The courage of standing alone.

The Movie: Hotel Rwanda, directed by Terry George
Recommendation: Von Gauzen
Reason: "It's very sad. You'll cry."

I have had several moments of great misanthropy. Sometimes, I just can't stand the world we live in and the people we're forced to share it with. I was admittedly lax in my knowledge of world news when I was a teenager, and so it's only a decade after the fact that I've learned about the Tutsi massacre. The only person I recall from that time and that place is of course Roméo Dallaire. He was not portrayed in this film (though there was a Canadian UN official played by Nick Nolte.). The lead character is Paul Rusesabagina, played by Don Cheadle. Through the depicted horror of the massacre of the Tutsis, Cheadle's characterization and starkly played humanity kept this from being another movie that made me curse the existence of the human race. (Yes, how emo of me...)

I like Don Cheadle. The first movie I saw him in was Ocean's Eleven, where he played for laughs, but since then I've seen him in a few other movies. He's a good actor, maybe even a great one, who brings a certain amount of humanity to all of his characterizations. It's hard to find a Don Cheadle character that doesn't seem real. He left the rest of the cast in the dust on this film, though Sophie Okonedo did a very good job of her role. I wanted to kick Nick Nolte, just for the hell of it-for some reason I find him pretty annoying, no matter what he's in, and overacting in a scene with Cheadle just made him look worse.

If there was a message to this movie, it was that more than one person has to stand up. Rusesabagina and Dallaire did what they could for the people in their care, using intelligence, sharp wits and every bargaining tool they had. What could have happened if more than a handful of people had organized that resistance? How many lives would have been saved? We don't know, and we can't know. But it's something to think on.

-87/365 down, 278/365 to go

Never trust a hippie with your wife.

The Movie: Down and Out in Beverly Hills, directed by Paul Mazursky
Recommendation: AMC
Reason: Hey look, a movie! On TV! What a novelty!

It's very difficult to believe that Down and Out in Beverly Hills was made over twenty years ago. The cinematography's excellent, likely pretty innovative for the late eighties. It was the first thing I noticed about the film, though there were a lot of other points that caught my attention. The plot is similar to American Beauty, but the execution and tone is different. Down and Out focuses on the same sort of journey, an awakening brought to the suburbs, but this awakening is gentle.

Lester (from American Beauty) somehow felt a little more real, a little more desperate than Dave, Richard Dreyfuss' suburban dad in Down and Out. Though the catalyst for the change they experience is desire, Dave's envy seems more pure than Lester's lust. When both of them see the object of their desire exposed for what it is, the result is strikingly similar-retreat, relief. It could be a quirk of the actors, but I feel it's more a reflection of the material and mood of the respective films.

Overall, this was an interesting light to American Beauty's dark. There were a few moments of really solid brilliance in the film, though there were definitely some low points (AhemLittleRichardAhem). It had several subtle points that were made, once more about the society that the suburbs seem to create within and without. Very interesting.

-61/365 down, 304/365 to go