Happy-Go-Lucky

"Sandy Hawkins’ performance is Oscar®-worthy" There is rawness to Sandy Hawkins’ performance as Poppy in Happy-Go-Lucky, which she won the coveted 2008 Best Actress at the Berlin Film Festival. After watching the film, the film striked me with great similarities to a film I had recently seen. The film that I referring to is the French cinema that launched Audrey Tautou, she played Sophie Neveu in the blockbuster film The Da Vinci code, onto international stage in Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, also known as Amélie in the United States. You must buy the motion picture soundtrack to Amélie, very instrumental and inspirational. Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is a life-loving, cheerful and exquisitely charming person. She lives with her best friend Zoe (Alexis Zegerman) in London, England. Through unordinary daily activities, Poppy decides to take her driving permanent. Her driving instructor (Eddie Marsan) becomes repressed by her behavior as a bad driver and he soon suffers from anger problems. She takes up an exercise of dance that leads her to participate in flamenco lessons; thereafter she encounters a conversation with a homeless man that she finds most rewarding, than she rows with her pregnant sister, and lastly, a love-affair with the social worker guiding one of her students. Happy-Go-Lucky is directed by one of Britain’s greatest living film director Mike Leigh, responsible for directing several hit film like: Topsy-Turvy (1999), All or Nothing (2002) and Vera Drake (2004).
— October 24, 2008 10:37 p.m.

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A downtown Los Angeles apartment building is quarantined after a mysterious deadly and highly contagious strain of rabies breaks out. A reporter and her cameraman are among those trapped inside. For all you moviegoers, I have to defend Quarantine because the film is brilliantly entertaining. The movie is not at its best, but still manages to indulge you into the plot. The point of film is to get the hands on experience and feel of what it could be like when the everyday rescue team (Firefighters and Police Officers) are guinea pigs under such chaos that known one knows your there. Picture this. An old woman near bits you while blood drips from her mouth, the building is locked down shut from the top of the roof to the foundation of the building, and questions lead to no answers. You’ve got a plot. Jennifer Carpenter, known for her roles in 2004, White Chicks and 2005, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, is a natural born talent. Unlike Heather Donahue, who tried to persuade the audience of her terrorizing performance in the hit-smash 1999, The Blair Witch Project which she used her real name for the film. I enjoyed Carpenter’s performance in Quarantine, just the way I felt about her performance in The Exorcism of Emily Rose. So the big question you probably want answer: Is the film worth ten to eleven bucks? Yes, I find the film to be wildly entertaining. We all know Jennifer Carpenter’s character Angela Vidal dies at the end, just watch the trailers, she states an interview, “Everyone knows she dies, it makes the conclusion of the film so easy, but it’s the process of what is killing and that’s what makes the film terrifying,” (ign.com). One thing I have to warn: the film is not original it is a remake of the hit Spanish film REC written & directed by John Erick Dowdle and Drew Dowdle. I must warn again, the film uses shaky camerawork style. If you suffer from motion sickness or you were on of hundreds whom vomited in the theaters watching The Blair Witch Project than this film it not intended for you.
— October 17, 2008 noon