The Intouchables

The Intouchables is foreign french film following the life of Philippe who is quadriplegic due to a Para-sailing accident. Philippe's household staff were interviewing new caregivers for Philippe and ended up hiring Driss who is and ex-con. The film was a huge success and has made millions of dollars world wide and won numerous prestigious  awards and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globe.

Although many people enjoyed the film and the loving qualities possessed by the characters not everyone put it on their "movies I'll watch again" list. After reading multiple reviews i stumbled upon Roger Ebert's review on the film, he thought the movie was a cliche and that the film give a "simplistic reduction of racial stereotypes" and that the only reason people enjoyed the film beyond the awful script was the fact that the audience began to feel affection for the characters and what made them happy made the audience happy.

I disagree with Roger Ebert, i thought the film was a light heart, funny, and captivating. Yes, the movie might be a cliche but who doesn't like a feel-good movie about two polar opposite people who come together and give each other a new lease on life. I feel like roger failed to see the true message of the film and instead judged it on a few scenes that he thought were directed in a racial way. I would definitely recommend this movie to my family and friends to watch.

Is Toronto Failing You?

Recently Toronto life dedicated it's magazine  as the voice to many Torontonians whose story's are being ignored and have no voice hence the hash-tag #Torontisfailingme. This hash-tag has created a lot of buzz amount the citizens of Toronto, with numerous amount of people telling their story on why Toronto has failed them.

David deBelle, is the current principle at Lawrence  Heights, he talks about how due to the location of the school kids don't feel safe. The number one priority for any school anywhere in the world is safety, that's what makes kids want to come to school and learn. Davids talks about how one of the schools staff members was a victim of gun violence when her 15 year old  son was shot on his was home from tutoring lessons. David and other staff members at Lawrence heights, regularly patrol the halls in order to make the students feel reassured. This is how Toronto has failed teachers, students, and parents.

Considering everyone looks at Toronto as a huge city of opportunities. An obvious issue with Toronto is our horrible bus service. To think we have one of the biggest cities in the world, and one of the biggest populations, we don’t have enough buses. Waiting for the bus when it’s freezing cold outside is the worst thing, and then having the bus come and then be fully packed is even worse. I think that if our government wants to take a lot of money from their citizens, there should be some improvements. Bus fare, and the prices for metro passes are on a rise and one would assume that there would be better bus service, but clearly there has not been any. The beautiful thing about Toronto, is that we have a very diverse and multicultural environment. You would think that since Toronto is so multicultural, there wouldn’t be such a great amount of racism, but sadly we do. It’s sad to think that as a black female, as I walk into stores I still get followed and looked at very differently just because of my race. I would assume because we have so many different cultures and backgrounds in this one big city, these things wouldn’t happen.