Not One Less Film Review

Not One Less

     Not One Less is a film directed by Zhang Yimou and released in 1999. Not One Less centers around a school teacher in a poor Chinese village. When the real teacher is called away because of family illness, the mayor replaces him with a 13-year-old, inexperienced girl. In the beginning she has a hard time keeping the class of near 30 students under control, but eventually the students lighten up and start to bond with her. All is going smoothly until one of the students goes into the city to earn money for his sick mother, and ends up getting lost in the huge city. She trails him to the city and goes on a two day search, where she ends up at a television network. After appearing on a news broadcast and begging her student to return, they are reunited. Not only does she find her student and return to him his village, but the surrounding towns are so moved by their plight for money that they donate tons of school supplies to the school. Money is also donated to the town, which is put towards building a new school.

     In this movie, poverty is obviously the biggest theme. It is evident in the way that the town operates. They have to replace a real teacher with a teenager. They are very limited with school supplies and the school itself is crumbling. Poverty leads into the theme of the caste system in some areas of China. It almost seemed like the city dwellers thought themselves to be better than the people from small villages and either ignored them or treated the very poorly. Another theme in Not One Less is the importance of money. No matter what was trying to be accomplished, money was a factor. The teacher needed to be paid. School supplies was expensive. They had to move bricks for earn money. A small container of ink and some paper cost the main character so much that after her bus ticket she had nothing left. She couldn’t even properly put up adds for her missing student because it could not be achieved without money. Money makes the world go around, but this theme made it look even more important when examining the urban vs rural sections of China.

     I enjoyed this movie. It was fun to watch the teacher start her job and be so awkward and nervous, and then steadily grow into disciplining students and being an authority figure for them. The film had a certain way of making you actually care what happens to the children and want the teacher to succeed so that she will get her pay. I thought the ending was going to be completely different than it was. I thought the mayor was going to come back at the end of her term as teacher and see how well she taught them math and physical education. I thought he’d end up giving her a permanent position. I guess that the ending that actually happened is more uplifting and happy than my original prediction. It was a good film that didn’t necessarily need good acting to drive the plot forward like Le Femme Nikita. I think they should make a sequel that shows what really happens to the money that was donated, because I don’t think I trust the shady mayor.

View the trailer below.
 

La Femme Nikita Movie Review

La Femme Nikita

     La Femme Nikita was written and directed by Luc Besson and released in 1990. The film is told through the French language along with English subtitles. In this film, Nikita is a junky who seems to have joined a gang of deranged men. While robbing a medical store for pills that could get them high, the police show up and open fire on the gang. Nikita survived, but in severe drug withdrawal, loses her mind for a moment and shoots a cop in the head. She is taken into custody by the police and put on trial to which she is sentenced to death. After she is euthanized, she wakes up in a white room, alive but disoriented. A man appears to her and informs her that the death was all an act and that he wants to train her to become a spy for the government. Nikita is trained in karate, beauty, dancing, speak, technology, and weapons, and is eventually let into the real world to live, but ultimately serve the government should they need her for a mission. Shortly after moving into an apartment, she meets a clerk at a grocery store and falls in love with him. The rest of the film tells their life together while Nikita does missions for the government and the struggle she endures both mentally and emotionally.

     The biggest themes in La Femme Nikita are the power of females, violence, corruption, and love. I think this film was trying to show that women aren’t the weak people that some men perceive them to be. Nikita was able to beat and kill men better than most of the henchmen or male agents could. As her beauty instructor pointed out, never underestimate a woman’s charm and beauty. Another obvious theme in this film is violence. There were so many bullets flying, punches throwing, and explosions that it could keep any action buff happy. Corruption, another central theme, can be seen in the way that the government works – fooling the public into believing something and then having that person knocked off when it seems most beneficial. The last theme I notices was love. Nikita was able to fall in love with the man training her, as well as the man she would eventually marry and go to Paris with. However, this may because no one has ever been nice to Nikita and she may not have known love before.

     I thought this film was pretty good. I had some idea of how it would progress because I’ve seen the American television series and bits and pieces of the American remake. I think that Le Femme Nikita is much better than Point of No Return. I liked the blue haze to the film and the music that accompanied it. The movie really did make me feel for Nikita and want everything to work out for her. The only thing I didn’t like was the abrupt end to the film. The scene with the freak out and then breaking into the man’s house was too fast and forced. This was another great film to watch and I would recommend it to anyone looking for an old action movie.

Look below to view the trailer!

Bad Education Film Review

Bad Education

     Bad Education is a movie directed by Pedro Almodovar and released in 2004. The story was told in the Spanish language with English subtitles. In this film, two childhood friends, Enrique and Ignacio, meet up years after they’ve left a private Catholic school. While at the school they fell in love, but were driven apart by sick Father Manolo. Enrique is now a popular film producer and Ignacio is an actor seeking work. Ignacio produces a script called “The Visit,” based on their real lives in hopes that Enrique will turn it into a movie, and give him the main role. The scenes tell the plot through three different tales – the past, the present, and what is being depicted while filming a movie based on their lives. They are all interwoven together. A series of twists and turns will keep the viewer watching and thinking. In this movie about passion and death, nothing is as it really seems.

     The two biggest themes in Bad Education are deceit and unwavering love. It seems as if every character in the film is deceptive, or has another motive for doing what they do. Father Manolo is obviously deceptive to his faith and followers at his church because he is pursuing a young boy. When he became older and was being blackmailed by a transgendered Ignacio, he was granted the loan he needed, but lied to Ignacio in hopes of pursuing his younger brother, Juan. Juan was playing himself off as Ignacio so that he could get a part in Enrique’s movie. Enrique knew this almost immediately, but pretended that he didn’t so that he could grow closer to Juan and find out what really happened to Ignacio. Plus, Ignacio lied to his brother and mother multiple times about entering rehab all the while stealing valuables from churches and johns at a hotel.

     The second theme, unwavering love, can be seen in a few places in the film. Ignacio’s mother loved her son, no matter what, and supported him when he became transgendered. Enrique loved Ignacio even after years and years of not seeing him, and loved him even after his death because of Father Manolo and Juan. Father Manolo and Juan even loved each other for some time, until a terrible scheme they put forth tore them apart. Despite being sick and twisted, Father Manolo loved Ignacio as a boy and still seemed to care about him somewhat even after being blackmailed by him.

     I enjoyed this film. I enjoy films that make you think. Hollywood is too predictable now adays, in my opinion. This is the first film I’ve seen in a while that kept me guessing. I certainly didn’t foresee some of the plot twists in the movie. I’m happy everything was flushed out well so that I truly understood what was going on towards the end of the film. I could have done without some of the graphic male-on-male scenes in the movie. I felt that, while they were important to the plot, they were just a little too graphic and overdone. Those scenes didn’t subtract too much quality from the film and I would still recommend it to other film members studying films from other countries.

To view the trailer for the film, please watch below.