“If you understand what happened in the camps, you have a much better understanding of what we’re all about as human beings” says Tim Blake Nelson, director and writer of “The Grey Zone”. But will we ever be able to understand the holocaust? Will we ever be able to understand why we as humans would destroy others like us? Why we would kill Children, and elderly people who were treated like worthless animals? Why one man ordered the destruction of the Jewish race nearly wiping out the entire population of Polish Jews? Based on the play by Tim Blake Nelson and Miklos Nyiszli’s book “Auschwitz: a Doctor’s Eyewitness Account”, “The Grey Zone” dares to explore that question but never gives an answer. There is no answer good enough to explain why the holocaust even happened in the first place.
Tag Archives: Thriller
The Italian Job (2003)
Not exactly a remake per se, but based on the concept of the original 1969 film starring Michael Caine, “The Italian Job” is a fun popcorn action flick. The filmmakers play it smart by comprising an all-star cast of actors that play their roles well; there’s a round up of charismatic and memorable actors who all play some great characters. Mark Wahlberg leads the cast as Charlie the gifted thief and leader of the group, Charlize Theron is Stella, the daughter of John who is a legitimate safe cracker for the police. Edward Norton plays the slimy and sneaky Steve.
Auto Focus (2002)
Based on the book “The Murder of Bob Crane” by Robert Graysmith, the film “Autofocus” chronicles the life of Bob Crane who had an early career as a radio DJ with a hit show and then made his foray into television with the hit series “Hogan’s Heroes” one of the most successful television series of all time. It’s by the life on the road where he formed an addiction to sex often luring women to his mansion and engaging in orgies, threesomes, and much more until his death at age 49 where his skull was crushed by a tripod by an unknown assailant.
The Transporter (2002)
I started off enjoying this film, but by the second half I began to notice something: I was zoning out. Why would I zone out? Simply because the second half is rushed, contrived, and boring. The film started off as a really awesome sleek and stylish piece of action, but then started to head off into such a predictable route. The entire second half begins to feel so tacked on and meaningless that I immediately began losing interest. It wasn’t hard to notice the shoddy fight choreography where we can see Statham pulling his punches on the stuntman with his slow fight maneuvers. I tried to ignore it but soon knew that I’d seen better fighting in a Van Damne flick, and that’s pretty pathetic.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
Based on the record-breaking bestselling series of children’s books, Harry Potter lives with his annoying family once more and is visited by a house elf called Dobby (voiced by Toby Jones) who warns Harry not to return to Hogwarts because of ensuing danger; Harry does not heed his warnings and returns once more to discover a dark force sabotaging the beloved members of the school’s faculty and freezing its victims to stone. Now Harry and Ronald must discover the source before it’s too late.
Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)
Based on the book by Doris Pilkington, “Rabbit Proof Fence” follows the early nineteen hundreds when the government would take Aboriginal children from their villages and families supposedly for their own good where they would be placed in a concentration camp to be educated and trained to be civil. Three young girls are taken from their mother to be taken to the camp. After a while, the oldest daughter Molly decides to escape the camp with her sisters and trek over one-thousand miles to get back home to their mother and must dodge a skilled tracker who must take them back to the camp. What make this movie so heart-wrenching is the fact that these three children are willing to walk more than a thousand miles just to get back to their family.
Ghost Ship (2002)
There’s been many ghost films over the past decades, and there’s not much original material or horror devices you can inject within the horror genre these days. Especially films that involve ghosts and spirits because it’s all been done to death. This film is no exception applying to that formula, but it does tend to use the tired clichés with much tenacity that I found it hard to dislike this. No matter how hard I tried, it was tough trying to label it awful, because it isn’t awful. It’s far from being scary, but it’s not dull either.