"Secret" Movies

I have seen two movies in the last week or so, both with the word Secret in the title.

The Secret in their Eyes

This is the Argentine film that won the 2010 Oscar for Best Foreign Film. It involves a murder where the perpetrator apparently got away with the crime. It is told from the perspective of one for the police investigators, who has retired and is writing a book about this case which happened some years in the past. The story is told with flash backs interspersed with current developments in the story, and also involves a love story between the investigator and his boss. It does have a surprising ending.

Here is an interview with the director and some clips from the film.



The Secret of the Kells

This film was nominated for the 2010 Oscar for Best Animated Feature, but lost to Up. The animation is very two dimensional and stylized, like the illustrations for book. The story centers around a conflict between the Abbot whose sole concern is building a wall around the community to protect from a Viking invasion, and the great illuminator who is trying to complete the Book of the Kells. The main character, a young boy named Brendan, has been forbidden to go outside the walls into the forest, but does anyway in order to get berries for the illuminator to make ink. I do think Up was a better film, but I did like this one, and it was more artistic than most Disney animated films.