MONROE SCHOLAR MOVIE REVIEWS

WRISTCUTTERS - reviewed by Ros O'Brien on 2/1/08
I enjoyed Wristcutters immensely.  I entered the hole-in-the-wall screening room where this movie is shown expecting (maybe hoping) to be surprised, likely befuddled, by Wristcutters.  The movie is a romance that takes place in a “limbo” where suicides go after they die—a premise that suggested to me a certain loopiness in the thinking of the writers, and as so often happens in the world of indi films, an initial inaccessibility to the viewer (at least prior to post-film ranting discussions).   However, I found the film a pleasantly surprising and accessible collection of contradictions—a movie about death, but really about life; a comedy set in a land where people aren’t allowed to smile; a weird love story between dead people, but one I could relate with.  The most fundamental contradiction is that Wristcutters, as the title tells you, revolves around the suicidal, but doesn’t harp on the morbid or violent.  I highly recommend this movie, even to queasy people who might normally be deterred by the title, so go check it out while you still can! Official website

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA - reviewed by Natasha Mikles on 01/30/08
Upon seeing the word ‘love’ in a movie title, it is tempting to assume that it indicates solely passionate love.  And Love in the Time of Cholera is about passionate love, a passionate love which extends over 50 years of aging, marriage, and scorn.  But it is also about other loves—the love between a parent and child, the love between cousins, the love between two lustful individuals, the love between those married not for romance, but sensibility. The plot follows Florentino and Fermina, who are young and passionately in love at the end of the 19th century in war and plague torn Columbia. Despite Fermina’s rejection of Florentino, he continues to love her throughout his life, a standard plot in love epics. But Love in a Time of Cholera does not let its characters become those of a classic love epic — larger-than-life gods walking amongst mere mortals. The characters are both perfectly heroic and deliciously human. Yes, Florentino and Fermina epicly maintain their love throughout life, but he consoles himself with the carnal pleasures of young women, while she understands the sensibility of marriage and the existence of love which is not passionate. At times, the movie suffers from momentary lapses in the characterization of Fermina, whose decision to reject Florentino’s love remains a mystery. Yet it is overall a masterful and moving work about the power of not simply passionate love, but love of all manners. Official website