Movie Monday - 3/5/2012

It was a slow movie watching week at Chez Merry Karma:

In Welcome to the Rileys, we meet longtime married couple Doug and Lois (played by Melissa Leo and James Gandolfini) who are living their separate lives. She never leaves the house and he is not working, he is having an affair or plays poker with the guys. It doesn't take long to realize why these two are not very happy. When he goes to New Orleans for a convention, he meets a 16-yr-old stripper named Mallory (played by Kristen Stewart). Doug decides to stay in NO for a while to figure things out and helps Mallory in the process. The movie was well acted and it is a good story. I liked it.

Incendies was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2011 Academy Awards. It is mostly in French with English subtitles. Nawal (Lubna Azabal) lives somewhere in the Middle East and undergoes a series of horrors, until she leaves for Canada to protect her twins, Jeanne (Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette). After she dies, she leaves instructions for the twins to deliver two letters - one to the father whom they've thought was dead and one to the brother they didn't know they had. Jeanne takes off for the Middle East right away. Simon joins her later. Their journey brings them closer to the mother they thought they knew. It was every good and very well acted. I really liked it.

MK out.