1) Coup De Torchon (1981 movie directed by Bertrand Tavernier): Rating 8/10
The English title of this interesting French movie is ‘Clean Slate’. And that is exactly what the main characters sets out to do – wipe all the corrupt people in his West African town and start fresh again. Tavernier adapted the story of this movie from an American novel by Jim Thompson called Pop. 1280. The story was moved from Southern American to a West African town. And it adapts perfectly. A corrupt police officer wanders around the town doing nothing to protect the black slaves from the rich white French residents. And then one day, he snaps. After a constant barrage of insults from the rich French elite, Lucien Cordier (played brilliantly by Philippe Noiret) starts killing people off one by one. Oh and thrown in the mix is Lucien’s affair with Rose (Isabelle Huppert) and Anne, the cute school teacher. Ofcourse, this is in between handling his wife and his strange brother in-law.
2) Knife in the Water (1962 movie directed by Roman Polanski): Rating 7/10
Roman Polanski’s first movie is a very interesting effort. With only three actors and a minimal production, Polanski manages to construct an interesting moral crime thriller. A well do couple is on their way to the lake. On the way, they pick up a young hitch-hiker. The husband invites the hitch-hiker on their boat journey over the lake. The husband pushes the young boy around and treats him like a servant. During a skirmish, the husband pushes the boy off the boat. Is the boy dead? No, but the husband thinks so.
The movie is decently acted and not bad at all.
3) British Comedy Series: Coupling, Season One – Rating 9/10
Hilarious. Watching season one of this Brit series was a fun experience. The series can best be described as ‘Friends’ meets ‘Sex and the City’. The series is clean but the jokes are much more adventurous than they would have been if this was an American tv series.
4) Un, deux, trios, soleil (1993 movie directed by Bertrand Blier): Rating 8/10
How do you rate a movie which is not linear and may all be a dream? None the less, this is one of the most original and interesting movies I have seen. The opening sequence goes something like this:
A young girl is eating bread and having her soup. Her mother constantly asks her daughter if the soup is to her liking. Finally, the girl gets tired of her mother’s nagging and leaves for school. But her mother chases the daughter down the streets and keeps harassing her. The mother attends the girl’s classes in place of her and sits down with all the kids. The teacher is surprised and when she inquires what the mother is doing there, she gets a nonsensical answer back. When the teacher leaves the class, she is chased by the school teenagers who try to rape her. The young girl comes to the teachers aid and gets a cop to pull over. When the cop is handling the kids, a bunch of 8-10 year olds drive away with the cops car. The cop shoots blindly and manages to hit one of the young kids. The other kids take the wounded boy to the cop’s home to see his wife. The cop’s wife removes her clothes and rubs the wounded boy on her naked body. After that, the boy is cured of his wound and fit again.
Sound crazy? It is. But once the movie settles in, you can describe the dream and real sequences and by the end things make much more sense. Hilarious performances by Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Grinberg, Olivier Martinez.
5) The Man Without a Past (2002 movie directed by Aki Kaurismaki): Rating 10/10
What a perfect movie! A man is traveling in a train with a single suitcase. When he gets off a station, he is beaten up by a bunch of thugs and his money and personal belongings are taken away. When he wakes up, the man does not know who he is or where he is. So he drifts around and tries to start his life again. He befriends another guy by the container yard near the lake (the poor people live in make shift houses made out of the metal containers). This is just a charming movie and yet it is both tragic and funny at the same time. Perfection!
6) Puteri Gunung Ledang (2004 Malay movie directed by Teong Hin Saw): Rating 6.5/10
This was my first Malaysian movie. The title roughly translates to ‘The Princess of Mount Ledang’. The love story (based on a Malay myth?) is quite simple but drags on for 145 minutes. A princess falls in love with a Malay warrior. However, a rival kingdom’s young king wants the princess for himself and sends the warrior to get the princess. The princess is hiding on top of Mount Ledang waiting for her true love – the warrior. In defiance to the young prince, the princess is willing to marry another rival kingdom’s king to save her kingdom from the clutches of the young king. Beautifully shot but the story is just too long to sustain continued interest.
7) Apaga Y Vamonos (Switch Off, a documentary by Manel Mayol): Rating 9/10
A riveting documentary on globalization and the evils of modern corporations! This time the arena is Chile and the problem is control of natural resources and water. 67% of Chile’s water supply is controlled by a Spanish company. How is such a thing possible? It is and this power control of nature is happening all over the world. Manel Mayol’s movie is engaging and chilling. The visuals are captured perfectly as well.
8) The Battle of Algiers (1965 movie directed by Gillo Pontecorvo, who also co-wrote the movie with Franco Solinas): Rating 11/10
This is one of the best movies I have ever seen! Period! Very few movies will ever come close to this realistic fiction movie which feels like a documentary. In fact, the first release of the movie had a note which stated that no documentary footage was used in this movie. Pontecorvo captures the feelings and sentiments of an oppressed people and their means to gain independence perfectly. This movie is more relevant today than any other movie. After 130 years of French control, the Algerian people are aching for freedom. So they start their mini revolution. Which leads to a counter reaction from the French who don’t want to leave the country. The situations escalate to a point of total collapse. And then everything is all quiet. For 2 years. After which the people start revolting again. Every scene, every dialogue in this movie is perfect. I had to shake my head and think that this movie was made in 1965 and not in the present day. WOW!
9) It’s all gone Pete Tong (Directed by Michael Dowse): Rating 7.5/10
Canadian (Calgary) Dowse’s second feature is a mocumentary like his first flick (Fubar).
This time Dowse takes the title name from a real life character, Pete Tong and even gives Pete Tong a tiny role in the movie. Pete Tong is a DJ in the Spanish island of Ibiza, a popular holiday spot for British people. In the movie, the main character Frankie Wilde (Paul Kaye) is a popular DJ in Ibiza. However, Frankie’s excess life style of music, drugs takes its toll on his ears – as in his is going deaf. He has only 20% of hearing left in one ear and eventually due to freak accident he goes completely deaf. After a long self imposed exile, Frankie returns. He finds a way to spin music again – he can feel the vibrations of the amps and read the graphs on his laptop. Along with the help of a Portuguese woman, Frankie learns to lip read as well. Once again, Frankie is the best. And then just like that, Frankie disappears.
It is a well done movie. The only complain is that it gets drabby in some parts but for a few stale scenes, it is fresh and original.
10) Fubar (Directed by Michael Dowse): Rating 6.5/10
Michael Dowse’s mocumentary on headbangers won rave reviews in Sundance and is a cult classic in its own right. The story surrounds two Calgary based headbangers who live their life to the fullest – rock and roll, drinking, fighting and smashing. A documentary film-maker (Gordon Skilling) decides to make a film about the two characters – Terry (David Lawrence) and Dean (Paul Spence). Either one loves this movie or one doesn’t. One can call it a mesh of Spinal-tap and Wayne’s World. It is a well done for a tiny of budget of $25,000. But I was not floored by it.
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