"Proof" (1991) - Movie Review

“Proof” deals the trust issues a blind man has starting as early as a child. His life a beckoned solitude and we do not quite really know what he is doing for living. Because there is nothing to attribute to his behaviour by what he does I believe that director Jocelyn Moorhouse negated that detail on purpose. The film immensely describes about Martin (Hugo Weaving) with a strange cruel relationship with his housekeeper Celia (Genevieve Picot) and his new friend, a young man Andy (Russell Crowe).

Martin is a neatly dressed man, thin and walks with his tall stature and a guiding stick all his life. “Seeing is to believe” is a saying which of course does not apply to Martin but he substitutes that with a strange habit, taking photographs. That is his record of a particular moment or a thing or a person captured and put on a hard paper for his long future reference. Later he finds some one to describe it, may be even after years. He believes there is a verification system in it, many may not lie. While some may not say exactly what it is, the truth is in the picture and that makes him satisfying.

His house-keeper Celia has been taking care of him for more than three years and her love towards Martin have been turned into a cruel torment that she has started to hate him to grab his attention. Martin on his part has his own philosophy for shunning away the people. He does not want to trust. She has turned much of a devious and cunning maid to find new methods to make Martin notice her. She is a loner too buried among the photographs of Martin. She believes that both being the loners are the perfect couple to complete each other’s miserable detached existence. Martin has used Celia to deal with his self pity. He believes that the only woman whom he continuously negates has a tendency to not leave him and that makes him to pity her, giving him the ultimate control.

Celia is shocked and threatened by Martin’s new friend in a nearby restaurant. Andy a happy go lucky youth has the open honesty and terseness Martin wants to describe his photographs. They instantly bond. Director Jocelyn Moorhouse provides wittiness in an unpredictable smart manner. Andy is curious and Martin opens up as he is at a point to trust a stranger. Andy methodically explains each photograph with veracity, candidness and clear. Martin loves it since he believes that his Mother (Heather Mitchell) has supplied him with false images to jail him in his thoughts and inside four walls.

This is a film with a dark value of love, trust and hate. Celia by Picot is unbelievably cruel. Her hate is questioned and condemned but she takes Martin to a theater for an experience he will not forget. At the same time, she black mails with a photo she took of him half naked to go out with him. Picot expresses the deep love she had and has to Martin by the degree of machinations she places over him on regular basis. She keeps objects in the middle of the room while she is leaving. And we understand her anger, because she has been humiliated and ignored blatantly for such a long time that the love she has transformed into reeking spite of bitterness. Picot is terrifying and cold who can be compared next to nurse Ratched played by Louise Fletcher in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.

It is a complicated emotional work on three characters messing around with each other. More than love it is the trust which is shared and not shared by Martin in between these two people. Andy is the innocent being who gets beaten around by Celia to eliminate him out of the picture. The movie while taking the consideration of the blind man deals with an emotion not dealt before.

Weaving gives a clean and neat performance with an onscreen chemistry with a much younger Crowe at that time. The film has blurry dull tone with cold actions and comedic moments with equal magnitude for the story. It is neither an overly emotional nor a complete dark behaviour of personalities. We feel for all the three characters. We indeed do feel a strong distress for Celia and empathize with Martin and sympathize for Andy. Moorhouse with three characters with a back ground of emotions and not their work they do for living provides a drama and comedy of a revelation of emotions in a man deprived of sight and trust.

"Gosford Park" (2001) - Movie Review

The class system depicted in the “Gosford Park” in 1930’s British is partially a compelling harmonious working of industrial process and crass slavery shined with classy mannerisms. A film with a screenplay as challenging as “Memento” in linear narration with a humungous casting and a brilliant camerawork may not be the best drama but as its representation is a strongly attired conservative smugness. Very high in the artistry of storytelling, the classification of servants and owners builds into a shield for us to care for emotional characters. But for a storytelling, precise in exploring the intricacies, gossips and scandals among the riches and their servants, it pierces than slicing the system through the behavioral patterns of humans, which of course is ironically unpredictable.

The film pushes the audience amongst the people inside a big house. The residing members of the house or hosts are Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon), his rich wife Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas) and their daughter Isobel (Camilla Rutherford). Of course there is a team of maids running the chores, reading the needs and preparing the dishes, clothes, foods and what not. They are the worker bees constantly pecking their work with the classic style invented particularly by the English. They work.

We are confused on exact identity of people. We are a stranger in a land of unspoken ethics and a chain of systematic rituals of well laid master-slave functionality. There are two outsiders like us, Mr. Weissman (Bob Balaban) and his servant Henry Denton (Ryan Phillippe). They are equally astonished but also secretly soak in to the hedonistic comfort these people demand for. The list of the cast and their part are learned through gossips. Director Robert Altman makes us listen through the hollow walls and talk among the laborious workers. Their life is surrounded by their masters and their existence is validated by their scandals, affairs, failures, success and death too.

Starting off as a drama and a clinical study of this conservativeness in its own cadre, it then subplots in plots and branches off to teeny tiny details which then comes useful to make some sense. But the murder mystery is not the film and when the event happens, as with the people in the house we too shed off the loss of a person and get on with the film as they do with their life. In the sense, the minimal awareness we get of the murdered person is nothing but contempt and spite of a boring life full of frustration. More than the person, the gossip is where we learn about him and we fall in to that scheme of small talks and big laughs of the inability of a man’s character.

There is couple of characters which not alone constitute the film’s advancement into a drama and thriller but really dissect and gives the perspective from either side. Ryan Phillipe as Henry Denton says that he is from Scotland but his accent is suspecting. He instantly makes a name among the servants gaining the praise and attention of Lady Sylvia. He gives an alternative view later in the film which is funny and sad. So much have this caste of social status laid upon generations and generations that the sect has imbibed into their nervous system. They respect and obey their masters but they cannot allow them in their posse. A strange discrimination.

Seeing this gathering reminded me of the South Indian marriages in India which sometimes happens in a big house but largely in a big marriage hall. Apart from the widened hall there are rooms with closed doors guarding the rants and cribs of the kin, cousins and friends. In these one or two days of celebrating the financial status and some human emotions, the prosperity of the gathering has its moments. In “Gosford Park” that moment never happens because the masters and servants have been like that for so long that this culmination of their rigorous work-reception routine pushes them to the limit which in turn reflects as a boredom of life. There is no affection or love in the entire film except in the end.

The screenplay of course won the Academy award for Julian Fellowes. Fellowes juggles with the characters while Altman with the cast. I am wondering whether there developed a class amongst the actors while filming. I would not be surprised if it had. The camera moving from the corners and the stairs through the darkness towards the light sometimes makes us gasp for breath due to the stretch of long walk. The film’s cold characters have an effect upon ourselves and we do not attach much to the film. There are secrets which thickens the plot and there are sexual taboos on those times happening in a rather open manner behind closed doors. But more than that the film is the stay we really go through among a chilling set of people who in their own class and trait cross the barriers in night and pose a complete façade of their existence in day light without any difficulty.

"Gattaca" (1997) - Movie Review

“Gattaca” is a science fiction film which does not compromise its concept, drama or the emotions for any thing a science fiction film would fall for. This is a faithful and loyal film about how much futuristic advancement humans can make and how much the sociological advances are equally crooked to be unfair. Thus is one Vincent Anton (Mason Gamble as a boy and Chad Christ as teen while adult Vincent as Ethan Hawke), a natural born child analyzed a 30.2 years probable life time with heavy heart condition plausibility. The term natural born comes because the film starts with the presumption on the genetic predictability the medical field has undergone that they can manufacture the best children, a grade A talented mind and the body to equal that challenge.

Being unfulfilled with a “damaged” child, his parents (Jayne Brook and Elias Koteas) go for the genetic perfect brother Anton (Vincent Nielson as a boy and William Lee Scott as teen Anton). Vincent’s child hood is surrounded by caution and fear while as a boy his dreams are belittled by his father. He aspires to be an astronaut, a job for the highly qualified genetically built people. Whatever the real potential and strengths one can exceed diminishes.

There is a limit to the potential and that is determined by the programming of the gene. A hair strand, saliva, blood, urine and innumerably minuscule dirt replicating each of us become the scaling factor for everything. This angers Vincent and he leaves his home to only find a more discriminating and degrading posse. He and others of his genetic nature are called “In-Valid” and put to menial work. He works as a janitor in the very same building Gattaca which he dreams of working as an astronaut.

