Rob Reiner's Flipped (2010)

I have a soft spot for Rob Reiner movies. The moment I see that Castle Rock Entertainment logo, I settle in for two hours of human connection stories steeped in history and nostalgia.

Flipped is Reiner doing what he does best – taking us back to a version of America that feels like sunshine filtering through trees, where the worst thing that could happen is the girl next door not liking you back. Set in the early 60s, this coming of age romance follows Juli Baker and Bryce Loski through their middle school years as they navigate the messy business of first love, told from both their perspectives.

The dual narrative is the movie's secret weapon. We flip between Juli's and Bryce's viewpoints of the same events, and suddenly what seemed like typical teen awkwardness becomes this tender examination of how two people can live the same moments completely differently. Madeline Carroll and Callan McAuliffe play the leads with the kind of earnestness that could have been cringe but instead hits you right in the chest. What gets me about Reiner's period pieces, whether it's Stand By Me or this, is how he captures that specific ache of looking back. The sycamore tree Juli loves, her chickens, the carefully manicured lawns of suburban America – it's all shot with this warm nostagia. The production design nails that early 60s aesthetic without being showy about it. The supporting cast is stacked too – Aidan Quinn and Penelope Ann Miller as Juli's parents, Anthony Edwards as Bryce's dad. There's a dinner scene that escalates from uncomfortable to devastating that shows Reiner hasn't lost his touch for quiet, powerful moments.

Flipped won't punch you in the gut like some coming-of-age dramas. Instead, it reminds you that first love, family dysfunction, and learning to see people for who they really are - these things are awkward and messy and occasionally involve chickens and eggs.

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Bernie (2011) comes to Carthage

Small town Texas, a true crime story told like a languid Sunday afternoon conversation over sweet tea. Richard Linklater's Bernie has Jack Black slowly rolling into the town and finding a job as the assistant mortician at a funeral home in Carthage, TX.

The movie is the real-life story of Bernie Tiede, the beloved assistant funeral director of Carthage and his unlikely friendship with the town's most despised wealthy widow, Marjorie Nugent. Linklater treats this bizarre true story with his signature unhurried grace - life unfolds naturally, meandering like those East Texas back roads, revealing character through accumulation rather than exposition.

Jack Black disappears into Bernie with such completeness that you forget you're watching Jack Black. He embodies this paradox of a man - devoutly Christian, genuinely kind and impossibly generous. Then he has an unexpected glitch in his personality which makes this story a story. Shirley MacLaine captures Marjorie's brittle cruelty with precision, showing us exactly why an entire town could hate one lonely old woman. The genius move here is Linklater's use of actual Carthage residents as a Greek chorus, commenting on the events with the kind of unvarnished Texas frankness that no screenwriter could manufacture. These aren't actors playing small-town Texans, these *are* small-town Texans, and their authenticity grounds this strange tale in something achingly real. I thought there was a Somerset Maugham quality to it all, if Maugham had traded colonial Asia for the American South. That same keen eye for human contradiction, the understanding that people contain multitudes and morality exists in shades we'd rather not acknowledge. Bernie loved that town. The town loved Bernie. And then a thing happened...

What stays with you isn't the action itself but the uncomfortable questions about justice, loyalty, and whether goodness can be measured by a single terrible moment or by decades of genuine kindness. Linklater never judges, he simply observes, and trusts us to sit with the complexity.

Like the entire populace of Carthage, I too loved Bernie, didn't at all like the character Matthew McConaughey portrayed in this movie - Danny Buck as was intended by the director. Anyway who can hate Jack Black, right?

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Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein (2025) : A review

I had been meaning to watch Guillermo del Toro's 2025 adaptation of Frankenstein ever since it dropped on Netflix. As someone who has never actually read Mary Shelley's original novel (yeah, literary sacrilege!), I went in with zero expectations except knowing it was a del Toro film, which usually means visually stunning and emotionally complex storytelling. This is quintessential del Toro - all dark aqua blues, deep greens, and rich browns creating that Gothic atmosphere he's famous for. The production design is absolutely marvelous, every frame looking like a painting, if you were into that whole moody Victorian vibe art. This is definitely a movie that deserves to be seen on the biggest screen possible because of its sheer grandiloquence. Del Toro has this thing about redeeming his monsters, and this newest retelling of Frankenstein fits perfectly into that pattern. Oscar Isaac plays Victor Frankenstein and he's irresistibly handsome in that tortured genius way. Isaac's Victor is portrayed as a complete egotistical dickhead, which apparently has some book purists up in arms. I read in various forums that readers of Shelley's original have major issues with how this adaptation simplifies both Victor and the Creature's characterizations. The consensus seems to be that in the book, Victor is indeed a piece of work for abandoning his creation, but he was also just a naive young guy who couldn't fully grasp the magnitude of what he'd done. Similarly, while the Creature is tragic, he's also a stalker who intentionally murders innocents in his quest for revenge against Victor - far from the blameless victim we see in this movie version.

 

The script-writing deserves special mention here. There's this moment where the monster, still learning human speech, says something like "Perhaps this was the way of the world, the world would hunt you and kill you for the way you are." The philosophical poetry woven through the simple words of a creature learning to speak is just brilliant. There are several such dialogues that stay with you long after the credits roll.

The female lead had me scratching my head a bit. She's written as this very righteous, empathetic character – maybe that's how Mary Shelley, daughter of philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, intended it. Women are often more empathetic than men, sure, but this lady thinks she's wise when she's really just displaying the foolishness of her immature young age. She was literally the only character who could have made Victor see the truth and helped redeem his ways, if only she would get down off her high horse and actually engage with the complexity of the situation instead of just being judgmental.

