Couple of semi-retro movie reviews for you now, I'll try and be brief, but you know me ;-)

Schindler's List - stars Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes

This tells the true story of Oskar Schindler, a member of the Nazi Party during WWII. While witnessing the persecution of the Jewish people in Poland, he starts to use his power as an industrial entrepreneur and his Nazi Party backers to try and save the Jewish people by hiring them as workers.

I won't go into detail, this is a very long and complex story that really does beg watching. Filmed completely in black and white also enhances what is truly one of the worst - if not THE worst - persecution of human beings that I have heard of. 6 million Jewish people were killed during WWII, less than 2000 remain living there today. The cheapness with which they were treated as far as their lives were concerned makes me wretch, the Germans didn't even think of them as human and the extent to which this view was carried is beyond words. This is a very intense, altruistic account of those events, and to my surprise none other than Stephen Spielburg is behind the camera.

The story itself carries the film entirely, and not without the help of some brilliant acting. Ben Kingsley is amazing, best work he's done in my opinion. Mahatma who? Liam isn't stretching here, he portrays a cold-hearted nice guy well but falls in a heap at the end. And Ralph Fiennes as the ogre Amon Goeth did such a good job he was probably petrified he'd get type-cast because of it.

All political and personal opinions aside, this is a story worth telling, and one that needed to be told. Stace and I looked at eachother and wondered why it hadn't been done before, and she's seen it before a few times. Handle with care and treat with respect, 4 stars.

Pleasantville - stars Spiderman, Reese Witherspoon, William H Macy

A avoided this for a few reasons, the main one being that it looked really boring. Hhmm, ok well I wouldn't say its boring per say, I tell you though, its borderline.

An innocent brawl between brother and sister results in the breakage of the remote control. Now this happens to be one of those new fangdangled TV's where if you don't have the remote, you can't turn it on. Coincidentally at that same moment, a TV repair man rings the door bell. What the...? Ok, and then he gives them a "special" remote and they get sucked into the 50's TV Sitcom "Pleasantville". Hillarity ensues.

Man, talk about holding on by a thread, some way to start a movie. Star Wars was more realistic. But hey, if you're desperate, you're desperate. Anyhoo, so this show is in black and white, but they turn Pleasantville and its citizens upside down now that they're there. Brother works out a way of getting back out of Pleasantville, Sister can't stand the place and won't agree to go along with these people, she just wants sex and cigarette! Reese plays a very sexy bitch by the way.

So we get a bunch of old stereotypes getting visited and watch the stuggles of the people to come to terms with them. I mean things start turning colour - that's one of the changes - including the people. So the black and white people, the "normal" ones, begin to persecute them for being "coloureds". The husband who comes home from work, "honey, I'm home" and expecting love and attention, and more importantly, dinner. Its a little bit amusing when his wife leaves him. Yaaawwwwwwn.

At 124 minutes plus trailers, I found myself hoping it would end. Not because it was bad, but not because it was good either, it was just overdone. They could've shaved half an hour at least off this thing. It stirred very little within me, a couple of "oh cool" moments, but they very quickly subsided, generally its just boring. 2 stars.

That's it, have a good weekend folks.

BH