CAROL'S JOURNEY

This was a great movie even though I had no idea of what they were saying. With no subtitles at times it was easy to figure out what was going on. I looked at what the movie was about and you find out that Carol new her mother was sick in the beginning and with no subtitles it was speculation.

Carol and her mother was on their way to Spain to see her family. Her mother was Spanish and her father was American. They lived in New York, her father was off at war. In the beginning you could see that when the Mother started smoking on the train that it was not right by the way the little boy and the priest looked at her. Carol saw this and the Mother just smiled. Once they get to the train station she meets her Grandpa and they are off in a horse and buggie. On the way Carol sees this boy Tomiche shoot a bird and kill it. Carol screams at him and he takes her hat. He calls her a name. Carol looks and acts like a tomboy. One night Carol sees her mom pay to have a letter sent to her husband and Carol takes note. The next day while Carols mom is out side she sneaks and reads the letter from her dad. This makes her happy. Carol runs out to find her mom dead. Carol goes to live with her Aunt and cousins and also becomes friends with the local boys and Tomiche. They have a crush on each other. One day it is Carols birthday and there is a plane flying over and everyone starts freaking out and Carol starts screaming that is her Dad. He drops a present from the plane for Carol for her birthday. While off playing Carol sees a truck with a lot off men in it and later she hears gun fire. Carols dad comes to see her and the police start looking for him. Carol and Tomiche start looking for him too, Tomiche goes to find him and tries to help him escape. Carol sees all of this and she sees the cops take aim at her dad and she starts screaming and the cop shoot Tomiche. He is dead. At the end it shows Carol and the Grandpa leaving and she is telling everyone good bye. I wondered what happened to the dad in the end. Carol sees allot of different things different from the American culture where she was from. The war, smoking, calling her a Yankee and even death. I would like to see this movie with the subtitles.

VOVLVER

I truly enjoyed this movie. This was a movie about a woman who was very strong in many different situations. In the very beginning of this movie it showed a lot of people mainly women cleaning graves of the deceased. I found this to be very bizarre and I would also say that it was also on the superstitious side. After the grave site they- Raimunda, Paula her daughter and Sole her sister went to see their Aunt Paula. You can see in the beginning that Aunt Paula was not fond of Sole. Aunt Paula did not get around so well and was very shaky. Raimunda wanted to take her home with her one day but she has no room. Raimunda questioned Aunt Paula on how she survives and she says she does okay. Once they go home Paula the daughter sits down and her father looks at her in a seductive way and it was very gross. I found that very disturbing. One night Paula is waiting for Raimunda at the bus stop and she tells her something happened. Once they get home she sees Paco on the floor dead. Paco tried to rape Paula and she stabbed him to death. Raimunda cleans up the mess and tells Paula that she did not kill him that she did. Paula also asked about whether Paco was her father and he was not. They hid his body in a freezer at a restaurant and while she was there one day a man came and asked if she could fix lunch for his crew while they were filming a movie. Raimunda went and got some vegetables and on the way she asked a friend for some pork that she got and from another friend she got sausage from her and she would pay them back the next day. This went on for a while. Then one day Aunt Paula died and Sole went to the funeral and Raimunda did not want to go. When Sole was at Aunt Paulas house she saw her mothers ghost and it scared her. After the funeral she went home and someone was knockning inside her trunk. The voice screamed that it was her mother. Sole opened the trunk and it was her. Sole still believes that she is still a ghost who brings luggage. Irene the mother is living with Sole and then Paula sees that her grandmother is alive and everytime when Raimunda comes over she hides. In the end Raimunda goes and buries Paco by the river and finda out that her mother is alive. Raimunda never had a good relationship with her mother and she finda out why. Her mother tells her that she was sorry that Raimunda's father raped her and that is how Paula came about and that her father had been having an affair with Augetsines mother. Irene went and set fire to this house they were in at one of the times they were together and killed them, she never got caught. Everyone assumed that it was Irene that was dead and Augestines mother just vanished. So in order not to get caught she kept hidden and stayed with Aunt Paula and everyone thought that it was a ghost.

This movie was a great tribute to the strength of women and of what women have to go through and still survive. The other superstitious part of the movie that I noticed was about people talking of the East wind making people crazy. That does not happen or we all would be in big trouble.

Guantanamera

Thanks to Netflix, I was able to watch this movie on my own.

There was a lot of culture in this film, both Hispanic and Cuban. The machismo men were Adolfo, Gina's husband, and Mariano, Gina's former student and admirer. Adolfo was a gross little dictator who beat his wife, forced her to dress how he liked and didn't have any feelings for anyone except himself. Mariano was good-looking, and had a girl in every port, even leaving one when she claimed to be pregnant with his baby.

Gina was a submissive wife until the end, when she finally got up the nerve, thanks to her aunt's lover's help. I loved when she finally bought the dress that she knew Adolfo would hate, just to look pretty for Mariano.

Some of the things that characterized Cuban culture were the gasoline and food rationing (the scene with the riot at the funeral over sandwiches was sad but a little funny), the tropical food (bananas and rum and coffee) and the music ("Guantanamera" is known as Cuba's national song, according to Wikipedia). Also, the legend of Olofin and Iku seemed to be a Cuban legend.

THE OFFICIAL STORY

I really enjoyed this film even though is was a little slow at times. This is a movie set in Argentina in the 1970's. It has three main characters, Alicia the mother, Gabby the daughter and Robert the father.

Alicia is a teacher, a wife to a wealthy business man who is involved with the Government and a mother to a beautiful 5 year old little girl-Gabby. In the beginning it has Alicia teaching the history of Argentina to a room full of young men. Alicia appears to have her head in the sand with the current history that was being made at the time. It was'nt until her school friend Anna came to town and ended up telling her that years ago she had been kidnapped and tortoured and while she was there Anna had learned of women that were pregnant and their babies were taken and sold. After hearing this it sparked Alicia's curiosity of where Gabby came from. Alicia had mentioned it to Robert and he blew her off. So Alicia started some investigating on her own. The people that were protesting in the street had family members that had been kidnapped and never returned and among those were preganat women. Alicia was at a hospital where Gabby was supposed to have been born and got no information. While she was there she ran in to this woman and they started talking about missing babies. This woman took her to this office and she was looking through some pictures of children that were adopted or missing.

One morning while dropping Gabby off at school there three women watching her. This left her very uncomfortable. Later on, this one particular woman aske Alicia to have coffee wth her and she started talking about her son and daughter in-law being married and abducted. The daughter was pregnant at the time. Gabby had been born around the same time her grandaughter should have been born and there was a picture of the daughter in-law when she was little and it looked alot like Gabby. Alicia got very emotional and started tearing up. Alicia had taken the grandmother to meet Robert and he got very angry and yelled at the woman. The woman left and then Robert and Alicia were talking and he asked where Gabby was and Alicia said she was gone, Robert freaked out and started banging Alicia's head against the wall and smashed her fingers in the door. The phone rang and it was Gabby, she was at her granma's and grandpa's house. Gabby started singing on the phone and then Alicia left.

There is always hope in whatever is going on in life. With the grandmother she finally had hope that maybe her grandaughter was alive. Hope that maybe she might have something to cling to even if it wasnt. I think in the end Robert felt hopeless because he just destroyed his marriage to his wife by being cruel and abusive. As far as Alicia goes I believe she feels her marriage is over and she sets off to go and get Gabby and I would like to think that her and Gabby are happy together no matter what.