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!!!!