Brief movie reviews: The Bone Collector (US, 1999)

A chilling film, in many ways, and certainly too violent for me.  (I spent about a half-hour of it watching through barely spread apart fingers of the hand covering my eyes.)  But Denzel Washington gives a stunning performance, worthy without a doubt of a best-actor nomination for the Academy Awards.

The violence is in context in the film; the plot is intriguing -- essentially a mystery to be solved by a pariplegic forensic specialist and a smart cop who is drafted to be his legs and his on-the-spot partner.  Only the penultimate scene goes over the top into gratuitous goriness, but it probably will suit US audiences just fine.

City of Marvels (Spain, 1999)

A "turn-of-the-century film", as an astute friend observed -- it's set in Barcelona just before the turn of the last century, when the politicians were seeking to clean up Barcelona and make it beautiful for the world's fair that was coming to town.  The main character is a young guy from the country, come to Barcelona to look for work.

He ends up joining the local anarchist movement, and then abandoning it for richer pastures.  He rises to the top position in Barcelona's answer to the Mafia, before finally finding love with his long-suffering anarchist mentor.

God's Wedding (Portugal, 1999)

Now, we missed the first ten minutes of this movie.   And found out in the last ten minutes that it began with our protagonist working in an ice cream shop, being visited by an envoy of God, and becoming very wealthy.  The context helped, in retrospect, but I don't think it saved the movie.

This one was bizarre, from beginning to end.  The characters were largely unsympathetic, and the plot meandered in meaningless directions.   Or so it seemed, if one missed the first ten minutes, at least.

I still get that September urge to go out and buy school supplies, although I confess that it usually hits after Labour Day.  Cuz school starts the Tuesday after Labour Day.  At least it did when I was in school.  As my mom would say, "150 years ago, when I was young".  But not any more.

In Quebec, school started last week.  Here, in Ontario, elementary school (primary school in some cultures) started today, and high school (secondary school) starts next week.  When it should.  In my anachronistic view of school starting dates.  But today was it for many, many children. Including Mentor, the soon-to-be-nine-year-old in the refugee family we're sponsoring.

My life partner walked him (and his mother) to school, and made sure they were introduced to teachers, principals, and so on.  My life partner was impressed; they would have Mentor in his regular fourth-grade class half the time, and in English as a Second Language class the other half the time.  And Mentor seemed happy to be in school.

At the end of the school day (2:45 p.m., having started at 8:15 a.m.), my life partner and his  mother picked him up at school, and got briefed on the "drill".  It seems life has become more complicated at school than in my day. (When I was young, I had to walk five miles to school every day, without shoes, uphill all the way, in both directions.  Wait. That's what my father said!) 

Nowadays (another word only used by "old" people), students have to buy "planners".  Like agendas. The paper version of Palm Pilots and Outlook.  Because in the planner, the teacher writes the homework assignment, and the parent has to sign when it's done, and the planner goes back to school with the child for another day.  I suppose it makes sense.  Fewer lost notes.   More routine.  But planners? At eight years old? Good grief!

So, tomorrow, my life partner will pick up Mentor again, and make sure the planner has been filled in appropriately.  (It's hard to tell when family members understand what's being said, compared to when they're just hoping they do!)   And the planner will be returned, and paid for.  And filled up tomorrow with another evening's homework.

We have yet to see whether the young Mentor can cope with grade four.  He started school at six, but there has been a war on in Kosovo almost since then. So he's attended a total of one school year and three months of another.    It's not clear whether what he learned was the math part, which will be helpful to him here, or reading and writing, which will be less useful as he learns English. 

We can only imagine the stress this little guy is under -- new country, new school, new language. Heck, they'd never had to send a lunch to school before: the kids could all walk home to lunch in Kosovo.  But, we can be assured that children adapt more easily than adults, and that he'll be the most Canadianized of all the Gashi family, and probably the soonest, too.  Nonetheless, I'm silently keeping my fingers crossed for him, hoping his school days are happy ones, from now on.  No wars, no bullies, no traumas.  May he settle in with ease.

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