"My Dinner with Andre" (1981) - Movie Review

“My Dinner with Andre” is the conversation between two friends. One of them is a struggling playwright Wally (Wallace Shawn) and the other is a disappeared man coming back from various world wide trips and who used to be a successful in theater, Andre (Andre Gregory). Wally is the typical surviving man in the 1970s New York for his play to stage up and an acting job to live up. He mentions about his girl friend Debby whom we never meet and how they are managing their tough life together. This is the dinner he would not forget.

The film is simply two friends discussing mainly about existentialism and the spell under which we the people live in. The reach out to feel things. Lets face it that if one thing we from childhood learned, that would be to shun the darkness and embrace the comforting brightness, even if it is chillingly monotonous. Yet this confusion is a running question when the debate among friends takes into something else. What happens in the film is the deep peeling of the skin we have but not exactly a solution, because there isn’t.

Louis Malle directed film has two out of the restaurant scenes. One with Wally narrating his current state of his life and walking through the busy evening of the city and the other when he is traveling back in a taxi been infected by this mysterious feeling of seeing things differently, at the least for one night or just the cab ride back. As they place themselves opposite to each other by the waiter (Jean Lenauer), for most of the initial half an hour Andre goes on this loop of his past few years in different parts of the world. Wally absorbs these.

Andre mentions that he felt dead inside and the habituation of the theater made him to go away for unplanned life turns. He seem to have led a group in the forest of Poland where his friend Gretowski, an experimental theater artist arranges it. Before we meet Andre we know that he is going through an emotional crisis as voiced over by Wally. But Andre is a perfectly articulating person and stable in his thoughts. When Wally mentions to his audience in the start that one of their common friends saw Andre crying in a dark alley after seeing Ingmar Bergman’s film, we see the material in hand. We think he is on his mid life crisis which he did go through but after hearing Andre talk, we can see the outburst of him in that alley.

The screenplay written by these performing actors does give the feeling they are playing themselves which they denied in an interview with film critic Roger Ebert. But they are and not playing themselves. It is the extraction of their talk in some of the bars, restaurants and the theater they would have worked together. The fascinating thing about Andre talking about the stale acceptance the current generation and city life has embraced is relatable but Wally jumps in saying that may be that is what people want. They want to be masked under this blanket of comfort and be cozy and end the life. Ignorance is bliss as I always say is a great feeling and I am definitely not condescending. It is an art when it is needed. Completely ignorant is fatal.

This is a film which goes on multiple direction. It appear as babbles of a desperate man and at critical points pinches the flow chart life we have come to lead and the for-loop we have been destined to do. It becomes overwhelming at times but surprised how well both of them were engaged in portraying these ideas without being mistaken for an elevated step towards its audience. They know the audience for this film and talk to them. And we have questions and importantly countering points which are fed by the character of Wally. Hence we become participants and are thrilled to be getting a feel of something out of ordinary through this film.

“My Dinner with Andre” is not a wordplay. It deals with meaningful perception of the living existence through two different minds. One has gone through this journey of several years leaving his family and friends in search of finding something more with his life. The process is inevitable. Every one of the beings go through it. There is not concrete division into this ultimate designer and the sheer nothingness but the wandering in between. But people want definite because then it is a completion, the need for lead on without worrying about it. Many find in the religion but it becomes a being of its own and then there is the another end to that line which brings out Andre. “My Dinner with Andre” is the discussion we would have had with the people and become the best friends. We would have gained friendship in those open forum and learned something. There cannot be a solution and rather no one talks out there for solution but to simply enjoy that cloud of various angles of thinking. Each of the points are complimented even in disagreeing. It stops somewhere and we go back to the path we have been talking. It is a milestone in the ages we spent and are about to spend. “My Dinner with Andre” is one such for its viewers.

"The Limits of Control" (2009) - Movie Review

Leaving a film as a mystery of nothing sometimes mesmerizes and leaves the audience to be fulfilled with the experience of mysticism. Jim Jarmusch’s “The Limits of Control” is not one of those. It in its sporadical spring bounces rarely gets the attention from its viewer. Jarmusch is an uncompromising film maker and he shoots films purely on the journey of his mind. His “Dead Man” is what came in front of watching this film with a careful meditation in monotony, boredom and a practiced silence.

We follow a man (Isaach De Bankolé) and the thumb rule is that when he is socially detached and has a disciplined day, he should be an assassin. With that assumption we see him collect details for an assignment. He flies to Madrid and settles in a hotel wherein no one seem to live. He is asked to visit a cafe and there he orders two espresso in separate cups. A mystery person with violin (Luis Tosar) arrives in the second day visit and talks about music and the instrument. The cryptical dialogues which becomes poetry when the mood sets in or the nonsensical pseudo philosophical garbage, which mostly is when the film loses us.

After that it is the cycle of this procedure. The man goes to places, situates himself in a hotel and visit a cafe or travels in trains and cars. Whenever he treats himself with a set of espresso, Jarmusch destined person arrives with the sort of a strangeness and exchanges matchbox with a boxer symbol in different colours. Most of it has a bit of paper with codes and our silent man swallows with his drink after reading it. There is a helicopter, a naked lady (Paz de la Huerta), many espressos, different locations, hotels and disconnected scenes.

Jarmusch playing with the melody of the mood than the plot is not something unexpected, which is exactly the treat I go in for. In this, he is way over the top and there is nothing but stories of nothingness. The dialogues are the expressions blabbered in the rest room by someone trying to be high up. It does not become an experience of the environment and becomes a slow and painful lethal injection putting us to sleep we do not want to be.

Is this a hallucination or an imagination of the lonely man dying in the life of his solitude? The string of conversation of these messengers carrying information for the man, each talk about a particular subject. Music, films, science, art, paintings and even near the end one of them played by Gael García Bernal asks whether the man had hallucinations. Hello !!! The audience feel like having one and not a pleasant journey either.

Many actors come as a cameo and becomes bland whiff of the invisible scent. John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Hiam Abbass and Bill Murray are there for reasons of the confidence they have over the director than the scene they were shooting. It is the confidence they put on every film but have a vague clue of the scenes they were doing. I can only imagine them going crazy on what the heck they are asked to do in this disjointed opaque set of acts Jarmusch requested.

I am a great fan towards some of the films Jarmusch made. “Broken Flowers”, “Ghost Dog” and “Down by Law” would be those where in he has his signature but also characters we could remember. There is a feel of empathy and exist in the world of him but with pure flesh and blood. Even if it is screenplay pages on screen, they were there. Here the lone man is an inanimate object. He smiles at the beauty of music and dance but the curiosity to know his other side does not quest in the viewer.

I have told my friend who adores Andrei Tarkvosky that my body and mind goes involuntarily to sleep mode (literally) by the array of the images in his films. For long time I believed it is the day before devoid of sleep hours but entering “The Limits of Control” fresh and pumped, the instincts of boredom kicked in. I began to feel am in a class of unknown science formulas and I have to wake myself up to finish this. I admire Jim Jarmusch but this time around he indeed pushes the limits of his control and pushing us out in the process.

"L.A. Story" (1991) - Movie Review

A pride does not need a reason for characteristic when the judgment is by majority. The rudest people, the craziest traffic and the vanity of the city as such becomes a part to be proud of, insane it might sound. But the proud is not the behaviour rather their survival into it and becoming a person they could be fine with and around. It varies but Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin) fits the character. He hates the city of Los Angeles but does the randomness as a clockwork. Nothing remiss in the life he leads. It just is devoid of actual sensitivity in the little tiny place called soul.

There is this melodramatic, soap operatic and formulaic love story in Steve Martin’s screenplay and there is also the satire born out of the love for the city which becomes the character he anticipated. Nothing is normal in this city. For a date the young girl (Sarah Jessica Parker) Harris meets takes him to a place where they provide enema services. Liberating and frees the mind, she says. When people go beyond to be out of normal and the city does it together, there is nothing more monotonous than that. In a desperate attempt to differentiate themselves, they become the stereotype. Such is this young girl who needs a commonly given name Sandi to be spelled as SanDae*. Yes there is a star in the end.

Harris is a weatherman. Funnily the most easiest conversation starter with a stranger is the most boring part in the television programs. Still it is an unspoken mandate to have those and the nature of LA makes the man to be this jumpy and high wired presenter. He ends his report with a tidbit of Mercedes price fluctuations and uninterrupted car telephone service updates. His current girl friend Trudi (Marilu Henner) is an obligation to the community he lives in and she does the obligation herself by sleeping with the agent (Kevin Pollak). Harris is consumed by this nerve wracking style of existence and he meets the English lady, Sara (Victoria Tennant).

