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The French film was subtitled in English as “The Kid with a bike”. The story is about a 12 year old boy (Cycil) who is abandoned by his father to foster home. The boy is hell-bent on tracing his father and his bike that went with this father. While forcing his way to his old apartment, Cycil happens to bump into a stranger – the local hair dresser (Samantha) .Samantha buys Cycil’s bike back from a person to whom Cycil’s father had sold it before he left the area. Samantha then takes Cycil into her home in weekends and a bond of affection develops between them. They trace Cycil’s dad who categorically says he doesn’t Cycil back. In the meanwhile Cycil falls into bad company with neighbourhood anti-law elements & commits a theft. Cycil realizes his mistake, turns calm and the movie ends with all going well.
The cycle (bike) is the only possession Cycil has, it gives him comfort and he holds on to it with his life. It comes throughout the movie, hence the title for the movie.
The movie has few characters but all of them have done their part naturally and convincingly, you are literally transported to the small town where Cycil lives. No vulgarity or exaggerations. A must see movie of 2011.
“Madly in Love” is a German movie about a Sri Lankan Tamil boy falling in love over a Swiss-German Divorcee with a Boy. I came to know of this movie from a friends’ FaceBook stream, after a search in the Internet found this movie.
The main character “Devan” is done brilliantly by Muraleetharan Sandrasegaram – he comes out naturally as a next door youngster that we will see daily. The female lead role “Leo” is done nicely by Laura Tonke. The movie is about the struggle the Devan goes through between his love for Leo and his father’s pressure to marry “Nisha” a young girl from Sri Lanka who has been engaged and flown over to Switzerland to marry him. The movie briefly touches on the life that Sri Lankan Tamilians have in Switzerland trying to assimilate into main stream Europe or to stay apart. You won’t believe it – but the movie has 3 to 4 Tamil songs just like Kollywood movies, but were shot quite nicely and were appropriate to the storyline.
My friend shared the DVD of this movie, with two questions – are you a movie lover and do you see animated movies?. I was puzzled a little with the questions, anyways being a true Indian & someone who never turns down the opportunity to get (borrow) something free, I said “YES” and came home with two DVDs in my hand. One of them was “Grave of the Fireflies”, at that time I never realized the impact this movie will leave in me.
Grave of the Fireflies is a 1988 Japanese animated war film written and directed by Isao Takahata. Taking place toward the end of World War II in Japan, the story is about the tale of two orphaned children, pre-teen Seita and his young sister Setsuko. Their father is in the Japanese navy, and they live comfortably in Kobe despite rationing, but when their mother dies from burns due to an American bombing raid, a distant aunt takes them in — and conflict eventually forces the children to try to survive on their own. The movie is all about their struggle in a war-torn town with no roof to their head or income; their little joyous moments in beach and with fireflies.
The movie was amazing, as one of the reviews had said “a must in every list of anti-war movies”. Due to the the storyline and brilliance of the Director you hardly feel it was an animated work with the two main characters especially the young girl portrayed so beautifully. In the last 15 minutes I couldn’t control water rolling over my eyes.
The Rotten Tomatoes rating of 96% is less and 8.4 rating in IMDB are both less, the movie deserves 10/10. A must watch movie.
Yesterday while returning from Singapore to Chennai in SQ flight I saw this Egyptian movie “Khaltet Fawzeya” (Fawzia’s Secret Recipe). Hollywood and Kollywood movies are always there, but if you are lucky you get to watch wonderful hand-picked movies in Flight Entertainment and most often Singapore Airlines comes with good selections. The movie was described as “Fawzia is a poor woman, who has a magical, secret recipe for achieving happiness in life. She marries five men and lives with her large family in her small home”. The movie didn’t disappoint & was true to this description as well.
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The first few scenes start off on a high comedy note, with Fawzia shouting in the midnight complaining about her present husband, then the whole neighbourhood coming to her support and she demanding and getting Divorce from her husband. She then asks the next man to help her to marry her and the whole sequence repeating for 4 times. The story happens entirely in a small Egyptian neighbourhood (though a slum it is shown clean and friendly, no gangsters or dark lanes) where Fawzia who has been divorced four times live with all her kids alone in a small house of her own. Each Thursday all her former husbands join for a family dinner bringing with them gifts and foods, each father taking care of his Son/Daughter. All her former husbands admire Fawzia for her strong will, caring nature and they show true affection and respect to her after divorce, she calls them affectionately as her brothers!. Fawzia has earned the love and respect of her small locality, she helps the ladies to prepare Jam in her house as a community activity, then distributing them free to kids around the graveyard, takes care of a fallen from fame dancer, a single lady friend of hers who is struggling to live after her love dies. Fawzia’s fifth husband learns her liking for a private bathroom (now all of them sharing a community bathroom), constructs a private one for her but authorities demolish it for they lack money/power.