She falls in love with the creature ridiculously quickly, professing something like eternal love after what feels like two meetings. And wasn't she flirting a bit with Victor, her fiancé's older brother? The whole love angle felt forced, maybe they were staying true to the book, I wouldn't know.

 But sometimes a good story doesn't need to be complicated. Del Toro delivered something gorgeous to look at, Isaac brought his brooding good looks and acting, and Jacob Elordi as the Creature got some genuinely moving dialogue. 

The Arctic scenes alone are worth the watch. There's something haunting about that ship stuck in the ice, with the Creature framed against a pale sun that looks more like a dying moon. "I am malicious because I am miserable," the monster tells his creator, and you feel every word of that misery in the frozen wasteland that mirrors his isolation. Not every adaptation has to be exactly as the book, sometimes it just needs to be good television.

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Civil War: A curtain-raiser

Bananas are coming home to roost from all the banana republics the United Fruit Company States had planted. FBI has been disbanded, Canadian $ is the $ of choice, trading at several times the value of the American one and Texas and California have joined hands against the sitting President who is on his third term - the civil war is on.

From the director of other such disturbing classics with uplifting BGM like Annihilation and Ex Machina and the writer of 28 Days Later, Alex Garland, this dystopian peep into what is still a possibility, is a bold move for this time in U.S history.  

A bunch of journalists are the lead characters in this film which helps the director justify the detached and neutral observer track the film tries to stay on. Kirsten Dunst, as the de-sensitized photo journalist Lee is amazing and Brazilian actor Wagner Moura, the other lead just about keeps up with Dunst. I am not really sold on the waif like-wannabe-photo-journalist Jesse. Maybe Jesse's character was the only way some thematic depth and chaos could be added to the story. Otherwise it would be a war-road trip movie about some hardened (photo)journalists chasing a civil war without making many foolish decisions that might put their and their compatriots' lives at risk. Less drama overall, which is not something that sells a movie.

The film hits you hard with the imagery and symbolism of United State of America as a war torn country. The effect is amplified by mind blowing sound and music tracks. Modern warfare and the devastation that it brings along have never crossed into this nation of interstate highways, perfect lawns with even more perfect sprinkler systems and a god assigned in perpetuity to shower blessings on it. Here is hoping this empire does not fall this way. God (really need to) Bless the USA (this time.)

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Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)

 It was like opening a time capsule from the seventies. The movie is earthy, with shag carpet, a Gen X latchkey kid and long haired dudes. Unlike period movies of the sixties and seventies made now, there is a raw, unpolished look to this interesting movie from 1974 starring Ellen Burstyn and Kris Kristofferson. I didn't even realize till I finished the movie that it was directed by Martin Scorsese.

We follow Alice, a single mother with a penchant for co-dependency and her precocious 12 year old son Tommy, in search of a place in the sun and a living wage, with their ultimate destination set as Monterey, CA.  This movie's female-centric story and its mature treatment of the theme was something I had not have expected from Scorsese with his later movies like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Gangs of New York which are all very masculine. In fact when you think about it Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore is an odd-one in Scorsese's filmography stretching to his most recent one - Killers of the Flower Moon. 

The performances by the leads like Burnstyn (Alice), Kristofferson (David), Harvey Keitel and Alfred Lutter as Tommy are convincing and realistic. Alfred Lutter who reminded me of a young Bill Gates' went onto become a CTO many famous tech companies including Lynda.com

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Marty (1955)

 Landed on Marty after Amazon Prime suggested I watch Marty next after watching Dead End. It was past midnight and Marty was only 90 minutes long and boasted 4 Oscars from 1955 including the best picture, best director and best actor. Why not? Marty it was, to top off the night.

Marty is the story of Marty Piletti, a mid thirties bachelor butcher, living with his Italian American mother in the Bronx of the fifties. Like mid-thirties bachelors the world-over Marty too is harangued by his mother to marry and bring a girl home as soon as he can. But it is not easy for Marty, played by Ernest Borgnine, he is no Humphrey Bogart at forty five charming the socks of a nineteen year old Lauren Bacall. Marty is a stocky 35-year old butcher who ends up standing on the sidelines at the local dance hall the entire night on any given Saturday.

As luck would have it on one of those Saturdays he meets the female Marty. Betsy Blair (Gene Kelley's first wife) plays Clara who is a high school chemistry teacher, which I believe must have been a quite nerdy occupation for women of that era, who at 29 is also having a hard timing finding a life partner. Blair was one of the actors blacklisted during the McCarthy era. Gene Kelley, her husband had to strong arm the producers and threaten them he would quit the movie he was acting in if they didn't give the role to Blair.

Ernest Borgnine as Marty and Betsy Blair as Clara in Delbert Mann's Marty

This Delbert Mann movie feels like an international movie set in Bronx, where the inter-generational chaos of an Italian American joint family is on full display. Its relatability and down-to-earth script and cast might be why it became the first film ever to win the prestigious Palme d'Or when the award was introduced in 1955.

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12 Angry Men

The Sixth Amendment to the U.S.Constitution guarantees the right to trial by a jury. In case of a criminal trial, the jury consists of 12 people, citizens drawn from all walks of life, who decide the verdict of the case. 12 Angry Men is Sidney Lumet's first directorial venture, shot entirely in a New York city jury room where 12 middle-class white men decide on the fate of young teen (maybe Puerto-Rican, maybe Italian, definitely someone from the wrong side of tracks) who is charged with murdering his father.

