film

In the last week I've rented two little films that were fantastic and which I would highly recommend seeking out...


The Beauty Academy of Kabul is the first. Yes, it sounds like and is an oxymoron - a beauty academy in Kabul. What it also turns out to be is a quiet and gentle lesson about every day acts being subversive, about unintended consequences of international policies, about the power of the human spirit.

The second film is one that you'd likely never hear about. 10 Items or Less is an intimately scaled film staring Morgan Freeman as an actor researching a part and Paz Vega as a checkout girl in a grocery store. The film follows the two of them for the better part of day as they interact with one another. The characters are wonderful. The story is human. When the film ended, I wished they could both become my friends. But as Freeman's character and Scarlet acknowledge near the end of the film... they'll never see one another again. We'll never see these characters again, but it was certainly worth spending a short 82 minutes with them.