If I could describe the Germany-released movie North Face in just a single word, it would be the word horrific. Based upon the true story about a competition to climb the most dangerous rock face of the Swiss Alps, the subtitled movie gets better and better with each passing frame. For those moviegoers who aren’t into subtitled movies, I can sympathize. I tend to groan when I know I’m about to embark on one of those too. Subtitled movies are ones that you need to prepare for, and, unfortunately, when a subtitled movie is bad, it almost becomes twice as dreadful to trudge through. But, at the same time, I have seen some fantastic foreign-language movies, and North Face ranks right up there with them. And, as with any good subtitled movie, when you are truly engaged, you don’t even notice you are reading the words anymore. I’m not sure how I came across this movie, other than the fact that I love a good adventure movie (I am one of those people that tends to separate the adventure genre from the action genre).
Continue reading North Face (Nordwand) (2010)
Category Archives: Based on a True Story
Angela’s Ashes (1999)
A couple of months ago, I found an article in Entertainment Weekly that had a list of the most depressing books ever written. And near the top of this list was Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes. So, along with a list of other books I wanted to read, I went to Barnes and Noble and searched for the book. I came up empty, which surprised me because I had long thought this book was a classic and one read in English classes in many high schools. And I know I could have downloaded it or my Kindle, but I’m really about a 65%/35% reader in terms of hard copies over Kindle. And I like to read my classics as hard copies. In any case, fast-forward a month, and I go to a different Barnes and Noble looking for the book and again come up empty. So I texted my friend Sarah, and she told me I needed to check out the biography section and not the fiction/classics section. Who knew? And there it was, along with about 20 other copies of it. So I read the book over two weeks and loved it. It’s my favorite book of 2015. And, yes, I do rank my books just like I do my movies. I don’t blog about it because I watch more movies than reading books.
Continue reading Angela’s Ashes (1999)
Freedom Writers (2007)
If this movie had not been based on a true story, I would have given it a meager (we are talking less than 50%) score. Even with it based on a true story, it felt very cheesy, overly sentimental, and had way too much overacting. Its design evoked emotion and tugged at our heartstrings while making us believe that one person can make a difference just by caring. If this story were fiction, it would be utterly unrealistic. And, just because it is based upon a true story doesn’t mean that the real-life events played out exactly as they were shown in the movie. I’ve learned that “based on a true story” differs from “the following story is entirely true.” My most life-altering experience of this is Remember the Titans. When I discovered how many changes were made to make this story a more moving movie experience, I became very skeptical of Hollywood. Keep in mind that even though Remember the Titans came out in 2000, I did not know how glamorized Hollywood made it until a few years ago when I was surfing around the Internet and decided to look at the history of Virginia high school football. When I saw that the TC Williams Titans did not beat Andrew Lewis High School in the state championship game 10-7 but rather defeated them by the score of 27-0, I began to wonder what else Disney embellished in the telling of this story. It turned out that they embellished a ton. In case you are curious about some of the other inaccuracies of this movie, check out this link http://www.chasingthefrog.com/reelfaces/rememberthetitans.php. Even in 2014, when my top four films were all based on true stories, there were some inaccuracies in all four of them. These inaccuracies weren’t to the extent of Remember the Titans, but they also weren’t 100% true (especially The Imitation Game and Foxcatcher). This isn’t meant to blast movies based on true stories. Very often, these are my favorite movies. But now I do know to make sure I check out the facts of each film before I write its review. Now Freedom Writers isn’t nearly as good of a movie as The Imitation Game, Foxcatcher, or even Remember the Titans, but it is based on a true story that seems a little too Hollywood to be entirely 100% true.
Continue reading Freedom Writers (2007)
Big Eyes (2014)
Every once in a while, I’ll see a preview for the first time that I think I will have absolutely no interest in seeing. The movie looks either cheesy, too lame, too weird, etc. But then the film earns a solid rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and I’ll read what a couple of critics who liked the movie have said about it. And then I’ll watch the same trailer again and try to watch it with a different set of eyes. And between my first and second viewing, something convinced me to give the movie a chance. With Tim Burton’s (Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands) Big Eyes, my chief complaint was that the film would be a little too weird for me. However, after a couple of weeks, I convinced myself I would see that movie. I hoped that I could catch this one in the theater (generally speaking, I am far less distracted in a theater than I am at home. But then again, I’m Captain Obvious with this statement). However, Big Eyes grabbed my attention from the get-go and held it through the 1-hour 45-minute viewing.
Continue reading Big Eyes (2014)
American Sniper (2014)
In a year that hasn’t had that many must-see movies, American Sniper has proved that there is at least one reason to head out to the theaters. 2014 has been the most disappointing year overall for movies since 2008. Yet despite its horrendous start and some incredibly overrated movies (Birdman, Unbroken, Mr. Turner, Snowpiercer, Godzilla, even Boyhood to an extent), some films did manage to live up to their expectations (Foxcatcher, The Theory of Everything, The Imitation Game). In addition, some movies exceeded my hopes for them (The Drop, Nightcrawler, Kill the Messenger, and the surprise, feel-good movie of the year, Chef). But the film that had the most pressure on its shoulders to perform was American Sniper, the final released movie of the year. And while the movie did not exceed my expectations, it certainly met them in every single way. So before I review the film, I want to refer to a couple of observations.