Saturday, July 23, 2011

the deer hunter (1978). directed by micheal cimino.


i am going to say it again. i love war/anti-war movies. and this one has got to be on top of the list of my favorite anti-war movies alongside grave of the fireflies (1988), the thin red line (1998) and apocalypse now (1979), to name a few. the theme of war is rich with emotions, characters, events, action sequences, motivations and effects. only an unimaginative writer/director would make a war movie devoid of all these elements and choose to show explosions and shootings. war, is definitely more than that. it goes beyond power hungry and stupid politicians and conquering nations - it's about people who often have no idea why they are fighting the other side and are forced to put their lives by mere chance of bullets; it is about the people who were left behind in their hope, grief and loneliness that their loved ones would come back alive someday and it is about wrecking the lives of people they are fighting with. 

it is most often about the senselessness of fighting strangers we have no problem with in the first place. in this universe, where humanity is at its lowest point. 

the deer hunter is about a group of friends who volunteered to fight in vietnam in order to escape their monotonous lives in a small factory town. little did they know that the fight in vietnam is real and bloody, and in their attempt to escape hell, not all of them get out of the war in one piece - robert de niro the hunter who insisted to his hunting buddies that the one shot is all that matters to kill a deer gets a a dose of his own medicine when he is being hunted in the vietnam jungle, john savage who played steven the new groom went home with his legs missing and a broken man; unable to face his bride. the saddest of all is nick, played by the then 35 years old very handsome christopher walken (before he looked scary, yes the guy possessed teutonic good looks in his youth), who is the kindest and most considerate of the bunch mentally crumbled in the horrors of war. 

films like these are sad. i wept at the loss of lives for no good reason, of men returning from the battle field less than a human being. micheal cimino's direction is emotionally taxing, superbly captures the horrors of war through the eyes of the common men who have no idea what a war actually consists of.

where is justice and sense of sending these young people to their deaths, well before their time?

hamlet (1990). directed by franco zeffirelli.

 hamlet (1990). directed by franco zeffirelli.

i have watched three different movies of hamlet. this one, another directed by kenneth branagh (poster) and one directed by laurence olivier (poster). my brother has another hamlet directed by micheal almereyda released in 2000 which has ethan hawke and diane venora in it - however i have not watched that version. you can safely say that i have a thing for this particular play of the bard's. i used to stay up at night reading the play. the good old days. when i was at uni i caught several live plays, in which one of them had hamlet played by a girl.

hamlet (1996). directed by kenneth branagh. 

hamlet (1948). directed by laurence olivier.

amongst the three hamlet-s, i must say that i like zeffirelli's version the best. i find branagh's version too long  as it spans over 4 hours. my failure that i could not concentrate more than 3 hours for a movie and another thing that bothered me is the fact that the movie was too festive. as for olivier's version, which was shot back in 1948, is black and white and i only watched it once. perhaps i could not pass judgement as to how good it actually is, only that i realized i like zeffirelli's the most which sort of sits in the middle between the two extremes. mel gibson played the moody prince of denmark who hesitantly wants to avenge his father's death, there is an interesting subplot of internal guilt when he finds himself lusting after his mother, played by glenn close.

aren't we all freudians, now?

something to talk about (1995). directed by lasse hallström


should anyone wants to see a young julia roberts and dennis quaid. this movie is about cheating husbands and the positions women put themselves, or resigned rather, when their husbands cheat. women tend to become depressed and angry at the betrayal, but men treat it like it's not a big deal. i like the part when roberts was advised by an aunt to serve her cheating husband (quaid) a dish that would heal him of his cheating ways. he ended up spending a night at the hospital.

we should all get that recipe.  

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

she hate me (2004). directed by spike lee.


i know spike lee has many, many things to say. he wants to talk about corporate corruption, black power, dis-empowerment of black men, lesbians need to procreate and the emotional games that they play; i bet there is a hundred and one things if not more that he wants to say in a movie. so this movie becomes a pastiche of his unformed thoughts; they appear anywhere, everywhere like it is nobody's business. the story is incoherent and exploitative judging from the amount of sex scenes in the movie, no i don't enjoy watching naked people in my free time especially when the scene does not call for naked people to be in it. ah well. i am just worried sick because he will direct the remake of chan-wook park's old boy (2003) (oldeuboi (original title)) and he will in all likelihood fuck it up. why can't the studio execs give the movie to darren aronofsky or david fincher, for god's sake?!

ramblings. ok i hate this movie. i have seen only one coherent movie from lee and that is 25th hour (2002). the rest, i don't know - summer of sam (1999) captured the frenzy and panic during david berkowitz's murder rampage in the late 1970's, but it's strictly frenzy and panic. alas, i require more than as a content in a movie if i were to enjoy it.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

brothers (2009). directed by jim sheridan.


someone in the star yesterday wrote about this movie, "who would choose tobey maguire over jake gyllenhaal?" little did i know such trivialization shows that the reviewer have not watched this movie at all. which is a shame, because someone who reviews something should have a look at that thing first before firing away. 

