The Chosen Reviews

I simply ADORE the book, and was pleased to see this follows the storyline as closely as I'd hoped for. Enjoyed it very much.

Really good acting and story....awww let's face it, I'm a sucker for movies about Jewish people, and a fan of Robby Benson's from way back.

I love this movie so much! Especially the ending. Danny got what he wanted. It's a good friendship movie. I almost cried at the end of the movie and the book!

I must say this is Robby Benson's best film. He gives so much feeling and life to his character and the movie! Very worth watching!

Awesome film. Totally different from the book, which was really aweosem too, but the movie is still great. It shows what could have happened other than the way the book tells the story.

One of my favorite movies with its incites into the creation of empathy in a child and the relation of fathers and sons, while providing a glimpse into a culture and time unknown to most people.

A thoughtful film about friendships across differences.

I like the book a lot more, but generally a good movie with characters and a story that are both very interesting. World War 2 era New York provides a compelling backdrop as well. Great look at American Judaism.

***1/2 (out of four)

Strong performances from Robby Benson and Barry Miller are showcased in this thoughful and indepth drama set in Brooklyn in the 1940's.

The story follows two friends, one a son of a Zionist professor, and the other the son of a Hasidic leader. Rod Steiger and Maximillian Schell are also excellent in supporting roles.

Based on a true story, Persepolis is this weirdly animated foreign film about a girl in Pakistan trying to deal with things during a crazy islamic revolution, where women have to start covering up, alcohol is banned, etc. It is mostly black and white, and there are voice-overs in English. The beginning when she is a little girl is interesting and well done, but when she grows up, her great "liberation" from islamic orthodoxy involves sleeping around, drugs, marriaga and divorce, death metal, and being completely lost, which wasn't all that interesting. If I wanted to watch a movie about someone who is lost like that, I could think of dozens of far better movies. I was pretty bored.

The Kite Runner is about two boys, one from the upper class and one from the lower class, in Afghanistan. They form a very close friendship as boys, but it is odd, because the poorer boy's role is questionably one of mere servitude. Anyway, the friendship goes wrong in one very disturbing scene, and the rich boy spends the rest of his life trying to deal with this event. Its pretty interesting I suppose, but slow, and not exactly my type of film.

The Chosen is about two Jewish teenagers in New York during World War II, one a normal Jew and the other a Hasid (the guys in black and white with the hats and long sideburn curls). They form an unlikely friendship, and struggle against the differences in the way they approach religion, and against their father's stances on the war and the establishment of a Jewish nation. I watched this because the book was pretty good, and it was interesting to see certain scenes acted out, but overall this movie was quite dull and not really worth my time.

Rescue Dawn is about a pilot (Christian Bale) who crashes in Vietnam at the beginning of the Vietnam War, and is taken prisoner. There, he meets some other American prisoners, who he tries to convince that they can escape. It moves kind of slowly, but seems to keep up a level of intensity throughout the whole movie. Bale's acting is top notch, as always. I don't even like war movies, but found this one to be excellent. Its all very well done.

On their second adventure, Harold and Kumar get on a plane for Amsterdam, but are mistaken for terrorists and sent to Guantanamo Bay. This has to be one of the worst movies I've seen in a while. Not only is the script completely unoriginal (again, we get Doogie Houser, the daydream with the giant-bag-of-pot-as-a-wife, and various reoccuring themes and jokes that are old the second time around), but the level of humor has dipped down to a completely idiotic level (one of the first "hilarious" scenes is Kumar taking a giant dump). When the writers can't seem to think of what to write that would be funny, their stand-by idea in this one is "just make the character do the opposite of what you might think they would do," so we see rednecks with a trailer full of technology (flatscreen, hi-speed internet, etc.), KKK members throwing an awesome party, giant buff soldiers are all gay, and George Bush getting high, and on and on. Its just, none of it is funny. This would get an even lower score, except Kumar's math poem is actually pretty awesome.

What a great movie. I saw this movie in religious school, and at first I thought I would hate it. But it was really good from the baseball scene to the surprise ending. I loved every second of it. The emotion was authentic and the acting was terrific. Nothing dragged on and it was pure entertainment. I give this movie a :fresh: FRESH review. See this movie if you are religious or not.

i cant believe no one has rated this...its well... AMA[i]ZING...[/i]

[i]i would do anything to own this movie...:fresh: :D [/i]