bringing out the dead (1999). directed by martin scorsese.

i've watched this movie some time ago and recently felt like watching nicolas cage. i like his manic energy and desperation. the movie is like a documentary instead of a conventional film, determined to show the new york beyond the brownstones, 5th avenue and wall street. all through the eye of a tired medic who had not saved anyone in months, and beginning to blame himself for each death he has to handle. he is their witness, their departing angel. the hospital is a crazy place, doctors and nurses working over time treating the city's down and out selflessly the best they could even though sometimes there is no hope left. people keep on living, no matter how tired they are. some tried to reverse the destructive forces in their life, sometimes they win, sometimes they don't. life in new york is a battle everyday that needs a good fight to deserve a win. 

all the broken people of new york, you gotta be tough, because if you don't, you can't survive this city. the only good thing is, you have each other. 

the descendants (2011). directed by alexander payne.

what's wrong with having loads of money and not wanting to spend it? what's wrong with working to provide for your family, which means there are times you can't see your family as often as you liked it to be? is it your fault if your wife cheated on you because you aren't around a lot? is it fair that friends think you are a sucky husband and it's ok for her to cheat?

if you ask me, my answer is no for all four questions. 

most families tolerate spousal absence in the name of economic prosperity. we let go that our husband and wife has to be away for work, we do the best with raising children on our own, we make do with whatever money available for that month. george clooney plays the amiable father and husband who is thrifty with money even though he owns a large tract of land in hawaii, a working lawyer who travels frequently. he  leaves the household and child raising to his wife and thinks she's ok with the arrangement. suddenly his wife got into an accident, goes into coma, and he is shouldered with the task of taking care of his two teenage children. he is confronted with kids he has never really known, confronted with his wife's infidelity for the first time. you can see life draining out of him, and as he grieves the passing of his wife, he does the best a father of two could do - to just stay strong and be positive. 

george clooney rarely plays losers. so it is good to see him plays an ordinary guy close to buckling but has this will to go on, which is extraordinary. he could have just place his children in a boarding school and get on with his life, but he chose to be close to them and get to know his children. he could have chose to leave his wife behind for the pain she caused him, but he chose to tell her lover that she is dying so that he could say goodbye. he chose to be a better person when everyone thinks he is lame and uninteresting, unfairly taking his wife's side that it is ok to cheat. 

hawaii is such a beautiful place, the story unravels the island's quiet beauty. but even in paradise, pain will find its way to you, and when it does, all you can do is be strong and let it pass. 

trust that some day, you'll be ok. 

my week with marilyn (2011). directed by simon curtis.

michelle williams is glowing gold with that platinum hairdo. the movie is great, the cast is superb. williams is astounding. i watched it yesterday for fear that it will be yanked out of the cinema soon. it is about the famous marilyn monroe, and i love that the story peels the reasons behind her professional life instead of focusing on her personal life like most biopic tends to do. she takes acting seriously despite the dumb blonde look that she has, and actually tries very hard to be a better actress. 

the story obviously is told from the male point of view who can't help but falls under her spell - she is a beautiful sweet girl and a sex bomb full grown woman at the same time, seems worldly even though she is often lost and in tatters when dealing with stresses of the real world - in short, she is the ultimate damsel in distress that triggers the male instinct of protection. and men respond to that - some feel it is too much of a responsibility, like her third husband arthur miller reacted; others feel it is their call to rescue her, like that of colin clark, the 23 year old third assistant director in which the movie is based on. me? i think if i see a woman like that, i'd totally hate her - because she is the total opposite that i could never be, in fact men make it their point to let me do things on my own because i am independent. well, i am, but all ladies want to be treated like a lady if given a choice. 

let me say this again, williams is so good in this movie. she captures the little girl lost of marilyn monroe, the beautiful woman whose insecurities could only be matched with her constant need of approval - she is the woman who only wants to be loved, who puts a picture of abraham lincoln by her bed side table because she doesn't have a father and lincoln is as good as any. which is sad, and i am partially sympathetic to her plight that drives her to act the way she does. 

reign over me (2007). directed by mike binder.

i am not crazy when i said i like adam sandler. i do. even though it is far and between that he does quality flicks, preferring instead to stick to what he does best - the adam sandler genre. which is funny too if you like slapstick and dirty jokes - i like 'em. thank goodness that sandler has the sense of doing something else other than what he usually does - and reign over me is a very good exception. 

