Hotel Rwanda...

[NoCalMike 0]

This movie is pretty amazing. I have never seen my girlfriend tear up from the happenings in a movie, but alas it happened. This movie takes place in 1994 when the genocide in Rwanda starts, and the story centers around a hotel suite owner who risks his life to help a bunch of refugees that had to flee in fear of being slaughtered. The movie is amazing and very emotional. I had to go to an indy theater in my city, so all of you may have to do the same. Don Chealde is up for a Golden Globe and I believe there is Oscar talks as well. Well deserved.

[Taker666 0]

Ebert and Roeper were getting a huge hard on over this movie.

 

It looks pretty interesting though, I might rent it on video. Its not playing anywhere near where I live.

[MDH257 0]

It's powerful. I'm rooting for Jim Carrey to win Best Actor at the award shows, but if Don Cheadle wins, I won't be complaining.

 

Happy to see the women that played his wife got a Supporting Actress SAG Nomination.

[Bruiser Chong 0]

I had Tom Joyner in the Morning on the radio the other morning (for whatever reason) and they were going crazy over this one. They think that Jamie Foxx and Cheadle could both be up for best actor because of their respective roles, with Foxx being the likely winner between the two because of his name value.

 

This sounds like my sort of flick. They described it as the kiss of death for an inter-racial couple and even regular couples (although I think they were joking about the latter).

[godthedog 0]

it's like taking a date to 'schindler's list', only with more shots of people crying.

 

but yeah, great stuff. i spent the first twenty minutes or so thinking it was going to BE a less subtle version of 'schindler's list', and it kind of is, but there's an added dimension of fresh wounds and national guilt (since it's still fairly recent and everyone agrees that we should've done a lot more than we did) that made it feel REALLY immediate and harrowing. i like how bald it was about its goals & its tactics, with cheadle literally STATING, "we have to shame them into helping us." if i ever teach a film class on representations of history and ideology, i'll show this movie. it's definitely worth a full-length review, cause there's a lot going on, i'll see if it's still fresh in my mind after i finish up 'sideways'.

[NoCalMike 0]

Granted, Hotwel Rwanda scaled back somewhat on depressing shots of people actually being killed, and much of the slaughter and genocide was implied offscreen, probably to avoid an R rating. This movie was damn good.

[Guest Flyboy]

They described it as the kiss of death for an inter-racial couple

 

Explain.

[edotherocket 0]

I just saw this last night.

 

*contains minor spoilers*

 

I thought it was a great movie and Don Cheadle is terrific as Paul. I particularly liked the way he has to come up with some new form of bribery to barter for people's lives and the way he tries to keep his composure when he has all the bad news thrown in his face repeatedly from Nick Nolte. I'm sure being told the U.N had come back to bail out the white people would be pretty disappointing news.

 

Jean Renot was good in his brief role as the incredulous Belgian hotel chain owner when Cheadle calls up to say "they're going to kill 800 of us...g'bye. It's been nice working for you"

 

Powerful acting when The Don was putting on his tie too.

 

It's interesting that the darkest character remains unseen throughout the whole film and I got chills when he said "we have a report of U.N convoy trying to smuggle cockroaches...the graves are not yet full enough"

 

So now I've seen Hotel Rwanda, I've still got Sideways, Million Dollar Baby, The Aviator and A Very Long Engagement to go on my list of Things To See Before The Oscars.

 

...oh, and Kinsey.

[godthedog 0]

They described it as the kiss of death for an inter-racial couple

 

Explain.

the movie's very up front about race relations, basically claiming that the West chose to ignore the genocide because rwanda was a poor black nation. i don't think i've ever seen a movie that made me feel so guilty for being white.

[CanadianGuitarist 0]

Im terrified that this movie will be Hollywoodized.....i.e happy ending with Americans being victorious....how historically accurate is it?

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Im terrified that this movie will be Hollywoodized.....i.e happy ending with Americans being victorious....how historically accurate is it?

I count three American characters in the whole movie. Don't worry; it's great. This isn't really a Hollywoodized anything. It's very accurate, with the main deviation from history being that the Colonel played by Nick Nolte is a somewhat fictionalized representation of Romeo Dallaire, I guess.

 

godthedog is absolutely right about how harrowing it is. The first half hour or so of the movie is some of the most anxiety-inducing filmmaking I've seen, largely thanks to Cheadle (who is absolutely invisible in his character, by the way--really remarkable) and to how simply and effectively everything is shot. The cinematographer deserves a ton of credit as well for never once making the camera intrusive. The thought that kept coming back to me throughout was "I was only 11 when this happened; I'm not responsible."

 

The movie's also pretty excellent in that it clearly shows that the Rwandans lived in a houses, had homes, had jobs, had businesses, etc. In my experience discussing the genocide, most people seem to think the Hutus and Tutsis lived in tents and were deeply tribal.