Bombay Calling - Reaction

[made by Canada about India]

An okay documentary about a call center in India and the people who work there. Does a good job portraying the people and their personalities. Includes a few humorous scenes of them being trained to talk to Americans and Brits. However, I felt much was missing from the movie. We only see how the workers are viewed by each other and their families, not other Indians. We don't see other call centers, though we are lead to believe this one is typical. We learn nothing about outsourcing and its effects. We learn little about the economics of the call center industry in India and nothing about it world-wide. The film says nothing about globalization.

Romeo and Juliet Get Married - Reaction

[Brazil]

A very good, entertaining, romantic comedy-drama about two lovers in Brazil who are fans of rival soccer teams. Heart-wrenching at times. Loosely (very loosely) inspired by Shakespeare's story. Intelligently deals with deeper themes of bigotry(/discrimination/racism), as exemplified through its evocative portrayal of the fanaticism of soccer fans. Much like "Meet The Parents," though with the aforementioned deeper theme and with slightly less slapstick humor.

Two - Reaction

A poignant silent film (with music and sound effects but no speaking) about a rich kid with many toys and a poor (and darker-skinned) child that lives nearby in poverty with few toys. Excellent. A tale about envy, schadenfreude, one-up-man-ship, and simplicity.

The Inner Eye - Reaction

A documentary about Binode Bihari Mukherjee, a famous painter who goes blind after a failed cataract operation. Could've been much better. For instance, after he lost his sight, the film pans silently over works he later produced. We don't see his struggles with his lack of vision. We don't know how art critics reacted to his post-transformation work.

A Wonderful Night in Split - Reaction

[Croatia]

A brilliant, black and white film covering three overlapping tales of drugs and death. Great recurring musical theme and good music as part of the story as well. Sounds depressing but it's not. By overlapping, I mean stories that take place in the old quarter of Split on the same evening with some of the same characters. By brilliant, I mean the tales are tied together in subtle ways, such as by the usage of the camera and by connections via scenes that originally seem trivial or meaningless.

7th Annual Stanford Alumni Film Festival - Reaction

Series of shorts:

• Stanford Banned: About the antics of the Stanford Band. Bland; could've been orders of magnitude better (e.g., by showing events, not telling about them).
• The Inventor: About an inventor working on a potato cloning machine. Decent; a nice portrait but not that interesting.
• Zanuck-Brown: A Partnership in Montage: Scenes from many movies by these producers. Didn't recognize most movies so didn't care that much.
• Waiting for Anna: Possibly about a woman who steals another's boyfriend. Revenge is enacted with a mask and a gun. Artistically shot -or at least the opening credits were- but not much else going for it.
• Kind of a Blur: A quirky, cute comedy about two ravers who wake up in a cow pasture and try to determine what happened the previous night. Involves the quest of a cow and writing on skin.
• Yellow Hammer: About a man that uses female friend's urine to attempt to pass a drug test and (spoiler) ends up getting told he is pregnant. Way too long setup (8 minutes) for a pretty lame joke.
• Oedipus: The story of Oedipus via stop-motion animation of vegetables. Stars a potato, a tomato, and a piece of broccoli. Well done. As funny as you can imagine. Can be watched online.

Who Killed The Electric Car? - Reaction

A reasonably decent documentary that intentionally doesn't really answer the question. I had thought all these events happened much earlier than the late 90s. It's clear what side the film maker is on, but then it's hard to have a good murder mystery without portraying the victim in a sympathetic light. The best feature of the movie was two african-american women who had electric cars; they were such fun characters! It's clear the director thinks the hydrogen fuel cell is another electric car dream, a vision on the horizon that will never come to pass, a bogeyman used to scare away actual improvements that are here now.