The movie while it garnered 3 Oscar nominations was not a commercial hit at the time.  Over the years it has gained quite a following and is often taught in high school business law classes, film schools and Youtube videos purporting to teach the art of persuasion.

I've always wondered how juries reach unanimous decisions, considering most of the jury members are ordinary people whose closest brush with law might have been when they walked in front of a TV set playing Law and Order. More importantly the State has to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the accused is either guilty or innocent and all the members of the jury have to have be on the same plate. Beyond a reasonable doubt” is the universal standard of proof for criminal prosecutions in state and federal courts in the United States. O. J. Simpson would definitely thank the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment which requires the State to prove that every element of a charged criminal offense is beyond reasonable doubt.

In 12 Angry Men, at the start of the jury deliberation there are 11 jury members believing the accused is guilty and one person and the 12th man, Juror #8 (Henry Fonda) is not convinced the accused is guilty. There goes the unanimous verdict and starts the 1.5 hr real-time deliberation which forms the 96 minutes of movie show time.

The tight script by Reginald Rose is supported by  phenomenal actors like Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, E. G. Marshall and others.  It is a film that is totally reliant on dialog and performance and does a great job on both. As a film that is shown for the students at film schools, law schools, sociology and psychology departments,  there is something for everyone whether it is camera and writing techniques or a study in confirmation bias or methods of persuasion.

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Stand by Me : One of the best coming-of-age movies ever

We were all twelve once. If we had regular childhoods, I did, we know there is nothing like those endless childhood summers with our friends-in-arms. That pit in the stomach sense of nostalgia of things we lost as grownups is captured in the heart-tugging lines from Stand By Me - "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"

I often make the mistake of forgetting how amazing a writer Stephen King is. He is so mainstream with his paperbacks overpopulating airport kiosks, that one falls into the trap of underestimating King's story telling abilities. Stand By Me is one of the novellas (The Body) from Stephen King's book Different Seasons. The director Rob Reiner said that this was the one movie among all his movies, that he connected with the most. Makes sense, the movie is set in late 50s and Rob Reiner was a 12 year old in 1959, just like the four protagonists in the movie.

The story follows the events of a couple of nights - Labor Day weekend 1959, in the lives of four 12 year olds in a small town in Oregon called Castle Rock (Rob Reiner named his movie production house Castle Rock later.) In the picture above from L to R they are - Gordie Lachance played by Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix as Chris Chambers, Vern Tessio essayed by Jerry O'Connell and Corey Feldman as Teddy Duchamp. 

The Sixties was around the corner. Kids stayed out late till the sun went down, rode without seatbelts and on truck-beds of strangers' trucks and a penny had more value than what it cost to produce a penny. It was the search for some buried and lost pennies that led one of the characters, Vern to gather his friends and go on a quest to recover a dead body.

The four kids go into the woods armed with the innocence and invincibility of childhood and emerge out of it robed off those powers. Although all of the four actors live their roles, the one that made the most impression on me is the late actor River Phoenix. His sensibility, commitment and passion shines through his portrayal of Chris Chambers - the intelligent and sensitive roughneck who wants a break from his family's ill reputation. 

Whenever I watch this movie it brings tears to my eyes not just because of the nature of the story, but it also reminds me what a big loss to the movie industry (and probably to humanity as well) River Phoenix's death was. I wrap this up with a quote by another one of the actors we lost young, here is Brandon Lee in his final interview, quoting Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky, this quote is also Brandon's tombstone. 

"Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really… How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless..."

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Chadwick Boseman in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Before Oscars So White Redux (2021) I didn't care much about Ma Rainey's Black Bottom to write a review.  I wished Riz Ahmed would win the Best Actor award, although like most people who had kept tabs on this year's nominations, I knew it would go to Chadwick Boseman and was mostly reconciled to it. After all the incredible human being and actor that Boseman was, he would never again get a chance to be in the Oscar race ever again. Everyone else, including Riz Ahmed, who I hope will have a remarkable career ahead,  will have more chances.

Then the Academy went ahead and did its thing- awarded Anthony Hopkins who was blissfully sleeping in his bed and didn't even Zoom into the award ceremony, the Best Actor award. This made it imperative that I had to write about Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, to make peace with Chadwick Boseman, even though he is at a place where they are indifferent to gold-plated bronze statues of Uncle Oscar and other such earthly knickknacks.

Viola Davis put in a power house performance as Ma Rainey, the so-called Mother of the Blues. But it is Chadwick Boseman as Levee - the trumpeter who steals the show. I did not even recognize him at first in the film. Considering it was shot during the last few months of his life, physically, he was a shadow of King T'Challa he was in Black Panther.  That did not deter him from pouring his soul into Levee. 

Chadwick Boseman as Levee at the center, in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom has all telltale signs of being adapted from a play. That coupled with my absolute no-clues-about-blues persuasion didn't endear me to the content of the film much. Ma Rainey also says in the movie that it would be an empty world without the blues. Maybe for you Ma, not for me.

The silver lining for me was Boseman's Levee. Despite his irreverent, go-getter attitude, his was the only character I found myself rooting for. The script gives a handful of theatrical monologues to Levee, knowing that this might be the last time Boseman would have an opportunity to deliver such hard hitting lines. Like this one on death, which considering the circumstances add to the poignancy,

"Now death. Death got some style. Death will kick your ass and make you wish you have never been born. That's how bad death is. But you can rule over life. Life ain't nothing."

The black and white footage at the end brings home the message that black artists didn't get their due and had their intellectual property stolen from them. It is heart-rending to watch white musicians play Levee's piece sans any emotion, while we the viewers know how much the black musicians had poured their souls into their compositions and never got credit.