The movie is directed by Egyptian Director Majdy Ahmed Ali, and Ilham Shaheen (the main cast who did the Fawzia character) has done a great performance in bringing out a down-to-earth practical lady with a strong will. Her will is tested by events and deaths (of her former husband, her good friend ‘dancer’, her first son) but after initial pain and sorrow, she overcomes them with resilience. The movie has many small fine touches by the director, like the scene where two men driving into their street seeing Fawzia’s large family eating together mistaking it for a Ramdan community dinner and joining them without being asked or asking; the last scene where all her former & present husband join together in building a beautiful bathroom (again!) for Fawzia with each one of them bringing something special to it; a wealthy rich lady leaving a flower bouquet in the grave of her loved one, then immediately the kids around picking it up and selling it; when Hood (fifth husband) complains that Fawzia’s mother didn’t come to their marrige, Fawzia countering that his sister too didn’t come.
Overall a comedy movie but an undertone message about how to take on life as it comes and how to care for others around you. Don’t miss watching this fine cinema. You can see a trailer of the movie (in Arabic without subtitles) here.
Apart from this movie, the other International Movies from the KrisWorld listings that I was interested to watch were: Two Girls from Egypt, I love Hong Kong, 20 Cigarettes & Outside the Law. I hope I find those movies too sooner.
I saw this movie today, Paradise Now a 2005 film directed by Hany Abu-Assad. It is one of the very few movies that is shot in Palestine, it about two Palestinian men preparing for a suicide attack in Israel. It won a Golden Globe for best foreign language film and was nominated for an Academy Award in the same category – which raised my curiosity more to watch the movie.
The two youths from the city of Nablus (Gaza strip) are just 48 hours away from their mission. The two men are allowed to spend what is presumably their last night alive with their families. However, since absolute secrecy must be maintained and they can tell nobody of their mission, theirs can be no proper farewell. What happens next is the story. What I liked in the movie is that it shows the conflict from the eyes of two common (young) men, with families; the movie doesn’t take glorify the actions of either side and leaves it to the audience decision. A must watch if you like this genre.
Today I watched the movie “The Japanese Wife” by acclaimed director Ms.Aparna Sen. The plot couldn’t have been more captivating – 635 Letters, 3 Phone Calls, 15 years of marriage, but they have not met; a husband in remote Bengal as a School Teacher and a wife in Japan. Having seen her previous work “Mrs. & Mr.Iyer” I was expecting a phenomenal movie in The Japanese Wife.
Aparna Sen has told the story brilliantly well, we are transported for the 90 minutes to the remote Bengali village. The initial scene was very enjoyable where a big package from Japan comes to the little village and the whole village getting excited. Rahul Bose & Raima Sen have done their roles finely and measured. India can be proud that it has the talent to produce movies like these and not only the usual Bollywood & Kollywood Thamasha’s. A must watch movie if you enjoy this genre.
I have three little criticisms about the movie:
1. Rahul Bose’s character as SnehaMoy Chatterjee is pictured relatively older to what he should actually be. Even in flashback when he is in college he is shown old, and after just 15 years he should be only 35 Years, how does he become so older as he is shown.
2. With all the love and affection he has for his wife Miyage, he could’ve learned Japanese language easily.
3. The story is almost exclusively told from the SnehaMoy side, ignoring Miyage side of it. May be the cost of shooting in Japan might have limited the effort.
After reading my blog on the movies I have covered in it, my fellow INFITT member Mr.Jean-Luc Chevillard from Paris recommended that I see this German Movie “Good Bye Lenin”. Title alone was enough to make me interested. Today I got a chance to see this movie.
