11 posts tagged “movies”

What a stunning film. Adrien Brody's performance can't be lauded enough, neither can Polanski's direction. Brody plays Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish pianist whose true story of survival through WWII is pretty darn incredible. The screenplay is clean, crisp and entirely effective. The scene after Brody leaps out of the rundown hospital where he is hiding when it is bombed, and emerges into an avenue lined with grey, gutted and empty homes and buildings, must go down as a truly epic shot in the history of filmmaking. It took my breath away.

The Pianist is an all-round winner in that it deals with a horrifying and very serious theme, yet is beautifully and aesthetically crafted. The scenes flow smoothly into each other and at no point did the film come close to being boring or tedious. It's an absolute treat to watch.

This is one of the most singularly impressive films I've ever watched. Akira Kurosawa has done a masterful job of transplanting Dostoevsky's characters into a Japanese setting, as incongruous as the notion might initially seem. Be warned: this 2 hour 46 min long film is extremely slow-paced. But it's been made with very close attention being paid to detail, and as such should be viewed from the same patient perspective.

Hats off to Toshiro Mifune (who plays the role of Akama, or Rogozhin in the original Russian novel) for his stellar acting. I couldn't take my eyes off him whenever he appeared. In fact, I'm amazed by the uniformly excellent acting of the entire cast. Not only did Kurosawa make the right choices, but he evidently brought out the best in them as well.

The Idiot is a very difficult novel to bring to life by way of cinema. As such, the film does seem to simplify the storyline to a great extent, and that is perhaps its single shortcoming, as inevitable as such a simplification is. But for fans of Kurosawa and anyone interested in high-quality art films, this, in my opinion, is very unlikely to disappoint.

Incredibly funny film -- with John Cleese and Michael Palin of Monty Python fame, plus Kevin Kline and Jamie Lee Curtis, this is one of those rare films where the main cast have all given stellar performances and their comic timing is just superb. It's about a bunch of jewel thieves all trying to outwit the others, each intending to pocket the loot from their bank heist for himself. I thought Palin was absolutely brilliant as the stuttering, animal-loving Ken (my favourite character in the film), and Cleese was just perfect as stuffy English barrister Archie Leach. An hour and a half well spent.

I've also just started on Entourage. The first episode of Season One seemed ok -- not particularly enthralling. Maybe it gets better as you go along?

FUCKING FANTASTIC! Hugo Weaving is such a terrific actor... and this is one of the most HILARIOUS movies I've ever watched :D

Downfall traces the last few days in the life of Hitler and the history of Nazi Germany, once the Russian troops entered Berlin in 1945. I found it to be highly edifying -- based on the memoirs of Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge, Nazi architect Albert Speer and mostly on Joachim Fest's Inside Hitler's Bunker, it's a gripping narrative of how the events leading up to Hitler's suicide played out. Bruno Ganz as Adolf Hitler is very sharp, though bits of his acting struck me as being a little exaggerated -- but there are some other stellar performances that made me sit up and really take notice of the actors. Juliane Koehler as Eva Braun is altogether convincing in her vulnerability, denial of the bombardment and destruction right outside the bunker, and unquestioning allegiance to the Fuehrer; Christian Berkel as Dr. Ernst-Guenther Schenk, concerned for the well-being of civilians and torn between his official duties and his personal responsibility towards the sick and elderly, is heartwarming; and Corinna Harfouch as Magda Goebbels, who kills her own children rather than have them grow up in "a world without National Socialism" is masterful.

That a 2 1/2 hour film depicting the events of a short period in time should manage to be engrossing throughout is a pretty big achievement. Nifty editing, some great acting, and a commendable reconstruction of the atmosphere of 1945 make this a delight for anyone even half-interested in European history.

(With subtitles in English.)

This must be one of the greatest movies I've ever seen. There was so much about it, so many honest and direct scenes that I absolutely loved. I really do think this should be made mandatory viewing in all schools so that race-derived hostilities and stupid misconceptions can be tackled early on.

Danny Vinyard's sad summing up of what he learned from his skinhead experience is undoubtedly my favourite line in the film:
Hate is baggage. Life is too short to be pissed off. It's not worth it.

I agree.

Okay, I have lots of so-called contemporary Hollywood classics to catch up on. Not being much of a cinema-goer (it usually seems like too much effort), I end up watching movies that have hit headlines three or four years after they've done so. In most cases, though, that doesn't bother me. I get to experience it without all the hype and hoopla.

So -- Mystic River, which I watched tonight, boasts of the involvement of huge names like Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Clint Eastwood. Unfortunately, at the end of the film, I was left asking: "So what?!" The acting is fabulous, don't get me wrong, but the movie sort of crumpled in on itself as it tried to handle lots of complex themes and pose as a very profound piece of cinema. It's not, really. The innate talent of the actors saves it, but the storyline, while it might have been exciting in the original novel, didn't really have me engrossed or concerned as to what would happen next.

Sean Penn: a master of the trade, if there ever was one. But he's just a part of the movie, not the whole of it. I didn't like this one much.

This is an unquestionably brilliant movie. Nicolas Cage plays Yuri Orlov, a Ukrainian immigrant to the USA who makes it big as an arms dealer in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This is the story of what everyone knows, but cannot prove -- how leaders of various nations encourage and instigate the arms trade so as to provoke wars all over the world, either for political or economic benefit, and usually both. Orlov in his years as a dealer manages to acquire everything money can buy -- power, prestige, a "trophy wife," and a lifestyle of unparalleled luxury, but it comes from blood money that has been earned by aiding and ensuring the deaths of millions of innocent people at the hands of firearms he works so hard to illegally buy, sell and swap. Interpol agent Jack Valentine, played by the scrumptious Ethan Hawke, is engaged in a dogged effort to track him down and bring him to justice -- but how can those that are using Orlov as a shield for their own activities afford their cover being blown?

I'm usually wary of movies that "make you think," because as often as not they turn out to be ponderous and preachy, but this one is thought-provoking, engrossing, and fast-paced. It has enough food for thought for hours and hours of coffee-table discussion and is a straightforward, unafraid exegesis of the international politics of war. Viewer beware though, I found the combination of Jared Leto and Ethan Hawke on screen insanely distracting from the storyline. Hghm.

I haven't read the book by Arthur C. Clarke, and not being much of a sci-fi aficionado, was even hesitant to watch the movie. But it has the Kubrick stamp, and so I gave it a shot and watched it in two parts, an hour-odd each, between yesterday and today. It probably helped that I split it thus, because although I am a huge fan of Kubrick's works (especially the unforgettable The Shining) I have to admit the extra-slow shots and great attention paid to detail require considerable concentration if one is to appreciate them.

Not much to say about 2001 except that the Star Gate scenes are absolutely terrific. For a movie made in 1968 the effects are probably better than any that would be employed today. And it's hard to make a science fiction movie that doesn't look corny or plastic; I guess it needed a Kubrick to pull this one off. Incredible amalgamation of art and science fiction -- though I wonder why I unwittingly seemed to have subscribed to the notion that they are worlds apart. Now it seems but natural that it should all link up Kubrick-style. The music, the acting (Kubrick really does bring out the best in his cast -- every movie of his I've watched stands out for the actors' relaxed body language and unaffected dialogue delivery. It probably helped that he usually had a good cast to work with), and that amazing ability to create hair-raising suspense before the viewer has even realised it's building up... I guess you need to watch this one to understand what I mean.