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Minari : A review

You could have watched several K-dramas but you might not still acknowledge that a real flesh and blood Korean family is nothing like in those K-dramas. Flawless, mother-of-pearl twenty somethings who inhabit Korean TV shows is a far cry from reality. Minari, is the first time I've seen a depiction of a real-life Korean family on screen, ones who are not funny 24/7 like the Kim family in Kim's Convenience. Although they are a close second as far as authenticity is concerned.

 

Minari is an autobiographical sketch of a Korean American family that moves from the west coast to rural Arkansas to purse their dream of setting up a family farm. The director Lee Isaac Chung is setting a new path for immigrant film makers in the U.S where they make movies in their native language and English, in a setting that is quintessentially American. I see it as a harbinger of a new genre of U.S immigrant films recording the varied experiences and life reflections of all the peoples who call United States their home. 

Minari proceeds as if a camera-man is following the daily life of a Korean-American family in Arkansas boonies with a camera. The actors don't feel like they are actors. The time period is early eighties and the family of four - mother, father, daughter and son live in a trailer in the woods / potential farm land and are later joined by their spirited grandma.  This movie like Joji I watched recently is also about subtle nuances, where exceptional nuggets of everyday scenes are strung together to make a visual poem. 

Even though the family is Korean, there is plenty of evidence and presence of the rural Arkansas landscape the family inhabits. The water dowser, the cross-dragging (only on Sundays, that is his church and penance) Pentecostal neighbor and the chicken factory where the parents are employed as chicken-sexers. While all the actors have done exceptional jobs, I liked the wacky-ass grandma the best, the one who brought Minari (a Korean herb used in cooking and medicine) and found a home for it and made it thrive on the banks of an American creek.

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One Night in Miami & The Two Killings of Sam Cooke

All the four paths would diverge after that One Night In Miami. Two will be cut shot prematurely. Two will go on making their contributions to the world of sports and entertainment. It is the two who got snuffed out way before their time, their unfinished stories that well up in my throat. Like Sam Cooke’s last song which was released after his untimely death, we are waiting, we are still waiting…

It's been a long
A long time coming
But I know, a change gonna come
Oh, yes it will

One Night in Miami is what Bob Seger might have been thinking about (well not really, the unromantic in me is taking off on an imaginary scenic route here) when he wrote, “We got tonite, who needs tomorrow. We got tonite baby, why don’t you stay?” Stay they did, the coolest gang of bros who might have ever hung out together in the history of menkind – Malcolm X, Cassius Clay soon to be Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown at a Negro hotel in Miami, on the night of 25^th Feb 1964.

More than three fourths of the movie happens in a hotel room the four friends get together. It makes sense when it is adapted from a play and the occasion calls for it. The four men briefly spend some time on the hotel rooftop and Ali & Cooke make a short stop at a liquor store, but the rest of the time the conversation between the four men happen entirely in the hotel room. An entire movie centered around the dialog four people are having in one room reminded me a bit of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, but the similarity ends there.

To write meaningful dialog without taking sides and keeping the audience attention unwavering without any change in background scenery is quite a challenge. Shout out to Kemp Powers who wrote the original play and his debut movie screenplay adaptation. It is also the feature debut for the director Regina King. She has absolutely nailed it. Along with Powers’ powerful screenplay, she has received tremendous support from the crew of four amazing actors who play the four historical figures – Kingley Ben-Adir (Malcolm X), Leslie Odom Jr. (Sam Cooke), Aldis Hodge (Jim Brown) and Eli Goree (Ali) whose paths cross one night in a hotel room in Miami.

It is such a personal moment (or a few hours) for these four guys, but this serendipitous meeting is also a watershed moment in history. The morning after the meeting Cassius Clay confirms that he is joining the Nation of Islam and he changes his name to Muhammad Ali a week after. Malcolm X would quit the Nation of Islam a week after this meeting and make a trip to Mecca, Middle East and African countries to understand more about Islam and get international support and exposure to the Civil Rights Movement. Malcolm X would be assassinated and Sam Cooke would be shot dead before the first anniversary of this meeting. Ali would go on to become one of the greatest sportsmen in history and Jim Brown would quit football for Hollywood after being named NFL’s MVP for the third time in 1966.

To read more about what happened after that One Night in Miami, here is a BBC article.

After One Night in Miami, I took a peak into Sam Cooke’s life in Netflix’s documentary – The Two Killings of Sam Cooke. It is less of a crime investigation piece and more of a biography of Cooke through the eyes and words of the people who knew him and his music. Like many black musicians at the time he broke into the popular music scene via gospel music then crossed over to the devil's music - pop music and rock & roll.

In One Night in Miami we see Malcolm X exhorting Sam Cooke to take the activist route, considering he had a platform that people listened to - his songs and music. Although the movie gives the viewer the impression that Sam Cooke was not much of an activist, he was in fact at the time risking his career with his activism and earning wrath of big time record companies like RCA. If he had lived we would have an African-American Elvis, the guy had music, looks, leadership and charisma. In an alternate reality where Malcolm X and Sam Cooke could've lived on, I wonder how the world would've looked like? Those two men had so much unfinished business to take care of.😞

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The Frozen Ground : Anchorage's own Hollywood movie

Years ago when I was working in downtown Anchorage, most days after my lunch I used to take a walk from downtown to the water's edge (Cook Inlet.) The year was 2011 and I remember it was not summer. Every other season in Anchorage kind of felt the same - cold and grey, it had to be one of those indeterminable seasons. 