The film is full of parody, spoof and the satire we can compare to any city life. Along with director Mick Jackson, Steve Martin tries hard to sway away from the romantic comedy genre but it is tough. He breaks the chain and in the small moments of true love, he inserts sudden wackiness. And the people of LA are oblivious about it. That is the comedic element. Without that it would be a regular comedy much predictable but that extended indifference to the situation is the niche this film targets on and of course get its darn right.

Beyond the arrogance I hold up against romantic comedies, the map direction this couple takes to find out is detective curiosity knowing who the killer is. The film goes for the unusualness the city has to bear with. The ride is set as early as Harris steps out of his house and into the car. He takes the deadliest routes (but may be safer than the regular highway of the city) and gets to the destination promptly. He talks about the ambition of his classy news presentation to turn down walking in a parade and does the flamboyant, over the top weatherman. This set up is very important for the film because it should not be in the middle. That is part of the reason we do not mind when the sign post begins to communicate to Harris through its screen wordings.

“L.A. Story” provides a perspective of being a city person and viewing the skewed society he/she lives in. The residents knows the strangeness of their chores but the survival chances are possible adhering to it. The gain is the access to the best places many cannot even fathom. Unfairness is gloating itself and wearing fluorescent pink outfit in this town.

Steve Martin especially is loving in the role of Harris. He is the jerk but a jerk we like. He is the citizen thinking that he is leading a mundane life in this place of glamour and phony. What he does not know is that the next person is thinking the same. Both do not have the drive to push forward and expect a miracle to get something impromptu in their life. I believe the frustration of that unknown miracle is the signpost crying out aloud to move out of the cars and walk outside.

"Things You Can Tell by Just Looking at Her" (2000) - Movie Review

Rodrigo Garcia’s debut film becomes the starter for the kind of films he was about to make. He followed this with “Ten Tiny Love Stories” and the spectacular “Nine Lives”. He likes women for their beauty, the similarity, the differences and webs and webs of entanglement and complexity. Women is his inspiration and his films says how much of them shape the men around them. They seem to think otherwise but the control is within them and losing it to gain the love is thought as their part of the pain but they are wrong.

Five women and they have problems, as every one. Garcia loves those about these beauties. In a polished wooden floored house is Dr. Keener (Glenn Close) taking care of her mother (Irma St. Paule). She is awaiting a phone call from a fellow doctor, she likes. She is only met with the calls she is indifferent too. The loneliness in her is reeking out of these cozy house. There comes Christine (Calista Flockhart), a tarot card reader. A sophisticated doctor looking for answers in a fortune teller. This itself is a great cue for Christine to do a close called prediction about Dr. Keener. In my college years there was a junior girl whom I came to know as an expert in reading personalities through their handwriting. More than what she said about, it is the authority and confidence in reciting those that put me in amazement. She was in control and that was the most amazing thing more than her reading me well. Christine is not authoritative but confident. We know that her reading is not swaying away but cornering down Dr. Keener.

From a lonely self made woman, we go to Rebecca (Holly Hunter) another powerful self made woman. She has a boy cut and a slim tender body which we see her lying in bed while her lover (Gregory Hines) kisses her body. She comes across a homeless woman (Penelope Allen) outside her workplace where she works as a manager. Both smoke and in this case instead of Keener’s tarot card reader, Rebecca gets a lesson in judgment through honesty of this woman who calls her Nancy. In four of the five segments we see women getting old and in fear of the youth passed and the chances burned away. Here Rebecca learns she is pregnant, does not hesitate a bit to go for abortion. “Do you need to consult this with someone” asks the doctor (Roma Maffie) and her friend and she responds that the wife of him would not like that with a smile. Her sarcastic humour is the end to that contemplation.

Garcia likes this method of separating the prime characters and thereby providing enough detail about them completely. He is not fond of plot. He loves the people’s small gestures and the big letdowns. And the relationships with men are not the formulae. There is game but not the one we are aware of. Rebecca walks through the city and sees her employee Walter (Matt Craven) get in a bar. She goes and the immediate nature of their conversation suggests where the night is leading to. Earlier that day, the homeless woman calls her whore twice for which she reacts being hurt but continues being friendly with her. Next day after the night, the woman begins to assault her with words of judgment and Rebecca asks for more. She wants someone to look through her and see the flaws and infuriate inside on those sentences of whiplash.

While four of the segments were extremely affecting, the saddest of the four is the odd pick. May be the premise is a known depressant of an effect as such that it becomes a cliche even before it ventures. Christine the woman from the first segment is the caregiver for her lover Lilly (Valeria Galino). They talk about canaries and the first time they met as Lilly is on the verge of dying of cancer I presume. We are lost in these heard tragedies and deviate in the minds of thinking about the other women.

There is a heartwarming story of a mother (Kathy Baker) and a son (Noah Fleiss) and the dwarf neighbour Albert (Danny Woodburn) that moves across the street. The final story is about sisters Kathy (Amy Brenneman) and Carol (Cameron Diaz). Carol is blind and the dynamics of her getting a date (Walter coming again as the man jumping off his ladies after the first few dates) and how it affects Kathy is dealt with confusion of mixed feelings. Carol brings down Walter and Kathy sees naked Walter been playfully locked out by her sister. Carol tells a merciless comment “Go to my sister, you will do her a favor”. That pierces her. The next day Carol is stood up but Kathy gets a date but she does not tell Carol. What is this reactions? We do it all the time and hardly notice those small sacrifices, niceties and the sharpening unmerciful acts. Garcia finds those, collects and presents in segments.

"Tyson" (Documentary) (2009) - Movie Review

The ferocious sharpness in the kid Mike Tyson’s eyes are gone in his last fight against Kevin McBride in June 11 2005. His physicality on the appearance does not look not even a bit different when he started his career but there is a change, the time did a work on him. Those are his mistakes and regrets inside those gloves of steel. This is “Tyson” one of the best documentaries I have seen and is directed by James Toback. It is fierce and honest and a man deciding to come out of the sheath of misery after forty years of a life he reckon been behaved and executed better. He is making amends, to those around him but especially to himself and James Toback gives that in the best way.

The ninety minutes of the film contains no silence from the fighter. The narration is nonstop. He recites the childhood in the Bronx to the regular visits to the Juvenile detention center and as he grows up to enter the rings, the fights have commentary are combined with Tyson’s experience. I did not realize that the entire film consists of his narration. Toback combines the interviews without a pause. The film is a one single line of narration by the man to avoid any sort of judgments, because there already have been many. This is his story and entirely, completely and purely his version but with nothing between him and us.

Having missed the regular childhood many of us get, Tyson’s consisted of petty thieving and explains how most of his friends are either dead or in prison for life. He tells in the film that he lived this extravagant and over the top life style because he thought he would never live the next day. He is amazed to see the age of forty. The greatest emotional times of his life came during his training under the late Cus D’Amato. As he is found by Bobby Steward in the detention center, he is directed rightly to the man outside for something advanced in the skill he found.

Tyson as a kid was bullied and as he explains how he was picked on, he never fought back. He began to find solace in pigeons and he reacted when that part of him was disturbed by a bully. He won the fight as he says and he never stopped after it. He wanted to escape being hurt and humiliated. That escape guided him in the paths to help and destruction. He made the choices for most of it but sometime the nature took its own.

A film of sufficient detail and it rings to its audience because of this multiple cameras bringing together the man. Toback wants portray the different sides and the narration of the boxer. Tyson as any of the individual is a man of extremes. The difference is he acted on some and did not when he needed to. He got a great conditioning in discipline and self reform from D’Amato but as he died and eventually the stardom of his success made him the god, he fell for it. It is not that fame alone got to him but the distrust he acquired long ago made it feasible to do it perfectly good and screw up in a spectacular fashion.

The analogy might be unusual but Tyson reminded me of the protagonist of the film “The Weatherman”, played with absolute perfection by Nicolas Cage. In that we learn about a man choosing the best worst decisions in his life and wondering why he did it. He tells his audience what someone should not do in a relationship or human social behaviour and does it. Of course he advices when he is doing it and that flash of thought does not help him. Tyson would have had the inner voice through those moments and this film might be the first time he got the right person to do it some justice. All those interviews and outbursts are captured and with the voice of Tyson, we learn of the state and frame of mind he was.