The vicinity and the frustrating far fetched reach of it makes him go for alternatives. Through a “special” person (Tony Shalhoub), Vincent meets Jerome (Jude Law) the best in everything. He wants to lose his identity in fear of shame and ego. He is crippled now but his genes carry his potential. The identity swap starts and actually this is where the film starts. All the previous scenarios with a brilliant narrative run on to make us come to the pace. There is a swimming competition among the brothers which is not a melodramatic tool for hope and courage but a convincing plot to mark the nature of human kind of the same characteristics.

The film starts as any futuristic movies would begin with blue tinted shaded and polished neat furniture and surfaces to shine, perfectly arranged tables with contemporary fashions. More than that there is the dress code of rigorously business attired and all the people walking as a robot in a uniform fashion which turned me off. But director Andrew Nicol makes us believe in this future which does not have flying cars (rather all classic American cars) but a very high possibility in the genetic research. He takes that and pins on an identity drama and thriller. It talks about the extremity of a human and the social impairment and judgment the science brings on.

Vincent having acquired the samples of Jerome (which means blood and urine) goes for the interview. His urine is tested in a machine and says valid. The doctor who does that, Dr. Lamar (Xander Berkeley) says the interview is over. Today the ultimate say on a universally accepted and rejected philosophy or happenings is based on science. Religion and science are the opposing forces of each other trying to make and not make sense in between them. And here a religion gets born based on the scientific conclusions, “Valids” and “In-Valids”. How much incapable humans are to be without judgments and discriminations.

This is a sad film too in the character of Vincent who fights and goes through enormous pressure and physical pain of racing through his dream. It is an even sadder film when a Valid Jerome is consumed and ultimately gives up to the expectation of the world towards him. “Gattaca” cuts deeper in to the current society through a science fiction film which solidly uses the underlying factor of excellence in science to its plot points. There are nail biting scenes of intelligent thrill moments and as the style of the film, it gives a future very much in front of our eyes.

This is not the CGI fireworks or an enormous glance at a much confused and glamorous L.A or Chicago or New York. “Gattaca” does not even name the city it happens because the film does not need those. It has more human psychology and sociology to analyze than to glorify the modernity over a CGI aerial shot. It does not want to gaze us into the grandeur fantasy of glamour but a possible peek into our future and a shivering subtle comparison to the current society. Beyond that it gives the unfurling flag of human possibilities and limitless hope in this bleak society.

"Kalifornia" (1993) - Movie Review

The fascination Hollywood has over the serial killers has been exploitative but has given great films too. The films range from melancholic study of them to plain horror. In “Kalifornia” I have no idea what the writer Tim Metcalfe and director Dominic Sena thought for the character of Early Grayce (Brad Pitt), a serial killer with a naïve and defenseless Adelle (Juliette Lewis) as his girl friend. It is grueling long and is not a piece of art to watch. It sure has the heart and soul of Brad Pitt and Juliette Lewis for the role and it is bad for them to lose it over this film.

It is wildly and insanely consumable for a writer Brian Kessler (David Duchovny) to take along complete strangers Early and Adelle without even meeting them since he believes judgments to be the last and more over he is researching for his book on serial killers. He prefers the killers to be psychologically treated than to lawfully put them to rest. And he encounters one of course not aware of it to come to the lands of dilemma on his view towards a killer and the system’s treatment or his own.

It is profound on the opinions one has to seriously consider going through the hell and escaping it. The film does not get the hold of it when it has to be stopped from being a miserable creep journey especially when Brian’s girl friend Carrie (Michelle Forbes) from the start has bad feeling as any of us will have over tagging two strangers to a week long drive to California.

Even if we believe the plausibility of Brian fetching these two people not seeing face to face, the screenplay goes a long stretch on these characters. The back ground we know about Brian is minimal and his change of attitude towards the trip is surprising for us but frustrating on how much change he takes on from before the trip. He is soft spoken guy with less importance on the judgments we generally take on. He does not have doubts or suspicion after seeing Early and Adelle. He tells Carrie that to give them a chance. But it is more than a chance of danger, rather they would be totally incompatible people for a long drive aside the factor that Early kills people.

Pitt dissolves in to Early and is one of his toughest performances. He is a hunk and a control freak over women and well over many of his victims too. The question of why as it rings for Brian runs for us and the object of necessity is the only reasoning which comes up on his choosing the victims. Yet he kills one innocent gas station attendant for no reason and I mean completely no reason at all.

To follow him like a puppy dog is the Juliette Lewis perfectly cast for her stature and the innocence she sheds on her scenes. She chooses not to believe in the actions of Early. Duchovny and Forbes have nothing much to do than to let these two people do as they are made to become the focus of the film. But it is Brian who is supposed to be the chief inspector of his soul. It happens late in the film and is little too late.

The locations and photography with the haunting score is a beat to have a bleak look at this journey. It is not thrilling either as we are aware of the scenarios to be created. While Early shoots people insanely why he does not dispose Brian and Carrie when they identify him late in the film is a question of the character the writers developed. The desperate effort to prolong every single frame in to a running commentary of this killer and his supposed to be victims Brian and Carrie is not interesting either.

Dominic Sena went on to make “Gone in Sixty Seconds” and “Swordfish” a more commercial thriller with visual excellence on it and the origins are visible in this film. It is true that the answer to the reasoning of killings and capability of one to take another cannot be a written piece of paper or art or in film either. We all have opinions on desperate situations and clearly judge the people in the comforts of our location. Sena wants one of that people to put in that place and see what he does. Brian is that person but we see more of Early than him.

"Smart People" (2008) - Movie Review

“Smart People” survives on lull moments and dull damaged characters. Dennis Quaid’s Lawrence Wetherhold, a self declared bloated with language and condescending intellectual reminds of Bernard Berkman from “The Squid and the Whale” (Hey, both have beards too!). He has a daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page), a young female version of himself. A go getter and a convinced believer that she and her dad are the best damn elite people deserving everything. “Smart People” is not the catharsis of these estranged and dysfunctional personalities we have seen in many independent films but the realization of their problems which is reasonable and it works.

Lawrence a widower and a jerk is getting old and hardly have consideration for the people around him and their names. He is an English professor who has tasted more rejection in attempt of publishing his book. Added to that is the loss of his lovely wife and a long lasting smugness to make him one self pitied schmuck. He is not yet realized that he is been hated by every one because he is one such than that their intellectual quotient is negligible. Situation arises to make him dependent on his adopted brother (which he stresses) Chuck (Thomas Haden Church), a middle aged bum skipping home businesses as the main business. He meets a former student as his ER doctor, Janet Hartigan (Sarah Jessica Parker) of course he does not remember but sees an option for a change in his life.

Is city suburbs filled with dysfunctional family or is it the nonacceptance of the abnormality every one practice in their privacy? The little irritations and the uncomfortable physical contact in a queue or even with their own family are pondering factors for an independent film. Director Noam Murro does not handle it wrong in overdoing it nor does he repeats the formula independent film has succumbed to. It is a truthful attempt which has a low key in its character and makes us care for them.

The comedy is the pathetic smile we get on the clueless complacent characters. Ellen Page’s Vanessa reminds one more person of such character in another film. Reese Witherspoon’s Tracy Flick in “Election” is that and whiles the ambitious go getter is common, there is a human substance in Vanessa. She has missed almost her entire adolescence in the hope of becoming a miniature Lawrence. She yearns for his approval and rightly gets it too but the problems arise when he has another person to concentrate.

There is a son in this mid life crisis, Paul (Chris Klein) having contempt on not getting dad’s recognition. His relationship with Lawrence though is much left to be evaporated as he has moved on from those years. But for Vanessa her life is what she has seen in her dad. And when he has some one else to spend time with, she is broken. Chuck loosens her up but with a consequence. Page again plays a character too mature for her age but handles it with an acting maturity. She never gets herself over the top of the character. Church and Quaid are the veterans out here who have their part to be the strange losers. Their scenes together are intentionally underrated as their relationship.

Essentially the film is about Vanessa and Lawrence dealing with their personality issues. One has crossed the point of control in his adult life and another is starting to follow the same path. Success, title and recognition drives these two people but rejection does not discourage them rather give themselves more reasons to be intelligently separated from rest of the society. They both get an outsider not enlightening by their words but giving rejection to think about. In the process we know the outsiders are equally lost but they are aware of their situation.

It is not a wholesome film because the characters are not wholesome. And it does not provide the character change some might want and expect. But a person like Lawrence does not change over a period of weeks. The film is the first step on their overcoming their self denial on their addiction to intellectualism. It is a slow process and the film is slow for its hour and half. Yet amongst its faint and fading tone of reality, “Smart People” has the heart, originality and the integrity to have their characters stay to their characters till the end. The difference in our mood from beginning and end is the hope we get out of the people.

