My favourite movies (II)

Spoiler alert!!! The reviews below may contain spoilers.

5.- Full Metal Jacket. Stanley Kubrick (1.987)  The best war movie ever. At least in my view. Extraordinary script and actually two movies for the price of one. The first part is about the Marine's training camp at Ellis Island depicting how a bunch of youngsters become fearless fighters and some of them are even brainwashed. This first part of the movie ends with a memorable scene, beautifully shot, with the suicide-homicide by Private Pyle. The insults by Sargent Hartman are extraordinary. The second half of the movie is in the actual Vietnam front, where the fresh recruits are put to test. The film reaches its second climax with the sniper scene at the end. By having a teenage girl as the sniper, who kills and sometimes deliberately keeps her targets alive for more suffering, Kubrick wants to show the world the absurdity of war. This concept is enhanced when the Marines walk out of the battle singing the Mickey Mouse Club song. 

6.- Goodfellas. Martin Scorsese (1.990)  This is Scorsese at his best. Great characters and superb casting. Lots of violence. Based on a true story, Scorsese tells us about mafia in New Jersey not long ago. It's like the Godfather 30 years after. Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci team up once again in a Scorsese movie. They had done it previously on "The Raging Bull" and would do it again on "Casino" a few years after this movie. It's the story of Henry Hill, a young boy who ends up working for Paulie, a New Jersey mafia boss. It contains the same elements you expect top find in this genre: violent assassinations; codes of honour; double crossing; drug trafficking. Henry Hill (played by Ray Liotta) ends up as the star witness against Paulie and his other band members in exchange for his freedom and anonymity.

7.- Cinema Paradiso. Giuseppe Tornatore (1.988)   A movie about friendship, nostalgia and coming of age which is almost perfect in every way. The story of a boy named Toto growing up in a small town in Sicily who develops a love for movies and works at the only cinema in town. He befriends the projectionist, Alfredo, and eventually becomes a famous director. Many years later he returns from Rome for the funeral of Alfredo and we're told the story of his younger years as Toto remembers it. Like every other kid, Toto gets in trouble, finds love and loses the love of his life. Tornatore develops his characters in a way the audience are drawn to them. You just can't help but loving the young boy and the friendship he develops with Alfredo. The town's priest, who is the highest moral authority and who decides which movies the people can watch and even edits the love scenes off the final cuts. The end of the movie, when Toto receives a gift Alfredo had left for him and which is a movie made up of all the scenes cut off by the priest, is memorable to say the least. Cinematography and music are also important elements that help make this movie one of my true favourites of all time.

8.- The Shawshank Redemption. Frank Darabont (1.994)  A movie that contains one of the best story lines I've ever seen in film history. This fictional tale of friendship, hope and survival has many sub plots, twists and great characters, all of them masterfully portrayed by an extraordinary cast. It's funny that there are two movies based on Stephen King's novels in this list and none refer to a horror story or have anything related to the supernatural. Like I've always said, if the story itself is great, the movie is 75% complete. Just add up the casting, direction, music and cinematography. Another one of the great movie endings. 

My favourite movies (I)

I've done this before but, like everyone else, my list keeps evolving as I watch more and more movies. These days I've been renting movies from way back in the 50's and 60's, classics I had either forgotten about, never seen before, or found a new appreciation for.

Last time I posted a list of my favourite movies must have been a couple of years ago. A lot of movie water has gone under the bridge, so I felt the need to update my choices. Let's see how many I come up with, because while I'm writing these lines, I'm still unsure as to how many I will refer to.

Let's start.


1.- Midnight Express. Alan Parker (1.978)  Although this list has no particular order, I have to say this one tops my list for a very personal reason. I was 17 when I watched this (not in 1978 but a few years later) on tape. I can certainly say this was the first movie ever to move me. For the first time I took notice of the elements that make up a movie like direction, acting, original score, script, cinematography, etc. But two elements really had an impact on me. For starters, the fantastic story line, with a sensational ending, which manipulated my emotions throughout the film. I was really shaken at the end, and couldn't keep the story out of my head for days or weeks. The second aspect was Brad Davis' impersonation of Billy Hayes, and his powerful monologue when the court sentences him. This movie is ranked No.1 because it opened my eyes in many ways towards film.

