Category: movies

From September 2003:

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Name: Meet Joe Black
Directed By: Martin Brest
Written By: Ron Osborn, Jeff Reno
Type: Romance, Drama
Year: 1998
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Brad Pitt, Claire Forlani

The movie started off well. It seemed to me that it would be an interesting movie. William Parish (Hopkins) is a multi-millionaire about to turn 65. Parish has a date with Death (Brad Pitt). Susan Parish (Forlani) starts to flirt with Death.

The movie started off well. Parish’s encounter with Death’s voice and the coffee shop scene with Pitt and Forlani. After that, the movie turned to a crawl. It was so slow I almost died.

Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins are wasted in this movie and Forlani isn’t what some folks make her out to be.

Rating: 2 out of 10
stay away from this one, unless you have a lot of time on your hands…

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From October 2003:

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Name: The Count of Monte Cristo
Directed By: Kevin Reynolds
Written By: Alexandre Dumas, Jay Wolpert
Type: Adventure, Action, Drama
Year: 2002
Starring: James Caviezel, Guy Pearce

I haven’t read the book of the same name written by Dumas. But I’ll put it on my ever increasing list of books to read. For a person who doesn’t read many books, I like carrying this list around.

Back to the movie. It’s about an innocent man Edmond Dantes(Caviezel) and how he’s tricked and deceived into his imprisonment by people he knew and trusted.

Adventure, action and revenge, this movie is stuffed with all this and more. James Caviezel delivers a wonderful performance and Guy Pearce plays the jealous Fernand Mondego very well.

Rating: 9 out of 10
I truly enjoyed the movie, very very entertaining. it’s a movie made to watch.

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From August 2003:

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Name: Bend it Like Beckham
Directed By: Gurinder Chadha
Written By: Gurinder Chadha, Paul Mayeda Berges
Type: Drama, Comedy
Year: 2002
Starring: Parminder Nagra, Keira Knightley, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers

Jesminder Bhamra (Parminder) is a girl in love with soccer. She dreams to play professionally. There’s just one problem, her family is desi. The movie is about her fight against Indian traditions that prevent her from achieving her dreams.

I think the movie was okay; nothing great. There were plots, sub-plots and sub-sub-plots, and everything falls into place in the end. I didn’t “fancy” that.

Rating: 2.5 out of 10
I would have given it a 2, but the main actors acted well.
Watch it if you want, I’d stay away from this one.

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Originally posted: August 2003

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Name: Anand
Directed By: Hrishikesh Mukherjee
Written By: Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Gulzar, Bimal Dutta
Type: Drama
Year: 1971
Starring: Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan, Sumita Sanyal

Anand is about a happy go lucky man played by Rajesh Khanna (named Anand of course). Anand is diagnosed with a deadly disease; he has just 6 months to live. He moves from Delhi to Bombay to meet with his friend Dr. Prakash Kulkarni and spend the rest of his days in his nursing home.
Prakash is a good friend of a cancer specialist Dr. Bhaskar Banerjee (Amitabh Bachchan) and wonders whether anything can be done to save Anand. Thus Anand and Bhaskar meet. Anand changes Bhaskar in the most subtle ways, and that too for the better.

I loved this movie. I can’t say enough how much I loved it. This is the only movie that has ever made me cry. Not “boo hoo hoo” cry, but it made me shed a couple of tears, which is infinitely more than any other movie has ever done.
I recommend this movie to everyone. If you haven’t seen it, you don’t know what you’re missing out on. If you’ve seen it already, go watch it again.

10/10

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I like watching movies. I like watching good movies even more.

I remember a time when I actually built an entire system to allow me to review movies. I even designed it to allow multiple users. It would grab all the movie details from IMDB, all you had to do was enter the imdb url, and it would grab the actors, director, year, language, length etc etc… It was pretty neat for what it was back then. This was in 2004.

I think I reviewed 15 odd movies before being sucked into work and leaving the blogging world behind. Methinks I shall pull in some of those old reviews into this blog.

I was trying to get the movie review site back up, but it was giving me technical issues. meh…

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I’ve been watching movies again lately, more than before. What’s with movies starting slow and picking up a little steam later on? (Gone Baby Gone, 13 Conversations, and a few others I’ve seen lately). I want to see a movie that captures my attention right at the start and keeps up the pace. Not that there’s anything wrong with slow movies (I loved Gerry, but that was slow all the way along). But there’s something else about the well paced movies… Fight Club, The Bourne Identity, Company come to mind, where I’m sold on the movie within 10 to 15 minutes.

