hachi: a dog's tale (2009). directed by lasse hallström.

a good movie to turn on the waterworks, and i wasn't even trying to get sad or get anything off my chest. cliche?

beautiful boy (2010). directed by shawn ku.

the flight from dubai to kl was dreary. and i couldn't sleep. i read most of the time and took breaks in between, and in this flight, i didn't watch as many movies as i did in the previous flight. my eyes hurt from the flashing lights of the screen which is less than 2 ft away. 

it's a story of parents which i think should be watched by both parents and children. i wondered, would the boy still went on a shooting rampage and killed himself had he known the unbearable pain he is to cause his parents? and parents, living in a difficult marriage, would it be better for them to walk away than to stay unhappily together for the sake of providing a family for kids? the movie asks tough questions like that - and it is for us to judge, bad things happen sometimes for no reason at all, and it doesn't make misery any more easier to deal with had we known the answer. 

x-men: first class (2011). directed by matthew vaughn.

a less successful effort from matthew vaugh if you ask me. it is cartoonish and i would have turned off the in flight movie if not for micheal fassbender's masochist panache and pained performance. i think the pairing of fassbender and mcavoy doesn't really work - it's like having a grown man acting with a kid.  i find the CGI poor too, and i can't be blamed for seeing inception (2010) that pretty much shows the audience that nothing can't be done out there. however, the story is contemporary as the whole mutant issue is framed as the don't-ask-don't-tell debacle. 

kick-ass (2010). directed by matthew vaughn.

another movie that shatters the superhero myth. superheros are people who refuse to be victims. i like the movie with a little girl that literally kicks everybody's ass, her shiny purple hair and her crazy over acting daddy in the form of nicolas cage. divine. 

the cell (2000). directed by tarsem singh.

i know, i know. the acting and actors are wax works. i won't even comment. i endure horrible acting (jennifer lopez as a social worker? come on she sleeps with her lipstick on! vince vaughn as an fbi agent? oh yeah very believable!) because i like the weird imageries of harsh colours and contrasts in tarsem's movies. sometimes you do watch a movie for the (pretty) pictures. 

daybreakers (2009). directed by michael spierig & peter spierig.

i normally do not like tales of warewolves and vampires. i think there is no mystery left to be told, however from time to time there will be a story that takes the legend to pretty interesting places. when my brother put this movie up for our weekend movie night, i could hear myself groaned...darn another vampire movie. 

i was wrong. it was pretty good. it has good casts with ethan hawke, willem dafoe, sam neill and the husky voiced claudia karvan weaving a tale of a world populated by vampires, where humans are commercialized and kept alive only for one reason - blood. if you noticed, most vampire movies follow a rule as to what happens to them should they be deprived of blood. in this movie, they will turn into raving zombies if they don't get their fix. and a vampire can un-vamp themselves by undergoing a painful transformation - by burning themselves in the open sun. what don't kill you only makes you stronger, indeed. 

i like this movie because it tries to re-invent the tired vampire plot. forget twilight and that sado-masochistic crap that comes with it, i could identify with ethan hawke's character, the tired vamp-scientist who has it all except for the feeling of being alive because he is not human. sam neill's vamp-businessman has a greed that knows no bounds, when he chooses to sacrifice his daughter to save his failing blood business. the movie surprisingly has many interesting characters, like the conflicted vamp-soldier whose misplaced loyalty and need for approval is ripe for manipulation. 

watch out for the day-time driving cars. you know how vamps can't stand the sun, so in the movie there are cars made for day time driving. that's cool. 

tinker tailor soldier spy (2011). directed by tomas alfredson.

right after i finished watching the movie, i read roger ebert's review and was surprised to find that he didn't like it. a greater blasphemy, he gave 3.5 stars to very pg-13 sherlock holmes and only 3 stars for this movie. that is not right. 

i like the atmospheric 70's london in the movie, it's foggy and everyone where black like no other colours exist. m16 is the place where tired old men spent at the heights of the cold war, sipping tea and whiskey in the eternal cigarette smoke now have to clean up their own house when a double agent is suspected to be working among them. gary oldman is such a pleasure to watch, i swear to god he could pass as queen elizabeth if he ever wanted to be her...he is that good. he is george smiley, the retired agent who was brought back into the game to find a mole amongst his former colleagues at m16. he is reticent but penetrating, sharp but close to defeated when his wife left him for another agent. it is the nature of the job where secrets and intrigues is the only currency for one to get ahead, trust is non-existent and everyone is suspected of something. when the mole is finally caught, he didn't even have a good answer for working for the other side - he merely said, the west got ugly. 

this movie reminds me a type of character that i always like - the man who can not change. oldman reminds me of  javier bardem is the dancer upstairs (2002). in the face of treachery and when anyone can be bought for almost nothing - we all depend on one thing to get us through - and that is loyalty. 

there is one scene in the movie which was revisited several times - the christmas party scene. these people who keep secrets for a living get to go british-wild (haha!) drowning away worries in endless alcohol mixture and not so fun music, but that is as fun as it can get. i must also mention that the cast is superb, even when they sat around staring at each other in mistrust. 

little odessa (1994). directed by james gray.

you can't be a hit man and be normal at the same time, can you? you can't go around killing people expecting  the people you love won't be a part of the tragedy. you can't be the admired big brother and not be there for the little brother. you can't be the loving son of a mother and the hated son of the father and not twist yourself in the process. you can't be a lover and push away people at the same time. this is little odessa. 

a dangerous method (2011). directed by david cronenberg.

i finally found sundance houston, the new cinema in town, yesterday when i went to hard rock cafe with a friend and asked the waitress there about it. it is the only cinema that plays this movie so i was anxious to catch it before it got discontinued. 

the movie felt like a stage more than celluloid. acting is good, though i can't say so for keira knightley who went a tad over the top that she stands out in the movie as not very natural compared to the rest of the cast. viggo mortensen is believeable as freud, so is micheal fassbinder as carl jung. i am not very familiar with the basis of freud's interpretation of dreams and his subsequent psychoanalytical methods, but judging from the movie, psychiatrists and psychologists alike are very neurotic people. freud and jung started off with a friendly father-son relationship, but they got competitive when their opinions clashed over the inclusion of non-scientific methods in psychoanalysis. things got more complicated when sabina spielrein (keira knightley), who essentially got dumped by jung as he caved into social pressure took her sad case to freud, and he began to have second thoughts about the ability of his protege. 

i don't think i come out of the movie enlightened about human nature, but it is nice to know that they are neurotic, manipulative people who play emotional games just like the rest of us. 

inside deep throat (2005). directed by fenton bailey & randy barbato.

this movie was made at the cost of usd 25k but gross over usd 600 mil. it was made at a time when sex on tv and cinema is merely suggestive, and nixon was still in power. people are curious about sex, but curiously it was a time when conservatism had a strange hold in the united states. i find the documentary hugely interesting, the hippie fore runners of art-porno film makers and their sleazy but naive actors, low budget and ultimately sleazy porn film that became embroiled in the battle of free speech between the nixon government, the mafia, the emerging feminist movement at that time, the people and the art community who fear prosecution over mere film making. 

it is true, deep throat more than sexual pleasure. it is about freedom of speech paid by ruined lives of linda lovelace, harry reems and gerard damiano amongst others - for they didn't make a cent out of that film. harry reems was jailed for it and linda died penniless. freedom is very expensive and demands human sacrifices.