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Monday, February 07, 2005

On the commercial movie path

1) Enigma (directed by Michael Apted) -- Rating 8/10

This is a pretty engaging movie about the English-German Cryptography battle during WWII. The movie shows how the English had to battle against time to break the German codes transmitted via the Enigma machine; the Enigma machine was considered unbreakable and believed to be the most perfect machine of its time.

The lead actor, Dougray Scott, is ok in his role. He does nothing special as he is given a very boxed incharacter -- genius code breaker who falls for a femme fatale, loses the woman, turns to alcohol, is washed up, hated by his superiors, is written off, and at the end of it all, saves the day. Kate Winslet does a good job in her different watered down look. But the real juicy role belongs to Jeremy Northam, a shady inspector who has all the airs of a classic Film Noir character -- mysterious and untrust worthy.

Overall a worthy watch.

2) Vanity Fair (directed by Mira Nair) -- Rating 7/10

Reese Witherspoon plays her role to perfection in this classic Thackeray novel adaptation -- herexpressions, dialogue delivery, etc are all well suited for the chirpy role of Becky Sharp.
That being said, all the supporting cast do indeed support her with a good performances.

The all women production and direction crew do make a worthy team but what bored me was the overall length of the movie. Given the movie had to work off a lengthy novel, one can't really blame the screenwriter/directorfor the tedious pace. But after the first hour, all the buzz dies down. And only near the endare things lit up again before ending on a Colorful note.

From the Arabic belly dance sequence and the beautiful Rajasthani shots, you can tell thatMira Nair was aching to add colour to this movie. And that she does, as there is quite a bit of colour present equally in between visuals of dark and gloomy London and Brussels.
It started off really good, ends pleasantly enough but in the mid hour was pointless, boringand seemed to crawl on for no reason.

3) Stepford Wives (directed by Frank Oz) -- Rating 6/10

The trailers do a poor job of giving away the key sequences of the movie. So I knew what the big twist was (since I never saw the original movie, I was not aware of the story). But the movie moves at a brisk pace of only 90 minutes. Almost everything in the trailers is shown by the first hour, but there is atleast one suprize by the end. The movie is never over the top nor too serious -- there are quite a few snide remarks made towards some of the current pop culture trends (internet, reality shows, men/women steroetypes) but they are made only inpassing (as opposed to harboring on each point, the remark is made and things move on to the next scene). I would have given the movie a higher rating were it not for some of the glaring technical problems regarding the true identity of the Stepford wives -- there are few scenes which contradict each other and it seems that the writer/director were too busy trying to make cute scenes that they failed to realize the ending exposes loop holes in some ofthe earlier sequences (how can the end and the ATM machine sequence co-exist?).

4) Human Nature (directed by Michel Gondry, written by Charlie Kaufman) -- Rating 7/10

Human Nature (2001) was released in between Kaufman's Adaptation (2002) and Being John Malkovich (1999). Hmmm...that sums if up, doesn't it? The movie starts off slow but then gets fairly entertaining before heading towards an interesting ending. The premise has been done before though -- humans come in contact with a person raised entirely in the jungle; this person knows nothing about societyand human behavious. So the people who found him go about trying to civilize this ape like person. There are some funny moments in this and some different ideas from the usual run of the mill movies.

5) A Touch of Pink (directed by Ian Iqbal Rashid) -- Rating 8/10

This was an enjoyable movie even though the story has been done in various shades before.
But this time the few differences are funny enough. Boy meets boy, boy loves boy
but boy can't openly declare his love because boy's mom won't understand, so boy lies about
his life, mom finds out, boy loses boy, but eventually everyone understands and boy lives
happily ever after with boy. Oh boy also has an imaginary friend who helps the boy in his
decisions. The humour is never over the top nor too cynical.

6) The Terminal (directed by Steven Spielberg) -- Rating 4/10

Yes, Steven Spielberg directed this movie. If any other director has made this movie, it would
have been trashed by all the critics. But because of Tom Hanks and the director's name,
the movie is praised. Agreed the sets are amazing -- the terminal sets look like a real airport
indeed. The germ of the story is interesting enough, a man is stranded in the terminal
because his country has ceased to exist during his fligh duration. But what happens afterwards requires one to suspend all belief. The movie is best described as a cross between a Disney movie and a Bollywood flick (minus the songs ofcourse).

Yuck!!!!!

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