The film is stunning since a person confiding to his audience without inhibitions. Being who he was and who he is right now, this is a study of a human. It gives the psychology of the extremes and the differences of lives each of us lead. Tyson talks blatantly about the days of nothing but sex and the days of nothing but hatred. He admits the mistakes he did which is what makes it a step above the regularity of a biographical documentary. It is not about a success in the end happening in a ring. It is about an effort of person to explain himself to him. Tyson tells how he feels before a fight. How when he walks closer and closer to the ring, he is wary of his opponent and the fear he is building. He explains the fear and the confidence are accumulating and the psychology of defeating his opponent way before the fight. I was amazed by that tactic, simple as it seems, unbelievable as it sounds, that is startling. And we see how that never got translated into the life he led.

It is a film I could not sway a bit. It is a packed up fast moving and brilliantly told documentary. Its editing by Aaron Yanes is uncanny in bringing the frames and arranging the interviews, fights and footage. But mostly it is the narration by Tyson which would have placed the slides easily into a display of life in ninety minutes encompassing the details of destruction and the prospects for a better life. What we learn most importantly from James Toback’s “Tyson” is that it is never too late for anything.

"Brüno" (2009) - Movie Review

With the knowledge of the reputation of Sacha Baron Cohen’s and not watched any of his characters, TV show or films, I went in and the preparation is still useless. “Brüno” is a film heavily surviving on the reaction of its audience and it succeeds. Larry Charles directing this mockumentary has the committed actor and performer Cohen. Many people forget that his performance carries lot of potential risk wherein he does not work around actors but real people with real beliefs, moral code and who can bludgeon him to pulp of the antics he puts up. Whether he is intruding into the privacy and disturbance of the public is debatable but the camera out there tells some obvious presumptions. I began as a kid entering his first roller coaster and scared. I am not joking but Cohen brings the real person in people. He takes it far and deliberately exemplifies the possibility of a character amongst us which would reevaluate certain behavioural tolerance. He does not expect his audience to like Brüno, he wants to laugh, hate and then in a spur of that heightened hilariousness shows the morality and the conflicting guilty pleasures.

The gayer than gayer Brüno is an Austrian and a TV show host losing his celebrity status. The film is the venture of reclaiming that fame in the nation of United States along with other countries becoming stops for laughs. Cohen makes the stereotype and then thinks the freakish obscene activities no one wants to see or even think about to make the character perform those. Many of the people he meets while are spooked does not gets suspicious of the gag. In the living media world of tabloids and reality television, anything is possible and anything passes. In this mode he has lowered himself beyond imagination and the people crack in unbelieving honesty.

There is a plot which guides the path of explicit nudity. Rarely have I seen people walkout of the theater and this after noon show had a few not able to withstand the penis dance. Films while depend on the reactions, shows what we are made of. We conveniently avoid those confrontations in the regular life and Sacha Baron Cohen attracts his audience with a premise and burst the images right in the face of the people (literally).

He comes to the epitome of celebrity chaos, Los Angeles. There he finds a famous agent and beyond the ludicrous display of acting, the agent manages to get him as an extra in a television series “Medium” and even persuades CBS to have a focus group in seeing the pitch of his TV show. A TV show which I might not be surprised to inspire someone to get into VH1 or MTV. Cohen mocks the situation of the media stooping to the worst possible sensationalism.

There is a loyal assistant Lutz played with a sincerity close to Cohen by Gustaf Hammarsten. He follows Brüno like a puppy and does his chores. Brüno goes on being himself and not alone ruins but creates a giant black hole to suck in the normalcy. The steps he gets into for becoming famous are nothing but satirical, spoof and a little bit of homage. With no tiring, Brüno tries again and again in achieving his status of fame. He tries a TV show, fails gloriously, pursuits for a sex tape and he lures Ron Paul, the presidential candidate into an interview and then a private moment in another side room, and decides to adopt a baby when he makes a stop in Africa. He auditions for kids and reveals a deadly scenario of how parents are desperate to get their kids on to the path of fame. More than Brüno’s shocking images, it is the real people in an unheard honesty reveal details of scary thoughts. Finally he realizes what he is missing and decides to go straight which becomes the best part of the film.

Brüno is not sensationalism but an idea taken to the extreme seriousness. The people doing it are dead serious about their agenda. They pick the people and while at any time expects the people to flip out. The people like psychics, gay converters, “strong” men and the macho outlook of the National Guard are both made to look normal by Brüno and freaks their audience with their confessions. It is a satire which takes a method many will not like or cannot stand.

Brüno is destined to be offensive and painfully funny. Many times I was not sure whether I really need to laugh at this. But the mind reacts to those and laughing becomes an involuntary action. Whether I acknowledge the acts or what is it? While Cohen wants his audience to laugh out loud, he creaks in another level of human mind into it. He brings the side we do not really acknowledge and in that we confront ourselves. “Brüno” is daring, offensive, explicit, beyond explicit, satirical and unbelievably funny.

"Duane Hopwood" (2005) - Movie Review

Often people forget the real actors behind their typecast TV sitcom stars. It takes a breathtaking change to get over that and see them as a different personalities. Take them a little more serious. “Friends” success bit the back of the stars in it as they wanted to further their career elsewhere. Some did few bits and the most successful would be Jennifer Aniston. If someone that got really shadowed by that sitcom, that would be David Schwimmer and “Duane Hopwood” is a film which tells that he is a terrific actor.

Here as the titular character he embodies a man spiraling towards the rock bottom. Duane Hopwood is a great guy, a great husband and a great father. He drinks, and he hates to be called “drunk”. He works as one of the casino managers and his shift is from 3 to 12. When the sun hits the top, it is a leisurely evening for him when the rest of the city lunches. It is time to shoot a couple. That has got him divorced. When the movie begins, we see him driving drunk. He is stopped by a cop he knows. The cop knows Hopwood as a person than a drunk and offers a ride back. Duane is not able to stand still and he reaches back seat. There is his daughter sleeping and that is his ticket to fall.

Duane is a reasonable man pushed to the emotional cliff. What hurts most to him is that the distress spot he is in has nothing but himself to blame. He cannot get his arms around that fact. Not that he does not know but he cannot get it sinked in. Rationality is long sedated by his emotions, self pity and booze, of course. He loves his kids and this irresponsible act revokes his license and in the dawn of a cold winter in November, he is put to ride a bike to work. He gets all the more reason to hate his position.

Writer and Director Matt Mulhern gets the man right and his friends and family more perfect. His ex-wife Linda (Janeane Garofalo) does not want to do this to him but she needs to act as a mother too. Here the civilized conversations are not customary but out of concern. Duane loves her and she is battling her emotions inside. It is while painful for Duane to watch her go out with another man, she cannot bear the sight of the man she once loved to witness that.

Films such as this takes sides and even in the unreasonable reactions of its main personality, there is an unexpected characteristics of justifying it. In “Duane Hopwood”, we see both sides. He is run over by the tragedies of life continuously and in it he begins to become this flight risk of violent behaviour. He is frustrated by the falling relationships and he flips out. It causes further turmoil.

It is not a story of self pity. It is a story of one man’s journey persistently being sucked in to the underneaths of the isolation and holding of life. It is sad because the bond which gets broken is not a natural process but a self inflicted pain. We see him in his rough ride. The film opens with him being the happy husband and dad. We also see him going to the bars and coming back with the SUV cross parked. This side of a person is unpredictable and the addictive behaviour only makes him even more on the edge.

His friends and neighbours care for him and know the good man inside. His colleague Anthony (Judah Friedlander) is loud and persists to be Duane’s room mate. He wants to be an actor but steps up for a stand up comic. He likes Duane and does not sympathize but understands. Even when Duane loses the patience with the man, he is forgiving in his own way. There is Fred (Dick Cavett) and Wally (Bill Buell) his old neighbours inviting him for the thanksgiving dinner and try to do what they can. There is Duane’s regular bar waitress (Susan Lynch) knowing the man. All these people including Linda suffers a lot more than Duane because they know the best in him. Duane is angry at himself but his expression of it only results in further incidents.

When the film started and the first time we hear Duane speak is when he is stumbling for complete words. And we do not see the sorry faced sitcom hero, we see an irresponsible adult. Then we see how he can be, good and likable. A very good husband and an affectionate father wondering where the life he once had. In his sitcom role, Schwimmer has been the sympathetic geek (becoming a little too boring though as the seasons began to pile) and never needed any kind of extra work to get that from his audience. Here he portrays something simple as it sounds in a layer of practicality and understanding of this person. I am not comparing the roles, but amazed by the shift this actor can do and little sad on how he cannot been seen more often in character roles.

