Here are some short summaries of a few movies I love.
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
From beloved author Roald Dahl, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is a scrumptious treat coated with captivating tunes. Charlie Bucket is one of five lucky Golden Ticket holders who win a tour of the factory run by wily mogul Wonka.
Young Charlie lives with his grandparents and poor mother. He dreams of a way to help them. His dreams come true after he finds a Golden Ticket and wins a journey through Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, along with four other winners. Charlie is a poor but honest boy, but the other four winners are obnoxious and spoiled children: a gum-chewer, a TV-addict, a glutton, and a selfish rich girl. Each of them is felled by some imaginative catastrophe, leaving Charlie to win the biggest prize of all. There, in the factory, Charlie, his feisty Grandpa Joe discover a kind heart is a finer possession than a sweet tooth.
The NeverEnding Story
Chased by school bullies, reprimanded by his father for daydreaming too much Bastian is lost in his own world. Bastian escapes school bullies one rainy day by hiding in an old used book store. A strange leather-bound volume attracts him. The owner warns him away from it, explaining that it is dangerous: once entering its world, the reader cannot escape. Bastian
borrows the now irresistible book. Taking refuge in the attic of his school Bastian opens the book, and a world of
fantasy. Learning that the wondrous, beautiful land of Fantasia is being destroyed by a terrible "Nothing" Bastian is taken deeper into the story. Soon discovering the ChildLike Empress is deathly ill, the cause; she needs a new name. A young warrior named Atreyu is called and Bastian follows his adventures, unknowing that he, himself is slowly being written into the mysterious book. Soon realizing that he is now a part of
the NeverEnding story
Bastian understands that the only one who can save Fantasia is him.
Titanic
The sinking of the unsinkable luxury ocean liner on its maiden voyage in 1912 is one of the most enduring tragedies of the century. With uncanny accuracy, and using some documentary footage spliced in with his re-creation, Cameron depicts the event from the loading of passengers in Southhampton to the rescue of survivors by the Carpathia, two hours after the R.M.S. Titanic sank. Everything is presented with heart-wrenching detail, from the rigid class divisions between first, second
and third-class passengers to the depiction of bizarre twists we all know, such as watching the band play on to calm passengers during the chaotic evacuation. We see the poor locked behind
barricades while the rich and famous are attended to first. We see the ship explored from the opulent dining rooms of the upper decks to the fiery hell of
the furnace rooms. The film is spell-binding, Yet it is what Cameron does in the foreground that transforms
Titanic
into great art. The entire saga is told from present times in a flashback told by a 101-year-old survivor. Rose tells her intensely personal story to a rapt group of deep sea explorers who are plunging into the depths seeking Titanic riches. Instead
of treasures, they first get the priceless gift of understanding, an eye-witness account told with passion, poetry and beautiful sensuality. Which is where the romance fits in. Rose was a society girl engaged to a rich brute. But on the Titanic, she falls in love with a dashing young peasant who saves her life
in their first encounter and proves instrumental in her fate as the ship goes down. This romantic entanglement, replete with complications, class warfare, challenges, gunplay and narrow escapes, may be fiction but it supercharges the reality of a great film.