Craziness in July

1) Crash (directed by Paul Haggis): Rating 10/10

Either you like this movie or despise it. But one can’t discount director and writer Paul Haggis’s attempt. Like Gurinder Chada’s What’s Cooking, Crash shows an ethnic side to Los Angeles. In Crash, Latin Americans, Koreans, Persians, White, Black collide and brush past each other as they make do with their daily hardships. One of the biggest criticism of this movie has to with the fact that virtually all the encounters are dipped in racism. Is that a right portrayal? Yes in the movie’s framework. The movie shows the stressful moments in various characters lives and when they are pushed against the wall, their anger and fears come to the forefront. And it is in these situations when racism rears its ugly head – when people try to use racist remarks to put the other person down.
The movie moves at a good pace and the acting is top notch. Loads of stars make little cameos and all the roles have an important place in the structure. Not to be missed!

2) One Night in Mongkok (Directed by Tung-Shing Yee): Rating 7/10

Mongkok is one of the most crowded areas in Hong Kong. The story starts off when two rival gangs clash and one of the gang leader’s son is killed. So the other leader wants revenge. A contract killer is hired (by a middle man) to finish the job. But this contract killer is from a small village and finds himself as a pawn in between the person who hired him and Hong Kong police who want to shut the violence down. Not a bad movie, but nothing spectacular either.

3) Oldboy (Directed by Chan-wook Park): Rating 9/10

A man is imprisoned in an apartment for 15 years without any reason or explanation. So when he gets out, he goes out to seek revenge on those put him there and those who tortured him on a day to day basis. The movie is not a violent revenge movie but has a story which plays out like a puzzle thriller (sure there are some fight scenes). And the reason for the imprisonment is completely unexpected and comes as a shock. Chan-wook Park’s follows up with another stellar movie like his earlier Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002).

Note: Hollywood is remaking this movie next year. That is just plain pathetic. Why do they have to remake almost all the recent Asian hits? Have they really run out of ideas?

4) Three: Extremes (sequel to Three, a collection of 3 short films made back in 2002):

This time around, directors Takashi Miike, Chan-wook Park and Fruit Chan serve up three short films. All three movies are shot/edited very well. But not all are equal.

a) ‘Box’ by Miike: The less said about this the better. Quite boring and weakest of all three segments. Disappointing by Miike’s standards but he does try different stuff every now and then.

b) ‘Dumplings’ by Chan: This one was apparently cut down from 90 minutes to a shorter version to fit in between the two other director’s movies. For a change, I thought a line had been crossed in this movie. Like a Twilight Zone episode, this one features a woman who serves up the best dumplings because of her secret ingredient – aborted human fetuses. Yup, that’s right. Apparently eating bits of these aborted fetus help preserve women’s skin and make them look young. So what was the line? The choice of the secret ingredient! Other sources on the net are praising the story but I don’t think the selection of the secret ingredient was a requirement for this movie or it helped in shaping the story.

c) ‘Cut’ by Park: This is the best of the lot. By a long shot! A famous director awakens to find himself tied to the wall. His wife is tied and tangled in a web of strings by her piano. The intruder offers the director a choice – either he kill a young girl or he will chop one of his wife’s fingers every 5 minutes. None of the gore is shown in this one but the acting from the intruder and director is very good here.

5) Fantastic Four (directed by Tim Story): Rating 7/10

This movie has been heavily trashed from all fronts. But despite all the movie’s faults – script problems, poor acting, technical inconsistencies, I enjoyed this flick. The characters of Human Torch (played with tons of enthusiasm by Chris Evans) and the Thing (Michael Chiklis) are the best played and acted characters of the lot. Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) is very poor and Sue Storm (Jessica Alba) is only mildly better. Dr. Doom (Julian McMahon) looks the most polished but is made out to be clear villain, as opposed to giving him more substance. So I am probably the only person out there who is giving this movie such a high rating, but it was short and enjoyable. And I don’t this is the worst of the recent comic book movies – 2003’s Daredevil is still one of the worst. Ofcourse, I have not seen Catwoman or Elektra.