"Street Kings" (2008) - Movie Review

The cops are corrupt and the system has been rotten to the level of no redemption or recuperation in the film “Street Kings”. This is a world defined by the cops been pressurized by the dealing of down trodden criminals. The nick second decisions of doing the right thing and coming clean out of a death hole is something only a cop might understand. “Street Kings” does not explain those and starts as an encounter specialist Tom Ludlow (Keanu Reeves) who takes no prisoners (as tagline says). It shows the ugly righteousness the circle of the unit has created and the means to the greater good has now been officially raped. But “Street Kings” has no plans in causing the mental derailment of tipping the law to the correct side. It starts to ramp up the gun fight the cops in the film celebrate.

Can Keanu Reeves be any blander? He is the lead character piling up bodies in the name of saving the victims and he is pale and I mean pale. Not that it bodes cool factor rather it sucks away the energy and gravity the film puts on. He is been brought up and picked by his Captain Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker). There are other officers, who in the competition for grabbing names and getting medals are Clady (Jay Mohr), Santos (Amaury Nolasco) and another detective whose name I forgot (John Corbett).

In spite of that they have each other’s back mainly Ludlow’s. Ludlow’s ex-partner Washington (Terry Crews) has come off the darker side and been talking with Internal Affairs Captain Biggs (Hugh Laurie). This ticks off Ludlow who begins to follow and bad things happen. It is an investigative glorification of the gun shoots in a very serious manner losing its value on its way. As with films of this kind, a distraught cop at the end of crossroads should have a young aspiring rookie to guide which is Diskant (Chris Evans).

It is tough to see Reeves not able to pull off Ludlow having in mind that he knocked off the role of Jack Traven in “Speed”. I have liked David Ayer’s screenplay in “Training Day” and his directorial debut in “Harsh Times”. Both have characters running along the line separating good and evil when clearly they were always on the path of doing exactly what they intended to. Ludlow is some one like that but what has been making him sleep better all these years is unknown. Whitaker as he had the devilish charm in “The Last King of Scotland” brings some of those to the character of Jack Wander. He is enjoying the rampage Ludlow delivers and he comforts in the end result even if it involves a planned encounter. His philosophy is undiscovered too.

End of day, “Street Kings” becomes the film which it desperately tries not to. It goes on about the darkness in the cop world but it also markets the gun factor and its style to support it. Which side the film is on? It is fine to be border lining but to send mixed signals in a film of violence and corruption, the endless pit of the system should be left to us on what to decide.

Dealing corruption and the outcome of it cannot be known better through real life honest cop Frank Serpico and the film “Serpico”. It does not answer anything rather tells a story plain and front for what it is. It has a positive outcome at the loss of one good cop’s life. “Street Kings” has double vision on approaching the content of corruption. At one time it behaves as honest as it can be and other time it sells off on the macho factor of gun fights and tough guy syndrome.

In “Harsh Times” we see an aspiring cop roaming and breathing the crime. His cold perspective on the crime and the cops is shivering. He drags his partner to a suicide ride. There Ayer plays on the fear of us. Even in the crookedness of that character we desire for him to survive. Keanu Reeves shoulders Ludlow to neither root for him (which is what the film wants) nor do we dislike him completely due to the fact that we know nothing of him. There is a moral calamity in the end which exposes the truth of the political/social games but the stamp is as an exploitative plot factor than a serious message.

"Proof" (2005) - Movie Review

“Proof” is the kind of film which makes me think back to put the screenplay and editing to my choice and credit myself that it would have been better because the material is original and good. I also think Gwyneth Paltrow is miscast for the role of Catherine, the daughter of mentally deteriorating mathematical genius Robert (Anthony Hopkins). She is a mathematician too and at one point she is challenged for it by two characters which we second but the difference is I doubted it throughout the film because she does not convince me as a mathematician.

I totally believed a loving daughter who is grieving her father’s death, but a mathematician, nope. Now Jake Gyllenhaal as Hal, a former research student of Robert is a perfect geek whom I can any day believe in. He can be the nerd who is cool enough to impress a woman like Paltrow and still claim his geek standard. Anyways, “Proof” could have been a very good film and it falls short a couple of foot in reaching it.

The film is said in present and as in flashbacks of Catherine’s encounters with her mentally ill father who suddenly seems to be working again. At the start of the film we see both of them talking over Catherine’s birthday and cuts off to flashes of other sequences in past. And we cut back to the day before Robert’s funeral. She is imagining things and begins to doubt herself on her mental stability. To make things worse arrives in the form of her sister Claire (Hope Davis) from New York bringing New York along with her. Claire is the big sister ticking of check list items in a diary for things to do, even the emotional actions. The mechanical execution behind it is the rudeness to its maximum utility. But in her thoughts her calculation is to tally the accounts of goodwill, sacrifice and a true guilt.

The film which begins as the story of a mourning daughter to cope up with her proceedings turns into math game. We do not understand it as the involvement of it seems unnecessary and this is where I would have loved to have the story take the screenplay from start, going linear. The choice of flash back by director John Madden does have a distinguished insight on figuring out the character of Catherine but the puzzlement is more befuddling. It becomes tangential on the enormity this character. Madden wants us to wear the judgmental hat as a concerned Hal and Claire does but seeing through them is not the story but looking through the reality of Catherine is the core.

There is an emotional pay off which should move us and we should see Catherine shed off those doubts of instability. Out there, at that moment the prejudice we have created should shatter us all and drain us into the guilt and awe which Madden intends. It is moving but it does not hit the spot. Not that in any way misjudges the character. It is the failure of the screenplay to play a math game which was not required at all.

There is an aura of light even in the darkness of a scene and it places the movie in a plane realistic enough and imaginary too. There is a subtle cinematography which lights up the dungeon house into a temple of mathematical enlightenment. Hopkins has a scene with Paltrow wherein he is washed up by the invigorating control of mind he has achieved. He talks and walks with a man of complete sense and the doubtful eyes her daughter is laying upon. He steps back a few feet to confirm her acceptance. The character as said had a greater perspective and incredible aptitude to purge out his mind into mathematical equation and for him to stare in to the eyes of his daughter, the moment is both precious and sympathetic. And in Hopkins we find the Robert director Madden demands.

“Proof” is a good film and the complaints I have might skim through one’s mind. This movie has been adapted from a play written by David Auburn. The film does not seem to appear that it has been taken from a play. True that most of the actions happen in a closed section but the angle of the characters has the scope beyond that and Madden does use the cinematography and editing, the medium has a unique stamp on to make it for what it is. I was trying to think of an alternative actor for Paltrow and cannot come up with one. May be Madden was not able to come up with one either.

"Bleak Moments" (1971) - Movie Review

Mike Leigh’s first feature “Bleak Moments” has those awkward silences, smiles without sweats and the offers to fill the cup with coffee or tea as the space within the people are empty. It makes the film tough to deal as with the people in it; lonely, detached and suppress the hiding emotions. But then there is a chance and an opportunity for those desperate silences to have a closure in “Bleak Moments”.

Sylvia (Anna Raitt) a middle class secretary takes care of her mentally challenged sister Hilda (Sarah Stephenson) in a match box apartment. Her colleague Pat (Joolia Cappleman) is her only visitor and friend in an otherwise mundane aloof life she leads on. She buys wine and drinks it in solitude, not for enjoyment but for her yearning pleasure of a social life. Her evenings are marked with tea sessions. She has a boyfriend who has more hesitations, fear, desperation and shyness than Sylvia. He is a teacher who tries too hard to impress Hilda and get on the good side of Sylvia but he does not realize that it is of no need.

I was exasperated by these literal “bleak” moments the film goes on in the beginning. The relentless motion in the dead air is deafening. The slightest bit of sound becomes an instant welcome for some activity. The film takes its subtle twist in the form of territorial feeling of insecurity when a shabby print worker rents the garage. His name is Norman (Mike Bradwell) who duplicates materials for a magazine. He plays guitar and sings. This is a welcome change for Sylvia and Hilda. Sylvia invites him over for tea. Then one evening he is joined merrily in her house with music and genuine smiles. Watch when Pat comes in for her baby sitting Hilda who is her favourite and in a boorish manner interrupts the music and watch how Peter tries to maintain his reign of the male presence in Sylvia’s life to Norman. They are afraid that the bridge connecting their relationship with Sylvia and Hilda might be strained by this sudden happiness and deviation. Solitude and suppressing emotions are the things which keep them in tandem.

