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!

Black Swan

Year: 2010

Genre: Psychological Thriller

Direction: Darren Aronofsky

Cast: Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis

Rating: Good

Black Swan is the story of a ballet dancer with a dance troupe performing the 'Black Swan' for the opening season. All through her career she had been an extra. But now that the lead dancer has been removed, she has chances of becoming the new Swan Queen. To be the Swan Queen, she has to dance as both the White and Black Swans with ease. The White Swan comes to her naturally. Black Swan seems to be a bit of trouble as she is a perfectionist and is scared to let loose of herself to become the Black Swan.

All through the movie we see how earnestly she tries to become the Swan Queen, the hardships, revelations, a very dominating mother, hallucinations, and how finally she transforms into the Black Swan on stage.

Portman has done a truely wonderful job. I have no idea of how ballet is and haven't observed one before. But her moves seem perfect and like those of a seasoned dancer.

The movie is shot almost in shades of white, grey, and black. These shades seemed to portray the moods and sadness of Portman's character effectively.

There are some scenes where I had to literally close my eyes fearing what would happen next. One of those is where she pulls out the loose skin from the back of her finger nail. Another one was when she goes to meet the old Swan Queen in hospital. Even the scenes where she quickly nips off her nails with scissors seemed scary to me :-D

All said, I liked the movie. Though there are no bright colors, romance, or action to keep you entertained, the dance sequences, and story does keep you glued on. A good watch.

The Descendants

Year:2011

Genre: Drama

Director: Alexander Payne

Cast: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, and Amara Miller

Rating: Excellent

The movie revolves around George Clooney (Matt) who is a busy lawyer and is always away from family on work. Though he is the sole trustee of a trust which owns 25,000 acres of pristine land handed over from the ancestors over generations, he believes in living on his own earned money.

Matt's wife, Elizabeth, meets with an accident and enters a comma. Matt has to come down to take care of his wife. The doctors let him know that the comma is permanent and his wife is not going to make it again. He starts taking care of his daughters, Alex and Scottie, 17 and 10 years each. He has no idea of how to handle their unruly and spoilt behaviour. Most of the times, he is very uncomfortable being with the girls. Gradually he starts understanding them and the girls also get used to him.

As the movie moves on we see how the girls become closer to their dad, how they cope with the loss of their mother, and what decision Matt takes regarding the sale of the land he owns.

Though having complexities in itself as an emotional story, the cast seemed wonderful. Everything just fell in place. The actors just have to be praised again and again for portraying the emotions so well. There were some very touchy scenes in the movie - when Matt says final farewell to his wife, the reaction on Scottie's face when the tragic news of her Mom is broken to her, the shot where Alex cried under the water, and so goes on the list.

I would say that I actually loved the movie for the correct proportion of emotions than the story. Not a pinch is more. You just look at their faces and understand what is it that they are going through.

A wonderful movie!

Dirty Dancing

Year:1987

Genre: Romantic

Director: Emile Ardonlino

Cast: Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey

Rating: Very Good

The main plot of the movie is the romance between the lead characters, Baby and Johnny. Baby and her family arrive at a resort for their vacation. There she gets acquainted with the staff and gets an opportunity to watch 'dirty dancing'. She is a thrilled by the moves and the dances. Johnny is the lead dancer in the entertainment group at the resort. When his dance partner is not able to participate in an Annual Dance show where they dance every year, Baby becomes his dance partner.

Johnny trains Baby, from a person who can make moves to a good dancer. They practice the Mambo and the portrayal of how Baby learns the moves are quite nice. Though they even practice the 'lifts', they don't do it at the show as Baby gets nervous. Later they fall in love and the rest of the movie shows how her father does not like the relation and how he finally agrees to it. The last dance sequence in the movie was awesome and so was the 'lift' scene.

A sweet little story that keeps lingering on even after you watch movie.

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.

The Town

Year: 2010

Genre: Crime

Direction: Ben Affleck

Cast: Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jeremy Renner.

