Word: poignant
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Surviving Adolescence Two of the strongest, most poignant films at Cannes deal with young people trying to navigate the labyrinth of adolescence. In most serious international films, especially those from Brazil (Pixote, City of God), the route leads to violence and early death. Linha de Passe, directed by Walter Salles and Daniela Thomspon, renounces the lure of melodrama for a neorealistic study of four sons of a single mother in Sao Paolo. Their have ordinary dreams - to become a football star, to become a religious leader, to be something more than a motorcycle courier, to drive a bus - but they...
...Bolivia; in both places he has to decide whether to accept underage volunteers; in both, he gives his men a chance to quit before the decisive battles, where they are fired on by unseen regular soldiers and suffer the deaths of friends who've made their big speech or poignant impression moments before. And forgive me for asking, but with all these young men spending up to a year in the jungle, why (with one rapacious exception) so they never express any interest in women. Are they bearded Boy Scouts, or celibate monks with guns...
Anticipation is often the best part of romance, including the form of ardor known as movie love. The dictum applies with its greatest, most poignant force when a sequel to a beloved series is finally unveiled; recall the shrugs and recriminations at the arrival of The Phantom Menace. The Indy franchise never reached the heights of Skywalker mania. It was just (just!) a trilogy that both tapped the innocent vigor of old B-movie serials and turned them into sophisticated thrill machines. Raiders and its progeny were fun without being facetious; they moved with the speed and power...
...press reports to bring the era to life. It also shows how the Ripper's 11 victims - all alcoholics who turned to prostitution - were brought down by slum life before falling prey to a murderer. A police list of Catherine Eddowes' clothing and possessions is both mundane and poignant: A gray petticoat, "a very old ragged blue skirt," and a pair of men's lace-up boots...
...best films at Cannes. One of these is Terence Davies' Of Time and the City, a dreamy documentary of Davies' home town of Liverpool. Shots of working-class Liverpudlians from the '30s, '40s and '50s doing the wash, or playing with school-friends, or preparing dinner, offer a fascinating, poignant glimpse of the rhythm of ordinary life - so precious because it is so rarely seen in documentaries...