don cheadle is a dentist, married with kids and thinks his wife is not giving him space for him to do "man things". may be it is the seven year itch, but he's restless, bored with his ordered life, and looking for a way to let out some steam. he then came across his long lost roommate (adam sandler) from college who initially didn't remember him. sandler is disheveled, constantly renovating his kitchen, always on his music head space listening to rock greats. he spent his nights going around the city on his scooter (i don't know what the thing is called) and i suspect he doesn't sleep much. he didn't seem to remember anything much from his past. at first cheadle didn't mind sandler playing an amnesiac, until he found out the reasons for sandler's insistent pretension to forget. 

sandler's playing the down and out guy who suffers so much that he disconnects from the world is endearing. i am sad for him. if you noticed, he always has this inner desperation going, like he's repressing something and ended up doing something else that is the opposite of what he feels. cheadle is great (played with great ease), the nice everyday man looking for a little excitement at the expense of forgetting the good things he has in his life, which is often taken for granted. by the end of the movie, he realized that he doesn't want to be sandler nor his apparent freedom if that means he can't let anyone into his life. the movie is touching at so many levels, it doesn't get too dark and the ironies of everyday life provide a much needed comic relief which is not silly at all, but true. that is the kind of surprise that i like when i watch a film, given adam sandler is in the movie. 

i especially like the cinematography that shows the beautiful new york city, the city and its people after sept 11 bustling like nothing happened, covering deep scars if only time could heal them. 

shotgun stories (2007). directed by jeff nichols.

i know men like son (micheal shannon), boy (douglas ligon) and kid (barlow jacobs) in my own family. men who can't say what they feel, and when they finally say them, they do that with great violence, often unintentional. it used to annoy me when these men choose to be quiet than act on the issue plaguing our family the way i do - but then i begin to understand, that they are merely trying to contain their anger, doing their best to calm down and say not the wrong thing before taking any action. 

else we have men like son and his brothers. their broken family and harsh childhood make them cling for one another for support - the brothers don't speak much, but they look out for one another to make up for the lack of words being said. their mother is estranged, as son speaks of her as the hateful woman who brought them up to hate their father and his other family. their father is a reformed alcoholic who left them behind for a new wife and new sons, so you know it is disaster when son and his brothers turn up at his funeral, spitting and reminding the new family what a vile man their father used to be. you can sense their anger at being abandoned; their life languishing in a dead end town, uneducated, unloved, unable to escape. they have no one who cares but the three of them. son had shotgun marks on his back, it was from protecting one of his younger siblings. 

i don't know if many people appreciate this kind of story telling, because i must say this story touched me in places most movies hardly make an impact. i was looking for movies with micheal shannon after watching him in take shelter (2011), also directed by jeff nichols. i feel sorry for son and his brothers, and it is especially sorrowful to see bad blood from an older generation who hardly cares about them had son and his brothers wage a war against their step brothers. this movie is a character study excellently portrayed by shannon, ligon and jacobs; i like nichols' deliberate direction that lets the story unfold by implication. adam stone's cinematography shows a sleepy arkansas town that holds nothing for its residents, each day reminding them of the cruel realities that their life is wasting away and that there is no escaping it. the town is a prison, symbolic of the prison they live in their minds. 

for people like son and his brothers - while there is no easy way out, the most obvious has got to be to just let go. 

martha marcy may marlene (2011). directed by sean durkin.

why would it be attractive to anyone to join a cult? if it's attractive to you, then there is something wrong with you. this is the story of martha, who upon joining a cult gets her name changed to marcy may because the cult leader pointed out "you look like a marcy may". the cult has more women than men, their roles are  confined to having sex with the men, cleaning up after them, cooking for them. the women could only eat after the men finished their dinners. the extent of their depersonalization is magnified by the name marlene, the name that the women respond to when answering the cult's only telephone. 

may be those women are lost souls looking for a sense of belonging in all the wrong places. god forbid a girl with daddy issues would come across a man who acts like he cares - because the cult leader in the film is a master manipulator. broken people needs someone who believes in them, and they will re-pay that belief with undivided and fiercely blind loyalty. martha seemed like a smart girl, she must have had more conscience compared to the other girls as she was the only one who managed to escape from the cult. but she has trouble adjusting to the outside world - the grip of the cult leader and its insular life is rooted in her, that she has to fight its persuasive call to come back. 

when we think about it - about how those women could subject themselves to repeated rapes and other forms of degradation without questioning, in fact with pride that they had themselves cleansed by the cult leader, proudly inviting other girls to do the same - we are witnessing an immensely basic human need in action. that people, will do anything to be loved, and that the illusion of it is good enough than having none at all. 

