Silent Night is an excellent war drama with great acting of Linda Hamilton (playing Elisabeth Vincken) and Matthew Harbour playing her young 10 year old son Fritz Vincken. It is set in west Germany on Christmas Eve 1944, when Elisabeth took her son deep behind American front line to their family cabin somewhere in Ardennes forest to protect him against a continuous war. She intended to wait there in peace till the end of the war and wait who actually wins it. Would it be a Nazi Germany as Adolf Hitler is promising every day or American forces endlessly marching deep into the German homeland? However, her dream of peaceful Christmas disappeared when three American soldiers entered the cabin to harbor their wounded mate. Elisabeth doesn't agree with soldiers inside the house. She doesn't want her son to see any reminders of war and be involved in this. Both, Elisabeth and Fritz are fighting with their oath to the fatherland and helping enemy at the same time. However, she agrees to help them if they leave their weapons outside. The soldiers agree and soon help with the household. The young boy is shy and suspicious at first, but the soldiers find their way to his soul and he soon realizes that they are nice, friendly people unlike the German propaganda was trumpeting to Germans everyday. Since Fritz's father died in eastern front somewhere in Russia the soldiers quickly became his male role models and he accepted them with appreciation. You could even see in his eyes that he loves them.

Suddenly, three German soldiers appear at the door and Americans have to deal with the situation of having their weapons in the cellar and the enemy in the house. During this part of the movie you could feel that a fear entered the house. The boy became silent again and scared of soldiers of his own country. Such a terrible regime governed their fatherland! From now you would experience an incredible masterpiece, true story of one night in 1944. All three American and three German soldiers are forced by Elisabeth to deal with each other, to confront the reality of the war and personal courage, hopes, beliefs and duty. They met each other as deep sworn enemies and left the cabin as friends.

This movie is one of my favorite war movies. You won't see a single shot in it, but you would feel incredible tensions and fear of war and having enemies in your house. You never know who will lose his temper and the fight starts immediately.
And Fritz? He is telling us the story and when you see him, you realize how important it is to keep our children safe and happy. They deserve it the most.

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If you like this excellent war movie about a young boy watching his mother protecting him against war realities, purchase it

By purchasing this movie, you will help to donate to children with leukemia. Thank you.

Rating: ★★★★★ 

This is the post from: About this Boy

Silent Night

Maxwell Kane (Elden Henson) is extremely large, huge and a very strong seventh grader. He suffers from learning disability. He is silent and a bit slow and very shy to his mates. He has no friends. One day a new neighbor moves to the next house. A small boy Kevin Dillon (Kieran Culkin) is a rare physical disabled near-genius suffering from Morquio's syndrome. He moved from Saint Luis with his mom (Sharon Stone) to escape bullies in the old place. Kevin was running all his life to avoid other children picking on him because of his disability. Wherever they moved, soon after other kids bullied on him and it was the time to move on again. This time, Max meets his new neighbor at his yard where Kevin was constructing a flying robot. Soon the boys befriends each other and Kevin invites Max to his imaginary world full of adventure and Knights of Avalon, the knights of the King Arthur. Max realizes, that they are a great team, that Max is Kevin's legs and Kevin is Max's brain.

The movie was based on a book Freak The Mighty (Scholastic Signature) by Rodman Philbrick, buy it here.

Other kids start calling them freaks and amazing thing is, both boys do not care. Kevin even replies: "This is what we really are...". This team - knights of the round table are on their quest helping other people and fighting bullies. Max is changing under Kevin's influence and becomes more communicative enjoying life, even though sometimes it is hard for him to cope with Kevin's ideas. He quotes: "Why am I always the one who ends up knee deep in crap?" But he loves the small boy and protects him with his whole heart and strength. Kevin on the other hand got moments in his short life he has never experienced: he could get to a local fireworks, which he has never been, he could attend physical exercising at school and play basketball and he even became a star in his grade. And Kevin appreciates it and when his best friend ever gets himself into troubles, he goes across the town to help him.

The Mighty is a gentle family drama of a strong friendship and building of trust. It was released in 1989 and it was almost immediately forgotten.