2. - Stand by me. Rob Reiner (1.986)  A movie about friendship, loyalty and coming of age in small town America. I loved the simplicity of the story and felt deeply identified with the main character, Gordie LaChance, a geeky kid who loved writing and telling stories and had a best friend whom he admired and respected. The relationship between the four boys reminded me of my own best school friends, who even when we're distant, are still my closest mates in the world. The phrase at the end of the movie always stayed with me, and even inspired me to write my first short story: "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?" Brilliant.



3. - The Godfather I and II. Francis Ford Coppola (1.972-1.974) The ultimate movie(s) Great storytelling, superb casting. Violence like nothing ever seen on screen before. Brilliant direction and editing. The music by Nino Rota was perfect, with a touch of nostalgia to it. To me, these are perfect movies in every sense. I consider them as one movie because that's exactly what they were. Shot almost simultaneously which made the transition from I to II very easy and smooth. The story of how an innocent patriotic soldier gets dragged into a life of crime by his mobster family is extraordinary in every sense. The scene where Michael (Al Pacino) shoots Sollozzo and the Police Chief McCluskey is one of my favourites in cinema history, those seconds when, prior to shooting, he realises what he's about to do will change his life forever. It was brilliant acting and directing. The story of how Vito Corleone migrated to America, slowly became a respected figure in the Italian community and then returns to Sicily to avenge his family, is also fantastic. Too much to say about these movies. True cinematic history.


4. - Incendies. Dennis Villenueve (2.010) This is new to my list. A French - Canadian production which became very popular at Film Festivals over the world in 2.011, this film tells the story about two young Canadian twins looking to track down their brother and father in a war torn Middle eastern country. The country is fictitious but is very similar to Lebanon. Told in two times, the first one 30 years ago when a woman is forced to let go of her young child and he's brought up by Islamic forces. We're shown the cruelty of war as she goes around the country searching for his son, only to be imprisoned and abused. The story then moves forward 30 years and we have her twins who, after their mother's death, leave their comfortable life in Montreal to embark on a search for their past. Everything unfolds in the end, with one of the most dramatic twists in film history, that left me thinking about this movie for a week. Another aspect I loved was the fact that I knew nothing about these actors, never seen them before. This truly made it more appealing as the story seemed more real to me.

I'll continue with this in a new post

The Kite Runner (2007)

Spoiler Alert!!!

A few months ago, we started a very good book-exchange relationship with our friends Fabiola and Oscar. We use to recommend books to each other and sometimes get together to watch a movie at home. The first book Fabiola recommended us was "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini, an Afghani immigrant in the U.S. who tells a powerful story about friendship and his upbringing in a once peaceful and beautiful Afghanistan

This was one of these books that as soon as you grab them (or they grab you?) you can't stop reading until you reach the back page. And even then you still want more.

The movie was released in 2007 with a moderate success and mixed reviews. I believe there were very high expectations given the success of the book, which was first published in 2003 I admit I was also eager to watch the movie and had high expectations as well. But the movie didn't let me down.

The Director, Marc Forster, tried to keep the story as tight as possible to the actual book. This is always difficult because there's so much information you can cram into two hours of film. He left out some bits but, to me, he managed to maintain the book's idea and the screenplay even contained many quotes taken word from word from Hosseini's book.

This is the story about Amir, a child growing up in pre conflict Afghanistan in the seventies, and his relationship with his best friend and servant, Hassan. They live a peaceful life in Amir's house, a big place in Kabul's best residential district as his father, Baba, was a wealthy man. His mother had died during childbirth, so Amir felt his father ignored and even hated him. Amir grew up trying to please his father, and cherished every little gesture his father had towards him. He idolised his Baba.

At the same time, Hassan, son of Baba's longtime servant and friend Ali, was devoted to pleasing his friend Amir in every way he could. Hassan admired and loved Amir and was loyal to him to the end. Hassan was a Hazara boy. Hazara's are considered as low class people in Afghanistan, only suited to be servants or blue collar workers at best. Amir and his father were Pashtun, one of the leading tribes in the country.

