Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

      After watching Scoop, the actor-director combination of Scarlett Johansson(SJ) and Woody Allen(WA) intrigued me quite a bit. I went on to add 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona' and 'Match Point' to the top of my Netflix queue. This movie is an entertaining slaughter of the objective ideals by the subjective ideals. It reminded me of other movies such as 'The Dreamers' and 'Stealing Beauty'(Bernardo Bertolucci) where American tourists end up in cerebrally subjugating roles. Somehow I find this subjugation exceedingly hilarious.
      The movie follows two girls (Vicky and Cristina(SJ)), Vicky knows exactly what she wants and Cristina knows exactly what she does not want. I had to use the word 'exactly' because the girls think they know what they want or do not want 'exactly'. And they visit Barcelona to spend their summer and pursue career. They meet this charismatic artist Juan Antonio (played by Javier Bardem of 'No Country For Old Men' fame) at an art exhibition and the rest of it is mutual exploits to put it short.
      What I am interested in however is the way WA depicts the collapse of deductive ideals of the girls when subjected to the charm of non-conformist ideals of the artist. The course of Cristina reminded me of this quote by Chuck Palahniuk 'If you don't know what you want, you end up with a lot you don't.'
      However the real adrenalin in the movie starts when Maria Elena, ex-wife of artist (played by penelope) whom Juan Antonio literally worships enters the scene. The intellectual contrast between the real non-conformist Maria Elena and the fake non-conformist Cristina was apparent.
The relation between Maria Elena and Juan Antonio is brilliantly written by WA. I would watch this movie again to see their chaos, if not for anything else. Would have loved the climax if Vicky left Doug(Vicky's factory made zombie husband) to eventually become the missing-missing ingredient of the relationship between Juan and Maria. That would have given a tint of Nietzsche to the story.

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

This movie is based on the novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith. There is a surprise almost every ten minutes in this movie. It is so full of surprises that by the end of the movie I almost lost track of the all the twists and turns. I had to watch this one back to back to appreciate all of its thrills. This movie is centered around a compulsive liar Tom Ripley brilliantly played by Matt Damon. As far as I see the most crucial talent he had was to lie effortlessly and cleverly. Tom is hired to bring back Dickey Greenleaf (the victim of Ripley starring Jude Law) who is a non-conformist playboy spending his father's allowance with his writer girlfriend (starring Gwyneth Paltrow) in the tropical blue seas of Italy. Not to forget, this movie also casts Philip Seymour Hoffman (character name: Freddy Miles) who almost nails Tom but gets nailed doing so.

The best part of the movie is that it slowly draws the viewer to start identifying himself with Ripley. I never wanted his good luck to end anywhere whatsoever throughout the movie. Another tip to watch the film is to enjoy the breathtakingly beautiful locations of Italy. I will give this one the maximum rating. Also added 'Plein soleil' (a french mv based on same novel) to the top of my netflix queue.

Pi

This is a movie about a certain math genius who thinks there is a pattern of numbers in the operation of nature and everything in it. While watching this, I could not but think of Aronofsky's other movie 'Requiem for a dream'. The scores were very closely intertwined. It occurs to me that the score in his movies is actually better than the content and depiction of the movie itself. It turns the whole movie into a psychedelic experience. And the movie is made in black and white to make it more intense and absorbing.

Blade Runner

This was the sci-fi movie we watched and discussed on the Human Robot relationships depicted in the movie.

One interesting line of discussion we had was, what would we define as Robot, specially when robots starts looking Human? if they are bio-engineered to have blood and muscle like us (clones) Vs mechanical: wired and electronic how does the ethics debate change? Are they still Robots?

Second interesting theme was, what is the need to know who is human and who is robot?
Is it the intrinsic human tendency to categorize everything and apply rules based on that? i think in Anthropology this is the phenomenon repeatedly observed where the tribe defines whats self and other, and applies different rituals and rules based on that.