One has to hand it to filmmaker for making this brave documentary on the struggle of Muslim homosexuals.  The Holy Book demands death or rather ‘stoning’ of practicing gays and Sharma has had hate mail ranging from condemnation to hell to forgiveness while making the movie.  The faces of many interviewed in the film had to be blurred to protect the ‘guilty’.

Based on the musical of the same name, MAMMA MIA! is the story of a bride-to-be, Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) searching out her real father of out of 3 possibilities (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Karsgard) to have him give her away to groom (Dominic Cooper).  She lives with her unwed mother (Meryl Streep) on a Greek island helping her in her club/restaurant.  Mother has 2 other friends attending the wedding too.  3 men, 3 women!  The audience can easily put 3 and 3 together.  All these events unfold amidst the 70’s hit songs of the Swede pop group ABBA.

I would like to brag that I was one of the first to discover Brit director Christopher Nolan.  When my mate and I were organizing Britpics in Toronto (a week of British film) back in 2000, we programmed his first film, the black and white FOLLOWING.  Nolan went on to make MEMENTO, INSOMNIA, BATMAN BEGINS and THE PRESTIGE.  All his films are dark, both in the storyline and often in the lighting. 

The opening sequence in the film SILENT LIGHT of a starry night making way to dawn and the ground tells it all.  It is a long, almost silent 6-minute start that will leave many in the audience already yawning, just like one of the children in the next scene having breakfast to the sound of the tick-tock of the clock’s pendulum.

THE WACKNESS is a story about both a shrink, Dr. Jeffery Squires (Sir Ben Kingsley) and his patient, Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck), a drug dealer who pays him with the weed he is peddling.  Both have girl problems, Squires with his wife, Kristin (Famke Janssen) and Luke with Squires’ step daughter, Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby).  Writer/director Jonathan weaves an interesting enough tale for the audience to care about the two men while setting it as a period piece.