that the government and the war have had on the Iraqi people. The brother of Agrin, a girl Satellite likes, has no arms and plays an important role in showing the hardships caused by war. Even though he has no arms he continues to remove mines from the ground surrounding the village because there is no better way of making money. Throughout the film several characters are heard making comments on the restrictions of Saddam and the government and how it prevents their safety. One thing that happens is that news is cut from the radio towers, so that the refugees and villagers cannot escape the country when the war begins. This is a protest of the director/writer against the former government's ways of manipulation. 

The actors, although not professionals, lent a reality to the film that really brought it to life. I thoroughly enjoyed this film's story and its message against oppressive governments and war.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu

The content of the post written by Aubrey Winship is the first comment because blogspot will not allow you to copy paste from Word for the original post. Thanks for understanding!

Joint Security Area: JSA

Nine Queens

 upThe movie Nine Queens is a movie representative of new Argentine cinema. It is a story of two caught artists who meet in a convenience store when Marcos observes Juan attempting to pull off and money changing scam to stop by his father when he was a small boy. Marcos asks Juan if he would like to be his partner for the day due to the fact that Marcoses partner has been missing for about a week and Juan agrees reluctantly saying that he needs to make some money to help his father. These two men worked together to pull off a scam involving the sale of nine rare stamps to a stamp collector. A turn occurs in the movie when the buyer of the stamps declares that he will only buy the stamps if they are delivered to his room by Marcus's sister who is a receptionist at the hotel in which the gentleman resides. The director finishes with a denouement that will leave the audience laughing, feeling a great sense of relief for certain characters and scratching your head as the pieces fall in place.

The director of nine Queens, Fabian Bielinski is a very talented director who also happened to write the script for the film. He uses mise-en-scene through costumes and makeup especially well to help give the characters the look that helps to convey that they are living in on the fringes of an Argentinian society and that to feed themselves or get revenge for wrongdoings the must rely on themselves; there is no higher authority such as a government to help them out. The director uses costume to convey this to the audience in a way that it could never be done with just a few lines of dialogue. He also makes use of many tight camera shots to better show some of the tricks of the trade these con men use over the course of the movie. It is a clever way to show some things that are very important to the story without drawing too much attention to them. Fabian Beilinsky wrote and directed an amazing movie in nine Queens with an even better ending.

-- Written by: Jesse Zell