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A movie and book review blog

  • Reading films, watching books,....
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Oct 28, 2003

Catch Me If You Can 

Like Men of Honor, this again is a biographical movie of a man who achieved the unachievable of a rather dubious nature. Frank Abignale, the ingenious imposter, crook, defrauder a la master of all trades is the ME in Catch Me if you Can. Don't think any of us can catch up with him, especially if you are already past your teens. He impersonated "successfully" an airline pilot, a doctor, a lawyer(passed the bar exam too) and cashed millions of dollars worth of fraud checks before he was finally caught and he was just 19 at the time! Leonardo DiCaprio plays Frank Abignale and Tom Hanks plays Carl Hanretty, the FBI agent hot on Frank's trail. Its a good movie to watch, to see how Frank make fake checks, degree certificates and the like, at a time when nobody had heard of photostat or photoshop. Catch it if you can.

Oct 27, 2003

Men of Honor 

Men of Honor is a feel good movie, one where the tough and steadfast but downtrodden hero triumphs atlast. Its a movie for the dark horses in us, who desperately need a win, who need a symbol for our hope and that is what Carl Brashear(played by Cuba Gooding Jr.), the navy diver who aspires to be the master chief achieves in the movie. Inspired by a real life story, Men of Honor traces the journey of Carl Brashear, the first African-American deep sea diver in US Navy from his Kentucky hometown, thru' the navy training schools and barracks and his experiences as the first African American in a not very welcoming world of US Navy deep sea divers. His never quit attitude and perseverence in the face of adversity leads upto his final triumph of will when the Navy allows him to continue as a deep sea diver inspite of an amputated leg and from there he goes on to become the Master Diver. Robert De Niro plays Master Chief Billy Sunday, who is out to get Brashear kicked out of the diving school and the Navy, who later on turns into a dependable ally of Brashear. The best part of the movie is not the acting, though Cuba Gooding's & De Niro's performances are outstanding, but the fact that one man, who is real as you and me, went thru' all this and emerged victorious. So why go to Krypton, we have our own, right here on earth!

Oct 26, 2003

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil 

This is a Clint Eastwood movie, one I saw as a part of my initiation towards knowing Clint Eastwood, the director, after being bowled head over heels by his latest film, Mystic River. Midnight in the Garden... is set in Savannah, Georgia, suffused with the old world charm and mystery of the South, feels like it is a different continent out there. Starring Kevin Spacey and John Cusack this is a murder mystery, seems like Eastwood is quite a reader, this one too like his other directorial ventures is an adaptation of a novel. Cusack is John Kelso, the big town reporter who comes down to Savannah to write an article about a society party held each year on Christmas by Jim Williams( Kevin Spacey), a prominent Savannah businessman. The photography is soothing, there are some interesting characters like Lady Chablis - the transvestite, Minerva - the voodoo woman etc, though the murder is not much of mystery. Kevin Spacey plays a charcter very different from his usual roles. A lazy afternoon movie, in Southern accent that is.

Oct 23, 2003

  • 10/23/2003 09:32:00 AM
Brian Aldiss was one of the very few science fiction authors I had reading access to when I was a kid. He being British, his books were abound in the local British library in the city I lived. Artificial Intelligence in Steven Spielberg's take on an Aldiss short story by the name 'SuperToys Last All Summer Long'.

A.I is a cool story, I don't know how it did at the box office. There are always a number of failings to be pointed out when it is an SF movie. Science fiction traverses a realm where we haven't been yet, everyone's concept of the future differs, even though you and me are not Asimov or Bradbury or Clarke, everyone has an opinion of her/his own when it comes to the future. The success of an SF writer depends on how much his version of the future matches or atleast captures the interest of the majority of the population.

Artificial Intelligence as the title implies centers around robots, intelligent in the ways they are intended to be, by their makers ie human beings. The robots are called mecha (from mechanical?) and we, humans are called orga(organic) and now that everyone can think, scientists cross over to the forbidden territory of love. They make a mecha child who can love, and that is Haley Joel Osment. He has given a wonderful performance, as the eleven year old mecha boy, whose quest is to find the blue princess and make her grant his one wish, so that his (human) mother will love him. It is a fairytale, one set in the future, that makes it possible to have its own sets of trappings and rules, essentially different from the fairytales we have been hearing till now. Its has a good storyline, some lousy acting if you don't count Osment and Jude Law, who makes an appearance as Gigolo Joe, the lover Mecha, a fabulous futuristic landscape of Manhattan half flooded with sea (and you thought global warming was a joke, eh?) and a talking teddy bear, which is an aging super toy. If you like fairytales with a flair and a 'future', you might like this one. Oh, you like science fiction like in Star Wars?!??!! Then I am not quite sure.