3rd Ave leading to Hilton was closed to traffic on that particular day. There were a lot of old and vintage cars parked curbside. We knew there was a Hollywood movie being shot in our city. This was the first time I was this up close and personal to a Hollywood movie location. Along with my friend who was with me on that afternoon we skirted around block and tried to get a better view from another side. Unfortunately we didn't catch any glimpse of Nicholas Cage or any other actors who were purported to be in the movie. Yet we were excited, a Hollywood movie in our city, that was a first. The movie is The Frozen Ground. I happened upon it on Netflix yesterday and watched it in one go.

 In the background of the title is the hazy urban sprawl of Anchorage

Ever since reality TV series took off, Alaska has been a reality TV hot-spot. The only true last frontier state remaining in the United States has provided ample fodder for the escapist lifestyle fantasies promoted by reality TV. From series like Alaska State Troopers and Ice Road Truckers to Palin clan's reality series (Sarah Palin's Alaska, Bristol Palin: Life's A Tripp) to homesteading families in Alaskan Bush People and many more, there has been no dearth of reality TV material from Alaska. 

But it is a different reality when it comes to feature films. Most of the Hollywood films with stories based in Alaska are shot in Canada, mainly in British Columbia. Thanks to Film Incentive BC Tax Credit. Why can't Alaska institute something like this, you know you can't always rely on oil.(Oh just found that there is one , and The Frozen Ground utilized it) These so-called Alaskan feature films will have few aerial shots of the real Alaska and maybe a few scenes filmed at landmark locations, other than that they are all Canada. I am  looking at you, Insomnia. The Hollywood remake of the famous Norwegian movie of the same name supposedly takes place in small town Alaska and starred Hilary Swank, Robin Williams and Al Pacino. It was entirely shot in BC except for a few frames shot at Bridal Veil Falls in Valdez,AK.

The other Hollywood movie, based in Alaska and shot in Alaska that I can think of is Into The Wild. Adapted from Jon Krakeur's book of the same name documenting the real life story of Alexander McCandless who hiked across N.America and finally found a home in an abandoned school bus in the wilderness outside Fairbanks,AK, Into The Wild's Alaskan parts were shot in Cantwell, about 50 miles south of Fairbanks. Oh yes, there was also Big Miracle - the Drew Barrymore movie about a whale rescue in Point Barrow. For this movie Anchorage and Seward stood in for small towns on the North Slope. It was imminently forgettable.

Back to The Frozen Ground. It tells the story of the real life serial killer, Bob Hansen (played by John Cusack), who terrorized the ladies of the night, walking the streets of Anchorage from the 1970s to the early eighties. I had a colleague who worked in my team who used to frequent Hansen's bakery for donuts (in 1970s.) She said the man gave off no signs of being a serial killer and was just another ordinary looking guy. 

A faraway shot of the Anchorage skyline, a bit more close and you would see it is 2010s Anchorage and not the 1980s.

Despite its 300K+ population, Anchorage is still very much a small town. Anchorage operates at a maximum of about 2 degrees of separation, six degrees is too much when half of the State's population lives in the city and its suburbs. Even serial killers can be just an acquaintance of an acquaintance like you can see in the example above. Some people even claim to be able to see foreign shores like Russia from their backyard.

Alaska Public Lands Building on 4th Ave serves as the APD HQ in the movie, which is less than half a block East of the current APD headquarters in the LIO building.

 

 A considerable amount of shooting took place on the 4th and 5th Ave, west of the Sheraton building. The shot below is at the intersection of Barrow St and 4th Ave looking east, where Bob Hansen is seen picking up one of his victims in the movie.

The film crew converted the store fronts on 5th Ave into strip clubs and other night-life enterprises. A lot of action in the movie happens on a couple of blocks on 5th Ave. In most of these scenes, the sidewalk outside seemed more crowded with people than you would expect on a night-out in Anchorage. But I am not complaining.

The Frozen Ground : Shooting Location on 5th Ave

I am immensely grateful that the makers of The Frozen Ground decided to shoot the movie on location, remaining truthful to the places and people, especially all the victims like Eklutna Annie whose remains are shown to recover from the sandy banks of Eklutna river, near the Knik Arm. This was the same place her remains were recovered in 1980.

          Aerial shot of Hansen (John Cusack) on Knik River bridge , Old Glenn Highway

Nic Cage plays Jack Halcombe the Alaska State trooper in charge of the investigation. His character is modeled on the real life investigator,Glenn Flothe. The movie also has Vanessa Hudgens, 50 Cent (he is one of the producers) and Dean Morris (aka Hank Schrader from Breaking Bad)

Hansen is an avid outdoors man and a pilot, which is not uncommon for Alaskans. Alaska probably has the most pilots per capita for any U.S state. He is often seen in the movie taking off from Merrill Field in his little bush plane, sometimes taking his victims along, probably before letting them escape in the wilderness and hunting them down with his gun like game.

All the actors have given solid performances. It is not your typical Hollywood movie, maybe reflecting the director Scott Walker's New Zealand roots. The script (also by Walker) and the movie are taut. There are no frills or cheap thrills which is probably why it failed at the box office recovering only $5.6 million of the $20 million production cost. It reminds me a lot of the Icelandic and Norwegian police procedural series like Trapped or The Valhalla Murders, set in a similar snowy grey landscape.

The film is dedicated to all the victims of Robert Hansen - he had attacked and raped 30+ women in Anchorage and killed at least 17 of them. At under two hours, it is a quick watch. Give it a try, just the amazing performances by all the actors will be worth your time. If you are from Alaska or have ever lived in Anchorage, you should watch it, no excuses.

