A Serious Man

Director: Joel & Ethan Coen
Year: 2009

I found it hard to keep up with this film at first, it starts slow, boasts all of the Coen's brand of bland, almost square cinematography, and the story isn't anything that gabs you by the balls, but let me assure you that your balls will be grabbed & twisted, albeit gently, by the time the film ends. It is funny, with the typical Coen brothers' humor, just leaves you with a smirk & maybe shifting uneasily in your seat, and is full of irony. The screenplay is brilliant & the acting is very good, what else do you need. And let me correct myself for saying that the cinematography is all bland, it is not, there will be sudden bursts of almost surreal sequences to just break the monotony. In fact the film starts off with one such sequence, which has practically nothing to do with the rest of the film, apart from maybe act as a pointer towards what to expect. The climax is worth waiting for.

I give it:  7.5 on 10

The Blind Side

Year: 2009
Director: John Lee Hancock

 I give it: 7 on 10

An inspiring & heart warming story. I am not a huge Sandra Bullock fan, neither do i like sports dramas, but this is one film that i loved watching. It will give you hope. Films like this leave you feeling warm & happy, even more so because it is based on a true story. Watch this when you feel low & need a pick me up.

A guide to watching films based on Nicholas Sparks' books

Namely: Message in A Bottle(1999), A Walk to Remember(2002), The Notebook(2004), Nights in Rodanthe(2008), Dear John(2010), Last Song(2010).

 1. Expect love like you will never ever find in your life. All forgiving, all sacrificing love. Love that last forever, till death do they part, blah blah.
2. Expect lots of crying.
3. The couple will break up, at least once. But don't worry they will get back together.
4. If the couple is very happy before too long into the film, one of them will die.
5. If the couple is not happy till nearly the end of the film, there will be a happy ending.
6. There will be a scene with an old couple who have undying love for each other.
7. Expect parents to be super parents, you will wonder why you never had such wonderful parents.
8. One of the protagonists will have a talent, which they will not nurture until the loves of their lives come along & inspire them.
9. Things always happen at the beach.
10. You will wonder for days after you finish watching the films, why you waste time watching stuff like that, but a week later you will watch another one. I guess there's a closet sadist in all o

La Meglio Gioventu (The Best of Youth)

Director- Marco Tullio Giordana
Year- 2003

I give it- 9/10

This is how films should be made, even if they must run almost 6 hours to be made this way, if you make it well people will sit through those six hours & watch it. It is a tale that spans 3 generations of the Carati family, mainly centering around the two brothers, Nicola & Matteo. Several characters are introduced in between & at the end all of them are built so well that you know them almost like you know the real people, you feel for them, you hope for them, you laugh & cry with them. I stayed up till past 2 am on two consecutive nights to finish watching this & it was totally worth it. Wonderful film, must watch for every cinema lover.

The Experiment

Director:  Paul Scheuring
Year: 2010

I give it: 7/10

I should go & throw myself off a bridge because I am commenting on a remake without watching the original. Hollywood is known to make messes out of great films, but this one didn't seem like much of a mess, even though, like I said, I shouldn't comment on it without watching the original first. Forest Whittaker is magnificent. Adrien Brody is okay. The film does look a bit hastily put together, too much happens in too little time. Nothing really sinks in. The soundtrack is pretty bad, makes the film appear very cheap & cheesy. It's an interesting plot though, if you haven't watched the original. But watch it for Forest Whittaker, if not anything else.

