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Few days back I watched in one of the movie channels, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This 1989 movie has all the big names in the industry, Steven Spielberg as the Director, Harrison Ford as the protagonist and the legendary “James Bond” Sean Connery. The action movie of those days was fun to watch. The story was all about the search into the Holy Grail taking into Nazi’s Germany and many places over middle-east.
It was nice to see Airships (Zeppelin) as a mode of transport, I never knew that Airships were used big time in 1930s by Germany and even for trans-Atlantic flights. Somehow I thought Airships were more demo vehicles and before they became mainstream the Hindenburg disaster happened.
The special effects in the movie like the hidden bridge and the tank looked funny now but according to Wikipedia took look of effort in those days without much Computer Graphics. Kudos to them.
The first time I saw Titanic was in Feb ‘98 at London, U.K. during my first abroad trip. I didn’t know anything about the movie and little about the original tragedy, so when my friend in London invited me to the movie with his family, I had little expectation but I was excited in being to a theatre outside India. Needless to say the movie took my breath, it was brilliant and kept me thinking for many days. After which I have watched and enjoyed the other two movies of James Cameron – Abyss (which actually was a predecessor to Titanic movie) and Avatar 3D.
15 years after that I went to see the movie again this Friday. This time at INOX, Chennai and with my 8 year old son – who knew more about RMS Titanic & the movie than me. He was super excited to be there and enjoyed the movie thoroughly. The original movie in 2D itself with its sets and interior were awesome, now being converted by Computer Graphics to 3D made it better. Unlike Avatar “3D” which was shot in 3D, Titanic 3D being a converted from 2D the effects were subtle, but the story and music compensated for all that.
A nice entrepreneur idea by the producers (James Cameron & 20th Century Fox) of the movie to re-release it this year commemorating the century of the original tragedy and to have no one complaining that they are exploiting a tragedy.
The movie “The Help” released in 2011 is one of the movies nominated for several awards for this year Oscar. I read about the movie in this article in “The Economist” about servant’s shortage in Brazil. The movie is based on a novel by Kathryn Stockett & is based on 1960s Mississippi in USA where how black maids were treated around the Civil Rights movement’s time period. This movie is one more in the list of Hollywood’s recent obsession to 1960s – remember the TV Serials Mad Men, Pan Am and movies like A Single Man.
Though Emma Stone plays the lead character Skeeter Phelan, a budding white writer who is trying to find her career, it is Viola Davis who steals the thunder in the movie. Viola appearing as an experienced black maid Aibileen delivers an imposing performance throughout the movie & is a perfect candidate to win an Oscar this year. Skeeter is one of the few people in Jackson, Mississippi who seem to be appreciative and sympathetic to the sacrifices the black maid in the city perform. Octavia Spencer coming as Minny provides the needed relief to an otherwise serious story, every scene she appeared I smiled.
Overall a good movie to watch & enjoy.
When a friend suggested I see this movie “Bad Teacher” I was not sure I will like it. From the web comments I expected the comedy to dull & boring and the sexy visuals of Cameron Diaz especially as a teacher will be making it unpleasant to watch. But the movie turned out to be better than that. It is by no means a great movie or anything but just different, certainly watchable & at places I even laughed while watching it.
The movie is about a seventh grade teacher Elizabeth Halsey (played by Cameron Diaz) who is an exact opposite of an ideal teacher. She does everything that is wrong about a teacher, she sleeps in classes, secretly drinks alcohol in class, doesn’t even know her students names or what’s in the syllabus and she even uses Marijuana in the school parking lot. To fund her breast implant (which is to attract a wealthy spouse) she is shown stealing items from a student’s house, dresses provocatively in a student car wash to pocket the collection and even accepts grafts from parents for better grades and drugs the state examiner. Then there is the usual love story with Elizabeth trying to impress a wealthy substitute teacher while the gym teacher likes her.
What makes the movie watchable is the simplicity and the frankness of the portrayal. It doesn’t sugar coat anything. The Director breaks the typical mould of a teacher character in movies – someone who is normally inspirational and above criticism. And at the end too, Elizabeth doesn’t get caught, instead the good teacher gets punished and Elizabeth gets away, she stops being sloppy and becomes a guidance counsellor.