Oct 20, 2003

Mystic River 

Its a wow! all the way. Where has the director in Clint Eastwood been hiding all this time? Or was it me who missed out on him? Whatever it is his latest directorial offering, Mystic River, has definitely made the cut and I can confidently say that it will be one of the top five movies of 2003. While reading Mystic River, I knew it was the right Hollywood material, the question was who'd grab it first? It was one movie I had been waiting to see since I heard that it was being made into one, if only they'd release it.

Everyone did great in this movie, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Marcia Gay Harden, Lawrence Fishburne and Laura Linney, but the its the first two, Penn and Robbins who have really done some stellar performing. Do I smell an Oscar here? The story is about three childhood buddies, their pasts connected by an abduction and their futures connected by a murder. As Eastwood's Dirty Harry says, "go ahead, make my day" what more can I say, make his day, its worth it!

Heist 


I love those movies which involve plots and plans, especially the ones which has a plan as cute as a Chinese baby(what does that really mean? I don't know). Thats what the main character in Heist, played by the formidable Gene Hackeman calls his own brain child. The movie involves two robberies, carried out after elaborate planning and backup. The first one is to show the viewers how 'talented', coordianted and well prepared, the team of robbers led by the mastermind Gene Hackman are, they are no petty thieves, they only deal in diamonds worth millions of dollars of gold biscuits. I am not going to tell the story here as it'd kill the pleasure of watching it.

There are some real wise guy dialogues in the movie like "Well, don't you want to hear my last words?" "I just did" or "It's a good day for the race" "What race" "The human race.." etc etc. There are a lot more which I don't remember now. I think only film I have seen directed by David Mamet is Glengarry Glenross of which I don't have any recollections. Heist is written and directed by David Mamet, even though this movie hits the wall of credibility once in a while, its a watchable fare and has prompted me to out for more from the same director.

Oct 19, 2003

You Can Count On Me 

The bar tender from Los Angeles did it great. Mark Ruffalo, the leading man of the movie You Can Count On Me, spent the last nine years of his life as a bartender in LA before he hit gold in Hollywood. In the movie he's a vagabond brother, with no particular aim in life, to Laura Linney's character who is his sister working in a bank in a backwater town. Ruffalo with his easy going style and happy go lucky ways gives an excellent performance. The movie is also the debut vehicle for Rory Culkin as Linney's son. There isn't much of a story to the film and the director Kenneth Lonergan developed the whole movie out of a one act play, nevertheless its a poignant look at some ordinary lives in some ordinary small town somewhere in America and the interesting way it is delivered makes sure that its never uninteresting.

Oct 16, 2003

Do you believe? 

I wonder whether there are people who really really really believe in God. The ones who never questioned God's existence(or non-existence), ones who never debated that issue ever, not even in the remotest corner of their being on their most doubtful day. If such people exist, they must be the luckiest ones alive.

Oct 12, 2003

The Ring 

Finally saw the horror movie, which was tauted a class apart from other Hollywood horror flicks, The Ring. The remake of a hit Japanese movie of the same name, it is without any doubt a product of Hollywood Horror Hawkers Inc., the signature of which stares out at you from the start to the finish. I'd really like to see the Japanese version to see how they dealt with it. Since everyone knows the story I am not going to waste my time exercising my poor story telling skills.

Its kinda urban-legendsy which starts out with two teenage girls talking "well, did you hear about that video, after watching which, the viewers will die in 7 days..blah blah". The horror films which starts with teenagers make me wary, I mean, give them a break, they are the most easy scapegoats for the horror mongers, 9 out of 10 horror flicks involve a group of teenagers stranded in some desolate spot. Anyway this one didn't stretch the teenager material too far and quickly pushes Naomi Watts into the storyline, as our damsel in distress, but a courageous one at that. Ms Watts seems to have become the staple of supernatural and surrealistic films after Mulholland Drive. The Ring could be said as a well directed horror movie, with a glaring "made in Hollywood" sticker attached, which is worth a watch on times like Halloween when world is in dire need to conjure an atmosphere of ghosts(dressed in Walmart Halloween specials) and the horror weekend in your favorite TV channel is horrible beyond tolerance.

