Gaegrand

Movie Reviews

Girl with a Pearl Earring
In 17th century Holland, Vermeer painted a picture of a girl with a scarf wrapped around her head and wearing a pearl earring. The book and movie is a fictional recreation of that episode.

The movie is beautifully filmed and makes the bland colors look lovely. What is not lovely is how hard life was during that era. Grete goes to the house of the painter as a maid. She cleans, cooks, washes, mixes paints, dusts, scrubs doorsteps, with little remuneration and no respect.

If you read the book, you will love it. If you did not, you will think it slow-moving.

Warnings: Premarital sex implied.
Stars:**** ( for me)


Whale Rider

A girl is born in New Zealand in a long line of Maori chiefs. Her mother and twin brother dies during the birth.

She is taken in by her grandfather. He is good to her even though, being female, she is a great disappointment to him.

The film show life in New Zealand today. If you don't have an interest in New Zealand or Maoris, this movie probably isn't for you. If you see it, it is important to know that "pakeha" means white person.


Warning: Some bad language.
Stars:***