BIFF, Day Five

Has it been five days already? Man that is a lot of movies. Today I limited myself to two. It was actually a little difficult chosing. I met my friend John for coffee and then it was off to the movies. He remarked at one point that seeing all of these movies was kind of difficult.

The first movie I saw was an Australian one and it was called "Home Song Stories". I made the mistake of going to it thinking it was something else. Turns out it was a film about a Chinese woman who married a man from Australia and then deserted him a week later. It was a movie about making all of the wrong choices and then blaming it on others (wait this is starting to sound a little familial). Overall there were some pretty good performances. It didn't fall into the stereotype of blaming Ozzies for the troubles that the immigrants faced. It was a really personal film, and you feel it was based on a true story. I felt bad mostly for the kids. It starred Joan Chen as the mother and let me tell you she has held up nicely.

The second movie was called "Beaufort," and it was about a group of Israeli soldiers in Southern Lebanon during the last days of the occupation there in 2000. Mostly it is about some young men who really just want to go home, but are caught up in the political wranglings between their government and Hezbollah. I thought it was kind of good. The message was a little heavy from time to time, but you get that in war movies. I liked the fact that many of the soldiers were Jewish Arabs. We often think of Israelis as mostly European which isn't the case (which is also a belief that many Arab governments like to promote).

So today was a pretty strong day.