Movie Watch! - The Chumscrubber and Tsotsi

1) The Chumscrubber (2005) - I have to admit, this made me fall in love with Camilla Belle. Jamie Bell plays Dean, a boy who discovers that his pill-dealing best friend hung himself, and he decides not to tell anyone. Instead, he just walks out and doesn't know what to do. Justin Chatwin, Camilla Belle, and some ugly guy play a trio of kids who kidnap Dean's brother, only it doesn't really turn out so perfectly. In this typically picture-perfect community, the parents are oblivious and the kids are all self-medicated and mildly neurotic. So, okay, it got crazy at times, but there was something somewhere in there to like. Jamie Bell is exceptional, as is Rory Caulkin (the little brother indeed). Rita Wilson and Glenn Close were sharp and tireless. But still, I don't know, it was very derivative at times, and Ralph Fiennes and Carrie-Anne Moss were vastly underdeveloped. Actually, most of the cast was, without a feasible explanation for why many things happen, other than chalking it up to coincidences that happen for a reason. Yikes. But Camilla Belle is so irresistibly sweet and effortlessly effervescent that I just had to fall in love. Even with that butt-ugly haircut. 6.5/10

2) Tsotsi (2006) - Tsotsi, a minor gang leader from the shantytowns of South Africa, goes and carjacks a wealthy woman's car, but then he finds out that there's a baby in the backseat. Yikes. Actually, this movie was startling and astonishing and impossible to turn away from.
Tsotsi learns to be human again and we all melt just a little in our seats. 9/10