Showing posts with label Movie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Movie. Show all posts
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
In Slumdog Millionaire, directed by the whiz-bang fabulist Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Sunshine), Jamal (Dev Patel), an 18-year-old Indian orphan who has spent his life scavenging on the streets, lands as a contestant on the Hindi version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and he wins — big. Don't worry, I'm not giving anything away: An opening title informs us that he wins 20 million rupees (in U.S. currency, that translates roughly as...an awesome amount of cash). The host (Anil Kapoor), who looks like Omar Sharif if he'd been a high-end vacuum-cleaner salesman, models his act on the British version of the show, which may be why he's a lot more condescending than the courtly Regis Philbin. Mercilessly, he mocks Jamal for being a ''chaiwalla'' (a boy who serves tea — extremely low on the class totem pole). Yet the kid is immune to insults — or, it seems, nerves — and he becomes a folk hero as he keeps knocking out those impeccable final answers. The prospect of an uneducated orphan from the slums of Mumbai winning a pot of gold on a game show that hinges on worldly knowledge is, of course, the stuff of purest fairy tales. Based on Vikas Swarup's novel Q & A, with a script by Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty), Slumdog Millionaire is nothing if not an enjoyably far-fetched piece of rags-to-riches wish fulfillment. It's like the Bollywood version of a Capra fable sprayed with colorful drops of dark-side-of-the-Third-World squalor. A framing device has Jamal being interrogated by Mumbai cops who want him to confess how he won the show (they believe, wrongly, that he cheated). To let us know how he won, the film keeps flashing back from Jamal's stint on Millionaire to scenes of his life as an innocently scheming Dickensian ragamuffin.
Orphaned during a riot, the young Jamal (Ayush Mahesh Khedekar) skips around India with his older brother, Salim (Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail), the two boys scrambling to survive in a bustling, hothouse landscape of exploitative treachery. They're detained, along with a bunch of other orphans, by a vile crook who doesn't just use them as beggars; in a touch to give Fagin the willies, he likes to blind his orphans by pouring boiling liquid into their eyes, because then they'll earn more sympathy from passersby. The two escape, along with a girl, Latika (Rubina Ali), whom Jamal falls for and keeps trying to rescue. But just as we're reeling from this close encounter with evil, the movie reveals its true, happy design: This episode, and others like it, provides Jamal with the precise piece of information — in this case, a song title — he'll draw on, years later, to answer the questions on Millionaire. The inventor of the revolver, the figure on a $100 bill (he learns that one while scamming U.S. tourists at the Taj Mahal)— all the knowledge he'll need is offered by his life of hardship.
As Slumdog Millionaire jumps from the fear and degradation of Jamal's childhood to the snippet of game-show victory each episode provides, the audience relaxes, secure in the knowledge that the hardship and cruelty on display are, in their way, as much of a fairy tale as the mad-money TV triumph they presage. Slumdog Millionaire is brash and lively and compulsively watchable, but with Boyle working at full boil, it is also an unabashed concoction — a movie that turns the horror of broken Indian childhoods into a whooshingly blithe, in-your-face picaresque. Not since Les Miz have you felt this gooey-good about kids whose lives were this bad.
We follow Jamal and Salim at three different ages (with two sets of nicely matched tyke actors), but it's when Jamal is 18, and played by Dev Patel, that the movie takes on a touch of gravitas. Patel is tall, with a serious thin mouth, sloping eyebrows, and a wiry boyish toughness rather like that of Shia LaBeouf; he holds the camera while appearing to do nothing — the mark of a star. Madhur Mittal, as the older Salim, is a study in contrast — a permed weakling who goes to work for a gangster — but I wish the grown-up Latika (Freida Pinto), whom Jamal finds enslaved to that same thug, looked less like a supermodel. It's all part of the movie's fanciful sentimental tidiness. Slumdog Millionaire rousingly celebrates the escape from the slums, but since it’s Jamal’s childhood that allows him to win big on TV (and to win that girl), you could also say that the movie ennobles poverty.
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Monday, November 17, 2008
Quantum of Solace Movie Reviews
Scorsese did it with Christ and Nolan most recently did it with Batman. Those are two iconic film characters that usually embody pristine souls of clarity and goodness. Their emotions aren’t usually played upon because they don’t usually find themselves being rattled. That was until Scorsese and Nolan injected their heroes with a Shakespearian sorrow and made them human. Now, Marc Forster - with the 22nd James Bond film from Ian Flemming entitled “Quantum of Solace” – injects the same serum to James Bond; the only man in the history of cinema that is lusted by children and men and women of all ages. Now after seeing “Quantum” how would they like to embody a Bond that has an unwelcoming conscious that craves a vulnerable soul?James Bond has become a pinnacle to our society today. If his name were to be found in the dictionary it would indicate the words smooth, suave, dreamy and charismatic, not a tragic figure who invites bruises and scratches to his face preferably over kisses. Most Bond films, including last year’s “Casino Royale” where “Quantum” picks up an hour after, provides the audience to escape the everyday casualties of life, not to sulk our hero in them and watch him slowly become – how can I put this? – Human. When Daniel Craig signed on to play Bond it was an awakening to a new chapter in the franchise. Dreamy love-boats, who adorned perfectly cropped hair and always a step ahead of their nemesis, were replaced by a more rugged man whose first instinct isn’t to bed women but to put a bullet in the bad guys’ heads. He rightfully accepts the bumps and bruises that follow throughout the process.
