Central Station

Rating:
Summary: Great story, good performance, to-be-improved direction.
Review: Fernanda returns to the silver screen with her signature laugh/cry capability. A new star seems in the making but a better director would avoid his bad intonation (as if he is always yelling). A great support actor, at the end, plays the kid's brother. Must see the "other" Brazil, which is NOT the 8th largest world economy.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: Only in a few times a movie comes along that catches your heart and soul. This movie is "Central Station". Beautifully directed, the movie shows one of the year's most fascinating and inspired performances by an actress. Fernanda Montenegro is pure emotion. A must-see !

Rating:
Summary: Para todo o "mundo" ver
Review: Forte concorrente a filme de melhor lingua estrangeira, Central do Brasil é uma obra poética que mescla imagens e sonhos. Para as pessoas que acham que a vida não é tão bela, a realidade de central pode até ser chocante, mas o intuito de Dora está além de uma beleza comercial. Parabéns Fernanda e Walter.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfull!!!
Review: The movie touches the heart of everyone who see it. Wonderfull movie

Rating:
Summary: A gift of life.
Review: In a world always worried about what's going to happen, Central Station -Central do Brasil- is a sweet surprise of what really happens. Central Station puts a real picture of LIFE in front of your eyes and portrays a powerful human experience.

Rating:
Summary: The best Brazilian movie of all times?
Review: Made in a country with little tradition on cinema, Central Station is a wonderful surprise. Fernanda Montenegro's particular show... Certanly, a strong candidate to Oscar 99.

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant showcase for Fernanda Montenegro
Review: It seems to me that foreign films in recent years have seen more than their fair share of stories in which a crusty old person bonds with some cute kid. Of course you can trace this plot way past "Cinema Paradiso" back to Chaplin in "The Kid," so it is certainly a tried and true tale to be told. Which makes films like "Central Station" all the more remarkable because you would think this mine had been played out long ago. This Brazilian film by director Walter Salles offers the exquisite Fernanda Montenegro, who richly deserved an Oscar nomination. Her character is Dora, a barren soul who makes her money by writing letters for illiterates in Rio de Janeiro's Central Station. Dora reads the letters to her roommate and then throws them away. But then she meets Josue, played by Vinicius de Oliveira, a nine-year-old boy whose mother has just died. Circumstances are contrived by which Dora takes Josue on a bus trip to return him to his father. This fateful journey does not consist of big confrontations but small moments, each of which begins to peck away at Dora's cold exterior. Perhaps the greatest testament to this performance is to simply point out that the cute kid never really manages to steal a scene away from Montenegro. More than anyone else, she elevates "Central Station" to its heights.

Rating:
Summary: Power of forgiveness
Review: The transforming and redemptive power of forgiveness is the major theme in this moving film from Brazil. The two leads, Dora, an older woman whose self-imposed sheltered life has been long shut-off from the yearnings and longings that make us human, and Josue, a young boy who forces her to confront her detachment as such, move the viewer from a jolting start to a warm, satisfying ending.

This is a film I never get tired of. The performances are great; the musical score is subtle, yet significant; the people and places are compelling; the story is wonderful. The ending is heartfelt, warm, and satisfying.

Some reviewers have side-stepped the warmth of this movie in attacking it as pretentious, cliché, and overtly sentimental. To these viewers, I have the following advice: lighten up, relax, enjoy; stop being so analytical and learn to feel. If just for a couple of hours watching a film, learn to feel.


Rating:
Summary: A film of heartfelt elegance.
Review: From it's intriguing premise of a letter writer working in the main transit station in Rio who callously plays God with the hopes and aspirations of the illiterte working migrants she pens and pretends to send letters for, Walter Salles film starts as all journeys do - at the station. Such an unappealing character has probably not been seen since Ebenezer Scrooge graced Dickens' A Christmas Carol and like that story redemption comes ,not in the form of ghosts, but in the even more terrible apparition of an orphaned ten year old boy. This film is brilliantly told with a confidence and ease which is truly refreshing. The acting is uniformly superb and i would recommend this for anyone looking to try and understand that the gratest poverty in life is often that of the human spirit.

Rating:
Summary: Wow! Excellent Film!
Review: As I have noticed with most Brasilian films, the cinematography of this film is unbelievable! Vinicuis de Oliveira, the actor who plays the young boy in this film has more talent than many A list adult stars in America. The movie is about an old angry woman with nothing to live for, who eventually grows a heart when she meets Josue (Vinicuis de Oliveira)and tries to help him locate his father (only living relative) after the death of his mother. I purchased this film on DVD and watch it religiously, whenever I'm in a relaxed mood. IT WILL MAKE YOU CRY... but they are tears of joy. Enjoy!