"Every word is a part of a picture. Every sentence is a picture. All you do, is let your imagination connect them together..."

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If you like this heart-touching movie about a strong friendship, purchase it

By purchasing this movie, you will help to donate to children with leukemia. Thank you.

Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

This is the post from: About this Boy

The Mighty

I like movies where young actors perform not only as actors but perform as musicians or artists, playing piano, violin, singing or dancing. This movie is one of such movies in which children sing beautiful songs and most of them are real singers in their real life. This movie introduces Jean-Baptiste Maunier, a French soloist singer and actor, who became famous for his role of a troubled boy Pierre Morhange. Pierre was sent to "Fond de l'Etang", a school for troubled kids along with many other orphans who lost their parents in World War II. The school is ruled by a ruthless principal Rachin who accepts only one method of discipline: "action - reaction". Children are beaten and locked up for nitpicky misbehavior as well as for serious issues. However, this method brings only one result: the boys are more reluctant to behave better and Rachin gets even more resistance and more troubles from them. His method "action - reaction" turns against him. As much as he presses the boys as much counter-reaction he gets. And the boys feel themselves more isolated, hated and useless.

When a new prefect, Clement Mathieu (Gerard Jugnot) enters the school, he sees a sad picture of Rachin method: distressed, resistive boys without any interest in anything and teachers leaving the school to save their life. Everybody in school lost all hope in the boys ability to be better people. Nobody believes in them, and old teachers are warning Mathieu against the boys. You can see sad eyes of the boys without any sparks. Really sad picture.

Clement Mathieu is a sad man too. It seems like he has lost his family during the war and become a very lonely, aging man, who sees his bright future no more. For some reason he gave up his life and his passion: music. He was a composer. When he meets the boys for the first time, it seems like he is going to lose the first "battle" for the authority in the classroom. He gets involved in a few incidents with the boys in presence of Rachin, but surprisingly for the boys, Mathieu steps up to protect the boys against punishments. The boys appreciate it and start looking at Mathieu like a man who cares about them. When a small group of boys led by Pierre Morhange steals Mathieu's brief case with music scripts, the prefect gets an idea. He establishes a chorus.

Rachin is not fond of such an idea, but he allows to have the chorus in school. When the chorus become famous, he takes all the credit for it. Nevertheless in this part of the movie you can see an amazing change in boys and even in Rachin himself. It was like a spring coming after a very long and dark winter. Singing boys started behaving well, started dreaming and having their boy's wishes. You can see their little faces full of smiling, hope, dreams, sparks in their eyes and love. You can see that special moment you want to see in every children's face around the world. You will get close to tears to see all this along with the incredibly beautiful music.

And the music of this movie is what makes this film so precious. The music became a world bestseller soon after the movie was released along with double impression at 2004 Oscars (nominated in categories Best Foreign Language Film and Best song categories film).
 
 

 
 
The soundtrack for this movie was composed by Bruno Coulais and he did an excellent work helping to create a great inspirational story which catches hearts of the audience around the world. You will love this movie and music immediately after the first tones.

You can buy the Les Choristes MP3 album here

The film is in French language with English subtitles and I strongly recommend you to purchase the original version instead of any dabbed versions. I could see German and Spanish dabbing and the movie lost its beauty. You should hear the French language along with the songs!

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If you like this heart-touching movie about the boys singing in a chorus and loved by their only friend and teacher, purchase it
By purchasing this movie, you will help to donate to children with leukemia. Thank you.

Rating: ★★★★★ 

This is the post from: About this Boy

The Chorus (Les Choristes)

Stolen summer is about an 8-year old Irish Catholic boy Pete O'Malley (Adi Stein) who lives with his family in Chicago of 1976. His mom visits church services regularly with the kids, his dad is a brave firefighter but a bit old-fashioned man, so when Pete's older brother wants to apply for a college, the father refuses to support it. He believes that a good job is the right thing and what counts in life and education is wasting of time, smoking Pot and drinking beer. Pete still attends an elementary school and he is a little hellion, so sister Leonora Mary, his teacher, is constantly telling him that he would end up in hell one day. However the small boy thinks about it and he doesn't want to end up in hell. So he brought up a plan how to avoid it. First, he asks his priest if by accepting a mission of saving someone else would help him not to go to hell and when the priest answers positively the boy acts.