Gerry

I’ve wanted to watch Gerry for a while. But it was always hard to find. I was going to watch ‘Gone Baby Gone’ but thought I should try and watch Gerry before that.

Gerry is a  movie about two guys named “Gerry” and their trek through a desert. They get lost, and they don’t have any food or water.

Gerry is a slow movie. There are stretches of the movie that have absolutely no dialogue. These last anywhere from 1 minutes to 10 minutes. There are multiple such stretches. The average shot length is 60 seconds! This is not your fast paced hollywood movie with an overdose of car chase scenes, blasts, evil villains, awful comic relief and romance/sex. This is just two guys in a desert. I liked this movie.

The lack of dialogue intensifies other sounds and visuals in the movie. You feel the sounds of the walking and the sounds of the winds that much more.

There were bits of the movie that were obviously adlibbed, some of them were great, others not so much. Matt Damon has better improv skills than Casey Affleck.

I will admit that I wasn’t able to watch the movie in one go. I had to watch it in two sittings. Generally I will watch new movies in the early morning when everyone is sleeping. Nights are for tv shows or movies I’ve seen already. I prefer watching movies in one go without any talking or interruptions otherwise. But Gerry, even with no interruptions, I could not watch in one go.

I also found the ending very disturbing. But I really enjoyed the opening of the movie. I will divulge no further information. If you watch it in one full sitting, let me know.

9/10

[IMDB Link]

This is a very very very good movie, and you should see it.

There is one particular exchange in the movie that I absolutely loved, it pretty much made the movie for me.

It’s when Aamir Khan’s character is at the parent’s house and he shows the father a painting that Ishaan made.

aamir: yeh dehkiye Mr. Avasti, yeh tez dimagh hazaar khayal bol rahe hai rangoon main, aap ki aur meri khabiliyat se kahi aage
father: lekin is ka faida kya hai?
aamir: is main aap faida kyon dhoond rahe hai?

English translation [thanks iffat, I did modify it slightly to convey the context]:

aamir: look at this Mr. Avasti (holding the painting up), this bright mind is speaking a thousand thoughts through these colours, far beyond your and my (cap)abilities

father: but what use is it? (what are we getting out of it?)
aamir: why are you looking for benefit in it?

10/10 – I would give it 10 just for the above conversation, but the rest of the movie was really good too. =)

Om Shanti Om at IMDB

I liked the movie. I really liked the movie. I thought it was good. I thought it was very very good.

“But Adnan, you didn’t like Main Hoon Na, and Om Shanti Om isn’t like the drama movies that you prefer”

This is true, I didn’t like Main Hoon Na, but that’s because Main Hoon Na sucked. While Om Shanti Om is good. Sure it’s not a drama, and is “mindless entertainment”, but is good mindless entertainment.

The movie sets up an “anything goes” atmosphere to start off, and thus anything that goes afterwards becomes much more believeable. And it’s very well done as well, it’s not melodramatic, and there are tons of inside jokes along the way.

I would say 9 out of 10, go watch it.

[Curse of the Black Pearl] [Dead Man’s Chest] [At Worlds End]

Okay, I’m getting as many opinion pieces on movies as I can while the Oscar buzz in my brain lasts.

Pirates! I don’t think I’ve laughed out loud so hard in a theatre before (Dead Man’s Chest), (I saw the first one on DVD).

I know I will instantly like “At Worlds End”. This is not like the Matrix where everything gets ruined by the sequels. I liked “Dead Man’s Chest” as much as I liked “Curse of the Black Pearl”. In fact, “Dead Man’s Chest” had more piraty stuff than the first one. If you’ve played the Monkey Island games back in the day, you know what I’m talking about. The wheel fighting scene is an example of this… hahaha.

Plus, there’s Johnny Depp. I’ve been told I have a man crush on Johnny Depp. This is true.

This is the movie that makes me want to say “savvy” and “love” at the end of my sentences, even when they don’t really apply.

I’ve seen both movies multiple times, and each time is worth it.

Anyone who dislikes any part of this series is clearly not intelligent… and clearly they’ve never been to Singapore.

[IMDB Departed Link]

This movie rocked. Literally.

The only Scorsese movie I saw before this was “The Aviator”, which was a good movie. But it wasn’t a great movie.

The Departed was a great movie. A good plot, acted out by very good actors. Mind you, I’m not a big fan of Jack Nicholson or Leonardo DiCaprio. I am however a big fan of Matt Damon. But they all delivered great performances.

Definately deserving of it’s Oscar victories.

If I had the time, I would definately go see it again.