At first glance this may be something many people would not pick up. The story, a boy escapes a post WWII prison camp and travels across Europe and finds happiness, sound sanctimonious and saccharine. This film is hardly sanctimonious, actually it is rather bleak and heart wrenching.

I highly recommend this film. If you have children, I recommend it even more. While this is not a film for children, parents will have a special connection with this third act – in particular mothers of boys. This is a very good film that has been completely overlooked. I suggest you give it the chance it deserves.


Based on Margaret Edson’s play, Emma Thompson co-wrote this with director Mike Nichols (Charlie Wilson's War). This is a great piece about the trip we’re all making to the grave. We are shown the experience of dying through the eyes of Vivian Bearing (Thompson), a coldly intellectual poetry professor who learns she is dying of an aggressive ovarian cancer. As the film advances, so does her cancer and Vivian dissects the process for us on both physical and philosophical levels. Her cold, humored look at the horrifying cancer treatments and their effects on her body are entrancing and her eventual decline from healthy looking professor to bald, thin cancer patient is devastating.



Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood) is comfortable indulging his whims in his films. His saving grace is that his whims are simply fascinating.

Anderson creates a brilliant mosaic of morality and mortality, populated with vivid characters struggling with the bitter troubles of their lives. Suffering in their sins the characters turn to each other and find little comfort for their pain.

This film contains what I see as the best presentation of a Christian put to film. John C. Reilly's bumbling cop Jim Kurring shows a Christian man not as a weak, goofy zealot but as a real man trying to do his part and offer comfort where possible.

Anderson doesn't get enough credit for his ability to get moving performances out of his actors. Tom Cruise, John C. Reilly and Philip Baker Hall each give the best performances of their careers. These performances matched with Anderson's ease with handling multiple storylines makes this a great movie.

Labels: movie recommendations