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Irrfan Khan says The Story is Yours Now: A Tribute

Like a coworker who you run into occasionally in the hallway, with a comforting smile confirming things are just as it should be on this little marble of ours, Irrfan Khan was an un-intrusive coziness that permeated all the films he acted in. He is one of those people (albeit a celebrity), an incredible human being, you feel lucky to have shared your time on earth with, at the same time he was also passing through.

Irrfan, to me was less of a movie star and more of an acquaintance I had never met. An acquaintance who had the potential to turn into a friend, if one of us was brave enough to break the ice.

Fair winds and following skies, Irrfan, to your next port of call.




If you want an intro to Irrfan's body of work, here is an article from The Atlantic

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The JFK Enigma and the media products it spawned

John F. Kennedy was fascinating in his death as he was in his life. The mystery of his assassination continues spawning new stories, podcasts, books, movies and keeps the midnight oil burning for thousands of conspiracy theorists. Everyone, especially if you live in the United States, gets lost in the fog of Kennedy mystery, at least once. If you get hooked, there is no telling that the unsolved mystery of the late President's death won't comeback to haunt you on an idle Saturday afternoon.

I have been to Dealey Plaza in Dallas once. The grassy knoll, the brick buildings flanking it and the smooth curve of the black top had seemed to me like a serene hideaway tucked just beyond the reach of urban throes. It was hard to visualize a Presidential assassination happening there.

With the recent release of all confidential JFK files, which according to our current President should put all JFK conspiracies to rest, there is more attention on the case which never left America's consciousness. I did some reading and watching related to JFK assassination and here are my notes.

Norman Mailer's Oswald's Tale is a work of gargantuan proportions covering Lee Harvey Oswald's life - Kennedy's purported killer, in two separate sections - Oswald in Minsk and Oswald in America. Mailer went back to Russia in early 90s after Gorbachev, Perestroika and Glasnost made landfall in USSR and he was able to access a lot of information than before and discuss with 'newly talkative' people about Oswald's time in Russia. In the end it tows the Warren Commission line that Oswald was a disillusioned loner who acted alone. But Mailer never intended his book to solve the mystery of Kennedy's assassination, his work was a study about the evolution of the purported killer - Lee Harvey Oswald.

Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison in JFK

JFK, the Oliver Stone movie, which I re-watched recently provides a believable counter point to Warren Commission's bureaucratic fact finding mission. It brings out the discrepancies in the Warren Commission findings and showcases New Orlean's District Attorney Jim Garrison's work trying to unravel the Kennedy assassination mystery.

Garrison might have been one of the few true and honest investigators of this case for which he became a victim of a smear campaign, probably paid for by the CIA. But to my relief, Jim Garrison re-emerges victorious on the other side after all the plots to bring him down fizzle out. This led me to the best seller he authored which became one of the books on which Stone's JFK is based on - On the Trail of Assassins (1988). The other work that provides material for JFK, the movie is CrossFire : The plot that killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs.

Killing Kennedy is another movie starring Rob Lowe as JFK. Lowe's resemblance to Kennedy in the movie is uncanny, and in many places he appears more handsome than JFK. Nothing sensational about the movie, it is built up on the single shooter theory as is depicted in U.S. history books.

11/22/63 by Stephen King. King, one of the best writers practicing the art of fiction in our age could not stay away from the JFK charisma either. His novel, 11/22/63 is a fictional work of epic proportions where the protagonist (from Maine, of course) gets pulled into the JFK assassination through a time travel vortex. I thoroughly enjoyed the ride. But do not read or watch 11/22/63 (Hulu has come out a TV series of the same name) to provide a new and reasonable theory that will put an end to all other conspiracy theories. King's work agrees with Warren Commission findings of Lee Harvey Oswald being the sole assassin of Kennedy and builds the story around the premise of trying to stop Oswald.

To round things off I listened to Conspiracy Theories podcast and Gone podcast from Parcast Network. The podcast revealed further botch-ups that happened after Kennedy was assassinated - how rules were broken by his staffers taking his body for post mortem back to Washington, when as per the rule it should have been done at the hospital in Dallas where he was taken to after he was shot and how his post mortem was performed a pathologist, who has never done any post-mortems before?! This is the American president we are talking about, how could this happen to such an eminent figure ? In the movie JFK I remember one character saying, if they could kill Kennedy, what are you and me to them? Then the original post mortem notes were destroyed soon after they were written and was never found again including Kennedy's brain which disappeared after the post mortem. The most crucial piece of evidence that Kennedy's body could provide, his brain where those fatal bullets struck, disappeared under high security. WTH?!?

Robert Kennedy's assassination by Sirhan Sirhan (another pawn) five years later in 1968 is as mysterious and unsolved as his elder brother's. It is as if someone at the top was bent on removing the Kennedy 'contagion'. RFK, I think was the brainy brother, JFK being the handsome one. In an alternate reality where both Kennedy brothers are alive, I wonder what it would be like. In 11/22/63 Stephen King paints a discouraging picture of this parallel universe if it ever existed.

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The Big Country & The Assassination of Jesse James by Coward Robert Ford

The American West is the stuff of myth and legends. While East coast was all about the original boat people aka the Puritans and the blue bloods, the West was the indefatigable frontier that drew in the itchy feet adventurers and crazy eyed outlaws.I have been enamored by the landscape of the West, despite having no birth-right citizenship connections to it.

The wide brown expanse of semi-aridness playfully taunted by rolling tumbleweed, sweeping hills dotted with cattle or the majestic outcrops of rock that have hid many a vigilante - the once famed frontier of the US of A is indeed poetry in landscape mode.

Recently I had a chance to watch a couple of beautifully shot Westerns, made fifty years apart.