Amir and Hassan were close friends and shared everything, but in front of others, Amir changed quickly and treated Hassan as a servant, sometimes even humiliating him. On one occasion, Hassan is cornered by other Pashtu boys and is raped, the ultimate humiliation. Amir watches everything from a hiding spot and doesn't dare to intervene to save his friend. He is so shocked by this act, and feels so much guilt for not helping Hassan, that his easy way out of his guilt is faking a robbery at home blaming Hassan. Ali, his father, is so embarrassed  that he quits his job and leaves with Hassan, much to Baba's dismay and disapproval.

In the meantime, the Soviets take control of Afghanistan and Baba leaves the country in a hurry with an adolescent Amir. They finally settle in the U.S. where they live an uneventful life, deprived of the luxuries they had at home. Amir gets married, and eventually Baba died. Amir then is called by Rahim Kahn, his father's best friend who stayed behind in Afghanistan. He wanted to discuss something about Hassan with Amir and needed him to fly back to Pakistan, where he was living now. The Taliban were now in control of the country.

This where the movie starts, with the phone call, in the middle of the night, made to Amir, who was happily married and already in his early forties. He and his wife couldn't have children and had recently stopped trying. From here onward, the story is told in two times, while Amir is a boy playing with Hassan is Kabul's streets and his adult life in the U.S. followed by his adventurous trip back to Afghanistan.

Once he meets Rahim Khan, he's told Hassan is dead. He got married and had a son, but him and his wife were killed by the Taliban while defending Baba's old house, which Rahim asked Hassan to look after. Rahim asked Amir to rescue the little boy, Sohrab, from an orphanage and bring him back to America with him, to give him a better life. Rahim also tells him Hassan was his half brother, because his Baba had a one time relationship with Hassan's mother, a beautiful woman who ended up leaving Ali.

Amir decides that he must find Sohrab and bring him back to America. That's his mission, and he owes this to that honorable man named Hassan, whom he had hurt so much once. he then crosses over to Afghanistan and after locating the boy, a nine year old who was being used as a sex slave by a Taliban officer, manages to escape with him, not after being badly beaten almost to death.

Upon his return, his wife is happy because they now have a son and they both try very hard to get to know the boy, and they struggle to gain his trust and love as Sohrab had only known about death, violence and abuse since he was born. The final scene is a great one, where they fly a kite and the boy engages in a kite fight the same way Amir used to do when in Kabul. After winning the fight and the losing kite flies away, Amir tells him he's going to get it for him "For you, a thousand times over", the exact same phrase Hassan used many years ago. Sohrab, who finally engaged with Amir when flying the kite, gives him a big smile, and the movie ends.

With this simple gesture by Sohrab, we feel there's finally a hope for redemption for Amir, who spent his entire life with this enormous sense of guilt for having abandoned his best friend and hidden the truth of the false robbery accusation from his father.

The movie is beautifully acted and scripted, although all it took was to follow the book step by step and employ many of its memorable quotes. The time factor, the story told in two different eras, was also managed very well and was not confusing at all (sometimes it tends to be)

This is a powerful story anyway you look at it. There's suffering, forced migration, longtime friendships and of course, a long war which torn a country to shreds. The main character is not perfect. He's not a hero in shining armor but only a confused boy whose actions had far worse consequences than he expected and he paid the price for this. And finally, redemption, or at least a the beginning of it.

This is, at least, my opinion, and I might be wrong.

Django Unchained (2012)

I’m a big fan of Tarantino, and also of Westerns, so when Django Unchained was released here in Melbourne, it didn’t take long for me to see it. And once again, Quentin didn’t disappoint me.

