Gravity (11 Oct 2013)

Cast: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Ed Harris

Director: Alfonso Cuaron

This movie is a first of its kind. It gives you the experience of being in space. Not travelling in space in a spaceship or being on an alien planet. But the on-the-face experience of being in space (in close proximity of the earth)! And this experience is beautiful as well as unnerving. It is beautiful to watch different snapshots of earth at different time periods. But it is also very unnerving to realize that you actually don’t ‘belong’ in space! We are so accustomed to the earth’s ‘force of gravity’ that we hardly notice its presence or give it any importance. In fact, we try tooth and nail to overpower it with more efficiency, so as to venture in space with more ease. But this very ‘force’ gives us the sense of ‘belonging’.

The movie ‘Gravity’ gives you the opportunity to experience the following novelties –

-       Picturesque views of earth from space.

-       Exterior repairing of space stations.

-       Interior functioning of different pods.

-       Methodology of stranded astronauts.

-       Method of positioning oneself in a directionless area i.e. space.

-       Mega destruction without an iota of sound because sound cannot travel in vacuum!

The entire movie revolves around Sandra Bullock and George Clooney and in most part of the movie they are clad in hooded spacesuits. Their realistic facial expressions and excellent voice modulations keep you glued to the screen. Not for a single moment, you happen to miss the sheer body language associated with a normal movie. Direction and special effects are awesome as well. It needs great r&d and immense focus to create such a movie. In fact, you can also call it a very interesting and educational documentary. It will not be surprising, if this movie will inspire many of its young viewers to become rocket scientist or astronauts in the future!

This movie is best watched in 3D. Actually these are the movies that live up to the full potential of 3D viewing.

Last but not the least, you need to see it to believe it.

The Gods Must Be Crazy II (1989)

Cast: N!xau, Lena Farugia, Hans Strydom,

Director: Jamie Uys

The movie is a sequel and except for the plot, it’s very much identical to its prequel Gods Must Be Crazy I (1980). However, the prequel is more detailed and justifies the actual movie message i.e. how the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert are eons away from the urban civilization, but still happen to be the masters in their own world, and also how a mundane and daily use (read consumable) object from our life appears totally inexplicable and utterly useless to them and how hard they try to simply get rid of it!

It seems that since this message was well established in the prequel, the sequel simply concentrated on a plot comprising of both the Bushmen and the city dwellers without going deep into the differences of their perception, preferences etc.

In the movie, it is very interesting to observe how Bushmen calculate and understand everything just by reading different footprints on the sand. It seems that the desert talks to them just about everything! Just by looking at footprints, they can derive – who/what has imprinted it and whether it’s wounded, copulation activities of specific animals, tracking of lost children etc. It is important to note that they are the only population in the world who has thrived successfully for so many years without any surface water! They are one of 14 known extant "ancestral population clusters" (from which all known modern humans descended).

The movie actually is a well made documentary showing snippets of Bushmen culture and also the pace is little slow. People who are interested in knowing about different cultures, or say world movies will surely like it.

Hideous Kinky (1998)

Cast: Kate Winslet, Said Taghmaoui, Bella Riza, Carrie Mullan, Sira Stampe, Abigail Cruttenden, Pierre Clementi

Director: Gillies MacKinnon

First and foremost, the movie has nothing to do with its name. It is based on Esther Freud’s novel of the same name. It’s a simple and nice partial journey of a hippie (by heart) English woman along with her two kid daughters. And this journey of hers is solo and not in a group or caravan. She is a gypsy by heart who is absolutely untouched by money and grandeur. What she seeks for her daughters and herself is the true meaning of life and the opportunity to live life as it is intended to be lived i.e. with the soul.

Morocco as the movie background serves as a good setting for such a storyline. Kate with her divine face has acted well. Actually it does not feel that she is acting at all. Maybe somewhere she believes in the character. An interesting study that you find in the movie is the impact of a hippie lifestyle on the children. It is amusing to see the elder daughter argue with her mother (the protagonist) to get her admitted to school in spite of her mother’s nonchalance to do the same! The movie clearly shows the ease with which they adapt to any new environment, get attached to people, provide and seek assistance at the drop of a hat and are at absolute ease without any money!

All in all, it is an interesting movie to watch if you wish to understand the actions and reactions of a gypsy soul.

How Do You Know (2010)

Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Paul Rudd, Jack Nicholson

Director: James L. Brooks

Till now we have seen stories on true love, shifting from false love to true love, sudden realization of an association as true love, but this love story defies all the aforesaid settings! This one is about being in a casual but genuine relationship, keeping in hand an upcoming friendship and ultimately putting the ‘true love’ label on the budding friendship and leaving the casual but on the verge of turning steady relationship midway for no particular reason!

The only plausible reason for the aforesaid choice seems to be the fact that the protagonist i.e. the heroine happens to be in the same mental state or life phase as the chosen hero during the decision making period. This made them totally understand the respective needs of each other to - stay quiet or constantly blabber or be indecisive or make a total mess of themselves.

There is no bad guy in the movie. Neither any of the characters are looking for love or happen to believe in only serious relationships. Everyone here is well mannered and good at heart. They may be childish and/or eccentric at times, but they are genuine at heart. So, there is no moral as such in the story. It perhaps just depicts the ultra urban scenario where relationships don’t commence with the hindsight of longevity, forget the sentiment of commitment! Partners are chosen at whim and left at whim without intending any actual harm and perhaps no major offence is taken since things start on a very casual note!