But Sylvia likes Peter and they go to a restaurant and there is a lonely customer (Reginald Stewart) whose body language tells that he is alone not of abandonment but by choice. He does not look like a person to appreciate a nice couple. His eyes are mocking on these couple whom he very well might consider the losers who chose to come to this deserted restaurant with a restless waiter (Ronald Eng). And following that is the high point of the film when Peter and Sylvia are at her house waiting for the move to happen. Sylvia is the most outgoing considering her strawberry smiles when the awkwardness posed by the waiter, the man or Peter himself over the ambience. Peter on the other hand thinks twice before drinking a glass of wine. He is the person whose mind churns the levers of insecurity and fear of rejection/morality while sipping coffees or making circling endless conversations. Again Leigh brings the void in between these people and the creak sounds the movement of a person makes in an apartment is irritating but glad too for something to cover this abysmal space of emotions.

“Bleak Moments” is an art house film which does take patience and sensitive ears to absorb the muttered sounds of these characters. While I shed more light on Sylvia and Peter it tells the overall story of the middle class people whose job and lifestyle are never punctuated for lively expectation of the following day. Nothing happens and responsibilities too have shifted its form from sacrifice, love to tasteless chores. Sylvia, Peter and Pat are all bound by it and they do want to get out of it at least for a moment. Yet they have been stuck in it forever that they are neither comfortable nor daring enough. Sylvia yet tries to make some attempt towards a change in her life but the people surrounding her are not ready to do the same.

Leigh’s “Naked” and this one tells his understanding on these middle class personalities and I believe most of his other movies concentrate on it too. Thinking about it, Hollywood has rarely attempted in centering the middle class people in US. Or to be precise the finance and the living scenario of them have not been ventured upon with the subtlety Leigh has taken on. But middle class are becoming a luxury class and the gap between them and the next financial class has enlarged and widened. Leigh in this emotional vacuum of characters makes us realize the inundate influence of their lifestyle.

"Unknown" (2006) - Movie Review

The suspense in a film which puts the pieces in the puzzle is any time a bonus to an already good film. Arriving to that point is the important thing rather than unknotting few dozens of clues near the end. This is what happens in “Unknown” a supposedly good premise failing on this note. It had some good casts of Jim Caviezel, Greg Kinear, Barry Pepper and Joe Pantoliano. It is not nail biting thriller or has twisted mind games but a straight lined suspense film with the twists straighter than the story itself.

An abandoned warehouse/industrial plant has entities with lost memory due to some gas leakage. They do not remember their name, roles or why in the hell they are out there. With some immediate clues we come to know that two of them are hostages while three others are kidnappers. They are Greg Kinear, Barry Pepper, Jim Caviezel, Joe Pantoliano tied to a chair and Jeremy Sisto who is shot and handcuffed. It is neither a crooked psychopathic game as in “Saw” nor a psychological trap/mind game in “Mind hunters”.

The film soon becomes a chewing which has lost its sweet taste and we are chewing it for the heck of it. Mainly the blandness in the situation is the reason of the memory loss itself. Of course there are flashes of relapsing cuts for each one looking in the mirror but the relapse are the clues which are given only to know the immediate next scene. The film does not focus on the inside alone; it takes us to the Eliza Coles (Bridget Moynahan) who is the wife of kidnapped Coles (any one of them in the warehouse) working with the cops. So this gives us a hint by two methods. One that there is character with a known actor which should accumulate to something to the story apart from sobbing and secondly they want to feed some more details to cover bases.

The concept of mind games among individuals with some one snitching has been successfully blasted in “Reservoir Dogs”. It is an exact replica of it minus witty, scary and cold dialogues of Quentin Tarantino. There is no unique personality to make it of that kind. There is an unknown trust which happens between the character of Caviezel and Pepper just on the basis that they woke up before any of them. Since we do not know anything about these people, our care in their escape is next to nothing. But to reveal everything about them gives out the story, so basically they dug their own grave.

There are two cops Detective James Curtis (Chris Mulkey) and Detetive Anderson (Clayne Crawford) who exist for the reason for the progress in the case and they cannot make it tasteless than this. The whole outside story did not make sense when the end is revealed. I would have been more intrigued to see these unknown characters develop from nothing, a fresh start in a situation to survive. But wait; have we not seen that in “The Bourne Identity” and its further films? It does sound a great pitch to give it in a single line and get it green lit without problems.

When a character with conscience is pushed into killing couple of people and when he/she is about to shoot them, if the camera shows some other person hearing the gunshots, it means only one thing, take your guess. “Unknown” does not have much of the regular thriller cliché routines but it does not have any other thing either to make it a complete film. I was not bored but neither was I excited.

"Any Given Sunday" (1999) - Movie Review

The first fifteen minutes of the football match “Any Given Sunday” shows breaks barriers and freshens our sight which has only been treated with clichéd slow motions and heavy orchestra towards that one winning moment. That one moment comes in “Any Given Sunday” with a twist of drinking a straight up clean shot of hard liquor. It is rapid, lively, buzzed and gives a kick. It is due to its “Stoned” treatment it has got of all the sports film ever seen. It has got Oliver Stone’s vision. But it lasts until we see the compromise made out towards the end and it brings sadness to a sports film which has the audacity and visual art throughout the movie.

The film revolves around the coin movers, king makers, losers, recovering winners, cover up people and the fulcrum of economics driven by this gargantuan sports in the United States. Stone uses fictionalized teams and we watch Miami Sharks and its intrinsic show players and personalities. At the start of the film, it loses its ace but aging quarter back Cap (Dennis Quaid) which puts the aging coach Tony D’Amato (Al Pacino) dead in the water. He brings in the second quarter back who soon succumbs to another blow bringing the tertiary option Willie Beamen (Jamie Foxx). He does not win the match but shows his promising skills shunned so long in the team. At this point everyone pretty much comes to the conclusion of the routine this film is going to adapt. Sure it is going to have the stamping authority of scenes by Oliver Stone but the fifteen minutes is good enough for it to be forgetful. The film spins off into something different, and it takes the multiple figures of characters to affect the game, conscience and the power.

It has a myriad cast of James Woods, Cameron Diaz, LL Cool J, Aaron Eckhart and lot of NFL Hall of Fame players making cameos. And it makes them to contribute their miniscule part in an enormous screenplay. The film though is more about Tony and Beamen who are representatives of the changing generations in the game of football. Tony has been a great coach enjoying success and close friendship with the team’s owner. The owner is dead and is taken up by the young daughter Christina Pagniacci (Cameron Diaz) and she is not much for football either. But that is a huge business to sustain her career and she is finding it hard for the people around her to attach so much emotion and legacy to it. Tony now surrounded by the youth who are more focused on the money than the game and passion is struggling to cope up. Tony is no saint either who has a plan of his own. In the midst of it we see the internal power battle in the game of testosterone spitting its control and reign in player’s locker rooms.

Stone mixes real life archive footages of foot ball games to this fictitious story. I am not a fan of foot ball and I am not fully aware of the rules either but the film is more than foot ball. It is about the back ground ugly picture of individuals banking everything including the possibility of death for earning those million dollars. Seeing “Any Given Sunday” reminded a much more financial storm by the game of Cricket in India. At least in US there are number of teams and number of opportunities but there is only one national team (the league is coming on though in name of ICL and IPL) and once a player shines for couple of games, it is heaven at the doorstep with him being granted the Midas touch of currency. The selection, politics and the ugliness should be made us a film to give a wake up call on its religious contagiousness over the people. The attachment of making it more than a game draws unwanted pestering consequences and enmity. The game loses its value.

Stone gives a great foot ball story and then the unexpected disaster happens. There is a visible quest for a fairy tale ending the sports films have always thrived on. But the film has bend over backwards in an angle unaware by Hollywood on giving this game the truth it very much needed. Why does the concentrated team have to win? Why does sports film has this obsession towards a nail biting win? Rest of the films is fine but Stone succumbing to the same scenario made me sad. The character of Willie Beamen of course needs to have the redemption and every thing is out there but it could have been a more realistic end it preached about. Despite the unethical and immoral take on the game, Stone made it a sweet digestive content to live on. The commentary the film brings about on this game can be as close as “Syriana” or “Crash” and it is true that there are countless youths dedicating and relying on this single game of hitting the jackpot and losing everything in the process. “Any Given Sunday” is the best foot ball film I have ever seen which could have been a great film too if it had the guts to take the shot.

"Shine a Light" (Documentary/Concert Music) (2008) - Movie Review

I am not a Rolling Stones fan. I have listened couple of songs which I like but not adore upon fanatically. First of all, the expectation on “Shine a Light” was a part documentary and part concert. My illusion was that director Martin Scorcese is going to dissect this long sustaining band with archive footages and current interviews weaved in with their music. It has footages but it is essentially a concert musical film. Hence the review of this film will be based on the presentation more than Rolling Stones music.

