A vacation for me

Wondering why I am not posting anything for the past one month here? Well, it is a long time since I watched a good movie completely. I did go out to watch a few Malayalam films but they did not seem that interesting to be written about.

Have you see The Holiday? The cast includes Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz. I had seen it almost 2.5 to 3 years ago. Recently it came on television and I was watching it. This is one of those movies I love to watch at any given point of time. It is just so lovely and refreshing. I love both the houses in the movies, the characters and to top it all the background scores. It is soooooo amazing. I do really want to write a review for it, but probably I am not in the mood to do so :-) But yes, definitely I will try to write one.

So if you haven't watched it yet, go for it!

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Swedish)

Year: 2009 (Swedish)

Genre: Crime and Thriller

Direction: Niels Arden Oplev

Cast: Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace

Rating: Very Good

A carefully scripted movie with a good plot. It revolves around the investigation of a 40 year old missing case of a girl, Harriet. A journalist, a professional hacker, and an old powerful family, to which Harriet belonged, are the central characters. The main plot is how the lead cast resolves the mystery and identifies the person guilty of many murders which led to the disappearance of the girl.

There is a sub plot to the movie - the life of the hacker, Lisbeth. There are a lot of incidents in the movie, which portray the crimes against women, be it 40 years back or even now. Though some scenes may be mentally disturbing, the script seems to have handled it well by making it look authentic than exaggeration.

The colour tones are also neutral. A majority of the scenes are in shades of black, white, and grey, and suits the mood of the film. The movie does show many helpless girls becoming victims to crimes but Lisbeth is shown as an example of one who is a victim to a crime and yet is able to handle the situation wisely. And she even takes her revenge on him. Though Mikael does the investigation from the beginning, Lisbeth seems to crack the clues, do the background research, and is portrayed as the bolder character.

Premonition

Year: 2007

Genre: Drama, Suspense

Director: Mennan Yapo

Cast: Sandra Bullock and Julian McMahon

Rating: Okay

The plot opens with Linda (Sandra) waking up a morning and doing her daily chores like sending kids to school, jogging, cleaning, and so on while her husband, Jim, is away on a business trip. Suddenly a police officer arrives and informs her that her husband died in a car accident on the Highway. Devastated, she calls her friend and mom. Her mom arrives to stay with her and the day ends when her mom goes off to sleep in the guest room and Linda fall asleep on the couch, holding her wedding photo to her chest.

Next morning when she wakes up, she is in her bedroom and in different clothes. Her mom is not there in the guest room and Jim is alive and in the kitchen, watching television. Here starts the confusion. Though Linda tries to believe that what she saw was a dream, she knows that there is something more to it. Things start becoming worse when she again wakes up the next day. Her house is full of mourning friends and family and the funeral of Jim is set to take place. Now she knows that something is really wrong and she tries to find out what is happening.

Her days are not going in the order it should be and are jumbled up. She gets to know of her husband's death even before he is dead, and many more events. The first two days make it seem a bit confusing. But later you get the flow and understand the plot as she tries to relate and understand the events in her life.

The movie has a Prologue and Epilogue. It ends on a positive and hopeful note.