i like anti-wars movie in general. we live in a time where we are anesthetized by it. we see war on tv and bloody bodies without feeling we should do something about it. we are numb. i don't blame people for not seeing it as their problem - we are concerned about our work, crazy bosses, rising cost of living, what shirt we ought to wear tomorrow. we don't care because we don't see the effect of war in our lives. that is the purpose of anti-war movies - to bring the effect of war right into our living room, hopefully it makes us think how war affect some of us, who are regular people like us too. 

this movie is a remake of danish director susanne bier's brødre (original title) (2004) (english: brothers). i watched one of her films efter brylluppet (original title) (2006) (english: after the wedding) starring mads mikkelsen exploring the theme of charity and familial responsibility - does it begin at home or does one have to be in the slums of india to do good? she has a way with intricate plots and creating emotional climax. after watching sheridan's brothers i feel i should do bier's the honour of watching. this film explores the complex dynamic of an army family, maguire as the somewhat overachieving brother sam who is the pride of his father casts a long shadow on his parolee brother, tommy (gyllenhaal). sam goes to afghanistan on a mission where he is captured and forced to kill a fellow marine, leaving him shocked and traumatized. while his family tries to deal with the new of his death, tommy tries to fill his brother's shoes and in the process becomes more responsible. it is not long after that sam returns home, a changed man. 

i haven't seen much of acting muscles from tobey maguire and was pleasantly surprised with the efforts he put in for this movie. we expect people who go to war to act macho and unfeeling about it but we often forget that they are people too, who fights for a bogey enemy and often had to repress all that horror to appear "it doesn't affect me". their families are often left behind for long periods of time, children who hardly know their fathers and wives who are lonely. all for the purpose of killing a bunch of people we have no problem with, in a distant land. makes us think, this war, what are we really fighting for?

Sam Cahill: [Last lines] I don't know who said 'only the dead have seen the end of war'. I have seen the end of war. The question is: can I live again? 

Saturday, July 16, 2011

harry potter and the deathly hollows: part 2 (2011). directed by david yates.


it wasn't so bad was it? i am no fan of potter films/books or the teen genre for that matter. i got dragged along to this movie by my sisters who had followed the story the whole nine yards. the theatre was full of kids, they were decidedly restless with the movie going at about two hours. as a non-fan, i find the this harry potter installment quite well done for a teen movie. at times it felt like a poor man's lord of the rings - but i kept myself in check in expectations. while the premise of the story is silly - i mean voldemort has had numerous opportunities to kill harry in the prior seven installments and failed to do so each and every time, you crusty old megalomaniac! - ok check expectation, check - i love the way the movie is filmed. i find myself thinking - wow - what kind of lens did they use to get that kind of picture. 

my fangirl sisters lamented that the ending was not good - for reasons i am not quite sure. however it is nice to see harry's life coming to a full circle - the orphan who wanted to loved and be normal finally gets to be just that - be loved and be normal.

we watched the movie at sunway and the experience was not as bad as the one i had last year in one utama. i ended up telling off two people to shut up as opposed to ten. that's an achievement.

Friday, July 15, 2011

the town (2010). directed by ben affleck.


i heard this movie was compared to micheal mann's heat (1995). i beg to differ. as much as a lot of similarities can be drawn between the two movies, and the town is actually a very close remake of heat, the two could not have been more different. the main problem lies in editing, the town has this very laid back feel for a supposedly intense crime drama. some stories choose that path, like justified (2010/11), but when it is intense, you feel the intensity. this movie - nada. i feel vaguely threatened whenever jeremy renner came on screen as the volatile coughlin - and it was destined that if not for him i would not enjoy the movie at all. something about the car chase scene that evoked a sense of monotony instead of panic or excitement. i don't get the sense of speed, that urgency. it's odd that something like that could go wrong. 

that comparison to heat (1995) is certainly not justified. 

Thursday, July 7, 2011

justified, season 2 (2011). created by graham yost.


i admit it. when i first watched the first season of justified, it is mainly  because i have a thing for timothy olyphant's flat board stomach and that toned shoulders that could not possibly belonged to a 43 year old. and damned he looked good. i am officially impressed with champion swimmers'...err...bodies.

flat board tummies can't carry a good story though. this show is about a pissed off marshall who tries his best to hide that he has anger management issues and hated that he's a small town hillbilly. he tries hard to disguise the fact that despite being borned a hillbilly, he ain't like the rest of them who is still stuck in a small kampung called harlan, deep in the mountains of kentucky. he is pissed off  that he's divorced and still has the hots for his ex, and the only thing that keeps him sane is his twisted brand of morality and justice that is oddly black and white. timothy olyphant had in the past played unfeeling cowboys with a sense of justice that can't be swayed in the excellently made, yet shortlived deadwood (2004-2006). as raylan givens he merely perfected the role, he makes men who don't talk much so that he can draw his gun faster than the creep next to him very very sexy. 

the show is a joy to watch. i love the witty script, the moving plot, the casts, the yellow colour of dusty kentucky, the shots and angles taken in the show, the southern drawl that they are speaking - they are proud people who would not bow to anyone, they have their way of doing things, they are criminals who live side by side jostling to control the town's only trade - drugs. never underestimate kampung folks when you see one.