Scorcese shot this in two days of concert in the 2006 A Bigger Bang tour comprising guest performances with Jack White, Buddy Guy and Christina Aguilera. The introduction towards the concert is spectacular. With the edged Scorcese waiting for the song list so that he can set up the camera positions and entry marks is witty, funny and gives a semi-fictionalized (as wiki says) insight into this program management. And President Clinton introduces the band and before that meets up with the band members which in its essence tells a lot about the personalities melting down barriers among the ranks, cadre and perception in front of art of music.

And seeing Mick Jagger drenching out every ounce of his energy on to the stage is a spectacle of its own. If not for the wrinkled skin, he as he says in an interview is still 29. He dances crazy steps which do not make sense, he smiles that innocent devious grin in a lovable manner and extracts and pumps up similar energy level from the audience. I did not know almost all of the songs but it is more of the presentation. The editing by David Tedeschi gets a special place in this film as it is the film. There are more than seven angles over Mick, Keith and Ronnie and we get those angles every minute but with no annoyance or motion sickness.

The interview footage from 60s and 70s are placed in between songs so as to give these aged band members the youth they are living throughout their life. Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood conveying their complimenting strategy and appreciation working out over the stage and in personal life too is a priceless interview in the film. The interview footages have a unique appeal to it. Not because of the early stages in their career but the questions which are being asked to them. One interviewer asks whether Jagger is tempted to call it quits feeling every time he might get before a show. And the answers these dozed up artists give carry lot of truth and fun. Another interviewer asks what does Richards feel when he is on the stage and he answers, “I Wake Up”. That is honest, mystical and poetical.

“Shine a Light” is a perfect delicacy for a Rolling Stones fan. I would not say I completely enjoyed it but overall it is a concert to be watched by the fans. The quality and the colour are uncompromising and Scorcese not alone places us in the audience but takes it a step closer. We are in the stage rubbing cheeks with these persistent musicians and dance around with Mick Jagger.

"Run Fatboy Run" (2007) - Movie Review

In romantic comedies, there exists a character forming serious threat to the main hero’s lost love interest. The personality will be adoring and a little too perfect. And when the ruined up relationship germinates a possible rekindling for our hero, then this perfect personality shifts momentum into a jerk, easily resulting in an immediate break up. This shift is for the audience to feel fine when the protagonist’s love has no guilt to it. It is formulaic garbage. Hank Azaria as Whit is that character who becomes a jerk to blossom the chances for Dennis (Simon Pegg) and Libby (Thandie Newton) in the end. And along with it the final marathon taking forever is what ruins the otherwise very funny comedy “Run Fatboy Run” directed by David Schwimmer.

It has Simon Pegg as the lazy loser who leaves his pregnant fiancé Libby (Thandie Newton) at the altar. Five years later he is a security guard in a women’s clothing shop, lives in a basement forgetting religiously his keys and spends jolly good time with his kid Jake (Mathew Fenton). His problem, he still is in love with Libby who now is seeing a potential candidate for Jake’s step dad to completely eliminate the chances of Dennis. That is Whit. Whit is considerate, kind, friendly and is a man who is also fighting for his place in Libby’s life. This obviously annoys Dennis. In a chance to revitalize his possibilities in proving Libby his capability of becoming a changed man, he commits to run the charity marathon Whit is running too.

And soon, his friend Gordon (really funny Dylan Moran) has bets with his illegal poker mates that Dennis will finish the race. His life is on line and he teams up with landlord of Dennis, Mr. Ghoshdashtidar (Harish Patel) beginning to have the training sessions. Now that in its own is good enough for the fun Pegg delivers along with his buddies. The film does distinguish itself from other regular fair of romantic comedies when Dennis makes an honest statement about his stupid mistake to Libby.

Pegg plays so good as the slacker and a loser with a dignity. He is sloppy, forgetful and more than that gives a regular Joe who we can see him along our sides. And he is quirky, witty and smart to shape the Dennis into some one who needs to be there for the film. Pegg’s Dennis is a close cousin of Shaun in “Shaun of the Dead” but a lethargic aspirer for responsibility. Dylan Moran’s Gordon adds the needed side kick buddy who is gladly not irritating as it would be but a cheeky lovable loser as Dennis. The thing that separates Dennis and Gordon is that Gordon knows who he is and he enjoys being it. Their chemistry is much needed along with Harish Patel’s character.

Schwimmer’s film has lot of promises for future ventures of his. He gives the simplicity of the joke in mild submissive reactions and the subtle carelessness the character casts in a scene. It is not a “Hot Fuzz” but it indeed had the potential to be one. Then it fails, and fails again in the never ending final twenty minutes. It is quite surprising that how much of that dragging really brought me down from the good comic moments it had before that. It’s a shame.

It is a clear hour and half film which got extended unnecessarily to two hours. Sometimes taking higher ground in delivering a message does not always is a good factor for a film. Some times the untold victory in the ridiculous loss tells a lot too. Schwimmer could have settled for an unadulterated comedy Pegg and Edward Wright gave in their previous films. Thrusting sweetness of conviction is not a great way to end a film.

"Kids" (1995) - Movie Review

“Tin Drum” got axed and murdered by this reviewer for employing a young kid in an explicit sexual act. It is time for “Kids”, which uses multiple teenagers and younger kids into contents which shocks not alone on the intended motive of the director Larry Clark on how the kids today are involved in debauchery acting haphazard or ignorant about the consequences but how manipulative and hypocritical it becomes to creep the living hell out of us.

Beside that fact, Clark uses actors unknown and they have the talent for giving exactly what he has demanded. The opening scene is how a teenager named Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick) deflowers a twelve year old girl (Sarah Henderson), wooing and deceiving her. He comes out proud and boasts about his victory over one another virgin to his friend Casper (Late Justin Pierce). We come to know through the conversations that Telly’s motto is to sleep with as many virgins as possible.

They go to their friend’s house wherein shabbiness gets a new definition and shock factor ramps up to new levels. But interesting thing happens, the boys bedraggling in the drug fest discuss in detailed fashion on their sexual encounters. At this point of time, we are shown a similar discussion in parallel among girls who take their fair share in graphic sexual experiences. Clark gave me hope of some thing is happening, an open forum for discussion. Instead of that the film deviates into the non-stop spat of the kids involving in open exploration of their sexuality.

Larry Clark wants us to provide the mid 90’s and may be the current trend of the cool factor and the curiosity of sex paving way into deadly effects and how it manifests into a cycle which is scary. What it becomes out of it is the means becomes the infectious disease. In the process of the higher prospect and motive, it succumbs in to the pits which it revealed not to get trapped. There is Ruby (very young Rosario Dawson) and from the vivid discussion with her friends tells us that she is vehemently sexually active while her Jenny (Chloe Sevigny) has slept with only one boy, Telly. The film again gave me some hope when Ruby goes for their STD medical test and Jenny for moral support tags along. Soon the results are out and Ruby comes clean but Jenny tests positive for HIV. She is devastated and wants to find Telly while he is onto his next hunt, a thirteen year old girl named Darcy (Yakira Peguero). There is a friendly encounter with a cab driver (Joseph Knopfelmacher) who is the only wise personality in the film.

I constantly pinched the brain to wake up from the moral stand I was taking on. The tone and documentary styled film is showing the truthfulness of the society with kids’ misguided sexuality resulting into. I am hundred percent with the message and intent the film carries on but the method it take on to show it steps over the line. The exact point what the film makes becomes self incriminating. To show a war film and its ill effect, one has to show the gore and killings to make a point, to show an emotional drama a film has to push the limits for putting the audience in a similar scenario and “Kids” does that. The difference is that in the others there are adults who even in their mistake have some awareness of their intent and participation. The kids in this film may have the idea of what they are doing but are they in that age of maturity to not regret this decision? And couple of scene would have sufficed the film’s purpose but it becomes an orgy and in a creepy way the movie starts to celebrate it. It crawls into the den it is warning the parents and the upcoming kids to watch out for.

It is a bold experiment gone wrong. When I finished watching “Requiem for a Dream”, there is the sickness in the stomach on the tortures these characters have put themselves in. Drug addiction strips the skins of carelessness and enjoyable hallucination. After fifteen minutes in to “Kids”, I got the same message of misconceived sexual concepts by the adolescence and how the children need to be educated on those. But “Kids” did not stop there and extended another hour and fifteen minutes. I would suggest “Requiem for a Dream” but not “Kids”. It loses its purpose and takes it wild. It fails as a responsible film it claims to be in the making.

