This IS the Best Picture of 2004 (spoilers)

Rating: 10/10 (5 March 2005)

As governments around the world ignore the atrocities against the Sudanese in Darfur, this movie should have you screaming for something to be done to save them! 'The Hotel Rwanda' should be seen by all, and forgotten by none.
'The Hotel Rwanda' is a familiar favorite among Best Picture contenders, more than humbling an audience with biographical tales of heroic struggles against disgusting atrocities. 'The Pianist' and 'Schindler's List' are more recent examples of this. But, with 'The Hotel Rwanda,' the intensity delivered by director Terry George and the powerful performance by Don Cheadle as Paul Rusesabagina, this film was able to put the shock into people in a much more disturbing and intense way than I had ever seen any other movie do and leaves you silent and just as helpless long after you've left the theater.
The Hotel Rwanda refers to the Belgium hotel that, under Rusesabagina's unexpected direction, served as a refugee camp for the Tutsi people who were being wiped out by Hutsi rebels in Rwanda. On the one hand, this movie shows you the kind of atrocities that could result if one faction controlled the media (the Hutsi's here controlled the radio waves and incited their violence and recruited their followers through a propaganda radio program). On the other hand, Rusesabagina is such an extraordinary heroic figure where he tried desperately to save people from the slaughter when it seems that every government that could help denied assistance to the Rwandas. Even where journalists were able to enter the country before the worst fighting began and report the massacre. We ought to be made aware of these things, and we should never ignore them, and never forget them.
I am still amazed by the powerful emotion that this movie is able to invoke, to nearly lose your mind in desperation when it seems like there is going to be no hope left for Paul, his family, or the Rwandan refugees. To become nearly violent when anger when you their holocaust, but the other countries refuse to help.
And, actress Sophie Okonedo, who plays Tatiana Rusesabagina, likewise gives an incredible performance as Paul's wife.
This IS the Best Picture of 2004.