Rating: Okay

The Town is a crime movie and the plot is based on a novel Prince of Thieves.

The movie opens with a bank robbery operated by Ben, Jeremy, and two more friends. Rebecca, who is the Bank Manager, is taken hostage and later freed. The story moves on to show the lives of these gangsters and the crimes they get involved in. Ben and Rebecca start a relationship and Rebecca is not aware of Ben's background. Rest is a cliche story - cops are involved, Rebecca comes to know of Ben's activities and breaks off the relationship with him, like all good gangsters there is bad crime lord governing them, and so on. Finally in one of the police operations, three of the gang members are killed. Ben escapes and kills the crime lord. He buries the looted money at a place where Rebecca is sure to find it and leaves her a note. The note is a hopeful one that they meet. She donates the money to the local ice hockey rink in Ben's mother's memory. The final shot shows Ben somewhere in Florida, looking over the waters from a small house.

Nothing seemed great about the movie and the story seemed to be a usual one. It seemed very much predictable. Just seemed like the old wine still in an old bottle itself.

Dragonfly

Year: 2002

Genre: Drama

Direction: Tom Shadyac

Cast : Kevin Costner, Susanna Thompson, and Kathy Bates

Rating: Good

The movie is about a doctor, who loses his wife, who was seven months pregnant - also a doctor, to a tragic accident, and is grieving the loss. He later sees signs of his wife trying to contact him through her patients who experience near-death situations. All the patients, draw wiggly crosses and ask him to go to the end of the rainbow. He initially has no clue of where is it that they are asking him to go. He tries to focus on other things but these signs follow him even at home like his pet parrot behaving oddly, he seeing a glimpse of his wife out of the window, and a dragonfly paperweight falling by itself onto the floor.

The story moves on while he finally seems to understand where he is supposed to go. He goes to the village where his wife was serving before the accident took place and is finally led by the villagers to a hut. A woman leads him into the hut saying that though they were not able to save her body, they saved her soul. In the hut, he finds, in a basket, a beautiful baby girl, his daughter, which was what his wife was trying to inform him about. His wife had given birth to the premature kid before her death. Similar to his wife's birthmark, the baby also has a dragonfly mark close to her ankle.

The movie, though not that great, has some beautiful shots, and some emotional scenes. The background score also seemed a little different and interesting.

Halfway through, I realized that this was the film based on which the Hindi movie Saaya was made.

The Time Traveler's Wife

Year: 2009

Genre: Romance and Fantasy

Direction: Robert Schwentke

Cast: Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams

Rating: Very Good

The movie is based on a novel of the same title. It deals around the love story of Henry, who has the ability to travel across time - to his future as well as past, and his wife, Clare.

It shows how Henry time travels to meet the little Clare as a kid, knowing that she would be his wife, travels to the past to meet his mom, and even to different places.

Henry, though has this special power is not always too happy as he cannot control the urge to travel and hence sometimes is away for hours and days altogether. This creates tensions in his family life. Slowly Clare learns to adjust as the wife of a time traveler. Amidst all the tensions, not being together during Christmas, losing two kids before they are born, they still share a very special bond.

Another interesting part of the story is that Henry travels to the future to meet his child and also gets to know when he is to die. But he is not capable of changing anything that is supposed to happen. Henry's daughter, Alba, also has the ability to time travel but is different from Henry as she can control the urge to time travel just by singing. The future Alba, at times comes to meet the younger Alba to the present and tell her things about the future.

The ending of the movie is filled with a lot of emotions and ends on a positive note which makes it even more pleasant.

The Lake House

Year: 2006

Genre: Romance and Fantasy

Direction: Alejandro Agresti

Cast: Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves

Rating: Excellent

The Lake House is a romantic movie and has a little complicated or rather unusual plot. It centers around two people who live two years apart from each other, falling in love.