"Moulin Rouge!" (2001) - Movie Review

Most of the musicals I have seen till now have the actors having fun doing it. I can see it nakedly on their faces amongst the happy and sad scenes. But in the mean time, I am not having fun. It does not move me, inspire me nor does it simply make me like the songs. I cannot come to terms with a flashy glittering musical. I am still waiting for the arrival a musical of “Moulin Rouge!” type with richness and glamour to make a mark on me.

There are some reasons I was able to come up with one prominent enough to conclude for the dislike. Most of my life, the regional movies and Bollywood ventures have carried this concept of colourful and vibrant spectacle of overzealous emotions in a simple love story, specifically love at first sight. I have been bludgeoned with that right from my child hood. But wait, I loved “Once” a musical one of a kind which has no flagrant costumes or outfits with the same simple love story and mellow music to soothe its emotions and art. What is happening out here?

“Moulin Rouge!” cannot be richer in its costumes, acting and music and still I am trying to put my finger on something to say this is the reason it failed in me. I know it is not the story which enriches the musical but the ensemble of dances and innovative blends of tunes to suit the situation. I lay still and glared at the screen with apparently no liking or emotions attached to it at all. When the tragic scene comes down, I was looking for the time and I just could not make myself to like this film. Because it has only one thing going on and on and on with clichéd sequences to remind me of all the boring movies depicting the one line love story.

Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman have a great time as a blossoming couple of instant love. It breathes that concept and usual stereotypes, filthy rich lustful villain in the form of The Duke played by Richard Roxburgh. I did laugh for the songs and sequences involving Jim Broadbent as Harold Ziddler to coax The Duke. Broadbent’s comic timing and voice modulation are the facts which stood out of the otherwise routine work.

The costumes are gorgeous and have colours in abundance; it still does not dilute the eyes. It has a mix of every culture into it. The fashion of Paris, the cultural representation of India and the western clothing to make it a fashion show of its own. It has the dances in a funny format and serious one did not do its tricks of talent and presence. Thinking back, I now am beginning to slightly like the “Sweeney Todd”. At least it had the revenge seeking cold blooded character of Johnny Depp to have a subject for its dark content with a freaky killer. The only thing you know of Kidman’s Satine and McGregor’s Christian are that they are young, attractive and can sing to woo. In the midst they preach love.

May be rich overabundant caricatured characters of musical genre is not my cup of tea. The songs if not a catchy one or even if it is something to be listened multiple times to grow on you, it would fail the scene. The choreography can run along as far as it could but it melts into meaningless puppet show with sky rocketing over emotions. It either becomes irritating or gleefully bland in “Moulin Rouge!” Both are not healthy for a film.

"Naked" (1993) - Movie Review

Johnny (David Thewlis) in Mike Leigh’s “Naked” can sense a lonely soul in a mile’s radius and rant about the obscurity, hopelessness and negative game of life being played by god. He is shabby, thin, dull but flooded with words. He is a voracious reader and practices his philosophy in wanderlust amongst the ditches and darkness of London streets. “Naked” is a weird film about working class characters of London. They can expect old relations showing up unnoticed with an ego of knowing everything but expressing nothing barging into their home. They welcome with half heartedness for old time’s sake while haunted with confusion and fear of what this person has in store. The working class girl is Louise (Lesley Sharp) patching her life in the clockwork London and the uninvited person is Johnny.

This is a film of profound knowledge in writing on characters of discordance and destitute. Johnny is a vicious charmer, rough in sex, low in seriousness and high on intellectual arguments. He is well read, strangely well mannered but is in a homeless state after running off from Manchester. The reason, we see him raping a woman in an alley and afraid of getting beat up, he steals a car and comes to London. He has no hesitations in knocking the door of his former girl friend’s house. He meets her room mate (Katrin Cartlidge) and she lets Johnny in. Both do not introduce themselves and we see Johnny get on with his life abnormalities and intense materialism and curious masturbation of humans in the quest for finding the unknown. She tells she understands if only she can read through the foggy smokes of pot she is smoking. He needs an outlet otherwise the churning factory of the consumed books he read in his mind will reek out in psychotic behaviours every second which he expresses during sex.

A film carries the humour in the sarcastic tones of the characters. Johnny cannot make himself to come in serious terms but that’s his charm. He gets out of Louise’s house and meets people. But he does not intend on the agenda of meeting people, his ego will not allow that. He makes himself the object of curiosity to get a glance, smile or hate to begin his lecture on the simplicity of wasteful life. He does not care if they ignore or listen or oppose or agree because he needs to exercise his mouth and thoughts. He is eloquent and convincing, sometimes astonishingly truthful. He can substantiate the invalidity of present, the validity of merciless and hateful god and the tenacity of this grinding march towards hopelessness. He finds his notes and points in unbelievable control and passion when he meets a security guard named Brian (Peter Wight) with a job of time to chew and empty place to protect. A focal point in the film when Johnny has a listener who grasps the entirety of his ideas even if he does not believes in it.

Being this the first feature I am watching of Mike Leigh, it is intense in its presentation and arbitrary to leave us to grasp the material. The writing is concentrated with deep ideas and tough words which limits us on many occasions to get Johnny. The writing is intentional on that so that people who understand can see the nakedness of this person while one who does not gets perplexed or shifted on by the wit of this guy to forget about it. It is candid in its dialogues because Johnny is stripped off with the regular attire of the social normality. But we never get what Johnny is after for. His fear of attachment is the sole known factor of his psychological inhibitions we learn. May be that’s the reason whenever he gets to know some one, he wants to seduce them and intentionally hurt and humiliate them to distance away from him.

David Thewlis presents a verbose stature of Johnny’s upright values of existence but a depressed and tired physiological representation in his face. He utters the words with a spite of vengeful, self righteousness and vehement tone of acceptance in its content. He acts the passive aggression with wit and frustration in unison. This is a performance which is made to look so easy but has the monumental burden of carrying this personality to be likeable in his desperation and hatred towards life. And with Andrew Dickson’s original score, the suppressed frightening emotions of him over others reverberate.

There is another character of the similar nature in the film, Jeremy (Greg Crutwell) who in all possibility would have been an inspiration to the character of Patrick Bateman in “American Psycho”. He is rich, arrogant and a rapist. His story runs in minimal sequences of his sexual war towards his women. He is the rich unpolished version of Johnny in a way. This is not a film about men demeaning women. It is about the complexities and questions in the current giant society of clockwork which runs as thoughts in frustrating minds of workers and jobless wanderers.

The women in the film are continuously won by the enigma of mysterious candidness of Johnny. Sophie, the café girl (Gina McKee) and Louise are blown away and freaked out by this odd unpredictable personality. The sex is explicit and offensive too. Does the actors were fine with it should be a question to them but those sequences represent these sexually frustrated and dominating men who exactly know their path towards the end. This clear path becomes their demise of their character to vile every day with strangeness, sexual aggressiveness and carelessness a bit too much.

"21" (2008) - Movie Review

“21” has the scenes wherein it has the uniqueness of not having single uniqueness. A cute nerd and a hottie, then there is a charismatic father figure with couple of elements needed for the thrill they all seek. In this subgenre of intelligent thriller in a commercial formula, the plot is developed on a single line thrill factor. And in this case, it evolves from true events. A secretive club in MIT with brainiacs goes Las Vegas over the weekend to apply their math skills over the table. Very good premise and as a formula it has been tweaked nicely to start off but just as the young genius Ben Campbell’s (Jim Sturgess) character dissipates in the film, it departs from us consuming to its monotonous story telling.

Ben needs money to cover his Harvard Medical School. Professor Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) finds him in his class where he shyly astounds with a solution of his own. He is surgical in handling a problem mathematically and from that assuming it to real life. He has two other nerds Miles (Josh Gad) and Cam (Sam Golzari) who ogle with painful desperation on the girls the frat guys have fun with in the MIT bar. Obviously Ben has to reject and then accept. Once that part is done, he needs to shine. He needs have an envious rival, Fisher (Jacob Pitts), the prettiest girl to romance upon Jill (Kate Bosworth), then two side kicks Choi (Aaron Yoo) and Kianna (Liza Lapira) for kicks. Rise and fall to the universal circle of life. There needs to be a clean cut to make for an ending to cover the bases. Are we sitting through a boring lecture?

Films like “21” are not Oscar Winners or art house projects but a crowd pleaser, especially a young crowd. It has the charming guy, an attractive lady, great cast of Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne to invite for disaster show. “21” keeps you worked up with its method of counting and how intuitively and intelligently Ben applies it across the casinos. I did not understand the pluses and minuses but that does not matter. Because it is not a sports film and that trumps the main thick plot the whole film was developed upon.