j. edgar (2011). directed by clint eastwood.

for a clint eastwood movie, it is surprisingly bland. neither is he known for insipid story telling, especially when we are talking about the famous j. edgar hoover, the first fbi director who ruled the agency for a mighty 48 years. just when we thought that dictators only exist in backward african countries. 

the film was helmed by good actors. we have di caprio, judi dench and naomi watts to name a few. di caprio did a good job portraying a man in love with power more than anything else in his life. he is constantly scared of losing it, that he justifies spying, planting evidence, making up stories - anything that he could gather to black mail others when the situation demands him to. naomi watts, however, is forgettable. it's not her fault though, the nature of the film that has no real focus, flipping back and forth, loses a lot of details that could have make for a potentially moving story. 

but the film...it is like it has no climax. no punch line. it sort of went on and on without attempting to shed something fundamental about hoover. it is like eastwood had something to say but he decided against it in the last minute. his j. edgar is neither reviled nor admired - he is just another guy with mommy issues and gay but happened to be the most powerful man the fbi has ever had. i don't know why eastwood is so detached - and the absence of his trademark intimate story telling is severely missed in this movie. 

the darjeeling limited (2007). directed by wes anderson.

the flight from houston to calgary was a drag. the plane was very small and the guy who sat next to me was very big. by the time i finished watching this movie, i thought, i can endure this flight only because i have watched a gem that makes me laugh and cry at the same time. 

the three estranged brothers played by owen wilson (eldest), adrien brody (middle child syndrome) and jason schwartzman (youngest) are on a spiritual roadtrip in india, wilson in particular hopes to bond with his younger siblings despite his controlling ways typical of an older sibling that has kept his brothers away from him all this while. far from realizing this, they bicker with each other like kids do, only they are not kids anymore but grown adults with non-unique adult issues. with a dead father and an absent mother, it seems like they are used to not having anyone to depend on, but i think they feel abandoned. the scene of the boy's cremation, they are strangers in the village where no one speaks english and yet they are made to be part of the family, which is what is missing from their own family. togetherness and being there for one another. 

it's a pleasure seeing the trio and wes anderson crafting something from his universe of broken people. the nonsensical situations that they are in, the flaws they can not help but kept doing. some people say anderson's films is an acquired taste, that they are too quirky for their own good. may be so, but i find much realism in anderson's twisted family dynamics. 

inception (2010). directed by christopher nolan.

the first time i watched inception, i didn't like it. there are infinite easier ways of telling the story as opposed to the layered mechanical dreams nolan is proposing. i am a proponent of story first, cgi second. the cgi in this movie is amazing, that at times i feel that it is done at the expense of the story. i don't mind the back and forth story telling, it shows how adriot nolan is in keeping the story tight although it requires audience to pay a closer attention.  

but then again, movies can be about anything. i guess i expect more storytelling from nolan, which is something he is very good at. when i told my brother than i didn't like the story - he merely said, you are getting old sis. 

then i watched it again. i liked it slightly. that was over a year ago. recently i gave it another watch and i began to appreciate the technicality of the story. or rather the stylish pseudo science of dreams (dreaming, rather). the cast is fantastic and it goes without saying that the direction is sleek. i read somewhere that nolan spent about 10 years to make this story, it is indeed a labour of love. 

the singing detective (2003). directed by keith gordon.

i don't normally like musical. though this film isn't strictly one, it has singing, as the main protagonist liked to call it, warbling. this movie happens to be one of my many favourites too. warped inside the mind of dan dark, a small time detective novel writer imagines himself to be the detective of his written invention, investigating a noirish case of a strangled woman left in drain, himself chased after two dubious figures who has a thing for patti page's how much is that doggie in the window?. but then we are presented with the real dan dark, struggling with a bad case psoriasis, close to losing his mind, very much in physical pain, abusing everyone around him, his suspicion of others shoots up exponentially. he is in pain mentally, of past lives unresolved only for him to relieve it again now that he is bed ridden and has all the time in the world to remember every single detail. we don't know if he is at the edge of sanity because of his skin disease, or he is at the mercy of his disease to reflect the burden of (in)sanity that he's been carrying all this while. 

the film is supported by a great cast, i must mention the excellent robert downey jr (who at the time was struggling with addiction of some sort), mel gibson, robin wright penn and carla gugino - in the tradition of great film noir (though this is not strictly one...here we go again) nothing is what it seems to be.