"Absence of Malice" (1981) - Movie Review

The democracy of journalism is a free pass used right, wrong and whatever between with a righteous stamp to it. The right to know as the reporters use is not the right for the privacy. It is a cruel standard and the remedy is beyond a point of little too late. An innocent person can wander scorned with a tattooed prejudiced opinion on the streets. Association with people makes the public sketch the characters of others, easy to do and free of charge and nothing wrong in speculating is the liberty to have a guilt free gossip. When it ends up in a paper, it is catastrophe to the involved people and it is irreparable. In “Absence of Malice”, Sydney Pollack gives Michael Gallagher’s (Paul Newman) peaceful life being brought to the troubled sea by a rugged and ruthless officer of the law Elliott Rosen (Bob Balaban) along with a shabby journalism by an aspiring young reporter Megan (Sally Field).

Pollack’s introduction to Paul Newman’s Michael is reflective of the film. He is shown walking in stooped grief of his bootlegger dad’s funeral watched as a taped film in the office of the Strike Force run by Elliott. Then he comes in a simple jeans and a checkered shirt into the office of Miami Standard. He has simple question for Megan, who is the “knowledgeable source” she is talking about in the article saying Gallagher is the key suspect in a murder investigation. Megan was left in the office of Elliott with the investigation file of Gallagher like a hungry dog and bowl of food. Elliott purposely leaks the story to tighten the grips over Gallagher for some information of a dried homicide case of the local union member. Michael at the day of the murder was with his lady-friend Teresa Perrone (Melinda Dilon) and reasons he cannot reveal.

Pollack shows the insides of the newspaper office with Megan preparing the material. We learn the nuances of wording it and the covering their butts discussion with the lawyer. Gallagher summarizes Megan’s seek of truth, she simply eaves drop. Anything talked to a reporter becomes a story. As long as there is a source and per se reference to the speaking person, everything is fine. The story is made and the opinions are left with the people. While the freedom of press is paramount, the responsibility that comes with it is often sparsely considered. With the current news coming out in the days, it is sensationalism and the idealistic aspirations of true media workmanship diminishing day by day.

A film with very simplistic politics following the people running across to get the job performed by any means possible. Elliott thinks he is doing the best to solve the case, Megan is driven by her reporter instincts and the district attorney (Don Hood) has his own. The actions of these result in a tragedy. Pollack narrates with Newman’s calm performance. He has learned to go for a simple life. He made the bootleg into a legitimate business and works hard. This is a person knowing his association will haunt his life. That has been the case in his past. We know from the casual manner he comes to Megan’s office and tosses the newspaper. He wants to know the person to deal it immediately. He is not surprised by the accusations but is deeply worried by it.

This is not an edge of a seat thriller or smartly dialogued screenplay. It follows the day to day aspect of the media and underlines the implications of the lines printed on a paper. The ripple effect can be a deadly device in triggering people to their edges. The film’s retaliation act by the protagonist appears too smart when it comes to the room with a short and powerful performance by Wilford Brimley as Assistant US Attorney James Wells. He is smart in terms of estimating people’s reaction. He plays the people involved in troubling him. He is not proud but has to do something for this continuous blame.

Pollack relies on the bitterness of the reality and the common sense in the political scenario and then overturns the same in his protagonist’s cleverness. He did so in “Three Days of the Condor”, a man trapped by the job he thought to be safe making him prime target overnight to the company he works, CIA. Here Gallagher is a simpleton getting dragged by his family’s reputation and acts to the bother. He succeeds but with a sorrow face and joyless relief. For Megan, she gets her lesson quite hardly, twice and seeks forgiveness within herself.

"House of Games" (1987) - Movie Review

The 1987 “House of Games” winged in is a directorial debut by the twisty sharp writer David Mamet. It has the deception and betrayal smeared in its people and rather the con I unravelled well ahead does not dim the fact that it is more than a show piece for a con film. It is a study of the shadowed characters and the resident of immeasurable caliber act in the people we meet waiting for the spark to kick in. That is the film of Mamet’s skill and it succeeds along with Joe Mantegna as Mike.

Wiki in its description says repetitively that the viewer should watch the film with next to nothing idea about it. I watched it with nothing but the personal awareness that Mamet’s films are twists and deception. That did not help me in identifying the ongoing but kept me alert. Whether it is essentially true? Whether I am complacent in discovering this plot? Does this make me better over the writer? The above are the things the film wants to get its viewers think. But I wanted more challenge as I began to be a little arrogant of the discovery I found in the film, which is not the way to be watched and Mamet does not beckon that from his audience either. Finding it might be the idea but not challenging it to prove something to themselves.

Regardless of Mamet’s film has its materials based on cons, it does not gets boring because he finds the platform to present it in forms we often practiced to see as action, thriller or drama. Look at “Glengary Glenn Ross” wherein he puts these salespersons into the cage to bribe, beg and steal for another day of living. His characters carry a charm, cowardice, courage and comedy. But beyond that there is the unexpectedness in them. In Mamet’s film everybody is capable of everything or at least he would make his audience think so. Then how he handles “Spartan”, a CIA operative tracking down the one of the country’s important person. Nothing we know about Val Kilmer’s character but he can be violent, fast and reasonable.

In “House of Games”, Lindsay Crouse plays a psychiatrist Margaret Ford is a representation of general audience. Her life has been financially sumptuous with a work of hearing people retch out their dreams of misery and despair. She is getting consumed by this process and has a mentor and friend Dr. Maria (Lilia Skala) to provide her wisdom of dealing with it. She does not suffice the emotional completion Margaret wants. A compulsive gambler (Steven Goldstein) tells her that he owes twenty five grand to a man and he will be killed for not returning the money he never had. She offers to help him being put in a spot and makes her visit to the pub he said, House of Games. She goes inside and calls for Mike the man who can forget the debt. She demands a deal to forget the money and Mike shows that her patient only owes 800$ and then he counter offers something. She sees a room from where he came out which is a gambling table. He asks to watch out for a man’s particular mannerism which would help him win the bet when he goes to use the rest room. Now 800$ is nothing for her and she could have instantly paid it back, but she does not. She takes up the offer. We know why she does that and Mike knows it a lot well. Beyond this there is no need for summary. May be the remaining film would unfurl easily, may be not but watch Montegna in his deliveries of lines, mannerisms and telling the truth while concealing the best. He explains the idea of con to her in a scene, “It’s called confidence game. Why? Because you give me your confidence? No. Because I give you mine” We would do that to Mamet but we do that for not being conned rather want to be conned.

The doubt of this game goes on and we do not see the end of it. This might not be the great film as I expected it to be but it is always a fun for me to watch any film of Mamet. He recites Zen like philosophies in betrayal and trust. There is no effort in the screenplay to fool his audience. He sees it as a character study and an exploration of ourselves in the nature of the emotional calamities we are ready to perform. In that, it is more than a con film. We want to be smart and so does his characters. The films of his rarely has any character who is cinematically dumb. His characters are either practiced their skills to perfection or the personality we would associate with rather making it a generic representation of the people. Not stereotypic but smartly common sensed.

“House of Games” happens continuously without a break. Not fast and hurried but dropping cues for its audience to follow. We learn a lot more on this psychiatrist at the end of the film while Mike knowing that still cannot avoid it. While the film is about Mike’s marksmanship, it is more about the unforgiving vulnerability and capacity a being like Margaret cannot withstand. We can be a victim of anything but not a con game. No one will be happy about being had and “House of Games” tells that the extremity of that reaction as it closes. Not an end I liked but it gave Margaret a crooked completeness as character and film.

"Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs 3D" (2009) - Movie Review

This is the franchise reinventing back to the basics. It has the herd living the domestic life with Manny (voice of Ray Romano) and Ellie (voice of Queen Latifah), an old tiring Diego (voice of Denis Leary) (come on! These beings need to get old some point) and the annoying yet the clown of the crowd Sid (voice of John Leguizamo). The side kicks Eddie (voice of Josh Peck) and Crash (voice of Sean William Scott) are there too doing their thing but it is the show of Simon Pegg as the crazy and daring Buck which sizzles the film.