Pete has heard that Jewish people cannot go to heaven, because Jewish people have different God who doesn't live in heaven, but there is a way how to change it. Converting a Jewish boy into Catholic would allow such a Jewish boy to go to heaven and save Pete from getting into hell as well. And here is Pete's new plan!

One day he meets rabbi Jacobsen (Kevin Pollak) and he tells him about his commitment. Rabbi is amused first, but then he agrees to allow the little boy to offer a free lemonade to Jewish people in front of a synagogue even though Jewish community is not much excited about a catholic boy offering services. Pete tries a lot, but with no results.

A few days later a rabbi's house is under the fire. The boy's father rescues Danny (Mike Weinberg), a rabbi's son. Pete soon befriends him and gets a great idea of converting him. Danny is terminally ill with leukemia and Pete offers him the quest of accomplishing a decathlon so Danny can enter heaven. One of the cutest part of the movie is when Pete is offering the solution to little Danny: "If you are interested, maybe I could help you to get to heaven." and Danny asks: "When can we start?"
Both boys enter a quest of ten trials and if Danny accomplishes them all, he would be allowed to enter heaven. Big adventure starts right here.

The movie tells us another story besides a wonderful friendship of two boys. The boys also show to their parents what is the value of friendship and the power of a family. Both fathers are those who need a lesson the most. At first, they do not like each other much, because of the differences of their religion, but soon their young sons teach them how to get over it.

Stolen summer was originally created as the 12-part HBO miniseries "Project Greenlight" which finally was made into a movie, one of the most beautiful family drama. I love this movie and I strongly recommend it. It is a gentle and funny masterpiece worth owning it.

Screen shots:

If you like this movie about two small boys, purchase it
By purchasing this movie, you would help donate to children with leukemia. Thank you.

Rating: ★★★★★ 

This is the post from: About this Boy

Stolen Summer

A nine year old boy Seamus (Ciaran Flynn) from an unknown Irish town is terminally ill. Doctors already gave up on him that the chemotherapy won't help any more. There is very little to do and a very little hope. Seamus knows it. He sets out on a journey to find God to help him with a miracle. On his journey he meets a 15 year old runaway James (John Traves) whose father was killed and he tries to escape from his past. On a small island, to which Seamus drifted on a small boat without sails, motors or oars, the boys meet Darry who desperately needs their help. Both boys decided to help. Seamus believes Darry is Jesus who was sent to him to help him.

48 Angels is a touchy film. You would see a little boy who overhears a doctor talking to his parents telling them his death sentence. How a little child can cope with such news? How can parents cope with the news that their only child will die? You will be staring on the screen and praying for the boy.

The movie is a low budget master piece, but handled very well. It is a gentle film with no killing, explosions or effects of today's Hollywood production, which on one hand may make you feel that there is nothing happening, however it is not true. You will experience innocent boys getting close together into a close friendship and hope. Three perspectives on death. Seamus sentenced to die trying to find the way out through a miracle, however managing the journey of all three companions; James unable to deal with the death of his father, but softening his heart and starting to believe to others again and Darry healing from his life threatening wounds escaping from being hunted down. This is the message of this film and what is happening.
At first James fights little Seamus. He doesn't like an intruder to his "own" island. His heart seems to be closed and hard to other people. He was a member of a gang and was slowly becoming a ruthless youngster. When helping Seamus you would experience James changing. You will see him as a boy who still needed help from grownups, who still needed learning how to deal with life situations. Darry seems to be the guardian to both boys till the end.

In this film a new boy actor Ciaran Flynn is introduced, who later played in some other movies (Call me son 2008, Cregan 2009) and he managed his role brilliantly. It is all three actors who made this film stunning, so you will be watching it to the very end.

Screen shots:

If you like this movie about a hope of a small boy, purchase it

Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

This is the post from: About this Boy

48 Angels