Shutter

Year: 2004
Director: Banjong Pisanthanakun
              Parkpoom Wongpoom

I don't understand why this movie spawned so many sequels. There's even a hindi movie called "Click" coming out which has the same story line. I also don't understand why so many people like this movie. Look at the imdb page & there are rave reviews everywhere. Maybe it suits the taste of people who like a certain kind of horror flicks, the "Grudge" kind, but as for me, i really don't find ghosts painted white, walking on ceiling, crawling like they have muscular dystrophy & dripping blood from their eyes scary. They are mostly funny, sometimes bordering on gross. Shutter has enough of both. about 15 minutes into the movie, the directors decide they want to scare you (read shock you) every 10 seconds or so, & so they carry out every single cliche in the scary movie manual succesfully. It's so damn predictable that if you are of the kind who closes their eyes to block out the scary parts, you will know exactly when to do it, but then again, you will miss almost the entire film, because like i said, it's a scare a minute, or half a minute, or even less. But wait, you won't even have to close your eyes towards the end, because IT IS NOT SCARY!!! It is so damn funny that i was in splits. I mean really! Ghost painted white peeping in through car window! Ghost crawling down ladder like spiderman with long hair in a white dress, & the climax is really the funniest. In fact i didn't even realize how hilarious it was till i overheard my dad complaining of his neck hurting over the last few weeks & i burst out laughing when i imagined the scene  as in the same situation in the movie.
On a positive note, they'll not even need to make a parody of this one, the original is good enough. :)

The Time Traveller's Wife

Year: 2009
Director: Robert Schwentke

Maybe my expectations from this movie were too high. I have heard so much about the book & have been wanting to read it for a long time, but i got hold of the movie before i could get the book. I think i expected it to be something so terribly moving that i would need boxes of tissues to see me through & feel like calling up ex boyfriends & professing eternal love to them just for the day, even if i really think they are complete jerks. But none of that happened. I guess romance is a hard genre to work with. Only masters can make romances that strike that certain chord inside people that makes the film a classic in its genre. And director Rober Schwenke surely is not one of those people.
The plot goes like this...
Eric Bana plays the main protagonist, Henry, who is born with a genetic defect that makes him travel in time. All is not very well with his life when he meets Claire (Rachel McAdams) who claims she has known him her entire life as later in his life he travels in time to go meet Claire as a little girl & tell her their little story. They fall in love & get married & life gets far more complicated from there. I won't be giving out more than this, mostly because it's all too complicated!
In the end, the movie is okay but some parts kept bugging me. For example, when Henry first meets Claire, he doesn't know her at all, so i guessed he never travels to the future, only to the past. But later he's shown travelling to the future, so he does indeed travel to the future. But then why had he never even seen the woman who would be his wife & the love of his life before he meets her in err... real time? Anyway, i guess it's not worth thinking so much about. I think i will go read the book, i think it's gonna be better than the film, because the plot is intriguing, but the movie just doesn't make the mark.

Cold Souls

Year: 2009
Director: Sophie Barthes

I kinda liked this movie. It begins really well. The plot is smart & gripping from the start. Paul Giamatti stars as himself, struggling with a stage adaptation on Uncle Vanya, when he comes across an article about an organization that extracts souls from people's bodies & stores them, so that they can go about their activites in "peace". Frustrated by mounting performance pressure as rehearsals for the play progress, Paul decides to give the soul extraction a try & as expected everything goes wrong thenceforth.
The film is funny where it intends to be & makes you think as well. Paul Giamatti is excellent. But towards the end there are too many subplots going on which are dropped abruptly, for example, the Russian woman whose soul Paul "borrows", the mob boss & his actress wife...i expected more about those characters & their contribution to the plot. Comparisons with Being John Malkovich is unaviodable, but the treatment is quite different. Overall it's an interesting movie, quite watchable.

The Rebound

Year: 2009
Director: Bart Freundlich

Why am i reviewing this movie? It's 'cause i'm back with a vengeance. Or at least i want to be. I have ignored this blog for a long time, now i wanna make amends. So i start by reviewing the movie i watched last night, which happens to be this one.
What to say about this movie. Let me put in some spoilers... 40 year old mother of 2 catches husband cheating, divorces him & moves to New York city. There she gets a fab job & meets this angel of a 25 year old guy who gives up blue collar jobs to be a manny to her kids, because "he loves them". Obviously they fall in love & it's strange, her being so much older than him. But he does stick around, the angel that he is, loves every bit of her & is thrilled out of his mind to hear that she's preganant. He can't wait to be a dad at 25 it seems. But things don't work out & she decides she doesn't want to be with him (yes, crazy woman, i know!) & he goes travelling the world, has all these awesome experinces and... well, i think you should watch the movie yourself to know the ending at least.
But let me stop being cynical here & admit that it was indeed funny in places, & is good entertainment. And i have to say this, that if anywhere in the world (or beyond it) there is a man as great as this guy in the movie played by Justin Bartha, CALL ME!!!!