I'm on a movie roll!

I took this weekend for myself and watched movies!!! Can you tell? I am LOVING Netflix!!!

Last nights movies were AWESOME! Totally caught me off guard and not what I was expecting. I'll start with:

THE CHANGELING

PLOT: A grief-stricken mother takes on the LAPD to her own detriment when it stubbornly tries to pass off an obvious impostor as her missing child, while also refusing to give up hope that she will find him one day.

REVIEW: Ok, this movie was SO not what I was expecting! Apparently I did not pay attention to the previews because I was expecing some science-fiction-morphing-alien to present itself. I was TOTALLY wrong and COMPLETELY happy I was! This was an AWESOME movies. It was heartbreaking, motivating and touching. What made it even better was when I found out it was based on a true story. Wow!! I'm not going to say anything else except, WATCH IT!

AUGUST RUSH

PLOT: A drama with fairy tale elements, where an orphaned musical prodigy uses his gift as a clue to finding his birth parents.

REVIEW: The plot is such a simple idea, but the way the movie spoke needs PARAGRAPHS! I was taken by this movie! I've come to love Freddie Highmore (also in "Finding Neverland," the new "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "Spiderwick Chronicals.") and he way exceeds my expectations in this movie. He's such a cutie! Another "must see!!!" Touches the heart and warms the soul!

Movies in Review, again

I'm managed to do something I didn't think I could do! Watch movies I want to watch! I realized that I can play with the kids AND watch a movie.... sooo I joined Netflix. I am now a Netflix junkie! I've actually watched 5 movies in the last week that I have wanted to watch for a long time AND I did it for free!! I got a free months trial and I'm taking advantage of it!!

Here's 3 I've recently viewed:

PLOT: In 1930s Italy, a carefree Jewish book keeper named Guido starts a fairy tale life by courting and marrying a lovely woman from a nearby city. Guido and his wife have a son and live happily together until the occupation of Italy by German forces. In an attempt to hold his family together and help his son survive the horrors of a Jewish Concentration Camp, Guido imagines that the Holocaust is a game and that the grand prize for winning is a tank.

REVIEW: Very touching, heartwarming movie. A little over the top and extreme, but the little boy is just toooo cute I had to keep watching it. I would like to think that this "life" could really happen in the middle of all the misery, but it was a movie worth watching.

PLOT: In the late 1960s four orphans, the December Boys, leave their orphanage for a holiday by the sea on the South Australian coast. When rumor gets out that two of the seaside residents are looking to adopt one of the orphans, friendships are tested and new alliances are made. In the end each boy learns something about himself and his place in the world.

REVIEW: Ok... I have to admit I watched this because of Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter himself.) I wanted to see how he did without his wand to save him! So, it wasn't the best movie, but it was cute. I didn't even know it was out there until it found me on Netflix!

PLOT: Set in Thirties London, Ballet Shoes tells the exhilarating tale of orphans Pauline, Petrova and Posy Fossil, who are adopted by an eccentric explorer, Gum, and raised as sisters by his selfless niece. The timeless and uplifting story revolves around each girl's struggle to fulfil her dreams: Pauline longs to be an actress, Petrova yearns to be an aviator, and Posy seems born to be a ballerina. But when Gum disappears, the money runs out - and the girls have a fight on their hands. Their struggle to balance personal ambition with the need to survive physically, emotionally, and financially, proves moving and comic by turns.

REVIEW: Again, Netflix chose this for me because of my reviews... what caught my eye was Emma Watson (Hermione Granger from Harry Potter... see a pattern?) She's a cutie in Harry Potter, so I tried it out. Very cute movie. The actresses do a great job and it's a cute plot to watch.

Movie Review

I have to share a movie with you that I just watched. It's called "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas." It tels the story of young Bruno who lives a wealthy lifestyle in Pre-war Germany along with his mother, elder sister, and army Commandant father. The family re-locate to the countryside where his father is assigned to commandeer a prison camp. A few days later, Bruno befriends another youth, strangely dressed in striped pajamas, named Shmuel who lives behind an electrified fence. Bruno will soon find out that he is not permitted to befriend his new friend as he is a Jew, and that the neighboring yard is actually a prison camp for Jews awaiting extermination.

I don't dare say anything else about the movie for fear of letting my emotions give away anything, but it was very touching!!!

2 days before, I had just finished reading this book:

For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Anna's daughter Trudy was only four when she and Anna were liberated from Nazi Weimar by an American soldier and went with him to Minnesota, so Trudy can't remember much....but she has one piece of evidence from the past: a family portrait showing Trudy, Anna, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuhrer of Buchenwald.

Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins investigating the past and finally unearths the dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her mother's life.

This too, is a very touching story.

And as I write this, I am watching the Hallmark Presentation of "The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler."

The story of Irena Sendler, a social worker who was part of the Polish underground during World War II and was arrested by the Nazi's for saving the lives of nearly 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw ghetto.

It shall take some time to recover from the heartwrenching topic covered in these movies and this book. I shall always have a scar on my heart from them.