More reviews from the Film Festival

Bambi (heart) Bones: This is disturbing! i tell you it's very disturbing. It's about parental physical and sexual abuse and how the family deals with this situation. Ultimately it chronicles how it affects the kid in his interactions with his friend when they play. I mean it's pretty sick if you make a cardboard cutout of a person and throw rocks and mud at it! It's hard watching the father sexually abuse the kid because it's not so much graphic as it is uncomfortable. The director of the movie was there and the heart inside the bambi bones was meant to describe the heart inside that relationship (contrived because they're family-- you have to love them). I wouldn't watch this one again (1 chip).

China Blue: This was fascinating and makes me contemplate where our jeans come from. Would I even consider buying cheap clothes made in China anymore? This film documents how life is living in a jean factory and the conditions the workers are subjected to when working there. You get penalized out of your pay if you skip work, if you sleep at work, and eat at work. YIKES. and you have to work almost 48 hours without sleep if they need to meet a deadline. Can you imagine that the jean sellers are selling their jeans for $200+ when in China they make it for almost $1 a pair. That is absurd. Of course their major customers are big name department stores like Walmart and Gap but the management who visit the factories are only concerned about margins and lowering the wholesale price! Who cares about someone who has to sit there all day long and pull thread out of jeans? I will reconsider before buying my next pair of jeans....j/k! (4 chips)

Familia: I loved this movie! It's a film set in Montreal about dysfunctional families and how we are all interconnected. Of course some of those connections between brothers and cousins are a bit far fetched but hey it happens. The main conservative woman Beatrice befriends a younger woman and finds out her husband's been cheating with this younger woman. Beatrice also takes in her messy (and messed up) sister in law and her troubled daughter because of physical abuse. But in the end she kicks them out because the sister in law has tainted her own perfect but repressed (and well-educated) daughter. Look at all these webs. I cried, and cried a lot...very emotional, touching yet shocking. Definitely 2 thumbs up and a must watch! (5 chips)

Peacock: This one details the trials and tribulations of a Chinese family living in rural China and how each of the children grow up through the years. There are three children (2 boys and a girl). The peacock only plays into the film at the end but throughout you get a guilty sense of emotion cover you because you live such a good life with so many choices (by just living in a good city). You don't need to be a bottle washer because that isn't the only job available. You don't need to be a street vendor because you are educated and have enough money to raise yourself. I really liked how each person tried to "unrepress" themselves and it worked out really well for themselves. (3 chips)

April Snow: This was more of a Korean "check this hot guy out" movie. The characters were apparently movie stars well known in Korea but unknown to the Western world. I liked it although it was rather slow throughout. I thought the story line was interesting and unique but Dex was still thinking it moved very slowly. At several points in time, we thought it would be the end already but it kept going on. I would watch this again for the good looking people (yes I can be a bit shallow! ahaha). (3 chips)

Horloge Biologique (beating the clock?) : I found this one oddly amusing with the "neanderthalian" beginning. This raw theme surfaces at specific times in the movie where the male instinct kicks in, letting the audience know that we should disregard all subsequent actions as they do not correctly represent the male in it's sane form. This story follows 3 guys and their lives hanging out with each other. Each one in turn gets turned out of their house because of the "stupid" things they do to piss their girlfriends off. Let this be a lesson to all guys about doing stuff behind your girlfriend's back! hahaha.... (3 chips)