Spacey and Fishburne walk their roles, if that’s what it is been called. Believe me I look forward for films in commercial lanes because I like to be relaxed and nullify the angle to micromanage the characters once in a while during the films. So when entering a cinema hall for a film on that cadre, I wish to be in a serene place of illogical and baseless work of rules. But when “21” pulls me from the space to seriously consider the options of that in string of events testing my predictability skills, it annoys me. More than a boring film is a film which annoys you. Taunts you in the assumption of how brilliant they have been showing the film and how the entertaining values are all out there to please every one. That stand aggravates and accumulates in to look for the exit door as soon as the film is over. I have created this obligation to myself on not walking out of a film. “21” does not make me do that but immediately when it got over, I wish it made me to earlier.

"Stop-Loss" (2008) - Movie Review

The stop-loss policy in US military is the involuntary extension of a soldier’s term even after his/her successful term of service. It is been put to use heavily in the ongoing Iraq War. It is known to the soldiers when they sign the contract but is it ethical and lawful in the current war? Director Kimberly Price’s “Stop-Loss” is about a Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe) who is stop-lossed and he does not want to go back. He wants to fight the system and his odyssey towards that supposed to form the core of the film. It does not though.

I for one learning about this policy have an opinion against it. It shakes the foundation of what we define as right. The film draws its stance from it and goes directionless immediately. The PTSD is known and horrific, but there is an inner deep meaning from a personal stand point. What it has done to them and how they perceive it should have been the angle Pierce should have taken. There is a young soldier under the wings of King, Tommy Bugess (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who needs psychological help desperately; rather it is assumed to be taken on the leadership of King. How far can one go towards disaster like this? We are supplied half naked facts about the terror these soldiers go through.

There is a confrontation by King towards his superior Lt. Col. Boot Miller (Timothy Olyphant), a promising start of many discussions on this policy and as a whole the war from a soldier’s standpoint who has dedicated his service honourably and wants something from the country. What we see though is a road trip with improper planning and random judgments. Continuously we are fed the horrors in flashes and the weird reactions from these young men. Some want to go back to fight not able to withstand the normal life (which we never get to see much) and some like King wants out of it. It is clearly against war but tries to tell through an individual soldier’s basis on his duty and acknowledgment. A nice thought which fails to materialize much on its content.

This year marks the 5th anniversary for this war. Enemies are made up out of family man and defense becomes an offense for the occupiers. “In the Valley of Elah” is a film which from US soil told through a war veteran losing his son in the army. It had more dimension and performance much required for a script having subtle signals of anti war and ends up strongly as one. “Stop- Loss” has that as its slogan and has a purpose lost in it. The derangements of their minds are going nowhere but why is it no one really talking to them in the film? These men know the reality of being men and not being macho. They are angry and confused but not stupid.

Films like this are tough to review because the belief one has towards the war should not trump how the film really was. I support the views and cause of what director Pierce attempts to do but it is sad that it never reaches out beyond a point. In the end it ties a knot which is messed, unreal and loses its agenda. There is an unclear tension between King, his best friend Steve (Channing Tatum) and Steve’s fiancée Michelle (Abbie Cornish). Thankfully it does not turn into a triangle love story albeit that it does not add up to the story either. I wanted “Stop-Loss” to be a good if not great film and it needs a script rewritten to focus exactly what it wants to. Without that what is happening seems no sense as Steve says to King in the end.

"Shortbus" (2006) - Movie Review

How often does any one confront their sexuality even to themselves? Director John Cameron Mitchell says in his interview that the films which are coming out now a day address sex in a negative tone and he wanted to take it and decorate it for what it really is made of. This is “Shortbus” which will not be enjoyable if confronting sexuality means tearing moral boundaries. But that’s the exact reason some one needs to watch it with an open mind. This is orgasmic, literally for a director visioning his artistic representation of sex laid on a flat clean surface of ultimate purity.

It is an audacious and positive approach towards a phenomenon which represents the very existence of human beings. It revolves around a sex therapist Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee) who prefers to be called a couples counselor and never had an orgasm, a gay couple Jamie (PJ DeBoy) and his lover Jamie (Paul Dawson) who prefers to be called James and is in a depressive state, a dominatrix Jennifer Aniston (Lindsay Beamish) who prefers to be called Severin and a Voyeuristic Caleb (Peter Stickles) who loves the love shared by Jamie and James but prefers to be not noticed. How many are realistically something, prefer to be some other thing and looking for their missing pieces in life? The tangling intersection of these lives in a place called Shortbus forms the film. Shortbus is like a time capsule from the hippie culture of 60s. The person Justin Bond (playing himself) who operates this place aptly portrays as, “It’s just like the 60s. Only with less hope”.

There is art in nook and corner of this film. It is hypnotic in its portrayal of the scenes involving the characters figuring out their sexual and emotional relationship with each other. I am glad that they show nudity right at your face and glad that they did not shy away from the concept of showing the orgy scenes because those are the essence of the film. It takes the sexual aspects into something of a material which can be viewed with no prejudice, fear and truly for its nakedness. But it is not about sex. It is one of the clearest forms of emotions in place. Sex and love intersects in multiple shapes and sizes. It means a lot and some times interchangeable. People are afraid of love and sex. Both are fragile and freaky but importantly too valuable to lose. The horizon “Shortbus” shows sex with so much explicit content that they take out the factor off from our minds. We are into the “Shortbus”. We may not accept it or may be not yet ready to embrace it but are in level with it.

The story and characters were developed as a project. Auditioning tapes were called on with a website ad calling applications for showing sex as an art. Tons of tapes arrived and from there the film took its shapes as the documentary of the “making” tells us. New York City just before the dawn days before the black out is taken as the time period of the events happening in the film. There are power lags and it “browns out” (a term I came to know through this film) the lights in the environment every now and then reflecting the states of these people.

It is an independent film true to its form. There is no shock factor but an enlightening daylight in the darkness of human realm to shun and avoid to look at the most beautiful thing we are been brought upon in this world. The characters so open in their sexual relationship are so closed emotionally. And Sofia is searching for her orgasm unknown of the real problem with her husband Rob (Raphael Barker). It is ironic that she being sex therapist has this problem which is like a doctor with disease not having found the cure. Here though it is not a disease but a void in her sexual life. She has made it so big of a deal that it has become a story of a legend and myth for her. That makes it even more curious and intriguing for her. James is figuring out what he is made of to be loved. Or is he ready for love at all? Jamie and James bring Ceth (Jay Brannan) a cute guy to their relationship. Ceth has a moment with an old man Tobias (Alan Mandell) who used to be the Mayor which is truly magnificent.

An art film with heart, penis and vagina treated clinically and emotionally for what their property is. The introductory scenes to each character might completely turn off some one but it made me curious, laugh and also feel for the characters. Each of them inside the walls is naked, vulnerable and in a weird manner fake too. How they find their true nature is “Shortbus”.

"The Dinner Game" (Language - French) (1998) - Movie Review

There is a fine line to maintain for a comedy film to consume its abuse in ease and comfort. Amongst the spitting spikes of words of sarcasm and derailment over a character, it is a slim area to work upon to make it comedic and not assassinating one’s character or to numb us well ahead to accept it. A drama generally blossoms in a comedy when there is a unique friendship forms in between two unlikely people. It is François Pignon (Jacques Villeret) and Pierre Brochant (Thierry Lhermitte). I am not sure whether they become friends though. The reason is that Pierre and his friends address François Pignon as idiot so many times; we begin to believe in it and forget the kindness, naïve and consideration of that person.

Pierre Brochant is a rich publisher who gathers for dinner with his friends and their invitees every Wednesday. Every one needs to bring one invitee. It is a strange dinner wherein they hunt for “idiots” as they say and let them talk during the dinner. Then make fun of them behind their backs. A cruel game. Pierre with his tip from friend invites Pignon who makes model out of matches. His day job is working at Finance Ministry and with bubbling happiness unaware of the reason he is originally called upon goes to Pierre’s place and finds out that he is suffering from a back ache. Pierre calls off his dinner plans only to be bungled by the mishaps Pignon does with devotion and unrelenting trait to make Pierre’s crumbling life more miserable.