I like Bruce Willis movies and I had been wanting to watch this movie but did it only today. The movie’s premise was very interesting, humans are living safe inside their houses and come out/do all their activities using a Robot which acts as their surrogates. Kind of like Avatar but this is all humans and in earth. So I had good expectation for this movie “Surrogates”.
It turns out the movie has wasted a great plot with poor imagination & execution, Bruce Willis is wasted too. First there is not much a suspense or rather it is not told correctly. Second lots of loopholes in the story, why should surrogates be doing sane things as humans & limited by Human capabilities – when they can jump as high as they want, why should they use a cell-phone to communicate, why use a computer monitor and mouse, why use the same cars as humans and the list goes on. The surrogates are supposed to be used worldwide including in China, Russia – how on earth will they let an American Private Corporation (VSI) control their lives, how the poor in the world who can’t even be reached to get safe water by their governments get a surrogate. How could all this have happened in just 14 years.
Overall, you can certainly live it through the movie.
This movie “The Lincoln Lawyer” is about a Criminal Defence Lawyer (Mickey Haller) who is street smart in helping his clients like Drug-Dealers & others released from law. He runs his office from his Lincoln car (hence the name), certainly not creative and was not elaborated much in the movie as well. Mickey lands a big wealthy client arrested in an assault case, but then comes the twist. With his co-worker on the case killed, he realizes his client is a serial predator but can’t turn him to law due to client confidentiality.
The movie starts rather dull and usual, but after the twist makes you sit on your seat’s edge. Nicely taken and acted by Matthew McConaughey.
On my return from Seattle to India in British Airways I watched this movie “Source Code”. The movie is starred by Jake Gyllenhaal who starred in Prince of Persia and did all the fabulous stunts, Jake has done a fine performance on the action sequences in this movie as well. Source Code is about a US Military secret mission of using last 8 minutes of memory stored in a dead man’s brain and travelling to multiple timelines in that. In the movie this is used to find the bomber in a Chicago commuter train. Jake comes in as a US Army Pilot in a mission in Afghanistan last remembered to have been attacked in a fighting, when he wakes up he finds in the body of another man travelling in a train. The idea that he can replay the same sequences as many times as the number of passengers till he finds the culprit is an interesting (impossible) idea. Nice movie, can be watched.
Just Go with it is a regular comedy movie starring Jennifer Aniston, Adam Sandler and Brooklyn Decker. Adam Sandler is a successful plastic surgeon (unmarried) and Jennifer Aniston is his assistant. Adam pretends to Brooklyn Decker (math teacher) he is in a bad marriage, has two kids. All of them go on a vacation to Hawaii. How Adam handle one lie after another with Brooklyn and finally marries Jennifer Aniston is the story. A light movie, can watch on a plane like I did – no complaints that way.
Having watched him in “Friends” and then in short lived “Joey” I will say I enjoy seeing Matt LeBlanc on screen. On learning in iTunes about his new show “Episodes”, I wanted to see it and did that this long weekend.
The show’s plot was quite interesting, it is about a British writer-producer couple who have a wonderful marriage and a hit TV series in UK. They get an offer from a Hollywood big network producer to do a remake of the show for American audience. After a lucrative offer, the couple pack up and ship out to LA. Next few weeks they learn that Hollywood is a place where deals are made and broken in the same breath. The cultural difference between the two countries and their celebrities are all shown very nicely. Tamsin Greig who acts as Beverly Lincoln, has done a good performance of enacting a Writer who is forced by Hollywood to include changes in her story, and who is personally going through a tough time of being a simple wife surrounded by Hollywood’s glamor all around. A must watch for a good laugh.
Unfortunate the series won’t be having a sequel or a next season to it.
After seeing and writing about a classic movie like Graves of the Fireflies, I couldn’t believe that I watched this movie “Hall Pass”. It is not the plot that’s bad about this movie, the plot is fine for a comedy movie – which is about married men dreaming about a chance to have an affair with a beautiful women and thinking how great it will be. What is bad is the artificial scenes, humourless acting, wasted twists & lack of any real joke. After the first half I had to literally force myself to finish the second half. I am surprised how this got 35% in Rotten Tomatoes.
You may skip this movie and save yourself 100 minutes of your life.
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