Good night, deoetdoctrinae. God bless.
"The Impossible" with Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, Tom Holland, Samuel Joslin,
Oaklee Pendergast, Marta Etura, Sonke Mohring
2012, Rated PG-13, 114 minutes
This story is about a single family that was in Thailand in the path of the massive tsunami
in 2004. The family was in the hotel swimming pool when the tidal wave struck, and the
mother (Watts) and eldest son (Holland) are able to stay together, but Watts is very
badly injured. Natives take her to a hospital with Holland. Meantime, dad (McGregor)
and his two younger sons are presumed dead by Watts and Holland, but no one really
knows where anybody is in all the chaos. The things I don't like about movies like this
are the maudlin, tearjerker scenes, and the over-hyped "ships passing in the night"
scenes where two characters, who are looking for each other, just fail to see the other
person. This one has plenty of those kinds of contrived extra bathos. We took a star off
for that. ★★★
"Sacrifice" with You Ge, Xueqi Wang, Fengyi Zhang, Xiaoming Huang, Bingbing Fan,
Hai-Qing, William Wang, Wenzhuo Zhao
2010, Rated R for violence, 130 minutes
The ruling Dynasty in a province of ancient China is assassinated by a power-hungry
general. Vowing to kill every last one of his enemies, he searches for the newborn son of
the last prince in order to kill him as well. Hidden at a doctor's house, where there is also
the doctor's newborn son, the boy gets snatched from the wife's arms and placed in
custody as are all the newborn males in the town. She hides in a powerful magistrate's
house with her own child, but the general's soldiers break in and kill her and her child.
That leaves the doctor to claim the princeling as his own or face execution. But when the
boy matures, his face is not that of his supposed parents, but rather that of his deceased
ones. This is a large, grand, busy epic picture that is exciting and enjoyable. We gave it
★★★★