In “Quantum,” Bond (Craig) isn’t motivated by any high-tech gizmo or sumptuous woman, but has his killer instincts set out to revenge the death of Vesper (Eva Green), his lover turned double-crosser in “Casino Royale.” In pursing her killer he uncovers Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), a business mogul who’s looking to control Bolivia’s entire water supply and eventually the world. He’s more of an Al Gore, economy friendly villain than the all cunning, blood crying La Chiffe. Greene manages to have people working all over for him, especially doubling as M’s (Judi Dench) M16 agents. New Bond girl Olga Kurylenko as Camille is used as bait by Greene for business deals, but it’s Bond who understands what she really desires for because it’s the same thing he’s driven by; revenge.
Director Forster is a worthy entry to direct a Bond film that has for the first time James Bond’s heart ripped from his insides. The proof lies within Forster’s repertoire. “Quantum” calls for revenge and emotion and he answers its call. Just watch his “Finding Neverland” and “Monster’s Ball” for further reference of humans apprehending life’s pitfalls.
The script is co-written by Oscar winner Paul Haggis and is a bit too congested. It’s become almost mentally impossible to follow any Bond film without asking yourself questions at the end. “Quantum” ultimately can do away with the script because it’s a movie that’s only interested in a maimed humanity, two actually, and how each goes through action scenes, jumping from Italy to Haiti to Bolivia, to satisfy their hungry hearts. To portray James Bond, the epitome of cool, like that can be dour to some. There isn’t any love interest between Bond and Camille because they’re so fueled by revenge. No sarcasm or exotic foreplay. No showcasing extravagant cars or gadgets. No lines of dialogue containing “Bond….James Bond.” Bond doesn’t say anything about his martini being “shaken, not stirred,” because his soul is literally shaken to the core and he’s mad as hell and isn’t going to take it anymore. It may take a while to warm up to this new portrait of cool. But when you do, you actually realize for the very first time that you’d hate to be James Bond. Well, kind of.
Starring: Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Judi Dench and Giancarlo Giannini
Director: Marc Forster
Release Date: November 14, 2008
Running Time: 106 min.
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, and some sexual content.
Distributors: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) and Sony Pictures
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Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Rachel Getting Married
A rollercoaster usually doesn’t last long. You’re guaranteed to get thrills and those butterflies that float around inside the stomach as you fly down the dips. You try and take it all in but it’s useless because it goes by all too quickly. But you still try anyway because you know you only have the given moment. A Connecticut home, full of people with different backgrounds and ethnicities, housing a wedding and the receptions that come with it, finds itself on the tracks of a rollercoaster that has the possibility of being derailed. With that in mind, each person present at this party tries real hard to enjoy the moment that’s full of music, family traditions and love. One character in particular, the bride, doesn’t realize all that was in front of her until the wedding has now become something of the past. By the time the end credits roll along she reminded me of Michael Corleone, the distraught human soul, at the end of Godfather Part II.What makes a family useful is its ability to caress and refurbish painful predicaments and decaying wrongs. Director Jonathan Demme’s portrait of a young woman dealing with the pain that comes along with being human is intriguing because she goes through life having to deal with being supervised all the time and her fragile emotions are constantly picked at such a nagging pace by family members, whose affections she would have rather greeted instead. This is Demme's forte; fascination with the social outcast. We've seen that worked to perfection in his greatest film, "Silence of the Lambs."
The young woman is Kym (Anne Hathaway) and she’s been released from a rehab center. She has been in and out for ten years and results are visible. She gets the opportunity to be in attendance at her sister Rachel’s wedding at their father’s home. Kym returns home to find a celebration in the making, not for her return, but for the wedding which will be a wedding that hasn’t been captured before on celluloid. What her return home does is serve her a reminder of her haunted memories, and minor indications of a brighter future. Hathaway manages to wipe away the sexiness and beauty that layered her face in previous films in order to replace it with a pale and skinny face that is searching for a soul. Her tour-de-force performance steers the movie away from melodrama and towards a near classical narrative.