Not only the movie is a Western, but Tarantino used many elements of the old spaghetti Westerns Sergio Leone directed back in the 1.960’s. To start with, the original music score was composed by Enio Morricone, who became famous for his whistling-charged tunes feature in Leone’s films, most notably “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”

For anyone who didn’t know, this is not casual at all. Tarantino has always loved spaghetti Westerns and has previously utilised Morricone’s talent in other films like “Kill Bill” and “Inglorious Basterds”

The use of quick close ups, where the camera zooms in from an open take to a tight close up; the relentless violence and the black humour, are other elements used by Tarantino in this film (and also in previous ones)  which are a tribute to Leone. If you haven’t seen any of these films, I highly recommend you find the trilogy of “For a few dollars more”; “For a fistful of dollars” and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” I’m surprised Tarantino didn’t at least tried to convince Clint Eastwood to participate in this movie.

The movie tells the story of a slave, Django (played by Jamie Foxx), who is freed by a Schultz, a German bounty hunter disguised as a dentist. This part was brilliantly played by Christoph Waltz, who had previously portrayed a sadistic Nazi officer in “Inglorious Basterds” He once again excels in his role of the extremely well mannered but decidedly violent bounty hunter who, after giving Django his freedom, forms a lucrative relationship with him as his criminal-killing partner.

This unlikely partnership leads them to a farm in Mississippi where it’s powerful owner, Calvin Candie, keeps Django’s wife as one of his many slaves. Candie is played by Leonardo Di Caprio, who is nothing short of magnificent in this role. Di Caprio’s butler and faithful right hand is Stephen, a free black man played by one of Tarantino’s favourite actors, Samuel Jackson. A long way from his memorable Bible-reciting henchmen Jules in “Pulp Fiction”, Jackson is still one of the coolest actors on Earth, and in this movie delivers equally well.

Schultz and Django come up with a plan where Schultz would offer to buy one of Candie’s prized Negro fighters, called Mandingos, and ask for Broomhilda’s (Django’s wife) freedom as well. Candie didn’t know his slave was Django’s wife.

During an elegant dinner, after Schultz had agreed to buy the Mandingo for $12.000 and return with the money three days later, Stephen (Jackson’s character) picks up the scam and, at gunpoint, Schultz is forced to pay the money but just for Broomhilda’s release. Just before leaving Candie’s house, Schultz fires a shot to Candie’s hart at close range, killing him.

What happens next is a vintage Tarantino bloodshed. Candie’s bodyguard shoots Schultz and Django shoots him in return. A dozen gunmen, Candie’s guards, enter the house and Django shoots everyone in sight. The shots are not the single red hole shots of old Westerns, but all wounds spurt blood in a fountain like manner, with splashing sounds and everything. Needless to say the house is turned upside down. Django ends up with no ammunition and finally gives up after killing at least 10 men when his wife is held by Stephen. To my amazement, this wasn’t the climax of the movie. There was still more.

Django is then sent to another farm to work as a slave along with other three coloured men, and travels in a caged carriage. While stopping to rest, Django convinces his captors that he’s a bounty hunter and that there’s a hefty reward for three wanted criminals back in Candie’s farm. He shows them the flyer he kept in his pocket with the bandit’s names. As soon as he’s released and they put a gun in his hand, he quickly proceeds to kill the three guards. One of them is Tarantino himself, who dies not by the shot, but in an explosion caused by the dynamite he was carrying with him. He just loves dying dramatically in his own movies.

Django then returns to Candyland (the name of the farm) where he meets the party that was just returning from Candie’s funeral. He proceeds to shoot almost everyone, including Candie’s sister, and after picking up Broomhilda, leaves Stephen wounded. As he leaves the house, he lights a fuse and the whole place explodes. He then proceeds to gallop out of the farm and, presumably, lives happily ever after with Broomhilda.

It doesn’t matter what kind of movie Tarantino shoots. It could be a mobsters movie (Pulp Fiction); a Japanese anime (Kill Bill); a Nazi movie (Inglorious Basterds) or a Western. He is always faithful to his basics: deranged violence with lots of spurting and splashing blood (cut off limbs a plus); extreme characters; long and tense scenes which end up in a bloodbath; magnificent casting and impossibly exaggerated plots. God, he’s good. I hope next time he opts for a Mafia movie. Can’t wait to see who he’s going to cast.

This is, at least, my opinion. And I could be wrong.

The Life of Pi

This movie left me puzzled after I saw it. I quite didn't know what to make of it. As I write these lines, I’m still unsure whether I liked it or not, but I least I felt it was interesting enough to write about. This should be a good start, shouldn't it?

