These Girls

Showing at the Hot Docs Film Festival: These Girls, directed by Tahani Rached

Synopsis from the Hot Docs website:

A girl rides a galloping horse through the middle of heavy traffic—a striking metaphor for the chaotic lives of homeless teenage girls in Cairo. Meet Tata, Reda, Maryam, Dunya, and Abeer (whose father wants to kill her because she is pregnant). Surrounded by a circus of activity, the girls fight, laugh, brag, sniff glue and pop pills to help them deal with assaults and danger. They confront the cops, argue with guys hanging out on the streets, nurse their babies, and sleep in derelict cars and alleyways to escape being beaten, kidnapped, or raped. Fiercely protective of each other, they confide in “big sister” Hind, a middle-class religious woman who visits them to provide non-judgmental love and advice. Rached’s respect for the girls’ courage and sassiness shines throughout the film. Alternately rowdy and tender, joyous and terrifying, the dangerous carnival of these girls’ lives resonates palpably in this masterful and compassionate film. - Lynne Fernie

Interview with Tahani Rached:


Interview With Tahani Rached - These Girls via Noolmusic.com

Netflix It: The Holiday

#32 - The Holiday

Okay, so the X-Factor Contest picked another Nancy Meyer movie, not The Holiday, but I really enjoyed The Holiday (two romcoms for the price of one!), and the other movie stars a certain vile anti-Semite whom I would not want to promote in any way.

Available from Netflix: The Holiday, directed by Nancy Meyers

Nancy Meyers' romantic comedy Holiday stars Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet as two women who exchange houses in order to get a new lease on life. After each suffers her fair share of romantic disappointments, Englishwoman Iris (Winslet) and L.A. woman Amanda (Diaz) meet on-line at a website devoted to helping people exchange houses for vacations. Each agrees to spend the Christmas holiday at the other's home. While each suffers from a minor case of culture shock, both women also end up becoming involved with a man. Iris makes the acquaintance of an upbeat everyman played by Jack Black, while Amanda spends time with a handsome Brit played by Jude Law. Both women must decide what to do with these new relationships as their pre-arranged house switch is scheduled to last less than two weeks.

Netflix It: Away from Her

#29 - Away from Her

Available from Netflix: Away from Her, directed by Sarah Polley

This movie made me cry, and it also won Genie Awards (Canadian Oscars) for Best Director and Best Motion Picture, among others.

Synopsis from AllMovie.com:

Adapted by Polley from a short story by Alice Munro, this small-scaled two-character drama concerns Grant (Gordon Pinsent) and Fiona (Julie Christie), a long-married couple, well into their golden years, who are much in love and connected to one another on every level. "Soul mates" in the purest sense of the term, the two feel a sense of ease and tranquility in their rural home. But when Fiona's memory begins to slip away and she insists on being taken to a rest home, the decision stirs up torrents of guilt and regret in Grant's heart. The rules of the center only complicate matters, as they forbid visitation and communication with Fiona for an interminable period of time. He determines to support his wife at all costs, even if it must happen at the expense of his own peace of mind.

Netflix It: The Namesake

#18 - The Namesake

Available on Netflix: The Namesake, directed by Mira Nair

Synopsis from AllMovie.com:

A couple coming to terms with living in a new culture discover their troubles are compounded by their son in this drama from filmmaker Mira Nair. Ashoke (Irfan Khan) and Ashima (Tabu) are a young couple who are brought together in an arranged marriage and soon leave Calcutta to seek their fortune in America. As the couple becomes accustomed to one another, they learn to deal with the coolness and superficiality of life in New York, even as they revel in the opportunities the city offers them. Before long, Ashima gives birth to a baby boy, and pressed to choose a name, they dub the infant Nikhil, though he soon picks up the nickname Gogol, after Ashoke's favorite author. By the time the child is old enough to attend school, he insists upon being called Gogol at all times, and he displays little interest in his Indian heritage. Several years on, Gogol has decided he wants to be called Nick (and is now played by Kal Penn) and has become a thoroughly Americanized teenager, openly rebelling against his parents, smoking marijuana in his room, and dating Maxine (Jacinda Barrett), a preppy blonde from a wealthy family. Ashoke and Ashima are uncertain about how to deal with their son's attempts to cut himself off from their culture, but Nick begins expressing some uncertainty himself when he meets Moushumi (Zuleikha Robinson), a beautiful girl who also comes from a family of Indian expatriates. The Namesake was adapted from the bestselling novel by Jhumpa Lahiri.

The film's website is here.

Netflix It: John Tucker Must Die

#11 - John Tucker Must Die

Available on Netflix: John Tucker Must Die, directed by Betty Thomas

Synopsis from AllMovie.com:

Three teenagers two-timed by a local lothario decide to turn the tables on him in this romantic comedy. John Tucker (Jesse Metcalfe) is the big man on campus at his high school -- he's the captain and star player of the basketball team, he's got money, he's good-looking and charming, and he can have any girl he wants. However, the latter attribute is about to get him in serious trouble when three different girls at his school -- Heather (Ashanti), Beth (Sophia Bush) and Carrie (Arielle Kebbel) -- discover they've all been dating John at the same time. Determined to bring down the campus ladykiller, the girls devise a plan -- they pick a cute but socially clumsy girl who is new at school, Kate (Brittany Snow), and give her a crash course in stealing John's heart. Once Kate has John wrapped around her little finger, she's supposed to drop him like a bad habit and give him a taste of what heartbreak is really like. However, it seems that the early stages of the plan work a little too well, and John and Kate end up falling for each other for real.