Saturday, February 27, 2010

More reviews I say...

Wow, I looked at the movies I have watched between my last review post and this one, and I realise it is a long long list, almost as long as MNIK. But enough of beating up MNIK, let me get on with the other movies...

Brothers Bloom

A story about a trio (the brothers Bloom and a chinese chick), who go around conning people, one of their victims include Rachel Weisz who plays a super rich, talented but bored and lonely young lady, who wants some excitement in life. Decent watch, but Adrien Brody would not have been in my cast as a conman, maybe they got him for cheap.


The Golden Compass
Average. Yes, its a Philip Pullman book adaptation, yes its uber cool to watch a polar bear fight in an armour, and its super to have Nicole Kidman in a negative role. But, the movie still does not make an impression.

Outsourced

Decent movie, but the lead heroine reminded me of a frog. She was pretty in her own way though.

21 grams
Very average Sean Penn movie about a guy who gets a heart transplant and falls in love with the donor's widow. Un necessarily made complex by mixing up scenes ala Memento, but this one fails miserably. 21 grams, is how much an average heart weighs.

Sherlock Holmes

What-e-beauty! Guy Ritchie and Robert Downey Jr. take a bow. A fantastic take on my favourite detective :) The ending was a little anti-climatic for me, but over all I loved it!

The Machinist

Fantastic movie! The atmosphere that the director whips up is amazing. Its almost like you are in the character's head and you can see and feel what a weird world he lives in. Add to it a dollop of suspense and we have a weirdly wonderful movie :)

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Its got the enigmatic looking (to my eyes) Mila Kunis (Who you may also recognise from 'Family Guy' - where she voices Meg), the very funny Russel Brand and the guy who I only recognise as 'Marshal' from the 'How I met your mother' series.

The guy I recognise as 'Marshal', drops his towel 10 mins into the movie, for an unxpected dose of full frontal nudity, and that sets the tone for this movie about a music composer who is ditched by his girlfriend (Sarah Marshall), and runs away to Hawaii alone to forget it all, only to run into his ex-girlfriend and her rockstar new boy friend (Russel Brand). There are funny parts to the movie but then its spoilt with some unncessarily explicit 'comedy'. Average.

I am legend
Will Smith, his dog and some vampire like dudes/dudettes, not a bad movie. Some of the sequences were really good. In fact as I write this, I think I quite liked the movie.


Stranger than fiction

Fantastic premise, the narrator narrates, and the main character can hear her! So out he goes on a mission to find out who is narrating every part of his life. On the way he finds love in the form of ugly (to my eyes) Maggie Gyllenhaal. He must stop the narrator from ending his story with his death etc etc

Nice idea for a movie and quite well made. I liked it in a way, except that this one contained all the women I hate, such as Emma 'annoyingly boring' Thompson, Maggie 'ugly' Gyllenhaal and Queen 'loud' Latifah

Original Sin
Angelina Jolie sizzles in this thriller whose twists and turns you can see a mile away. But watchable.

Hollywoodland
Ayyoo very very boring movie, supposedly about the death of some Superman of television or something. Boring only.

Duplicity

Okay, now I am going to say something controversial. I think Clive Owen sucks! He is extremely dumb in his choice of movies.
Given his looks and decentish acting skills, he should have been the Sean Connery of our times, but he delivers one pathetic movie after another. 'Shoot em up', 'The International', 'Duplicity', as far as I am concerned he made even 'Inside man' boring.

He and Julia 'can't act' Roberts, dole up a 'romantic' thriller about two corporate spies who try to double cross their companies or something or the other. The script is extremely complex (since it goes back and forth in time) and full of loop holes, in fact I suspect Abbas Mustan of 'Race' famemay have ghost written it.

Go watch it and tell me if you agree.


Lars and the real girl

Ryan Gosling's character buys one of those dolls, falls in love with it and takes it around almost the entire length of the movie acting like she is a real person. The entire town plays along with him. Once the novelty of the character falling in love with a doll wears off, this becomes a long and boring movie. Ryan Gosling is a fantastic actor but don't bother watching this.

Hurt Locker

Fantastic movie, despite being given an almost documentary like treatment, this movie loses none of its thrill. You shew your nails every time a bomb is found and has to be taken care of, you follow a bomb squad in Iraq as they work on the edge of death day in and day out.

Brilliant, this one is a must watch.

World's fastest Indian

Anthony Hopkins as Burt Monroe once again kicks ass in this story inspired by a true incident. The 'Indian' referred to is a motor cycle. The mission is to break the land speed record.
What makes this movie a great watch, is the road trip Burt Monroe takes from New Zealand to the US of A, with his old, home tweaked bike in tow, to try and break the land speed record.

Do not miss this one!


Roger Dodger
An average movie. The story follows a smooth talking dude who has been dumped by his lover who is also his boss. Enter his 16 year old nephew, who wants to spend an evening with his uncle and learn how to charm women.
Its an okayish movie. But not really one I would recommend.


Sunshine

Last evening we came back at 1:30am and decided we wanted more out of a Friday evening and hence sat down to watch 'Sunshine', this Ralph Fiennes epic about a family, follows Ralp Fiennes in 3 characters - The Grandfather - A Judge, the father - an Olympic fencing champion and the Son - The narrator and a police inspector who has watched his father being beaten and tortured to death in a Nazi labour camp and now wants his revenge against the fascists.

This movie is as much about the family as it is about Hungary all the way from 1890's to the 1950's. We finished watching this at 4:30 am, but found the movie very engrossing.

I admire Ralph Fiennes and that maybe one reason for me having liked this movie, but this one is highly recommended.


Whew! What a long post this has been.

Review - My name is Khan

My name is Khan a.k.a My name is Khan and I am not a terrorist a.k.a My name is Khan and I am not selling Reebok shoes and so on and so forth.

So children its time for our lessons again, what did we learn from My name is Khan?

Learning #1: Kajol screech freeze tiger blood - old Jungle saying

Learning #2: Now we know without a doubt, what the 'epiglottis' is, where it is situated and what it does. Of course Achmed the dead terrorist taught us this trick a lot better! (I looove Jeff Dunham)

Learning #3: Rizwan Khan and his son have same shoe size.

Learning #4: Obama has undergone plastic surgery and looks completely different now. Maybe it was the Nobel peace prize.

Learning #5: Rizwan Khan with Asperger's has better dance moves than Sanjay Dutt in Daud. (if you don't believe me ask Rohini Sharma or Chaman)

Sanjay Dutt, shows his dance moves and more.


Learning #6: Karan Johar is an idiot

Learning #7: Kajol screech freeze tiger blood - old Jungle saying. Oh, did I already mention that? Sorry I am a little disoriented, my ears are still ringing from all the screeching.



Ok, however there were some bits that I liked about the movie, these were :

1. Sonya Jehan,
2. The cinematography and the fresh locations.

I would like to say, My name is Gawde and I am not very particular about my second name being pronounced from the epiglottis.