The first one is1958's The Big Country. The wide angle shots of this outdoor epic directed by William Wyler (dir. of Roman Holiday, Ben-Hur,...) makes the title very appropriate. Shot in Mojave desert using a large screen cinematography technique called Technirama, the movie starred Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, Burl Ives (won the supporting actor for his role) and Jean Simmons. It is often called as a Western for people who do not like Westerns. It even has a New-Englander pacifist - Peck's character James McKay for a hero.

Jerome Moross composed the remarkable score for the movie which has been reused several times in ad campaigns and such - it is a musical piece that captures the essence of all Westerns.



While looking up the shooting locations of the movie, I found an interesting page - Orvis Cattle Company & Ranch.

About the story of the movie, you can watch it yourself if you want to know. I liked Burl Ives' Rufus Hannassey, the best. Peck as McKay was overly Gandhian for my taste, but great performances by all actors nevertheless.

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Then from 2007 came this visual poem of a Western - The Assassination of Jesse James by Coward Robert Ford. This is the first movie I could truly feel sympathy for a character played by Casey Affleck - the anti-hero to Brad Pitt's anti-hero - Jesse James, a notorious outlaw at the time. Affleck is a perfect fit for the hero-worshipping mumbler turned Judas, Bob Ford.

Roger Deakins' cinematography is evocative of vintage photos with blurry edges. The vast wheaty prairies and the still life shots of life in the old West with close-ups of complex characters is a visual treat. The sombre, nuanced nature of the narrative is aided by the intermittent voice-overs, like that of a historical observer.

Directed by Andrew Dominik, the sweeping frames of the movie is one of the few characteristics it shares with the classic westerns. It is a slow-burn film, delving on and developing its characters in an un-predictable way although the ending is self-evident from the movie title.

Maybe because it was the presence of Brad Pitt in the leading role, I felt it had something common with slow sweeping crescendo of the movie, Tree of Life by Terrence Malick.

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Bad Times at the El Royale

Mid-century modern architecture. The Dude aka Jeff Bridges. Retro hippy California captured in amazing production design.Tautly suspenseful. These factors did me in, even before the movie started I was a fan.

This Drew Goddard movie is a loopy mystery built on the much used story device of a bunch strangers coming together in a strange place for a short period of time. But the adherence to the stock formula ends at the beginning once the scene is set.

The characters are unconventional, the twist and turns unpredictable and you can't help but rooting for the Dude even though you are an atheist and he is in the guise of a priest in this movie. The only single bell hop and mostly absent caretaker of the motel, Miles, is played by Lewis Pullman.The rest of the quirky cast is made up of Jon Hamm as the traveling vacuum cleaner salesman and the amazing singing and acting talent of Cynthia Arivo as the single African American woman who is on her way to audition as a backup singer for Supremes in Vegas. Then there is Dakota Fanning as the hippie Emily Summerspring and the charismatic cult leader Billy Lee - played by a mostly shirtless Chris Hemsworth.

To find later (after watching the movie) that the entire El Royale motel was built inside a warehouse in Vancouver with set design, color palette, architecture, and even singular details like bar stools or the distance from the bar to the reception made to match up with exact measurement of the movement of characters and the aesthetics of the movie was mind-blowing. Martin Whist, the production designer deserves a ton of credit for the amazing setting. The El Royale motel is also an important character of the movie and merited all the attention and detail it received, of course it has its hidden dark secret too. The California-Nevada state line running right through the hotel is an interesting element of the story.

Bad Times at El Royale has a captivating story line, engaging actors and an incredible set for film noir fans with a finesse modern technology can afford us now. 1969 looks better than it ever was at this border line between sunshine state and sin city.

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Brad's Status

It faintly felt like a male version of Eat Pray Love. Instead of traipsing all over the globe to find meaning, thoughts and prayers, we have greying-at-the-temples Ben Stiller staring his mid-life crisis in the face, in puritan Boston. The male version is a lot less shallow and lot more relate-able (even for women like me.)

Unlike the stereotypical male crises that happen at this age there are no red sports cars or barely-twenty-year-old blondes involved. The hero (Brad, played by Stiller) is seen by his son's side while the high-schooler navigates his Ivy League college interviews. The kid seems chill and extremely well-behaved whereas the Dad is broody and mulling over his self-worth. Together they make a quiet pair in a quiet movie which does not offer or proffer to offer the viewer any instantaneous self-help solutions at the end.

In order to counter-balance the fifty year old's self indulgent voice-overs questioning his self-esteem, the narrative introduces a virtuous young millennial - Ananya, with roots in the third world. Of course I know these third-worlders (I live inside the head of one), the kind who have never really encountered poverty or discrimination, but could blurt out statistics like how an entire family of fellow third worlders in Delhi survive on a dollar a day budget or how their grand-father walked 26.2 miles to school each day. So we have Ananya, a high school friend of Brad's son deployed to put Brad in his place by reminding him that even at his age he still thinks the world is made for him. How very childish of him. The film-makers understand a lot of Brad's worries are trivial and frivolous. Through Ananya they let us know that they acknowledge and have duly noted it. But a fifty year old with low self esteem behaves in a certain way, there is no helping it, nor are there any answers to it.

This movie can be appreciated if you are over a certain age. The way I look at it, I am cresting that hill or 'am over that hill by now (depending on the camera angle) - so I could understand what the movie is trying to tell. Not many reviewers could. I would blame it on their later arrival on terra-firma, but be patient, you will get there too.

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A Ghost Story

There is the cycle of life as Mafusa had revealed in his hard knocks school sermon to his son in the famed Disney entertainer, The Lion King and then there is the cycle of after-life, a rather long and lonely affair as revealed in the film A Ghost Story written and directed by David Lowery.