Oct 11, 2003

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Oct 9, 2003

Hearts in Atlantis 

Hearts in Atlantis has some mysteries in it and some shades of supernatural. Anthony Hopkins plays the mysterious stranger who walks into the life of Bobby Garfield, an eleven year old boy and the two form a strong bond as the film progresses. Its something like Green Mile (yeah coming from Stephen King) but its not quite Green Mile. It doesn't have quite a strong story line as Green Mile, but what redeems it is its child characters and its setting - the never never land of childhood. If you like stories set in childhood (were you a fan of Wonder Years? then this one is for you), where the narrator has a manly voice although his screen self is a child, then you will like this one. But then I watch the Stephen King stuff for what they are....starts off with mysteries..sets out to explore what they are.....gets nowhere...except confuse the viewers.....we are left more dazed and confused, than when we started, the mysteries of life, universe and space time - maybe a Stephen King reincarnated will have better answers. Wait for that day!

Oct 8, 2003

The Life of David Gale 

When this movie first came I thought it should be a good movie given a contreversial theme and good actors. But then after that I read some reviews asking why Kevin Spacey was wasting himself in movies like these. So when I got this movie from the library a few days back I didn't have any high expectations for it. Maybe that was why I liked the film.

Kevin Spacey has done a good job, being the wrongly convicted Professor, who is also an activist campaigning against capital punishment, who ends up on the death row himself. Shot in Texas, which has more active death rows than anywhere else in US, this Alan Parker movie makes a strong state against capital punishment, although whether any of it will reach the ears of the law makers is doubtful. Kate Winslet plays the role of investigative journalist, whom Spacey has entrusted the duty of proving his innocence, if not to the whole world atleast to his own son when he grows up. Watching the movie one is stricken by the fact that how easily things can go wrong in life, one minute you are leading a cosy suburban existence and in the next you are on the death row, knowing for certain the hour of your death, but no one answers the question, "Why?"

Oct 7, 2003

The Enlish Man Who Went Up The Hill But Came Down a Mountain 


Where in the world could being "English" be the ultimate insult? Where else, in Wales, ofcourse! "The English Man...." is the name of the movie, this could very well be the English movie with the longest title, for all that I know. The story takes place in Wales, the accent itself is so funny, its about half the humor in the film. Hugh Grant is one of the two surveyors sent by His Magesty the King of England, towards the end of WW1, to Wales to measure and map the area. They come across a hill in a Welsh village, which the villagers think could very well be the first mountain in Wales. The rest of the movie is about villagers efforts to make the hill a mountain and how they overcome this 'mountain-high' task. A nice and light movie.

Oct 6, 2003

The Shower 

The Shower, the Chinese(Mandarin) movie is about the story of a father and his sons. Set in a Beijing bathhouse (such places still exist!!!) its the story of the owner of the bath house, the aging father and his sons, the elder son who is holding a respectable job somewhere up north and who rushes home thinking that his father has passed away and the younder son who is retarded and is his father's assistant and companion.

Its a subtle story, lightly told, with its own undercurrent of humor, never becomes suffocatingly sentimental and has almost an all male cast. Its interesting to see the culture, watch the bath house tales unfold - like two men and their fighting crickets, a singer with stage fright who won't shut his mouth once he's in the shower, the adorable younger son who is the soul of the place and is a naughty but likeable and helpful kid. Watch it if you have a taste for foreign movies and could let go Hollywood for a while.

Oct 2, 2003

The Nanny Diaries 

A funny, insider's peek at "Nannying" for high profile Manhattan moms. A first person account, most of it fact than fiction, The Nanny Diaries is an engrossing read, especially for those of us who have no clue as to what happens after the high flying Manhattan socialites get an unexpected visit from the stork-with-the-bundle-of-joy. Co-written by Nicola Kraus and Emma McLaughlin, the book narrates authors' experiences in the wicked and often vicious world where the Nanny's only ally is the child who she is taking care of.

Those of you have done your share of baby sitting will be able to associate with the Nanny easily, but that doesn't make the book a less compelling a read for those who haven't, like me. Its enjoyable and though at times I'd have wanted the Nanny to be more vocal about her needs, afterall this is a free country where slave labor is not tolerated, right? And the children, who are being taken care of, who are being bred right with the right amount French classes, ice skating and all the other related skills are shorn away from childhood before they begin it. Don't let me get started on Nanny's employer Mrs.X and I'll lose all my restraint, lesser said the better. Take a look at this book yourself, you won't regret it.
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