As the adventure in the animation, regardless of the patient and artistic effort put forth, anything can be brought alive. Here we see a lava river and a huge water fall of it too. And as Sid is floating on it over a rock, he tries to paddle and it catches fire. We feel the heat and I am not saying it because of the 3D. The effects sure are reproducible as the predecessors but this time they know that the disaster of second installment needs rectification. They do so with Buck and a colourful world lying right beneath the cold surface of theirs.

Sid has been the clown and the friend like a wife. His character is based such that he cannot exist on his own. Diego on the other hand can but with Manny expecting his first child, the feel of something more than the ordinary life of his, which is to hunt and make fun of Sid. Latter never is tough and never gets boring but hunting has been a bumpy ride with a ferocious chase ending with the deer making the most humiliating and funny dance mocking Diego. It is time to hone his skills back again and the family environment is not going to make it any better.

I almost feel a little too crazy to seriously psychoanalyze these extinct animated animals to a considerable of degree of humanism. It is not a surprise though as director Carlos Saldanha with co-director Mike Thurmeier are in the industry of creating something more out of a kids film. When Sid follows Diego’s path of finding his own family, he stumbles on huge eggs and Sid being Sid begins to nurture. Next day he gets up to find three cutest dinosaurs mimicking his moves and assumes him as their mama. That would end in the real mama dinosaur getting back and taking Sid along to the world underneath. Understandably the herd goes back to rescue the friend.

There comes Buck. A weasel on several Red Bull perform fast stunts with nifty cleverness. It is not choreographed but is a dance of super high octane acts. Simon Pegg does not become an accent alone but a rejuvenating experience for the franchise getting old. Suddenly everything is lightened up and when Manny and crew asks for help, Buck tells rules like Tyler Durden and means it seriously. Then again he erases it as he thinks through in the journey. If this film which is nothing but a formula-done-well becomes an exciting movie, it is because of Pegg’s Buck. As Eddie and Crash see him as this action hero idol, so do we and is no doubt will be the favourite character as their poster in the kid’s room. (It will be my desktop background for sure)

Kids are easy to please, atleast I was (on a more expensive level though in toys but in films, I did not care much as a kid) and in the coming films of animation, they want to make it fun for the parents accompanying them. In that there is the challenge of being within the line but stretch enough to entertain the adults and while the kids do not get much of it, still are giggling in the physical comedy of that scene. This film joins that list of other animation movies doing it right within the realm of those possibilities.

The 3D is not a distraction for once. I decided to not see “Up” in 3D because I knew that Pixar’s film would be more about the story than the screen cracking up into the objects of volume. Here the 3D is applied where it needs to be. Hence we fly through the snow filled mountains and coniferous trees with pleasure. We follow Buck through his flying acrobatic spectacles and walk alongside Manny and crew. The action in its creation gets more comic timing than the real stunt. The final showdown with the obvious Ellie giving birth with danger surrounding while Diego and Manny fighting strange creatures is put up but perfectly played. The extended finale of Buck battling the fearful and clandestine Rudy (for such a big dude, he sneaks up on people) is the right finish. “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” redeems the mistake of the second installment of this franchise.

"Public Enemies" (2009) - Movie Review

It all comes down to the Biograph theatre in “Public Enemies”. Dillinger (Johnny Depp) along with a mistress (Leelee Sobieski) and the pimp Anna Sage (Branka Katic) watches “Manhattan Melodrama” with Clark Gable as a gangster. He watches with a smile and a message syncing personally to him from the film. It is obvious that he sees Gable’s character to him but there is an odd bit of realization that this might be it. This is where the alley ends and there is nothing but garbage and sure death amongst it. Beyond the battle fights and shaking camera, Michael Mann’s film gets that across when we watch the film with John Dillinger.

The fascination towards the personalities in the dexterity of crime from the public is voyeuristic and the yearning to vicariously live through them. Not the serial killers but especially someone who seem to hit the underbelly of the contempt of the public. In Dillinger’s case, it was the riches in the times of Great Depression. When the person on the streets crawled and begged to get a menial job to feed their family, the sight of the glamour gets to them. A man who could stick it to the “man” becomes an idol. Dillinger did the robbing of bank with style, swift and perfection. Mann’s man, here Depp does it like a well trained and perfected acrobat on the high swings.

The anit-hero sentiments were used in analogy of the cop and thief, often times. It was the same director who brought Al Pacino and Robert De Niro to what might be described as the film that was meant to be for those two versatile performers. That was “Heat. In that both the characters Pacino’s ruthless flawed cop and De Niro’s merciless but professional crook acknowledge the existence of them on understanding the others. Previous year film “American Gangster” brought Russell Crowe as the cop with a personal life crumbling while Denzel Washington’s drug lord prospers in family merriness. Then there is the film I loved in 2008, “The Assassination of Jesse James by Coward Robert Ford” gave the admiration and obsession of Casey Affleck’s Robert Ford towards the outlaw legend Jesse James played with an eerie sympathy by Brad Pitt. All the men breaking the law and living the life of death game sense the end. That realization is the success of the films I mentioned and importantly like and have a sympathy for the devil in them. John Dillinger in “Public Enemies” earns it, though after lot of ragged shots and ear breaking gunslinging in the literal war between Agent Melvin Purvis’ (Christian Bale) men and him.

Mann does not make it easy to sit through the near to two and half hour film. He makes the Dillinger a sensible criminal. He does not like bloodshed but does not hesitate to shoot when the bullet from the cops welcomes him. For him it is the daring thrill and what comes along is the price he is willing to take. His philosophy in such a dangerous hold up and life is not explained much. Him and his trusted man John “Red” Hamilton (Jason Clarke) share the wisdom of their mentor of how to stay away from desperate men and they become one as the nature of their crime brings bad name to big syndicate criminals.

Dillinger sees Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard) and he madly is in love. He is demanding and decides this rough future for her. She is charmed and is curious enough to get her attracted to him. He says who he is and she laughs. She does not leave because of fear in their first meet but is upset for his attention going some where else for few minutes. He comes back later and asks to promise her to never leave her while beating a man for interfering the conversation. She is not petrified but as the public looking for that brilliance in his dare goes with him.

We know something of a little about Dillinger’s personal life but nothing about the cop Melvin Purvis. He is a dedicated young agent mocked by the personality of Dillinger. But Dillinger makes the law and order enforcement of the country a fool. He exasperates J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) and brings a shadow of self doubt in the small time he talks with Melvin. The only emotional response going underneath the face of Purvis is seeing his men getting shot and left in pool of blood. We know nothing about Melvin Purvis other than that he is determined and dedicated to the job and sells his soul when he is desperate for information. But he cannot take Billie getting tortured by his fellow officer. That is his limit.

“Public Enemies” depends on that Biograph theatre scene, without which it would have been a mere display of shoddy camera and deafening loudness of the gun battles. It takes patience in the middle when the tiredness in hunting the man and Dillinger getting into the floors to get some action to make sense of his life gets on to us. The changes in the film is sudden. It is not a forced unexpected entry nor a smoothened transition. We do not know when the reputation brought the Dillinger to the paucity of robbery but it does. Michael Mann’s film is a visually unique despite its nauseating docudrama method. As much as the final sequence is the film’s cornerstone, to arrive there without the road Mann takes, it would have been worthless shots of a passionate director. That journey makes it the killer shot for the film and “Public Enemies” survives.

"Day for Night" (Language - French) (1973) - Movie Review

François Truffaut’s “Day for Night” finds time for the ant workers dedicated, laborious and loving to work for the film they are shooting. That involves François Truffaut himself playing as a director in this film and how surreal it would have been for him. His films are a desperate attempt to match the life. I have not seen many but of the two before this, I did not become a great fan of his. Yet “The 400 Blows” is a bothering movie having the biting force of reality into the character. He does not try to exaggerate that acerbic quality. If an act of violence, fury or accident happens, there is a reaction time in us to process that it is really happening and in that film it brought that. I could not stand “Fahrenheit 451”, may be because it is far fetched into the future and mundane is not something one would expect of science fiction. In this film, he makes a risky but perfect choice of making a movie about making a movie. Yes, that is exactly what I meant.

In a crowded central town of Paris a camera follows the people but ejects the people from that bush of people it wants to be followed. The props in it becomes a transportation to the next character in the mixed crowd. A bus takes a woman in to the subway stairs and a man comes out of it and he heads to the road when another car takes that to shift us to the final character. Then two of those people collide and out comes “Cut!” and the director wants to do this whole thing again. I did not see any problems with it but he summarizes the extras not coming out at the right time with the proper preference of acting they were asked to do. This is a movie set and we will live through this and many others amongst the crew. We learn a little and lot of every one. And when the shooting wraps, we would be as them mingled and departed.