The movie’s story happens in East Berlin from October 1989 to just after German unification a year later. Alex lives with his sister, and his mother. His father fled to the West abandoning the family. Alex’s mother single headedly raises the kids and becomes an idealist and supporter of ruling Socialist Party. Later, she suffers a near-fatal heart attack and falls into a coma. When she comes out of Coma, Doctors advice Alex not to give any exciting news to her mother. So he recreates a make-believe communist era inside their house to make his mother thinking that all his well in Berlin outside. This happens till his mother dies peacefully having lived in a Communist Berlin which didn’t exist.
The director does a fine job of bringing out the difference in life in East Berlin before fall of Berlin Wall and just months after it, by showing simple things like a selection of Pickles in a Super Market to the hoardings and fashion.
I just now watched this documentary movie “HOME” by Director Yann Arthus-Bertrand (a french photographer and world renowned environmentalist). The full movie is available in HD Quality free in Youtube from yesterday till 14th June 2009. Don’t miss this opportunity to watch this must see movie.
I came to my office on a Saturday today so I can watch the movie in High Definition (HD) with the high-bandwidth that is available in the office – the privileges of being the CEO  . The quality was amazing, unbelievable it was playing over the Internet. Like I mentioned last year when I watched “Casino Royale (1967)” in HD from Hulu.com, the availability of these high quality content over the Internet is now becoming more and more wide stream than ever. These compel me to predict that in next 10 years we will see the end of distribution of entertainment content (movies and songs) in any physical form – it will happen much faster than the best of Internet evangelists have dreamed of and it will happen even in developing countries like India at nearly the same pace.
Coming back to the movie “HOME”, the documentary chronicles how life on earth came into existence 4 Billions years back, how we humans came into existence 200,000 years back and how we started farming 10,000 years back. This background helps you to understand and appreciate the destruction we are making on our planet, after the discovery of OIL and our dependence on it. The movie emphasizes the fact of how all organisms and the Earth are linked in a "delicate but crucial" balance with each other, and how no organism can be self-sufficient. I really liked the fact, the movie didn’t end with a pessimistic note of all being lost on climate change, but on a positive note that worldwide change is happening (though in pockets) and we can reverse the trends.
I saw this documentary (Original German dubbed to English) on my Lufthansa flight (Frankfurt to Seattle) last week – imagine they having only this worthwhile to watch. Overall Lufthansa hardly had a dozen movie and absolutely no comedy TV Shows in their in-flight entertainment – it is one of the things I don’t like in Lufthansa. And they don’t offer a hygiene kit (toothpaste, socks, perfume) either individually (or) even have it in the rest rooms. Lufthansa, please charge one or two dollars more and offer a decent hygiene kit – with airport security and restrictions on carrying liquids and paste it is difficult for us to bring it ourselves.
OK, enough of my airline ranting, coming back to the documentary. It is a retro comedy that talks about gender differences – a mixer of biology lessons and a love story line of two couples. Acted by Benno Furmann and Jessica Schwarz. Fun to watch especially how couples fall in love, fall out and then fall back in love. Nice to watch on an airplanes while killing the time.
Footnote: Native speakers of Non-English languages, pardon my ignorance and dumb description here. When I had to type Furmann’s name with the non-English U character with a dash on top, I went to Windows Character Map application to copy it. That’s when I saw there are 6 different variations of U, 5 of them having a symbol on top (Tilde, Dash, Half Moon, Circle, Double quotes) and sixth one having a hook on bottom. Interesting, isn’t it.
This week one of my colleagues gave me a DVD of the movie April 1945, A Nation awaits its … “DOWNFALL“. Surprisingly I didn’t put it in my CD shelves for watching one of the days (which will never come) but managed to see it today.
In the last half-a-century much as been written and movies taken about the Holocaust & World War II. But many of them skip the last few weeks of Hitler or mention them in passing paragraphs. This movie is all about the last few weeks, when it was certain the Nazis have lost. This different perspective makes the movie different and enjoyable, even though it is 2:30 Hours.
Oliver Hirschbiegel (the Director of the movie) chronicles the last desperate days in Hitler’s underground bunker, as the Red Army unrelentingly closes in. It’s April 1945. The streets of Berlin are defended by armed children, and the fate of Nazism is sealed. Some blindly believe Hitler capable of some last-minute miracle. Yet there is still a human drama to play out… Read a nice review of movie here.
If you are interested in war history and the human toll it takes, this is a nice movie to watch.
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