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Speak
Rating: 8/10
Summary (imdb): The teenager Melinda Sordino joins the high-school with a great feeling of rejection and becomes practically mute. Her school mates and friends call her "squealer", because she called the police during a summer party; she does not have communication with her mother, Joyce Sordino, who is workaholic and is permanently busy; and she has problem with a very radical teacher. She finds a great support with her art teacher Mr. Freeman and her school friend David Petrakis, and recalls her traumatic experience in the summer before school.
Comment: I always like to watch films of actors/actresses before they became super well known due to a popular movie series, like Twilight. And for those of you, who are film fanatics, probably have seen Panic Room, in which you will have noticed that Kristen Stewart plays Jodi Foster’s diabetic daughter. Speak is a decent film, but only improves with her interpretation of the character.
Mysterious Skin
Rating: 8/10
Summary (imdb): In 1981, in Hutchinson, Kansas, the eight years old boy Neil McCormick is sexually abused by his pedophile baseball coach and his deranged and promiscuous mother does not pay attention. Meanwhile, the also eight years Brian Lackey awakes from a brief amnesia of four hours with a bleeding nose, but his negligent father does not pay attention to the event. Brian grows-up believing he had been abducted by aliens, while Neil grows-up as a hustler. When Brian is eighteen years old, he looks for and meets Neil, who discloses dark innermost secrets of their past.
Comment: I was a bit uncomfortable when watching this film just because of the subject matter, but I was impressed with the Joseph Gordon Levitt performance. You may remember him in a hit television show called, Third Rock From The Sun, where he plays a quirky teenage alien, but I believe after this film (and many others, including Brick and The Lookout) he can be taken seriously as an actor.
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