Kate moves out of a lake house and leaves a letter for the next tenant to forward her mails to her new address. Alex receives the letter but is surprised as to his knowledge the house was vacant for several years. Kate mentions about paw prints leading to the house which was already there when she moved in, while, to Alex's surprise, there are no paw prints when he moves in and happens while he is staying there. Later, Kate tells him that she is in 2006 and Alex in 2004. The mailbox in front of the house is where they drop letters for each other. A lot of events happen further which makes them develop feelings for each other though they have not yet spoken or seen each. Things go further and Alex sees Kate in his present, which is actually the past for Kate.

Furthur, the movie reveals more interesting incidents which keep connecting them in the past and future. The movie is very romantic and keeps you completely hooked. Most of the elements in the movie are also very beautiful and romantic, like the maple tree, the house, mailbox, and so on.

The ending kind of seemed a bit confusing and complex. Reason - they finally meet at the same time frame. But I really loved the movie. Hope you also do.

Animated Movies!

I have been watching a lot of animated movies recently. It all started with Tangled. Before watching Tangled, I was not very fond of the animated movies. In other words, Tangled inspired me to go forward and watch all the good movie out there.

So to list all what I watched over the past few weeks:
- Ice Age (Dawn of the Dinosaurs)
- Ratatouille
- Finding Nemo
- Wall-E
- Monsters vs. Aliens

Well, to tell you the truth, I have been blown off my feet. I never knew I was turning myself away from such lovely movies. The stories are good and characters, awesome. Even after watching some of them, they linger on for a long and keep appearing in front of my eyes. Wall-e was one such character. I am highly impressed and loved the character to the core - his eyes, hands, and even the sounds he makes. Similarly, Nemo, Dory, and Marlin from Finding Nemo - all of these are wonderful characters.

And I still have some more movies to watch on my list now:
- Cars
- Up
- Sleeping Beauty

Will definitely keep you posted on how each movie is.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Year: 2010

Genre: Fantasy and Action

Direction: Mike Newell

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley, and Alfred Molina

Rating: Good

The movie opens with some nice golden shots showing the deserts of Arabia and some narration. Well, the shots really made me interested in watching the movie. As I said the shots are basically in a golden yellow tint and are absolutely lovely.

The movie is the story of an adopted Persian Prince (Jake), his invasion of the city of Alamut along with his foster brothers from the royal blood, the discovery of a divine dagger, some other revelations as time passes by.

The princes are made to attack the city by their uncle (Ben Kingsley), who misleads them to believe that the city served for the making of weapons and selling it off to Persia's enemies. They attack and win over the city. The Prince gets a dagger, which is a sacred dagger, which when used properly has the ability to reverse time. This dagger is what leads the story. It further shows the adventures and journeys in the life of the Prince, along with the Princess of Alamut and how he finally saves it from falling into the wrong hands.

The movie is wonderfully shot and keeps you interested throughout. Shot in Morocco, the movie is definitely worth watching.

Memoirs of a Geisha

Year: 2005

Genre: Drama

Direction: Rob Marshall

Cast: Zhang Ziyi, Ken Watanabe, and Michelle Yeoh

Rating: Good

This is a serious, yet touching and memorable movie. Now, how I came about to watch this movie -My colleague gave me the book to read. It was not with any great interest that I started reading the book. And even after I started reading, there was nothing too exciting that kept me reading, yet there was some curiosity that made me continue. I would not say that the book is a great literary piece of work. It seems written in simple language without any great elements involved. But yes, the story is a peculiar one.

Chiyo, belongs to a very poor fisherman family, where her mother is on her death bed. She has an elder sister too. The girls are sold to a wealthy man, who inturn sells them again. Chiyo is sold to a Geisha house. For the first few years of her life, she cries, tries to run away, is harassed by another Geisha, and suffers a lot of pain. But eventually we see, how she keeps her will-power and goes on to become one of the most popular Geisha in Gion.

The journey is amazing. In the book, the journey doesn't seem that interesting as there are many incidents happening in between. But the movie has the flow and the visualization is wonderful.

