Carmen's Books and Movies Reviews

Brenna Spector suffers from a rare disorder called hyperthymestic syndrome. This disorder prompts Brenna to remember events of her life to the slightest details. The disappearance of Clea, Brenna’s teenager sister, when Brenna was eleven years-old, scars her for life.

Now a private investigator, Brenna is commissioned by Nelson Wentz to find his wife who has been missing for about a week. As Brenna begins searching for clues, she discovers that Nelson knew his wife very little, but more importantly, clues of Carol Wentz’s disappearance will tie her to the decade-old vanishing of Iris Neff, a small child in Tarry Ridge, New York.

Brenna and Nick Morasco-- a detective in the Tarry Ridge Police, also the main investigator in the vanishing of Iris Neff eleven years ago-- join forces and grey matter to solve the mystery involving the disappearances of both Carol and Iris and of the dead people that begin to pile up as they come closer to the truth.

I liked this book. The mystery is engagi…

The country of Panem is divided into the Capitol and 12 districts. In the Capitol everything is opulence and excess, even the landscape is picturesque; meanwhile most districts are poor to the point of starvation and semi-slavery. It is in that context that two youths from each district are chosen annually to compete in The Hunger Games, a display of survival skills in which only one youth is crowned the winner after the other 23 competitors have fought to their deaths.

Primrose Everdeen is chosen as the female competitor from District 12, but Katniss, her older sister, volunteers in her place. The other competitor from District 12 is Peeta Mellark, a boy Katniss knows but doesn’t really like. There’s nothing like a good fight to death to force both Katniss and Peeta to form a convenient alliance.

“Happy Hunger Games and may the odds ever be in your favor…”

I am fascinated with this movie. It is gritty and hints at violence that is shown in bits and pieces, such as teenagers killing …

In We Need to Talk About Kevin star Tilda Swinton as Eva K., Kevin’s mother, John C. Reilly as Franklin K., Kevin’s father and Ezra Miller/Jasper Newell as Kevin.

Since Kevin was a child, he was different. He spoke late, even though there wasn’t anything medically wrong with him. He wore diapers until he was five or six years old and he learned to use the toilet after his mother Eva broke his arm when shoving him against the wall. It’s no wonder that Kevin’s relationship with his mother became antagonistic to say the least.

He did bad things on purpose to spite Eva, but everything took an inevitable turn for the worse when Eva became pregnant with a baby girl. Ever since, Kevin did anything possible to grab his parents’ attention, to the point of seriously hurting his little sister. However, the point of no return for Kevin and his family happened when Kevin opened fire against his high school classmates.

The story is told through flashbacks from the past and the present. Emotions ar…

An Iranian woman wants to separate from her husband of 14 years. Her reason is that she wants to leave Iran for good and only has 40 days left in her permit to do so. Her husband doesn’t want to leave Iran because his father, with whom they live, is ill with Alzheimer’s. The husband doesn’t want their 11 year-old daughter to leave with her mother. When the wife leaves home and moves to her mother’s house, her husband employs a pregnant woman to take care of his ill father while he works, but events spiral out of control when the woman loses her baby after an argument with him.

At the heart of this movie are issues of family trust, personal integrity, honesty and eternal damnation. Is a child’s safety worth 15 millions in whichever currency happens to be? And more importantly, is that money worth eternal damnation?

This film won several awards at film festivals around the globe this past award season, though as well acted as it is, the story didn’t resonate with me. I watched In the L…