My Left Foot (1989)

This is a biopic about an Irish artist who was born with a terrible disease called cerebral palsy. This disease renders his total body motionless except his left foot. I started this movie 4 times before because of various recommendations/excellent reviews etc. But I could never watch it beyond the first 5 minutes as I formed a certain preconceived notion that it might be 'full of self-pity' or 'tragical in nature' or 'dry and documentary like'. Somehow today I forced myself to drop all the notions that I had about it and go ahead and just finish it. To my surprise this movie was anything but what I thought it would be. The artist never ever shows 'self-pity'..he becomes successful/famous/rich..and his life is so rich with interesting incidents that it barely sounded like a documentary at any point in time. To be candid, i was in tears throughout the movie, not because of pity/sadness but because of the resoluteness that the artist has shown. Recently I watched 'There will be blood' and then I decided to watch all the other movies of Daniel Day Lewis and he is totally spellbinding in this one. No wonder DDL won an Oscar for his role in this movie!

Happy Accidents

Another sci-fi + comedy/romantic movie (after kpax) that makes me want to write (a quick) blog post about it - Happy Accidents (2000). Vincent D'Onofrio (Private Pyle in Full Metal Jacket) has brilliantly played the role of a back traveler from year 2470, who is in love with Marisa Tomei (in 1999) and tryies to alter her life by saving her from a road accident . He believes she has died so , several times in her past lives. He also believes in Cheeseman theory of using a strong emotional jolt can alter the direction time and events (momentarily :). Anyways, I liked this movie of how it tries to tie these concepts -- romantic pesty relationship, spiritual (breaking out of cycle of previous lives), and scientific(wormholes for back tavel) in one beautiful story.

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.

Earth

This is a intensely made movie directed by Deepa Mehta and has the partition of India as the backdrop. Again as in 'Fire', Deepa Mehta does a good research for this movie to depict the violence and nastiness of the partition. As the movie proceeds we can see the restlessness built in the hearts of the characters although it can be seen that this restlessness is in total contrast to the relaxed mood of the characters in the first half of the movie. None is saved from the heartbreak in this movie. Interested people can also watch out for 'Khamosh Pani' which also has the partition as the backdrop. Earth shows us the scenes of the partition where as the Khamosh Pani shows us how this violence took shape with all the details. Both provide us with a nice understanding of what actually happened during the partition and the way it affected other events that were to happen.