The movie has quite a lot of breathtakingly wonderful shots. The shots are such that you seem to notice nothing but the beauty in it. Be it the shot where little Chiyo runs through the Orange gateways to put the coins which the Chairman gave, or the cherry blossom, or even the flowing water with the bleeding colours of the clothes.

The book was written by Arthur Golden, published in 1997, and is fictional. The movie was based on the book and directed by Rob Marshall in 2005.

Finding Nemo

Year: 2010

Genre: Comedy and Animation

Direction:

Andrew Stanton

Voice: Albert Brooks (Marlin), Ellen DeGeneres (Dory), and Alexander Gould (Nemo)

Rating: Excellent

Phew, I wonder how I could miss it all these years! Such a lovely movie. I loved it from shot 1 to the very last shot. An extremely awesome and thrilling movie. What if it didn't have any humans to take the movie forward. Nemo, Dory, and Marlin were superb. It would be mean if I miss out any of the characters. All were cute and lovely.

Finding Nemo (2003) is the story of a single parent-a clown fish, Marlin, who raises his only son with extreme care and love, only to be taken away by an underwater diver-dentist to Sydney right in front of Marlin. This is how the movie begins. The rest of the movie shows how Marlin, who as Nemo says, is afraid to come out in the ocean from the coral reefs, swims across the ocean, miles and miles, to Sydney, to rescue his son. The journey is interesting as Dory joins (Psss, Dory is a sweetie with ahem, ahem, short-term memory loss - pretty interesting?). I loved the moments when Dory keeps referring to Nemo by names like Bingo, Fabio, and the like. I am highly excited as I write each word about the movie.

The animation is excellent. The fine details, vibrant colours, and the ease with which the characters move as in real life, is amazing. The voice overs also are commendable. I loved the attention given to each sound in the movie. To point out, each time Nemo kept fluttering his 'lucky fin', I could hear the fluttering. I mean, isn't that amazing? Well yes, I am a lot excited having watched this movie.

The movie went on to receive the Academy Award for the Best Animated Feature.

I loved the theme of the movie. To me, it was such a striking plot. It is easy for us to imagine and feel empathy towards a human losing his child and going all over the places, knocking doors in search of the kid. But what about a fish? Just imagine, swimming miles and miles underwater, to find his lost kid. I think it is a brilliant plot and was really touching as well. I really loved the way how emotions were portrayed by each of the characters.

And finally, I chose the poster for this post, so that it had almost all the characters in the movie. But I could not find Nemo in it. Can you find?

The Blind Side

Have you watched this movie? It's a slow paced yet soothing movie. I loved it.

The Blind Side is the real life story of Michael Oher, a football player. The main star cast includes Sandra Bullock and Quinton Aaron. This movie shows the early life of the homeless player, his poor and uncared upbringing, and his adoption into a wealthy family. The story is a real touchy one especially when you see the sad and unwanted Oher spend his nights on the roads and laundromat. It is heart wrenching to see him crying beside his mother's house.

Once Oher is adopted into the family, the movie shows how he becomes a part of the family, gets his athlete skills polished, becomes a more expressive person from his rather too introvert self, getting good at studies and how he gets universities come behind him with lucrative offers to opt those for higher studies. Then he chooses Mississippi University, then comes an enquiry into whether his family forced him to choose it, a misunderstanding with the family, and finally a reconcilation.

Some more interesting characters in the movie are Sean Tuohy, Collins, and SJ. SJ is the youngest in the family and seems to be an interesting character who inspires Michael to change positively.

It was a good watch and I must say this again - I loved it.