There are personal problems and troubles, deteriorating confidence and self esteem and a summing cliched but admirable hush hush affairs in the set. One such couple is the young actor Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Leaud) and Liliane (Dani). Alphonse is jealous, possessive and adorably loves Lilianne. Lilianne loves him like a puppy. We do not see her blatantly accepting these jealousy as a turn on but it is the mileage which keeps their relationship running. Of course it has to empty and randomness is the answer to that for Lilianne. For Alphonse, he becomes recluse and learns a valuable lesson about women and a miniscule effort to grow up.

François Truffaut makes sure he covers at least five to six people in a shot individually having a line leading to the next person. Because that is how a movie set will be, questions, doubts, issues and many “logistics”. There is a big expectation and media attention to the arrival of Hollywood actor Julie (Jacqueline Bisset). She had a nervous breakdown and in the subsequent time married the person treating her. “Did you marry your doctor?” asks a journalist in a press conference and she replies “I married a person whom I love who is a doctor”. She is clear and stable.

There are no plots apart from finishing the film and there are twists in the personal disappointments of the people working. A man of comforting presence and understanding is veteran actor Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Aumont). He delightfully welcomes Severine (Valentina Cortese) with whom he has worked in younger years. He is perturbed by his aging while she is self conscious and loses her cool in a shot which is comedic and sad. He is not bothered by the retakes and the self pity his fellow actor is creating. He knows what she is going through and does his best to get the scene smooth. To get an actor like that would be the best thing for a director and François Truffaut shares through the character of Alexandre.

Julie is level headed and knows the life she is leading. When she sees Lilianne unmercifully decides to crush Alphonse, she goes and conveys it to him. And she is concerned when he is ready to leave the place. What happens next crumbles her and she begins to doubt the rejuvenation from the meltdown she had. Yet we are not bothered because we seem to accept this kind of casual arrangements in the arena of film making and the process. But it is so due to the fact of the audience being the peeping tom in their intermingled misery of life and film they see of these actors.

François Truffaut’s film is not for every one. It is not an art house venture either. It is a film for people admiring the movies and laughs knowing the chaos running behind. It is not a surprise but the development in the people it contains is the pleasure in watching this film. He brings voice over sparsely as though there is no time to think in between the crazy schedule and unforeseen issues. His character dreams of a kid walking through a street in the middle of the night. When we see the put together continuous string of that sequence, we know that it is a film made by someone loving the film.

"Ten Tiny Love Stories" (2001) - Movie Review

Rodrigo Garcia’s “Ten Tiny Love Stories” has ten women telling not so much about their love but something like it. Each give attention to detail to the men they spent the night with, held their hands and keep repeating how they smelled. Some men stunk but liked them anyway, some were immaturely boyish but sweet. And they are women, being women in their characters. Each monologue does not last the same time and tells more about them than the people they talk about. The people in their stories become the background information. They are the tools, not the content.

Some of them tell their names not as an introduction but as a reply to the people they lived, met and passed on. Garcia does not surprise when he took the “In Treatment” TV series as it is a monologue towards the therapist, though there is a string of events which becomes the series. Here they seem to be doing an anonymous interview but and hence there is truth with the shades of withholding information than telling lies. The altered version and the version they would like to remember are told with vivid nature and would scare the men of the actuality their partners think of. Men might split it wide open but this minutiae of information is not something they will be patient for.

There is Radha Mitchell sharing the story of stumbling into an ex-boyfriend who specifically seem to have visited the town to see her after a sufficiently long time. She tells that the next day morning breakfast invitation will not be attended by her since she admits of spending a night with a guy she has been dating. But she is pulled back to the man she once loved and goes through a specific night. Similarly comes the next narration from Alicia Witt wondering the guy she wants to be with pulling back the memories completely disconnected.

All of them take single shot and lets the audience in for that minutes of their life they lived. We take this reality confession in a certain manner of judgment ourselves and amused on how these women play games to gain control and most of the time end being in a place they do not really like to be. Such is Lisa Gay Hamilton’s character been played well by this Argentinean guy and a date which she says heading nowhere begins to take another route. It is perplexing psychology that how she did not like it but anyway did it and put her in a position in a state of self humiliation and turn into an emotional confession.

Some of them blurt out the truth and some clearly show refrains of the details. The vignettes which begin to give women who we do not really like and then we are dozed off at certain revelation we do not really show interest in. Those are the ones we would not like to go on a date with. They would have mouthful of concealment gushing out in an interview like this.

The perspective is clear which is to look through the other side of the world away from men. It is not about the trophy of winning the sex but how insignificant the physiological importance generally is looked upon. The things which did not matter suddenly multiplying in building pyramids of frustration and then the mere sight of their partners disgusts and nauseates them. The sensation would soon become mutual and the end is ugly but the disappointment is haunting as such.
And it is not love stories because most of them deviate from where they start. That is an interesting approach as it is the procedure of a confiding conversation. We are wondered to whom they are delivering these. True that it is the audience but who really was there a friend or a psychologist? What is the relation between them to get such a open analysis of the sudden men, the long lasting men, the casual men and the disappointing men?

“Ten Tiny Love Stories” is as Garcia’s “Nine Lives” is an experimental approach and it keeps interested in these women till it gets sour. It gets a little unsettling to see the other side a little too candid and wondering the fundamental laws being altered about the trust. If the film completely does not work on me, it is because I did not like the characters than the film. May be a little too much of a detail in this is not something we men want to know. Ignorance is freaking bliss in this regard.

"Sin Nombre" (Language - Spanish) (2009) - Movie Review

The quest for the American dream has led to the pot pourri of the international residency in the country. The journey to get out here varies, sometimes morphed legit in the name of higher education to an occupation, which includes me. The other is the neighbouring country for the United States, Mexico which then also being the pathway for the further economically distressed nation like Honduras. “Sin Nombre” is that journey along with the tragedy of territorial wars, poverty spread in patches and bulk and the mixture of this humanity in the deadliest.

Regardless of the country, language and culture, in poverty there is a loyalty for territorial gangs. Wherever it started as an insignificant conflict becomes a tradition to that part. Then on the friendship with the members comes an infection of a misplaced adherence to the group. A devoted member of the clan La Mara is Casper (Edgar Flores) possibly in his late teens getting another kid Smiley (Kristian Ferrer) at the age of ten may be to the group. There he is inducted in the group by a timed cortes meaning beat the hell out of the little kid. Tattoos are trade marks and identification. The leader of that part of the town is Lil’ Mago (Tenoch Huerta Mejía), a ferocious merciless man. His face is covered with tattoos forming a permanent mask.

Casper seems to be a man with a chance for some slight change but is bound by the mob brotherhood and mostly fear of disobeying it. He is in love with a girl Martha Marlene (Diana Garcia). He keeps her off the life he leads in the day time because he knows better of his buddies, especially Mago. He tells Smiley to keep his mouth shut when they are asked about their scheduled lookout for the opposing gangs in their field. But Mago’s second in command Sol (Luis Fernando Peña) found a man from rival gang and he becomes the aided first kill for Smiley. Mago knows the truth and punishes both Casper and Smiley with cortes. Tragedy strikes when Martha stops by unannounced to be taken off by Mago and she dies in the effort to escape Mago’s rape attempt. “You’ll find another” tells Mago to Casper who clearly has departed and decided what he will do.

Simultaneously there is Sayra (Paulina Gaitán) from Honduras embarks her trip to New Jersey along with her father (Gerardo Taracena) and uncle who left when she was a child. He got deported and this time he would like to take along her daughter and brother. He has a family in US and makes them remember the phone number out there in case they get separated, which is quite possible. Sayra’s journey crosses Casper’s when along with Mago and Smiley they rob the immigrants over the train. The events out there would leave Casper take the train to nowhere while the young Smiley would soon become a Mago himself at the film takes us through this chase from the gang.

The blind and terrorizing film of “City of God” told these kids eager to be lifting guns and go through the life of being in the gang. Right from the young age, the feeling of belonging is imminent. If it does not come in the family or the family does not provide the necessity these kids want in such an environment, violence and sex are inches away as death too. At the age when everything makes sense in a unilateral manner, they become the fly seeking the electric light. Soon before the humanity takes some finding in them, they are deep into this mud of loyalty.