The movie is based on the bestselling book of the same name published back in 2001, which went on to win the Man Booker award, one of the top literature awards for English written publications. I never read it, which would have helped in writing about and analysing the movie.

The story is fictional, and refers to an extraordinary adventure endured by the main character, Pi Patel, when he was a teenager. A writer meets an adult Patel, now in his forties, wanting to know about a shipwreck where Patel was the only survivor thirty years prior. Patel agrees to tell him all about it, and the story begins to unfold.

The story of the shipwreck and subsequent events is told by Patel in two times, as an adult and as a teenager. A young Patel left India for Canada with his father, mother and older brother. The family owned a zoo and wanted to move it, animals included, to a better market in Canada. They board a big freighter ship that capsizes during a storm of epic proportions. The only survivors of this were Pi, a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan named Orange Juice and a tiger named Richard Parker.

It then becomes a story of survival, the search for faith and the relationship between a boy and a tiger.

Without reading the book, it’s difficult to interpret what the author wanted to highlight on this story. I presume it would be the search for God. At the start of the movie, prior to the shipwreck, Pi had been intensely looking for the truth about God and had embraced three religions. He was born a Hindi, but then learnt about Jesus Christ and prayed as a Christian. He even told his parents he wanted to be baptised. Later on, he is seen praying as a Muslim. During the 227 days he was adrift, he talks to God, thanks him for the life he’s had. On other occasions, he confronts God, demanding to know why he keeps punishing him. In other words, all the struggles humans go through in the course of their lives trying to understand, to justify, the existence of an almighty God that controls our lives.

As explained previously, after some awkward events, Pi ends up in a boat with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and the Bengal tiger. The hyena ends up killing the zebra and the orangutan and is killed by the tiger. From then on, Pi and the tiger fight over the control of the boat. After many incidents where the tiger (named Richard Parker by Pi) almost kills the boy, they end teaming up and learn to survive together. They become close mates, brothers in arms, struggling for survival against the Pacific Ocean and its many dangers. This relationship reminded me of that between Tom Hanks and Wilson, the volleyball in “Cast Away”. Pi initially feared for his life and at one point he could have let the tiger drown, but the possibility of being left alone at sea made him change his mind and saved the animal, risking his own life in the process.

Pi even finds an island, which is occupied by thousands of meerkats, and Pi believes they’re finally saved. The tiger has a feast with the meerkats and Pi eats leaves and roots, but at night Pi finds out the island is “carnivore” and feeds on its occupants (something that is not fully explained in the movie, but possibly much clearer in the book) Next morning, Pi and his pet tiger board the boat and off they go again, avoiding been eaten by the island.

It was just when both Pi and the tiger were about to die of starvation, thirst and exhaustion, that they reach the shores of Mexico. An exhausted Pi, laying face down on the beach, watches helplessly as the tiger walks into the jungle, leaving him forever. As he’s been carried away to a hospital by locals, Pi cries for losing his friend and companion through his adventure.

Pi is then questioned in the hospital by the insurance company, who wanted to know why and how the freighter capsized. After Pi tells them the story, tiger and carnivore island included, they don’t believe him. He then told them “another” story, where he ended up on the boat with his mother, a sailor and the ship’s cook. The cook ends up killing his mother and the sailor and Pi kills the cook, ending up alone. This story they buy. As he finishes telling his story, in actual times, to the writer, he asks him: “Which story do you prefer?” and the writer says: “The one with the tiger” to which Pi says: “Thank you”

That’s when the movie, and presumably the book, wants you to make a choice: Which story do you prefer?; Was the story of the tiger the true one or was this made up, or dreamed up by Pi? Of course everyone wants to believe the tiger story.

I the end, I have to say enjoyed the overall story line  the music, the cinematography. I liked both old and young Pi. The computerised tiger was nothing short of remarkable. But I sincerely think that the movie failed in expanding on the inner search of Pi for the existence of God. Yes, this is mentioned, but something else could have been done. It seems that the director wanted to expand more on the unusual relationship between boy and tiger, surviving together against all odds. Maybe it was the author’s focal point the whole time, and I was expecting something else.