It is a slow gliding film, almost a eulogy to ghosts whose physical form in the movie is appropriated from the home-made cheese cloth and ping pong ball figures hung on trees on Halloween. Several times while watching the movie, despite being a fan of eulogies and poetry in general, I fell prey to the convenience of the fast forward button.

No, don’t misunderstand, it is a good movie, worth watching and well made on a shoe-string budget. Writing, editing and direction have stepped in to make up for the dollar deficit. All that lack of action and lifelessness you can only expect from Casey Affleck has been realized in the lead role which puts these specific traits of Affleck to good use. Rooney Mara has an exceptionally powerful scene with a vegan chocolate pie. There are no other actors worth mentioning other than a couple of bed sheets.

It is a haunting movie in a literal as well as in a figurative sense. I couldn’t fall asleep after finishing the movie. Not because I started hallucinating imaginary shapes in the dark of my bedroom or kept getting startled by creaky settling noises our floor boards love making after midnight (in other news English is a funny language 😉) but because the movie essentially gave me the message, “You think life sucks, eh? Wait till you get a dose of after-life.” Such a downer. I have been an ardent researcher and reader of Sam Parnia, the Scole Experiment, Raymond Moody and the like. David Lowery has single-handedly snuffed out the romance of after-life from my mind.

As an easterner (from eastern hemisphere) by birth, the cycle of after-life is not an alien concept to me. What kept me awake at night after ‘A Ghost Story” is the absence of an escape door, which all the Eastern philosophies comfortingly provide us – whether it is moksha in Hinduism or nirvana in Buddhism. That one phone call to your lawyer in the sky, where is it David Lowery?

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Hell Or High Water

West Texas is the romanticized West of twenty first century Hollywood still populated by outlaws, sheriffs and thousands of cows. The edgy element of romance is provided by skeletal still art of derricks dotting the desert-scape, populated by dirt-poor ranchers, slick oilmen and occasionally, in saunters Jeff Bridges in a cowboy hat.

In Hell or High Water, West Texas is played by Eastern New Mexico. Same difference, the same earth under the same sun on either side of an invisible human-drawn administrative line, apparently invisible lines have no effect on geographies.

In addition to the strangely addictive West Texas-Jeff Bridges combo, Hell or High Water has a great cast and a subtly kick-ass script by Hollywood’s true Texan writer – Taylor Sheridan. Directed by David Mackenzie, the movie is about two brothers taking revenge on a financial institution, to put it indirectly staying clear of spoilers.

Chris Pine and Ben Foster work the dynamics of an endearing brothers-in-arms duo, one a happy go lucky ex-con and the other a reserved and protective father. The brothers are balanced on the other side of the law by two Texas rangers – wise-cracking Jeff Bridges and a half Comanche-half Mexican ranger played by Gil Birmingham. There is an interesting tension between these two law men characters  colored with sarcasm and racial jokes yet their banter (mainly one-sided by Bridge's character) has the looking out for each other, brother-from-another-mother quality.

The camera panning the desolate expanse of the desert towns and the story chasing the brothers through the lone star state's western outposts  captures the hopelessness, isolation and rapidly creeping poverty of the region. If you like neo-Westerns (there might or might not be cowboys, by Western I just mean they are shot in the American south west) check out Serpico, True Grit or Nocturnal Animals, the desert is a prominent player in all these remarkable movies.

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Blade Runner

Blade Runner dropped into my thoughts the other day in the form of Harrison Ford. I was trying to come up with the names of old Malayalam movies I wanted to watch and couldn’t remember even one. Then for some reason Harrison Ford popped up in my mind. Ford is not a particular favorite of mine. It is a mystery to me how he got himself into the two biggest movie franchises of all time – Star Wars and Indian Jones. Definitely it was not his looks or his animal charm. Some people are just plain lucky.

I might not have watched this Ridley Scott film earlier just because Ford played the main character. Anyway, without many choices last Saturday night, I paired a glass of Cabernet with Blade Runner and some cheese.It was an interesting combo. The casting of Rutger Hauer as the antagonist took away some of my hardship of watching a Ford movie. The rest of the cast was perfect, if you can excuse the 80s hair that seemed to have survived three and half decades of sculpted perfection.

Of all things a movie enthusiast might notice in a cult classic movie the first thing that struck me in Blade Runner's futuristic landscape of 2019 were the neon hoardings of the companies that no longer exist. Pan Am, Atari, RCA - all switched off their lights in 20th century. Later I learnt about the Blader Runner curse. 

Another observation is the absence of children. I will have to read Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", the sci-fi novel which served as the inspiration to this movie, to see if the introduction of robots nullified humanity's primary task - to procreate and propagate the species.

Watching this 1982 movie in 2017, two years away from the AI-rich dark future the movie is depicting, I am glad reality is considerably slower in pace than science fiction, and hopefully a lot less sinister. Blade Runner's dark and slick set design is quite a marvel. I read that the set design inspiration came from all over - from the Pope's sleeping quarters in Vatican to Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House. In real life 2017 flying cars are still in conceptual stages but Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are ramping up on the efforts. After all cars are only slightly bigger drones and drones are ubiquitous now. 2019 is still two years away to fatten up those drones.

Blade Runner is a movie to watch if you are interested in good old fashioned sci-fi. But then again if you were, you must have already watched it. Blade Runner or rather Philip K Dick's story had anticipated and provided material for lots of movies and TV series that came afterward. The most recent ones of the AI strain I can think are West World (world apart, but a perfect conceptual match) and some episodes of Black Mirror.

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