Writer/Director Cary Fukunaga does not go for clever dialogues. He makes up a story and has the characters get the attention in their stuck path. Casper as a kid would have got into the routine and when he finds love in Martha has realized the mess he made of himself He cannot get out and knows the worst is any time. And he knows the same when Sayra acquaints him. These characters in their age where a person of good life cannot imagine the cruelty and toughness they are introduced. They react to those where the balance in their decision has hardly formed. We are shocked when Sayra follows Casper blindly knowing his end. Casper is shocked too but knows the persistence she has and decides to play that to reach her to safety.

The camera work of Adriano Goldman captures the train journey through the lands of destitute in the condition of the people and the richness in the nature surrounding them. There is a constant shot when Casper takes Smiley into the head quarters of the clan and we are reminded of the world Henry Hill takes his wife in “Goodfellas”. Here it is bunch of young men tied violently by an identification insignificant and the power it brings upon of course with booze and women. “Sin Nombre” is a thriller, a drama of the inhumanity and the humanity and the people taking risk for something a little more of a better life in the American dream. Whether it becomes a nightmare before it achieves further ordeal is the dangerous adventure of Sayra with Casper.

"My Sister's Keeper" (2009) - Movie Review

Condolences and grief are an immediate attraction for unknown dilemma and unsettling place for people not involved in it. What to talk or whether to talk? Is there need to be false comforts or lying statements of obvious exaggeration? “My Sister’s Keeper” has those things covered perfectly some where in the end of it when the Fitzgerald family’s friends come in and talk about miracles, to do their best to cheer. They are out there when Kate Fitzgerald (Sofia Vassilieva) is in tears with her younger sister Anna Fitzgerald (Abigail Breslin) and elder brother Jesse Fitzgerald (Evan Ellingson). They stand there waiting for a moment of pause but dad Brian Fitzgerald (Brian Patric) has experience in those and asks “Who wants pizza?”

Kate’s cancer cure has been her genetically birthed sister Anna. Anna has been donating right from birth for her sister’s survival. The movie opens with the family in that cinematic oddities of face value happiness beneath crumbling, understandably. Anna enters the office of lawyer Campbell Alexander (Alec Baldwin) and says that she wants to sue her parents for medical emancipation. She has reached the brink to strip her body and put herself through these procedures with needles being punched in and out. She loves her sister but now she is fearing that her life will be of complication and sickness of the same. This shocks Sara Fitzgerald (Cameron Diaz) while Brian knows what they have done. Sara has been the warrior with immense bravery and courage. She along with her family has sheltered Kate with care and laboriously going through with it.

Adapted from the novel of the same name by Judi Picoult whose books I have not read but have often seen in the “Target” and “Walmart” where it is right by the women’s section. The film is obviously a tearjerker but there is a noticeable difference. Instead of attempting to put through the soaking sobs of this intolerable ordeal, suffering and fear of loss, Nick Cassevettes digs into the memory and keeps the courtroom drama at bay.

Nobody wants to go through this sadness but people do. When to give up and accept the reality is a line dividing life time regret and a consolation prize of slight comfort. Either way the loss is insurmountable and the living deals with it. Anna’s right in this regard definitely is unquestionable. And Kate has endured enough and more than that seen the pain her family is going through. Sara has taken this as any mother would, to go beyond the lines and fight. Brian knows the vigour in Sara and has stood by her all this time. He has managed to stand outside of Sara’s polarization towards the rest of the kids and looked what they are losing apart from their daughter.

This might be the film which does not exploit the sympathy and rather create empathy for each of the member in this family. Jesse, the older brother has missed out on the genuine care in the scale of the disease intensity to her sister. Brian has been missing his wife and Anna has been made feel to be a mere over the counter prescription. Regardless of these, the family love each other. This is how though it works in each of the house. While it is a dying daughter, it is something else in the other houses.

Cameron Diaz has managed to pull this off and I did doubt her on this role. As the passionate and clouded mother of these kids, she is neurotic but not hateful, she makes her despise but also feel her pain. Her character does not ask for sympathy but be in this fight without question. Brian has been that soldier but now reached that question of conscience and eventuality not able to submit that sincerity to her.

“My Sister’s Keeper” is not a sobfest and it genuinely goes through its characters and forms the shapes of emotions we would have stayed away from because meeting those is unbearable. Death is shocking but slow death is painful. Either ways it is an event to permanently shake any one. The film considerably leaves the moral judgment out of the equation and live through the moments of happiness in Kate’s life with her family. The argument of pro-life and pro-choice applies to the individual family and person with the emotional situation varying considerably. Hence Nick Cassevettes does the noble thing of dealing that only towards the Fitzgerald family. “My Sister’s keeper” might be the melodrama which was prudent and mainly understanding these characters than to blindly use them as tear devices.

"Away We Go" (2009) - Movie Review

This is the generation basked in the aura of cynicism. The doubt and despair is not alone towards the politics and media but in the tradition defining the purpose of men and women, relationships and families. Sam Mendes takes an indie route through the eye glasses of an American couple on this cynicism in a mellow tour around the northern United States. And the movie transcends into a film without a purpose and I mean it in a good way. The search for the objective is not a burning question for the film to end, which it does, in the tone of how the rest of the story takes place, cliched but funny, softening into melodramatic but moving and a refreshing feel of a pleasant time. We are amongst the trends and types of relationship with sometime reeking with self righteousness but mostly with yearnings unmet and the sorrows in the walls of the houses the couples visit. They are finding their walls. “Away We Go” is not a strikingly best film but a memory to reminisce as the days go by and would make it one of the best films.

We are interlaced into this one person and character by the elongated existence between our living and the dying to form an opinion. We change a little, may be not but the trust and hope for the remaining days of the lives is a fear swallowing very slowly until death. The bond of marriage is a name and a label but it is the crucial factor in a relationship. A symbol of the embarkment towards something binding. And that is scary. If it is not desired then there is another scare of being departed. It is the Catch - 22 of the cynic. In “Away We Go”, there is Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph) an early thirty couple living together expecting a baby. They are excited and trembled of this life changing event. Burt mostly is excited while Verona feels, well not exactly sure but sure she would make an interesting mother.

What Sam Mendes wants to see in Burt and Verona is not some dysfunctional comedy but the prefabbed normal couple. That regularity label might be argued on the misconstrued observation. Looking closer Burt and Verona represent the moderately well off but beings living on their own situation. They are not suburban role models but simpletons of the modern world, someone who could afford to fly, ride and dine, well. Their middle class status is the disorganized house. Is it me or is seeing John Krasinski bearded with normal clothes seem too weird? But fit they well for the film they shot.

Burt and Verona decide to go places around the country and decide to begin a life of their own, now that Burt’s parents (Jeff Daniels and Catherine O’Hara) are suddenly leaving to Belgium for their dream life style. The couple will be visiting their old friends, brother, sister and some acquaintance. All will be married and every one portray a marriage in various situation and formed philosophies. They weigh their future town by the couple they meet. May be because that is their scale of what kind of change that would impose on them in long run.

They goto Phoenix where Verona’s old boss Lily (Allison Janey) is loud, over the edge and has a husband (Jim Gaffagan) having his moments of monologue which freaks and entertains. Verona is little bigger than the usual 6 month pregnant women. Every one reminds to remind that without inhibition. They goto Madison where Burt’s child hood friend Ellen (Maggie Gyllenhaal) lives the pure human life. They are the organic freaks or the paranoid nature fanatics, however we like it. Their smell of self righteousness is suffocating and stinks of condescend with carefully placed softness. Their college friends in Montreal,Tom and Munch (Chris Messina and Melanie Lynskey) seem to have the perfect life and marriage. When Burt and Verona find that, they would be pleased but then made self realized of what they are up for in the upcoming sadness in them. They make unexpected stop over at Burt’s brother Courtney’s (Paul Schneider) place where they get another lesson from themselves.

Burt and Verona love each other very much in the movie way and in the real way in different angles. They are moving into their new life where they got to evaluate something of themselves. They look for places and people they could get an idea and get a lot more. The couples in the film are in levels of unhappiness that would eventually get Burt and Verona. This is not their fight to escape those because it just cannot happen. Not as fate but the surprise the long term commitment promises. They want to make their effort in a good start and the cross section of the current scenario of marriage is not sad but interesting as it gives intensity of the platform of the happiness we base it upon. “Away We Go” has some great music which initially seemed to be out of place but finds its way as the couples do. Sam Mendes who has his flair and flamboyance in frame picturing the disdain of the clock work life with an appreciation for the shambled beauty it presents, creates a film mellow, cheerful and a cynicism we accept as life itself from the writer couple Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida.