The Connecticut home is bursting with energy. A homey estate that belongs to a family of disconnected souls. It homes a dysfunctional child trying to cope with her personal struggles, Kym, and a child who abides by the everyday rules. The abiding child is named Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt) and she’s getting married to Sydney (Tunde Adebimpe), an African American musical guru who has a face that announces redemption. The bride and groom’s families couldn’t be more different when it comes to appearances and traditions. Demme goes for the unnatural approach by not focusing on the interracial marriage. He doesn’t even give the slightest hint at it, scoffing it off for a lesser director to approach such a cliché. This results in the film being more truthful than it plans to be. More truth is found in this technique than the handheld device Demme uses to track each member of the family. Yet it’s with the shaky camera that he uses to distract us from the interracial marriage. His movement from room to room, person to person is Altamnesque. Every character the lens focuses on is worth listening to. The reception dinner is a perfect example of this. No matter who is doing the talking we can’t help but to only be lulled along like we have known these people for the most part of our lives.
This wedding, so unorthodox and elaborate, mounts to form an isolated island around Rachel. Constantly yelling and harassing her sister for her entire stay, the father (Bill Irwin), a weak man who may take the tragic past harder than anyone in the family, finds himself in the middle of an ongoing sibling rival that recalls to mind The Prodigal Son tale. If his soul isn’t being gnawed at by the past, it’s certainly gnawing at his divorce from his first wife Abby (Debra Winger). She’s a firecracker waiting to be ignited so she can showcase her explosions and vent steam.
If there’s a flaw in Demme’s film, and there is, it’s contained within the characters of the two sisters, Rachel and Kym. Though each actress, Hathaway and DeWitt, give great performances, their characters are focused too much on arguing with each other. It almost gets to the point that as we watch the movie we become familiar and comfortable with the families in it, and then it clicks; it seems as if the audience is being used. Just as we nestle up real snuggly to the family and feel welcomed, most of the characters then begin to spill their guts out to us. Almost as if they use the audience as a ploy in order to unleash their furies and dilemmas. We’re the lucky psychiatrist who has the fortune of listening to some real rubbish and even some entertaining stories by patients who are basket-cases.
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Brideshead Revisited Movie Review
Brideshead Revisited is a film adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s acclaimed novel of same name. The novel was first published in 1945 and has been regarded as one of the British literary classics. David Yates was originally assigned as the director of this film. When he was attached to his project, he secured Jude Law, Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany as Sebastian, Julia and Charles respectively. However, Yates had to step aside when he was offered to direct Harry Potter The Order of Phoenix. Julian Jarrold (Becoming Jane) took over the project, along with Jeremy Brock (Last King of Scotland) and Andrew Davies (Bridget Jones Diary) as the screenwriters.There are a number of notable similarities between the protagonist of the book, Charles Ryder and Evelyn Waugh himself. Both Ryder and Waugh went to Hertford College, Oxford; studied history and were much more interested in painting than being a history scholar. In fact, Waugh only graduated from Hertford with a third- class-degree and left Oxford before he finished his studies. When asked of whether he played any sports, his answer was “I drank for Hertford.” Waugh was known to dabble in homosexuality while he was in Oxford, although that was never proven. As for Charles Ryder, his relationship with Sebastian Flyte was always questionable. Was it merely platonic, or was there more to their friendship?
Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) bonded with Lord Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw) after the drunken Sebastian vomited all over Charles’ room on the first night he moved into Oxford. The following day, Sebastian apologised by sending him flowers and asking him out to lunch. They quickly became the best of friends, often using the Latin term contra mundum when they talked to each other. It’s always going to be them, against the world. However, things became increasingly complicated when Charles met Sebastian’s family. Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson) is a staunch Catholic who ruled the household with a firm hand. She had four children; Lord Brideshead ‘Birdie’, Julia, Sebastian and Cordelia. From the moment Charles laid eyes on Julia (Hayley Atwell), he was mesmerised. Nevertheless, Charles’ feelings for Julia became a cloud that hanged upon his friendship with Sebastian.
As expected, Emma Thompson’s performance as Lady Marchmain was brilliant. Her cold and steely demeanor gave me chills to the bone. I completely understood why her children behave like nervous wrecks whenever she was around. Ben Whishaw was marvelous as Sebastian Flyte, the charming and flamboyant son who constantly struggled with his homosexuality and how it made him a constant disappointment to his mother. Sebastian dealt with these issues through drinking and avoiding his family as much as he could.
The main theme of the movie is Catholicism, although the movie tried its best to downplay its religious content. Every main character in the movie struggled with guilt, and then in the end they were redeemed through the power of grace. Julia always thought of herself as a bad girl, and married Rex because it was the right thing to do. Poor Sebastian, who often called himself a heathen, moved to Morocco and spent his life at a monastery while dealing with his alcoholism.
I really enjoyed Brideshead Revisited because of its engaging story that concentrated on the universal themes of love, friendship and religion. The performances were outstanding, the dialogue witty and the scenery breathtaking.
Now, I just have to head to the bookshop and buy the book.
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