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batcave2005
Reviews
The Princess & the Barrio Boy (2000)
Romance..
This movie is full of romance, as it is also depressing and sad to watch. When I first seen this movie on Nickelodeon on 9/25/2005, I was crying. My parents were out of town on that day, and I was just feeling depressed and overwhelmed. I hate that lady that he is marrying because she has no respect to the family of the death of their biological mother. This is a sad and painful movie. I like this movie because it is about romance. I dislike it because the "witch" is freaking disrespectful. I like this movie. I like how they had the step-mom be like a devil to the kids, but nice to the husband. And how the son Joseph, would make things worse for her. I especially loved his plan of getting her when she was walking up the stairs at the wedding. When he had the tape recorder playing. That got me!
Tommy Cavalier Rialto, Calif.
The Passion of the Christ (2004)
One of The Best Movies from Mel Gibson: The Passion of the Christ
I'd been looking forward to seeing this film since the day I first read a rumor that Mel Gibson was going to do a film about the Passion entirely in Latin and Aramaic. I knew this was going to be a very special film long before it made headlines and became the center of great and unnecessary controversy. Yesterday I was not disappointed. Josh Sewell has already put it more elegantly than I can when he writes, "I've been rendered nearly speechless... The Passion of the Christ... defies the typical 'it's good' or 'it's bad' mentality of a review. It's so visually gripping, so heart-wrenching and so emotionally draining that writing about it simply can't do it justice." The film begins at night in the garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem. Jesus (played by Jim Caviezel, an actor I have great respect for ever since his excellent performance in Kevin Reynolds' film of The Count of Monte Cristo) is betrayed by his disciple Judas to the high priest Caiaphas and, next morning, brought before Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator of Judaea. Originally, Gibson had intended The Passion of the Christ not to have subtitles, saying that the acting was to convey enough of the story for subtitles to be superfluous. Later he compromised and had the film subtitled. The subtitles do make the details of the story clear, so this particular compromise was not a bad decision, but I suspect from the generally quite stylized acting that Gibson still intended not to have subtitles while he was shooting. That the Passion was filmed entirely in Latin and Aramaic was a stroke of genius, and part of the great lengths Gibson went to in order to achieve a sense of historical accuracy. I certainly cannot fault his portrayal of the Romans: they do admittedly speak Latin with an Italian accent (partly because the actors are Italian, partly because they were coached by a Jesuit who presumably pronounces Latin consonants the medieval or modern Italian way), but they speak it fluently, as if it really were their everyday speech, and all of them look right and act perfectly, and their clothing, armor, weapons and hairstyles are completely accurate as far as I know. Pilate himself is actually played by a Bulgarian (which is audible in the way he pronounces the letter L) who really looks the part and manages to convey a lot of powerful emotions restrained by military and political discipline.
Caiaphas demands that Jesus be executed for blasphemy. Pilate refuses but, terrified that he will have a bloody uprising on his hands which will result in his own execution on the orders of the Emperor, orders his second in command, Abenader, to have Jesus severely punished in the hope of appeasing Caiaphas. Abenader unwittingly delegates the task to a group of sadistic soldiers who cane Jesus and then, probably provoked by his incredible stoicism, scourge him. The scourging is one of the most horrific and bloody scenes I have ever seen, and rightly so. The film has been criticized for being sadomasochistic, a criticism that is idiotic. We are bombarded every day with scenes of violence intended as entertainment, desensitizing us to our detriment. The Passion of the Christ shows violence for what it really is in all its true, disgusting, dehumanizing horror, a horror that takes on a further dimension when I consider, through my tears, that I have just paid to watch a man being ripped to shreds while the people all around me munch loudly on popcorn.
Caiaphas is not satisfied and demands that Jesus be crucified. Pilate tries one last time to avert the inevitable. He tells the mob that they can save one condemned man from execution and tells them to choose between Jesus and Barabbas, a murderer. To his disbelief the mob choose to pardon Barabbas. Jesus is to be crucified.
Another criticism of the film has been that it is unrealistic in that, amongst other things, Jesus is forced to carry his cross to Golgotha after having been mortally scourged. Do I need to point out the irony here? When Jesus falls on the way and seems unable to continue, the accompanying Roman soldiers rope in the unwilling Simon to share his burden. When Jesus falls again, Simon finds that the cross the horrifically injured Jesus managed to carry a part of the way on his own cannot be born by an able-bodied (but mortal) man.
Finally, the crucifixion. As Josh Sewell points out, "Most films about Jesus... make crucifixion seem slightly unpleasant". The Passion of the Christ shows exactly what this hideous form of execution really entailed.
This is one of the best movies that Mel Gibson has directed.