Is the joke on Pierre or Pignon? It is on both and I was not laughing. Pierre is the yuppie who has ego as the size of Mt. Everest and no evidence of consideration or kindness. The dinner game obviously is wrong, demeaning and psychotic. But by making Pignon do unbelievable acts of dumbness, the film turns out into justifying the dinner. It does not seem inadvertent but the suffering Pierre goes through of Pignon’s carelessness authenticates the action of Pierre. And do we need to enjoy the life dissipating for Pierre? Everything in the film in the name of fun abuses it. If there is a dark ending with no redemption from either side, it would have made me feel better, but there is confrontation and Pierre’s lessons learned philosophy arrives only to be trumped again by Pignon. That is the only joke which made some sense when both the parties are aware of each other’s opinion.

I was easily able to notice why it would have created a comedy riot purely on the basis of dialogue delivery. Knowing French would have made this funny for its timing of the actors. I observed it in the spontaneity and the reflex of each actor’s dialogues. The two leads comprising arrogant Pierre by Thierry and naïve dumb Pignon by Jacques carries a weird chemistry where they tango with imperfections in their characters. There is a friend of Pierre named Juste Leblanc played by Francis Huster. Leblanc is the former lover of Pierre’s wife from whom he thieved her. And he is forgiving and kind enough to visit Pierre. Huster is magnificent as a long friend forgiving and reuniting but it crumbles immediately when he laughs uncontrollably at the sufferings of Pierre. Both acting and comedy fails in those sequences.

Director Francis Veber provides a comedy with a character flaw in it. The humour is cruel and the characters are a dark combination of reality and fiction. Pignon is more fictional in the series of constant fiascos he gives out. And there is the five minutes in the end where he becomes in control of a situation and smart. This margin of fluctuation deteriorates furthermore the film’s trade of drama and comedy on dissecting a person’s integrity, kindness and naivety. Pierre is real and his redemption is opportunistic. “The Dinner Game” is hypocritical in its presentation. Either it should never have tried to explain itself of its dark comedy or choose a story with different characters. I remember “In the Company of Men” which is demonically comical. We see satire and dark humour in an evil form. It never shuns from its content. In “The Dinner Game” it tries to explain its nature and tone of it in the end which makes it all the more hurtful.

"Schindler's List" (1993) - Movie Classics

Rarely have I shed tears in films. I have been moved and mingled in submission to a film but to get into the moment of the tragedy and desperation, it takes brutal realism and one man’s success in an enormous human failure, Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) when he dissolves into tears in his departure to his saved Jews. He weeps for his failure to save more with his gold cufflinks or his car. He is a businessman who says his debacle of previous business lacked one thing, war. He sees it in Poland and grabs it. A business strategy of employing the Jews for less money becomes a life saving method for thousands. That is “Schindler’s List”, one of the emotionally moving and painful film I have seen.

The film is shot in black and white. And it is obvious than to question or think about the choice of it. I cannot imagine this film in colour. It would have been crippled by the modernity in it. In needs to be antique and the painful brutality cannot be watched in colour. The evacuation and massacres of the Ghetto raised questions of why would there be a recreation of this terror and inhumane act. But director Spielberg wants us to go through the ordeal, to feel the fragment of that humiliation and shame on humans. Grave stones becomes the road for their transportation, screams and shrieks are listened by the soldiers as call for execution, running away is a mere consolation for the complacency of attempting an effort and nudeness has numbed and becomes a usual spectacle. To put us right through the center of it and witness it for we get the sense of the fear and constant death the victims faced.

Three key players form the crux of this subtle orchestration. Two of them are the real caregivers who plan this; one of course is Schindler and other his Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley). Other one is a ruthless psychopath who kills and sells the people as goods, Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), the Nazi Officer. Schindler is introduced as a neat dresser with an addiction to be the party man. He goes into a party room without any one noticing and within minutes, he makes friends and kisses their women. He is a true charmer. But he has been failing in business prospects. He sees Poland as the land of no competition, cheap labour and sumptuous orders of supplies. He starts an enamel ware company. He recruits Stern, a calm methodical man who is the robotic clerk of faithful adherence to his job. He is a man of indifference even in the desperate situation. He does not like or hate Schindler when he meets him. He starts pulling in people with fake cards. Schindler does not mind as it is profitable to him. But he knows the limit. Business runs prosperous for Schindler and then arrive Goeth.

Spielberg immediately runs these two men in parallel who are in the opposite end of the spectrum. Goeth asks to shoot a lady engineer who talks sense about the foundation of the construction. She tries to explain that she is doing her job and he says he is doing his. He is sincere in telling that it is not an excuse or explanation but a state of fact. But he appears to enjoy it and his victims are random. Beyond this merciless action is his tug of war of desiring a Jewish maid, Helen Hirsch (Embeth Davidtz).

Why Schindler a German and a member in Nazi Party suddenly become considerate and risk his life and fortune over them? An officer advice Schindler on being helpful and lovable towards Jewish women as this, “God forbid you ever get a real taste for Jewish skirt, there's no future in it. They don't have a future. That's not just good old fashioned Jew hating talk. It's policy now.” Hate is a policy and it is easy one too when war is happening. Yet Oskar cared and dismissed the policy. Not as a protester but as an intelligent businessman and clandestine ambassador. He used his superior’s underestimation of him to his advantage. He shared wines and cigarettes with Goeth to insert a line of proper wisdom which would have saved many the coming days.

The back ground score by John Williams with the violin solo by Itzhak Perlman is used only in crucial moments. Rest does not need it as it would steal the naked emotion in it. Most of the times the film appears as a documentary and it scare us. At the end when the survivors are addressed by Oskar, there are no applauses or tears. They are too tired to emote anything at all. The sadness and fear nullifies the gratitude and the voice to thank in words.

“Schindler’s List” is a celebration of human life and the greatest shame of humans. As much as hopeful it is in the end, it is a failure of humans. Liam Neeson and Ben Kingsley give a performance which did not earn them Academy Awards but it has more than acting, it has a blend of their own emotions and perspectives into it. And Ralph Fiennes is scary and unpredictable. This is a heartbreaking and exhaustive film I have seen in a while.

"He Was a Quiet Man" (2007) - Movie Review

“He Was a Quiet Man” is a strong sentence which carries a lot in tragedies we see pretty regularly in open shoot outs by kids in schools and malls. Every one says the line who does not know the person well enough. It is not a kid but a man out here who is Bob Maconel (Christian Slater with a make over resembling Milton in “Office Space”). A man we see loading his gun to shoot some of his co-workers. He is deeply agitated, bullied by his fellow employees and isolated by his shyness.

In bits and pieces of seeing “Falling Down”, it has the much more similar character frustrated with his life and been pulled over the edge. We have already seen this person is the first impression we get. The cubicle environment has created a corporate claustrophobia and it is captured in the film. Bob says he has been requesting for a cubicle having windows and it cannot be more reflective of the current office spaces. It is a luxurious scale model of the prison. Yet people survive because on the hopes of seeing the evening to end and head home. Bob heads home and talks to his fish (voiced by John Gulager). He lives alone with neighbour’s’ subtle complain for not mowing his lawn. He needs help desperately.

His office sunshine is a cute and voluptuous knockout Venessa (Elisha Cuthbert). In his regular evening dilemma to shoot or not his fellow workers, some other person takes the first step. Bob shoots him and becomes a hero instantaneously. He gets promotion, being noticed and finally window personal office for himself. Unfortunately Venessa becomes quadriplegic surviving bullet wounds. He visits her and she puts on a strange request, to assist her in taking her life since she believes it is hopeless to live. They spend the night and they seem to like each other.

The progress of mood in the film migrates from a cold hearted aloof person to a happier ambience which makes us feel too good to be true. Bob thinks so too but in a different direction. The film’s official building is in the suburbia wherein it is clockwork of boring jobs from one place to another. Bob is a ticking bomb and it is tragic when there are people in a closed space to go unnoticed. It is sadder that surviving from school and college one can skip chances to really open up to some one. The opportunity though needs to be grabbed by the person themselves but how much of extending hands do they get? There is a thin line in stepping on toes and helping out. The film evokes that discussion among us yet it does not come full circle in terms of story.

After many of the questions of us are closely answered, it suddenly topples itself. The movie lifts high when the chemistry in between Bob and Venessa begins. And I would have been interested more scenes with their adjustments to their new life. Venessa finding herself from being a career obsessed go getter woman to realize life has more meaning. Similarly to focus on Bob’s agitation getting more attentiveness and less details on riddles. The tone of the film does not elevate that into an art experience.

Director/Writer Frank Cappello handles bright lights with a congesting darkness in an elevated building. It works considerably on Bob and Venessa and fails incredibly on the character of Mr. Shelby played by William H. Macy. There was lot much to be seen in between these two accidental fortunate/unfortunate people. I liked “He was a Quiet Man” for Slater’s good performance, Jeff Beal’s original score and the colour tone. And I disliked for its ending to leaves me completely clueless.