MeRrY ChRiStMaS!!!

MeRrY ChRiStMaS!!!

Dangerous Minds

Film Review

Dangerous Minds

An intelligent adaptation of LouAnne Johnson’s book “My posse don’t do homework”, “Dangerous Minds” (1995) is a powerful and significant film directed by John N. Smith.
It stars Michelle Pfeiffer as LouAnne Johnson, who got a job as a substitute teacher to work with disadvantaged kids.
Obviously, it won’t be an easy task to teach this group of students, who are neither interested in English poetry nor grammatical rules.
The essential ingredients for success are here – a daring teacher, a group of students who can be considered outsiders of society and a conservative principal.
Although the plot can be considered a cliché, “Dangerous Minds” is definitely worth seeing. It is a moving film, well constructed in terms of plot. It was set in an American ghetto in the late 1990s.
LouAnne Johnson, whose only dream was to teach, was happy when she got the job as an English teacher and didn’t care about the fact that her students weren’t ordinary kids. Actually, in her first class, LouAnne finds a group of tough teenagers, who didn’t pay attention to her. At first she couldn’t stand them and left the classroom, saying that she just couldn’t teach that group of students. Another teacher advised her – she had to get those kids’ attention. To achieve this goal, “she broke the rules and changed their lives”, with new teaching strategies. She began to read some books at home and started her second class with martial arts. Although the students seemed to love it, she was told that teaching karate was against school rules.
Determined to make a difference in her students’ lives, she told them that if they wanted to pass, all they had to do was to try. Moreover, she gave them support assuring them that “at this point, each one of you has an A, all you have to do is to keep it”. This was certainly a turning point for her to earn their trust because she showed the students she believed they could succeed.
In the following classes, she brought chocolates to give them when they answered the questions correctly and played them a song from the 60s with a hidden meaning that could refer to drugs.
The role of LouAnne Johnson is brilliantly played by Michelle Pfeiffer who is really at her best. The young actors who play her students also offer us very strong and promising performances. The remarkable job of director John N. Smith can’t be overlooked. Featuring the hit “Gangsta’s Paradise”, “Dangerous Minds” has a powerful and well chosen soundtrack.
All these features contribute to pass on the message that failure shouldn’t be accepted as a way of life – there’s always another choice because “when there’s a will there’s a way”.
And did the students get LouAnne’s message? Sure. They gave her a candy begging her to stay next year and called her “the light”…

The Lord of the Rings – the Two Towers

Running time: 179 minutes
Genre: Epic adventure
Director: Peter Jackson
Starring: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Vigo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Christopher Lee, Cate Blanchett, Orlando Bloom, John Rhys-Davies, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Miranda Otto, Brad Dourif, Hugo Weaving, David Wenham …

The Two Towers is the second film of the trilogy The Lord of the Rings directed by Peter Jackson. Maybe if you haven’t seen the first film – The Fellowship of the Ring – you will not understand why the hobbits Frodo (Elijah Wood) and his companion Sam (Sean Astin) are so obsessed in destroying the ring that Frodo - the Ring bearer - brings with him.
The whole story is about this ring – the One Ring - because it contains an enormous power and is wanted by everyone, especially Sauron and the wizard Saruman (Christopher Lee) who try everything to take it with their servants’ help. These two evil forces want to destroy and change the whole face of Middle Earth forever and that all kind of horrible creatures like orcs, trolls and many others start ruling all the kingdoms of Middle Earth.

Aragorn (Vigo Mortensen) has been the leader of the Fellowship since the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) had disappeared at Khazad-dûm and also plays an important role in this epic adventure as the king, who will return in the third part of the trilogy. In this film as well as in the whole trilogy there’s a love story between Aragorn and the elf Arwen (Liv Tyler) which is disturbed by the appearance of lady Eowyn (Miranda Otto), the niece to the King Theoden (Bernard Hill) of Rohan. The title The Two Towers means that the Fellowship has to face at the same time the increasing power of Orthanc Tower in Isengard where Saruman is the commander and Sauron’s Tower at Barad-dûr in the dark lands of Mordor. The War of the Ring starts in this film but we will only know how it ends if we see the third and last film of the trilogy – The Return of the King. The Two Towers introduces new characters such as Gollum (Andy Serkis), Wormtongue (Brad Dourif), Faramir (David Wenham), the people of Rohan and the Ents.
Besides the story, what I liked most in this film were the special effects which are amazing. That’s why it won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. The character Gollum is particularly impressive because it is very realistic. My favourite character is the elf archer Legolas (Orlando Bloom) due to his beauty, wisdom, skills and kindness. He plays some funny scenes with the dwarf Gimli (John Rhys-Davies). However, I think the funniest characters are the young hobbits Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd).
I loved everything about this film so I can’t point out what I didn’t like. It is one of my favourite films besides the other two of the trilogy because it portrays a totally different reality with all its fantastic characters such as hobbits, dwarfs, elfs and ents.
This film, which is an adaptation of the book written by J. R. R. Tolkien, was nominated for thirteen Academy Awards, including the one for Best Film, and won four. People who have seen the first film can’t miss this one. Better than this one only the third film of the trilogy – The Return of the King.

The Notebook

The film is based on the best-seller by Nicholas Sparks, “The Notebook” is a story about lost opportunities, life experience and the strength of eternal love.
Everything begins when Allie Hamilton (Rachel McAdams) goes to the town of Seabrook, in North Carolina for the summer and meets Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling). Although they belong to different worlds (she is from a rich family and he is a simple worker), they fall deeply in love during a full of emotion summer. They are separated, first by her parents an then by World War II, but they remain tormented by their memories.
After the soldiers come home, everything changes. Allie is engaged to Lon (James Garner), a successful businessman that she met when she worked as a volunteer in a hospital. Noah lives alone with his memories in a 200-year-old house that he had lovingly restored. One day, Allie sees an article in a local paper about Noah’s handwork. She knows that she’s got to find him and makes a decision once and for all about what to do with her life and her love. When she finds him again, their love revives and she chooses to stay with the man that she has always loved, Noah.
After some years, a man (James Garner) is reading an old notebook to a woman (Gena Rowlands) that he visits every day in a nursing home. When that man finishes the book, we know that he is Noah and the woman to whom h reads every day is Allie. She suffers from Alzheimer’s, and Noah does everything to prevent Allie from forgetting their exciting love story.
“The Notebook” shows other sides of a strong and beautiful love story. Other stories finish when a woman and a man stay together, but this one goes beyond, and tells us about the problems that all relationships have to face, which makes it more real.