Jay Lagare

The Last King of Scotland is not a Braveheart sequel :P It is the story of a Scot doctor’s experience as the personal physician and adviser of the infamous Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

The movie claims it is based on true story. Actually, it is loosely based on a book which in turn is loosely based of the life of Bob Astles. So to me, claiming it’s based on a true story is a little bit of a stretch. But that doesn’t really matter, it’s still a good story.

James McAvoy as the doctor did a great job of playing the doctor trapped in a surreal, inescapable descent into an orgy of horror and madness. But this movie is more of a tour de force of the thespian skills of Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin. Before seeing the movie, I was incredulous about him being Idi Amin. But he pulled it off brilliantly!!! He effortlessly transforms from warm to terrifying, from friendly to paranoid in the blink of an eye. He is just plain awesome!

Rating: 4/5

Hotel Rwanda is the Schindler’s List for Africa. A lot has happened and is happening in that continent that the rest of the world don’t know or don’t even care about. One of those is the massacre of Tutsis by Hutus extremists in 1994. In the middle of this madness, a reluctant hotel manager was thrust into a situation where he can do what is right. He chose to do so. He opened the hotel he was managing to as many refugees as he can accomodate and used his contacts and influence to feed and protect them.

The sad thing is that while one man did what he can, the rest of the world, especially the US, didn’t do anything at all. It was left up to the Tutsis themselves to rid Rwanda of the Hutu extremists who carried out “acts of genocide” as the U.N. calls the mass murder of almost a million.

Today, “acts of genocide” are being carried out in the Darfur region of Sudan. And probably elsewhere too. But has the world learned its lesson and do something? So far it doesn’t seem that way.

Rating: 4/5