Tendre Poison

He moves without sound. Kills without emotion. Disappears without trace. Only a 12 year old girl... knows his weakness. A perfect assassin. An innocent girl. They have nothing left to lose except each other. Léon and Mathilda, both victims of crappy unfulfilled lives, become begrudging friends.

Although it is an action movie with great action, it also has alot of emotion and feeling. First off, it actually isn't an action movie. No, it's a touching drama that can turn into an action movie or thriller in an instant. The last part with the plant is touching and a great conclusion and this movie is a definite success..and one of my faves.
A genius movie with everything be it drama, comedy, action and suspense. It's both American and French. An English movie directed by a French director.

I also fall into Léon: both wild and tender, both cold and passionate. I appreciate that kind of relationship between them: like father-and-daughter, brother-and-sister, son-and-mother,,,I seem to like mingle everything together.

Down-and-out Polish immigrant Karol is desperate to get out of France. He convinces a fellow(whom he hardly knows) to smuggle him home in a suitcase--which then gets stolen from the airport. The unhappy thieves beat him and dump him in a snowy rock pit. They get furied when they find Karol only has two francs and throw the coin off. "Give me back, that's my money. " At last he buried the coin in the coffin. I almost omitted the detail the first time I watched it many years ago in the university. Only after I went to France I got the symbolic meaning of two francs coin: it's carved with "liberty, equality, fraternity". They are the three ideals of the French Revolution, also the three colors of the French flag.

The story is a clever, bittersweet struggle for dominance, not equality, and laced with a little revenge. Equality is an illusion. But Kieslowski, the director does not spoon-feed his audiences, even in a rather straightforward narrative such as this, so the viewer is left to make up his or her own mind about certain things. Example: does Dominique love Karol after all? Does Karol find his equality? He seems like a nice, sweet guy, but a loser. Then he shows his dark side -- one that, on the outside, nobody would think he had. He's forced to do so. He returns to the newly-democratic Poland to rebuild his life. He becomes a shrewd and ruthless businessman. Power is what counts, power is what modern societies respect. If you lose your status - even as a man before the woman you love - you are equal to nothing.

White can be pure or empty, bleak or beautiful. This black comedy is sprinkled with white -- white cars, white skies, white marble, white snow. Kieslowski uses the bleakness of winter landscapes and cityscapes to emphasise the hairdresser's plight. The images are breathtakingly pretty and subtle. The less "showy" schemata of White still oozes out of the screen.

Brimming over with despair, nevertheless the film can make you laugh. Like you're guffawing that Karol gets crazy by two francs coin. C'est la vie. What else better can we do in face of despair?

I like Blue and Red too. Blue also explores the loneliness of independence and liberation from an internal prison. a self-imposed isolation and sorrow.

Beyond the Clouds is the last film of the Italian master Michelangelo Antonioni. Antonioni’s style is still intact here, even if it has been modernized. Here is where the genius of Antonioni lies: to stay always ahead of his time. His preoccupation is still the same, though he is now seeing things from the point of view of an old wise man and beyond the clouds.

The film unfolds as an interrogation on life and the feelings that compose its passions. From the two young people who are in the same hotel and their mutual attraction, to the two older ones who bring us back one of Antonioni’s favorite subject: the alienation of modern life. The film explores the meaning of relationships and love all along through one’s existence. The film is composed of four vignettes of different stories, which are all centered on the sometimes difficult attraction/repulsion of a man for a woman and vice-versa. The vignettes are linked by Antonioni’s alter ego: a director who is looking for a new idea for his next film.

I'm always looking for a new idea for my next book, next shot, next stop. I have eperienced or will continue to experience those four vignettes. The impact of these stories is not in the words but in the way the mood, texture and the acting build each situation into a visually intense parable about the similarity of spiritual, erotic and esthetic aspiration. It also makes me feel nostalgic about europe. I'm transported through the screen to a place where the physical and emotional weather fuse into a palpable sadness. It makes me an eerily isolated figure, seemingly floating just beyond the clouds in a melancholy reverie.

There are those who will be impatient with this film. The dialogue is sparse, and what there is often sounds stiff and pretentious. That movie director, playing Antonioni's stand-in, makes blunt, oracular pronouncements about desire, art and the pursuit of reality that ring sophomoric or prophetic depending on your feelings about Antonioni. People are sometimes afraid of being thought of as thoughtful, and therefore "dangerous," in this day and age. It's more "dangerous" that a woman is thoughtful. But I still appreciate the thought-provoking film. I still enjoy to become smarter enlightened by this kind of master.

Posters for the film illustrate the liberating, redemptive power of hope and the religious themes of freedom and resurrection, with the words: "Fear can hold you prisoner, Hope can set you free." The Shawshank Redemption is about friendship, patience, hope, survival, emancipation, and ultimate redemption and salvation.

Some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright and when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice, but still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. Red says it after Andy(Tim Robins) escapes. Andy's persistence is his own salvation. He never gives up hope. Only one moment after the Warden has set up Tommy to be murdered, Andy is desperate: "I'm done. Everything stops. Get someone else to run your scams." But after that he is still inspired by a dream of freedom. he says in transcendental words: goint to the town of Zihuatanejo,,,and opening up a Pacific Ocean coastal beach hotel with a charter fishing boat. It would be a forgiving, guiltless place with "no memory" of the past, with the ocean water washing away all previous 'sins'. He yearns for freedom and is determined to fulfill his impossible dreams through his hopes.

He's also talented to cope with "pressure and time".He is a successful young banker who is sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of his wife and her lover. He is sent to Shawshank prison, a dour and depressing place where brutality from both guards and other prisoners is commonplace. He is brutalised by other prisoners. He starts to get both other prisoners and guards on his side when he offers to help one of the most notorious guards with a tax problem in exchange for bottles of chilled beer for everyone in his work party. From then on, he always seems to be working on one thing or another. He improves the prison's tiny library, and helps those prisoners who want to study. He also handles the guards' tax returns, and even helps the swindling Warden cook the books. Over the years, he gains the respect of most of the other prisoners and guards. More importantly, he never loses hope for the future - a hope he tries to pass on to the other prisoners. He never stops believing in life's possibilities, but to make the most of them he needs to be free.

Make the most of it. Whatever it is, whether it's smooth or tough. Nothing can kill your spirit, your hope, your dreams, or your talents. One time when I was depressed, I watched this film again and again, trying to find my redemption. What should I do? Should I get used to the present? Institutionalized like Brooks? "These walls are funny. First you hate them, then you get used to them. Enough time passes, you depend on them." People live in different prisons. Most people are institutionalized, desperate. But remember: we all hold the keys to our own prisons. Salvation lies within(this time, not Bible but our mind).

Now I'm really yearning for that mexican city, Zihuatanejo.