Acting wise, Reese is very natural. This lady can put sense into all kinds of characters. This trait of hers remind very strongly of Kajol. Owen has great screen presence. Others are also up to the mark.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Josh Hutcherson, Michael Caine, Vanessa Hudgens, Luis Guzman, Kristin Davis

Director: Brad Peyton

It is a sequel to ‘Journey To The Center Of The Earth’. But like most sequels, is unable to repeat the magic of the prequel. Or you can say that now we are so used to CGI wonders on the big screen that the idea as well as its implementation needs to be really out of the world to make us feel out of the world. Otherwise the movie is nice and entertaining. It has its own new ideas like – riding on a honeybee, vulture sized butterflies, dog sized elephants, enormous rock sized lizard eggs, electrified water dragon etc.

Like its prequel, this movie is also based on a novel (The Mysterious Island) by Jules Verne. Mostly the children will like it.

Spartacus (1960)

Cast: Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, John Gavin, Tony Curtis

Director: Stanley Kubrick

This movie instantly reminds you of Mel Gibson’s ‘Apocalypse’. Reasons – Perfect r&d, set design, casting, costumes, picturization of ancient life and warfare etc. You find it hard to believe that such extensive movie was made in 1960! It is primarily based on a book ‘Spartacus’ by Howard Fast.

Set in the 1^st century BC, the film is about a slave named Spartacus, who is born in slavery, sold to be trained as a Gladiator (they were made to fight in twosome wherein one had to die), rebels against slavery, forms a group to facilitate departure of slaves to their home grounds as free men, is made to fight against the imperial Roman army, fights them again and again bravely, is ultimately crucified with hundreds of others, thereby condemning the age old system of slavery which ultimately got abolished 2000 years later.

It is needless to say that the direction as well as acting is simply superb. The movie is more of an edutainment since it covers in detail the hardships of ancient slavery system focusing more on how slaves (read gladiators) were kept and controlled rather than how they were captured. It is fascinating to witness the early teaching methods. There is a scene wherein the to-be-gladiators are taught wounding which body areas causes the following - death, impairing of limbs and slow death respectively. Today, we employ extensive lectures and audio-video lessons to teach anything similar and still cannot be sure of students grabbing the essence of the matter. But in the movie, the teacher simply used three colors – red (for death), blue (for impairing) and yellow (for slow death) to teach the same. In six swift strokes (two strokes for each color) wherein red was applied on a student’s throat and heart region, blue was applied on one set of his limbs and yellow was applied on left and right sides of the front region of his upper torso, the important lesson was taught effectively!

It is a must watch movie for serious movie enthusiasts.

Lincoln

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, David Strathairn, James Spader, Hal Holbrook, Tommy Lee Jones

Director: Steven Spielberg

This movie is a part documentary on one of the finest politicians of the world by one of the finest movie directors of the world. What do you expect?

You are subjected to perfection – in each and every frame. Be it costume, set, dialogue or acting – every element is well taken care of. Performances by Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field are excellent.

However, being an Indian audience you find it difficult to relate and thereby fully understand – almost one and a half century old American history, concept of long drawn civil war, issue of color and social system of slavery. Most of all you happen to miss the element of entertainment that you so non apologetically associate with the experience of movies. But this will not deter the serious cine goers from watching this highly critically acclaimed movie. Rather it will provide a good audio-visual study of that era.

The movie covers the time period spanning between termination of Abraham Lincoln’s first term and beginning of second term as the American President. It mainly focuses on the internal battles that the aforesaid great human and politician had to fight among his own party members, the Republicans and also the Democrats to get passed the Amendment 13 that effected the Abolition of Slavery. It also shows his personal anguish and family vibes related to this matter. You also see glimpses of his personal wit and jolly nature. Cleverly, the director has refrained from focusing on the actual Civil War and drudges of slavery, thereby keeping the movie length and audience interest intact.

Two interesting facts can be observed in this movie. One – most of us have probably seen Lincoln’s picture as a portrait in a school text book. But here you get to see him as a very tall and very thin man, more so when he is shown as a corpse in a nightgown. Two – in that era when apparels were coarse and voluminous and fashion as such nonexistent, men happen to exercise all of their fashion attempts on facial hair i.e. beard and moustache! An amazing variation of the same can be seen in this movie

Jack Reacher

Cast:  Tom Cruise, Rosamund Pike, Richard Jenkins, Werner Herzog, David Oyelowo, Robert Duvall

Director:  Christopher McQuarrie

You know what happens when a ‘good’ tailor aspires to create an apparel for the international market, say a fully embroidered long coat, buys the best fabric, best embroidery threads, copies the latest patterns, throws in a couple of his own, but simply cannot get hold of the ‘karigars’ or workmen, or say cannot guide them enough to fill the entire coat with the international class embroidery, and so leaves gaps in various places! Resultantly, the long coat no doubt gets ready for the international market because whatever workmanship it entails is of the international standard. But the buyers will refrain from buying it because they are used to and they expect ‘complete workmanship’.

This ‘complete workmanship’ is what the audience expects from a Tom Cruise movie. As an actor, he has played the character pretty well. To the extent that he has even refrained from flashing his toothy grin and jaw dropping stunts! Depth of character is visible in the Assassin, but not in his Boss. Meaning to say that, strong characters have been created, but not explored. Presentation of the plot could have been made much more interesting. Herein one gets to know the difference between a good director and a brilliant director.

Verdict: A fine movie but without any Tom Cruise effect.