For me, an enjoyable night at the movies that lacked a bit of punch to make it a truly remarkable cinematic experience.

This is, at least, my opinion, and I could be wrong.

We need to talk about Kevin

There are movie critics who say it’s not fair to evaluate or judge a movie after they've read the book on which it’s based on. They say it messes their judgment as they naturally tend to compare both and invariably the outcome of such comparison would be: “Nah, the book was better”

Having said this, I am going to analyse a movie I've just seen and shortly after I read the book. I’m talking about “We need to talk about Kevin”, based on the bestselling novel of the same name written by Lionel Shriver.

Right off the bat I have to say I enjoyed the book. I found it to be bit heavy to digest during the first few chapters, and had trouble dealing with Shriver’s prolific command of the English language which led to lengthy descriptions of characters and situations. But this is not demeaning of the book at all. It’s just that she took the time to carefully develop the main characters, in particular Eva and Kevin, and their complicated mother-son relationship.

After reading the book, I was really eager to see the movie. I guess most people are. But in my case, I was really curious about how in hell the director was going to bring to the screen a book that is written in letters from Eva to his husband Franklin. But from the opening scene, you can tell this isn't an ordinary movie.

The director, Lynne Ramsay, is a little known Scottish filmmaker for whom this is her first major feature film. She lets us know, from the very beginning, that this is not going to be an easy movie to watch. Ramsay employed a narrative technique where the story is told in two and sometimes three different times, and the viewer has to compose them into a coherent sequence. Eva is portrayed with a shorter and neater haircut and fashion clothing in her entrepreneur younger years, when she had an idyllic relationship with her husband Franklin and a thriving travel books company. When older, after the “incident”, Eva is shown with a badly styled and disheveled haircut along with baggy clothes, maybe second hand. We can even detect that, as she begins to comprehend the complicated nature of her son, she stops dressing in designer clothes and cares little about her own appearance.

Once we grasp that we have to build the story from scratch putting together past and present, we start to notice the magnificent job Tilda Swinton does as Eva Katchadurian. Through her facial expressions and body language she manages to transmit to the viewer the despair of a mother who struggles to deal with a problematic child who challenges her in every possible way. Meanwhile, the father is oblivious to all of this and is reluctant to see the evil behind his beloved son. Ezra Miller couldn't have been cast any better as the troubled Kevin. This up and coming new actor has penetrating eyes which alert the viewer to the enormous evil that resides in him, but doesn't give it away that easily. Through several actions, he tells his mother that he hates her. He is even reluctant to learn to go to the toilet by himself and stays in diapers until he’s six or seven years of age, just to annoy and challenge his mother.

Several of Kevin’s actions in the book are left out of the script for practical reasons. I figure you would need between 8 to 10 hours of continuous reading to finish the book whereas the movie only lasts little over two hours. This makes you realise how hard it is to convert a novel into a movie without losing its intent. And I think Ramsay was able to pull it off by her smart way of telling the story as well as the fantastic casting of Eva and Kevin. Even John C. Reilly was terrific as Franklin. OK, I admit this isn't a complicated character to play, but he really embodies the playful and unsuspecting father who is reluctant to concede that his only son is troubled and blames everything on Eva.

Ironically, when the movie reaches its climax, which we anticipated from the very beginning but didn't know exactly what it was going to be, Kevin chooses to sacrifice his father along with his sister. His father, who was so complacent and loving and totally unaware of any of Kevin’s wrongdoings. It seems like Kevin, by antagonising his mother since he was born, created a bond with her. A wicked bond that is but one that Kevin, in his own twisted way, respected. But he despised his father and his little sister Celia, who loved him dearly as well.

I've always loved powerful movies. And I’m not talking about car-chase-powerful, bomb-blast-powerful or blood-and-gore-powerful. I’m talking about movies which tell a powerful story that gets into our skin and we can’t stop thinking about it for days. Movies that make you want to dissect them as if it were a frog in a high school science lab.

This is one of them, at least in my personal opinion. But I could be wrong.