Hotel Rwanda

[JunkerSeed]

A film about Rwanda has been a long time coming. More holocaust pics than you could shake a stick at but noone wanted to tackle Rwanda. Well, I think Hotel Rwanda does a damned fine job of it. It has great script, perfect performances for the most part, and a good straightforward approach. It does a greta job of communicating not only the horror of the Rwandan genocide, but the general apathy that other countries showed Rwanda and how frustrating it must be to deal with that. One of the truest lines was when Nick Nolte is explaining why no other countries will intervene. He says "You're not even a nigger, you're African"

Don Cheadle was absolutely perfect, the role was completely against type, and it's the best performance of the year.

 

Oh, as good as it was though, it had the worst fucking score I've ever heard in my life. Espaically since the film was so good, the music stuck out like a sore thumb. The movie is begging for African music to score it, but inexplicibly they went for nothing but extremely mediocre typical movie orchestral music and it's really godawful.. It really holds the movie back.

And Nick Nolte is kind of distracting as the UN guy. Everytime he came up on screen the audience let out a chuckle, bad casting move IMO.

 

Other than that though, really solid, Cheadle is headed for big things hopefully, cause I really liked this.

[The NZA]

Still sad i missed this one in theatres, in the process of downloading it.

Amnesty's making a big deal of its DVD realease too, ill post on that later.

[Ganny McVagflaps]

It's a fucking great flick. Cheadle was screwed by the Academy. Fuck Jamie Foxx, that wasn't acting that was doing an impression. What Cheadle did was acting...

[Silent Bob]

I'm with you on that, 2T. This was Cheadle's best performance yet, and that's sayin' somethin'.

[TulipO]

This was one of the saddest and most amazing movies I've ever seen. Don Cheadle was incredible! This movie made me want to shake people by the neck and say "HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT!?!?!?"

 

I mean really think about it this way, if you gave the average American mother the choice between watching her children be brutally killed, BUT she could still drive her sweet gas-guzzling SUV everywhere OR having her children live but maybe driving a smaller car or even relying on public transportation (or God forbid--walking!) I guarantee you she'd rather walk and let her kids live.

 

And yet, they're okay with other people's kids, parents, brothers, sisters, spouses etc getting killed in such ways. Fuck it, they're only Africans right?

 

What got me the most about this story was how similar their way of life in Rwanda is to ours. They have houses just like ours and jobs and cars, and all the same things and this thing occured and NO ONE DID ANYTHING! Now it's happening in Sudan, and once again no one gives a fuck. Anyway, i think I just threw up a little in my mouth, so I'm going to go.

[The NZA]

posts like that make me want to make the babies with Tulip.

 

I'm watchin this movie this week for sure, gonna see if LL wants to watch it too.

[The NZA]

Finally got to watch this one.....jesus.

 

I cant recall a movie where i actually had to stop it, for fear of gettin choked up...that was powerful. I'm basically gonna reiterate much of what's said before by Tu, as far as the political end...

 

Movie-wise, i guess id disagree with Junker (i didnt think Nolte took away from the film), though the african elements of the soundtrack did fit much better. Still, during the tragic massacre scenes, its hard not to go with sweeping strings & such.

Anyway, here's another i plan on picking up one day, and i dont find many movies worth having.

[dinghy]

I cant recall a movie where i actually had to stop it, for fear of gettin choked up...

 

Why stop it? Just let the tears flow!

 

I actually had a much better experience with this than most people probably did.

 

The thing about movies like this is the reason they are so sad is because you feel so fucking helpless and frustrated!!

 

But I saw it at my school and afterward they had all these letters to political leaders for you to sign pleading with them to take action with the sudanese situation.

 

I'm obviously not saying that this made it all better -- I still had pangs of anger and the threat of tears -- but it certainly helped. and I think that sorta thing should be done more often.

 

In terms of the movie itself though, awesome. I meanit's one thing when you have such incredible material to start with, but hey really did a good job of bringing you in and making you emphathize with the people. It could easily have been a glorified documentary, but it wasn't it was a great film.