Revolutionary Road
Again, American suburbia as setting and cause/motivation—straight lines, white houses, flawed relationships, a slow then sudden falling apart. It is a backdrop and a main character, in this film named as an address of the Wheelers (Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCarpio).
Revolutionary Road is one of those films where you feel you can pinpoint the exact moment where the characters make the wrong decision, but also know that it will not make much of a difference even if you are there to point it out to them. It is painful to watch, but a joy, too—it does not make a travesty out of a broken life.
Kate Winslet should have won the Oscar for this film.
(Photo from ClicktheCity.com)
The Reader
How frightening, a narrow perspective. “We did not unlock them for the obvious reasons,” Kate Winslet’s Hannah says, referring to a group of Jewish women who ended up being burned alive in a bombed church. “We were guards. They were our responsibility!”
And I’m going to cheat right now and link to a great review by Ebert. The review made me appreciate the film more. Who knows, maybe I’ll watch it again soon.
(Personal pet peeve: I know it requires time and more money, but wouldn’t it be better if movies set in a particular country with characters of a particular race were told in the appropriate language? It’s strange, for example, to hear German characters in Germany speaking in American English with a German accent. Or, in Memoirs of a Geisha, Japanese characters in Japan speaking in American English with a Japanese accent. And even that showed effort on the part of the filmmakers—other movies would just have the characters speak with an English accent, even if they were in France or in Wales, as though having an English accent is enough to communicate foreign-ness. It’s weird.)
(Photo from Cinematical.com)
Eliza Victoria 
i read an interview of the director for The Reader. he chose to have the actors speak in English all throughout the film because of the “universality” of the movie’s themes. i can’t elaborate bilang nakalimutan ko na ang details ng article. haha.
but yes, ayoko rin na shorthand in film ang British English for anything “foreign.” well, that’s hollywood for you. (annoyed)
@paul kung “universality” e di sana nag-Chinese na rin sila. CHOSAAAA
oo di ba laging British English. hmp. (at sana may plurk emoticons dito hehe) (dance)