Kill Bill Vol 1 & 2

Kill Bill is a movie which I love to watch over and over again. Both the volumes! I saw this movie first when I was doing my Graduation. Then I did watch it a couple of times when it came on television. And this weekend I watched both the volumes again :-D

Kill Bill is a two volume movie by Quentin Tarantino. The story flows so smoothly that you can watch both the movies at one stretch. It is an action thriller movie and I must say that I loved the action sequences in it. It is the story of the revenge of a lady (Beatrix) who was shot on her wedding rehearsal day while pregnant. She does not die but goes into comma for four years. Finally when she wakes up she is desperately sad over the loss of her daughter and the things happened to her. She sets out on her journey of Revenge. The lead character is played by Uma Thurman and seemed apt for the role.

The story of the revenge spans over the two volumes. Beatrix has a list of people to kill and this is her mission. When the first part ends, she prepares the list of people to kill next. Here the audience is left with the message that her daughter is still alive.

The second volume shows the rigorous practice sessions of Beatrix and how she finally succeeds in her mission and gets her daughter back.

There are various kinds of music used in the movie. I am not familiar with the different music styles, so no comments on that :-)

A movie worth watching over and over again :-)

Changeling

This is the movie I saw the latest. I had been wanting to watch this from a long time and had it on the PC for months now. But never got to actually watching it. Luckily, two days back, it was being shown on HBO. I sat and watched it, not even allowing my husband to change the channel.

The story is based on a true life incident of a mother whose son goes missing and is never found. The movie shows the mother's pain, fights to get her son back, and coping with life. The police department finds a child and hands him over to the mother and publicizes that it is the correct boy who went missing. And when the mother complains that it is not her child, she is blamed for being insane and misbehaving. Finally she brings the case to light and proves that her child is still missing.

Angelina Jolie does the lead role and has very well portrayed the emotions. It seems like you get a feel of what she is experiencing. I loved some portions of the movie too much. One such scene is when the police officer informs her that her son is alive and has been found.

The makeup, costumes, settings, every minor detail makes you believe that the film is actually shot around 80 years back. The last shot where the wide shot of the city is shown gives you lot of time and substance to feel the sorrow, experience her lonliness, and newly found emotion of HOPE.

Cast Away!

Year: 2000

Genre: Drama

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Cast: Tom Hanks

Rating: Excellent

There might be none who haven't watched this movie or at least heard of it. But in my case, I was very late in watching it. The reason being that I am not such a Hollywood movie buff. May be it is because of all these Bollywood, Malayalam, and Tamil movies around. Whatever it may be, yesterday I watched Cast Away and I should tell you I was so wonder struck! Kept on imagining what if something like that happened in my life.

A little bit of the story in brief is that Tom Hanks is a FedEx employee who is the lone survivor of a flight crash. He drifts and ends up on an island at some far corner of the world. The worst part is that there is nobody on that island. Literally NOBODY! Not even a bird or an insect! Sounds weird right. The rest of the story shows the miseries he face over there, how he gets in harmony and learns to live without any luxuries, and how he finally makes it to the human inhabited places.

An interesting thing in this movie is the things that come in handy for his stay there. The skater shoes are the best! One more adorable aspect is how he keeps from opening that one FedEx packet. There are so many remarkable things he does on the island - makes the volleyball, Wilson, his only friend to whom he speaks all day long, becomes an expert from catching fish to making fire, and even how he survives for 4 long years on this uninhabited island. I would have rotted off had I been in this situation! Finally he makes a raft, and sets out with Wilson on a last hope to make it to the land where he belongs. In due course, his raft gets destroyed by the storms and he loses Wilson. He loses hope and does not attempt to go any further and leaves his oars in the sea. A day later, he is found drifting on the broken raft by a cargo ship and brought back to his life. Every aspect of a lost man is being shown in very much detail and how humans have the capability of adjusting with their surroundings. Finally when he returns home, he is even more shattered when he knows that his love has married somebody and has a kid. She and her thoughts was what kept him alive all the 4 long lonely years of his life. Towards the end of the movie we see him standing at a cross road and deciding on which way to go to start a new life.

Overall the concept is good, but the treatment and visualization is brilliant! It captures human emotions wonderfully. A worth watch!