"Il Postino" (Language - Italian) (1994) - Movie Review

“The smell of barber shops makes me sob out loud” recites Mario Ruoppolo (Massimo Troisi) to Pablo Neruda (Philippe Noirret) the creator of the line, asking what is the reason behind it. The fictional Pablo Neruda in the “Il Postino: The Postman” replies “When you explain poetry, it becomes banal”. Indeed it does. This a simple and passionate film written and starred by Massimo Troisi is directed by Michael Radford. It is the best a film could have come close in explaining and transpiring the beauty of poems without obliterating it with melodrama.

A simpleton wishes to join his friends in the land of opportunity in America, Mario leads an indifferent life on the shores of the island in Italy. With a father having a luxury of sparing two words during his couple of hours break from fishing, he has no one to confide. His father asks him to get a job before thinking about making a journey outside of the island. His bicycle and his literacy earns him a temporary post man job to deliver to one address. The poet in exile, Pablo Neruda. He remembers him from the news reel, and also learned that the women are in love with his poems.

He begins to get acquainted as a small pause to stay there to get Pablo’s attention. He hopes to befriend the man and someday in future would aid him in winning women. But he is drawn by the words. Soon he begins to ask what metaphors are and how it can proliferate in his stale brain. Walk along the bay says Neruda. Nature can be the best poet’s aphrodisiac to the cascades of lines, punctuation and the waves of paragraphs.

The discussion between Pablo and Mario on the beaches of the gargantuan structures of cliff are memorable in the love for the art form by the writer and director. One who understands the form of this presentation in the words speaks to those appreciating members in the audience. It is not a conversation we do not want to sit in wondering what is the obsessing thing about this that two people talk in disguised pseudo intellectualism and appreciation. It is more about a wise poet being aware of his work and gift explaining that the water is there in this dried up ground of human mind, it takes a little digging and lot of patience.

Mario is struck by the Italian beauty Beatrice (Maria Grazia Cucinotta), a young waitress in the town. She is hard and outspoken. He is shy dissolving in the shadows of the bar doors. He needs help and the man for that would be the man the women go gaga about. The friendship that begins in postal deliveries arrives to the place where Pablo becomes the cupid for his buddy’s love. The movie till then is a sweet story of this coiled and coy postal clerk finding something beautiful in the words and a friendship with a man helping him to see those. What happens once Pablo leaves forms the important part of the story and there is Mario in the sorrow of missing his friend and hoping to get a reciprocation. Not as to boast of knowing the man but an acknowledgment to the bond they had and shared.

Writer/Actor Massio died immediately as the film got over. He negated a known heart condition to finish this film. That is a passionate man restless and feared of his work not been on to the screen. For such a fierce obstinate person, he is sublime and softened in his Mario. After a long time he receives a letter from Chile and as eager he is to read the letter so are his family and boss. It is a letter from secretary asking him to mail the remaining items from the empty house of Neruda. And he is beaten by the insignificance he has been put to. He is unable to comprehend the enormity of the expectation he developed. He is fighting these two in that scene and brings those with a melancholy more than the poems read in the film.

“Il Postino” while an aspiring film is not striving for greatness and that is intentional. It is rightly put so. This as its main character relies on the simplicity and the freshness to the poetry it reads into. It uses the poems of Pablo Neruda as a tool for making it work than to impose. It is a film which does not expect much from its audience than to enjoy the poems along with Mario and Pablo.

"The Man from Elysian Fields" (2002) - Movie Review

Having seen film couples break apart, “The Man from Elysian Fields” would be the first to break my heart. The film directed by George Hickenlooper does the incredible thing a movie maker and a writer thrives to achieve in their work, to precisely feel the pain of the characters they want the audience to empathize upon. Such is Byron Tiller (Andy Garcia) in the famed hall of writers and he needs to hunt the book store which holds his first novel and canvas the browsers to buy it. He has a lovely family, an adoring wife Dena (Julianna Margulies) caring and supporting in his day of failures for his second book to be published and a son Nathaniel.

He is the believing writer having hopes and courage to see his rest of the life writing beautiful novels. He has quit his ad agency job and he did it in style by telling his boss to screw himself who rightfully gives it back when Byron resorts to get back. He is in desperate times because his editor thinks his work is not commercial enough. He does not tell it in a precise word but he tells a line which is what I have seen many of the regular film goers use to be bamboozled and annoyed by films with subtle meanings and needs some work from the viewers to enjoy it. We hear the story of Byron by the voice of Mick Jagger as Luther Fox. He is confident about Byron that he would make a terrific employee. Luther runs an escort service.

Byron hesitant as he should but hitting the bottom and not ready to let down his wife which he does so unaware, gets into the business. He meets his first clientele Andrea (Olivia Williams). She is the spouse of a dying Pulitzer Prize(s) winning writer Tobias Alcott (James Coburn). Andrea is representation of serenity but a deep sadness within. Tobias walks in when Andrea and Byron are together in the bed and without a slightest uncomfortableness, Andrea introduces Byron to him. Tobias does the same but has his knack of being sarcastic. He has few days left in his life and a book he has been working as the epic piece marking a requiem. It is a matter of time before Byron informs that he is a writer and out of a rare deal of third ear, Tobias provides his manuscript. It stinks as Byron tells after a punch in the nose. Soon Andrea and Tobias offer something more than Byron’s regular service, a co-authorship to help Tobias die with a reputation. Rest of it is how two women loving their men unconditionally are shattered and devious enough to pull off the worst thing ever upon the other people.

A film beginning as a story for something a plot setup soon turning out to be the pain the characters go through. Byron is humiliated but tells himself that he is doing for the family. He is disgusted when Andrea licks his fingers. Director Hickenlooper does not want to show the pain and the awkwardness Byron went through in having sex, that he has it only when Tobias comes in storming in the middle of it. It is a film about men who cannot bear the sight of their partners loving them so much. It almost kills them to see them suffering and showering relentless love. They wonder what does she see in their flawed character to blindly believe and follow them. They are disgusted by their existence on being impotent and getting denied of being the that exemplified stature of being a man. The biological and social ego how much ever it can be peeled always leaves behind a scar.

Movies generally portray men as an affectionate father, a vengeful/frustrated/romantic husband but to understand and saying that their confusion is a blossoming out of the love in the sympathizing and heart breaking fashion could be “The Man from Elysian Fields”. We see Byron in several stages of him being the man. As a head of the house dying to not support his family, to be castrated by taking the job of accompanying and pleasuring women and then as the broken husband unable to undo the things.

But what is most beautiful about the film is the other men apart from Byron. Tobias a diseased writer loves his wife and allows her to have an escort. He deals it with his own pain and do not want his sadness to gloom her. That is the reason when he is at his happiest asks him to sleep with Andrea. The most interesting and another dimension of a man is Luther. Luther has been in the service for thirty years and he has fallen in love with a client of his, Jennifer (Angelica Houston). He proposes to Jennifer who still is married, and asks to leave her husband. Her reaction is expected but Mick Jagger gives a face of a man ripped off inside out. That would be second most humiliation a man could not stand on the screen. First one of course is Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver” getting rejected over phone while the camera moves down to hallway unable to see our man being butchered by his cry inside. Then there is Nigel (Michael Des Barres), a cheerful middle aged employee of the service providing suggestions to the newbie Byron and he provides the profound line about his profession to Dena.

There is nothing more I can tell to say how much I loved and admired the film. It is a film which in the end came whiskers away in being the traditional happy ending. Though the ending seemed more than what audience wished for than the actuality of the reality, it smoothens out. “The Man from Elysian Fields” might be the film which says that men are pigs but they are so as much as women are complicated. Andy Garcia is nothing short of meticulous in being the defeated, passionate and broken Byron. I would never expect someone like Mick Jagger subliming into the neat and wise Luther. At the same time his Luther cannot stop his nature of being the male. Olivia Williams provides a woman who can be admired and hated at different parts of the movie while James Coburn is cheerful in his Zen comments. Julianna Margulies gets less time as the loving wife of Byron but she gets the emotions so strong to really feel for the relationship when it is broken down. “The Man from Elysian Fields” is a man’s film very much for women.