Grave Challenges

Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity is one to be remembered for excruciating attention to detail. Two astronauts - Ryan (Sandra Bullock) and Matt (George Clooney) - out to repair the Hubble space telescope - are hit by flying debris, and it is a war for survival from there on - played out in absolute silence. Unmissable, for the level.of detailed rendition. Highly recommended

15.5/20

Moving more than Real Estate Prices

Coming off the likes of The American and the Ides of March, George Clooney as the mild-mannered contemplative Matt King makes you shake your head in disbelief at the sheer breadth of his acting talent. While Matt and his cousins are inheritors of a huge fortune in Hawaii – 25,000 acres of land that the former is likely to sell off for a huge sum of money, Matt’s life is anything but picture-perfect. With deliberate incongruity against the backdrop of beautiful Hawaii, director Alexander Payne shows us Matt’s estranged daughters 10-year-old Scottie (Amara Miller) and 17-year-old Alex (Shailene Woodley), a comatose and terminally ill wife Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie), and the overtones of a life full of myriad regrets. The Descendants is about reconnecting with family and friends, and with one’s own values, and coming to terms with one’s own failings – including coming to know that the terminally ill wife was in a relationship, and then vacillating in a whirlwind of emotions between hatred and eventually coming to terms. And that is what the movie is eventually about – coming to terms with one’s realities so that one can shoulder the responsibilities for one’s future. Eventually, this movie does not move the Hawaii real estate market, but will definitely move the viewer. Quite exceptional - the best movie I have seen in a while

16/20

Far Below the Belt

Stephen Myers (Ryan Gosling), Junior Campaign Manager for the sitting Governor Mike Morris (George Clooney), for the Democrat Presidential primaries, learns to be beware of The Ides of March and much else besides. So what is Steve up against, really? For a start, Steve needs to understand the priorities of Senior Campaign Manager Paul (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his respective right and wrong sides. And then there is the campaign manager on the other side – Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti) and the latter’s machinations. Throw in a beautiful intern – Molly (Evan Rachel Wood) and her dark secrets, a single senator – Senator Thompson (Jeffrey Wright) who could be solely holding the key to the campaign, and cut-throat journalist Ida (Marisa Tomei), and Steve may be down to his very last card in surviving the political game. And no matter who the winners and losers are in this cat-and-mouse political game, what is certain through the movie is that Steve’s brand of passion and idealism will meet a terminal end

14.5/20

Of Staring Down Goats and Other Warfare

Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), a reporter with the Ann Arbor Daily Telegram is devastated when his wife leaves him for the newspaper's editor. A chance meeting in Kuwait with retired Special Forces member Lyn Cassidy (George Clooney) introduces Bob to the world of psychic warfare, and a story of their antecedents that sounds too ludicrous to be true. Started by US Army officer Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) during the Vietnam war on the aftermath of a curious event on the battlefield, the New Earth Movement soon had an equally strong and opposed proponent in the form of Bill’s student Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey) – the latter not a proponent of the non-violent ways of Bill and fellow-student Lyn. While some experiences are harder to believe than others, Bob and Lyn eventually find themselves in a psychic warfare camp run by Larry, where Bill is a mere depressive inmate. With predictive abilities on coin tosses, splitting clouds, and apparently killing goats by staring at them, The Men Who Stare at Goats is a now-you-believe-it-now-you-don’t expose on psychic warfare that is tailored more for humour than for serious consumption. With deft touches, director Grant Heslov leaves you with just the facts, and your own interpretations

12.5/20

The Times they are a Changing

Somehow Dylan’s timeless lines come to mind. America is changing, the Age of Superheroes is giving way to the Age of Introspection and turbulence. And the movies are following suit. Motivational guru and executor of retrenchment mandates, Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) criss-crosses America in a life wherein emotional detachment is part and parcel of what he needs to be, But how detached is he? Up in The Air is about Ryan making the connection with what he believes to be a kindred perpetually airborne soul, and then losing it. It is about a man, bereft of family and emotion, his only definable goal in life being the accumulation of 10 million frequent flyer miles, landing in bland landscapes, spreading the chill wind even as he ostensibly helps people find meaning in their new state of catastrophe. Most of all, it is about the relationship between Ryan and Natalie (Anna Kendrick), a newly recruited hotshot, who breaks in with new paradigms of operational efficiency in the art of firing people, but eventually finds her soul. This is a difficult movie to watch in parts, and I really wonder what kind of people labeled this in the comedy genre. This is a different Clooney, detached, reserved and vulnerable, as he changes with the ebb and flow of those whose lives he is tasked to change for the worse

16/20

Come Confess

As Chuck Barris, Sam Rockwell given the performance of a lifetime, in this intriguing blend of cinema noir foreseeing the coming of the brooding graphic novel movies a half decade or so later, and blending it with a scathing indictment of the travesty that is modern television, in Confessions of A Dangerous Mind. The skewed moralities of adolescent sex, killing without compunction for the greater good of the United States, the numerous women and the singular lack of attachment and the double-crosses, and the overarching peddling of the “lowest common denominator” of reality TV brings to the audience a movie that swings from passion to global intrigue to self-flagellation. A movie that leaves me reflecting on the overarching question of seeking our own individual identities and the eventual price of fame

14/20

Curiouser and Curiouser

O Brother Where Art Thou is an exceedingly peculiar movie even by the Coen Borthers' standards. Three escaped convicts make their way to "treasure that is not the one they seek" through a medley of characters that typify the Depression-era South just preceding the advent of technology and the end of an isolated way of life. Interspersed with much music, including the Johnny Cash "You Are My Sunshine", this is a strange romp through an era in America. You never know quite what to expect next and the ending is just as abrupt.

And the Verdict is...

Movies like Erin Brockovich and Michael Clayton explore class action lawsuits well. A movie like The Verdict lends character to the same. Paul Newman is reservedly spirited in his passion - unsure but moving forward with the vestiges of a once-unshakeable discipline and conviction. Victory in the end is equally sombre, at long last after a long grey spell in one's life not the least because of betrayal in love. The lone man, the underdog, pitted against the power and might of a top of the line law firm and its armies of minions - the audience would be, in the classical sense, rooting wholeheartledly for the underdog, except for one fact - this is no protagonist cast in perfection, but a man whose decline and the attendant evils of the same cast a long shadow over his unmistakable talent and passion. This is a movie that is worth several viewings if only to catch the nuances in Pal Newman's glittering performance

Mixed bag

Many years of *not watching much by way of movies* can lead to many years of glorious catching up! Chinatown (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071315/) is the kind of movie that one would dread reviewing, possible but not probable that one would be able to add much by way of fresh thought on what has been called in multiple fora as the "Finest Film of the 70's" and is in any case anthologized to weariness. Jack Nicholson is superlative, Roman Polanski signs off with a (wholly unnecessary?) macabre end. Made me think of cliches of brittleness and futility of life than suspense and the politics of water, really. Film noir calls for careful exploration

With a lot less trepidation, I write on Monty Python and the Holy Grail (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071853/), pretty much popcorn to Chinatown's complex concoction. Comedic capers and Brit wit, and what really stands out for me is being relevant and genuinely funny thirty years down. Not a mean acheivement. And a hilarious one, too

Back to times more contemporary. Edward Norton remains a favourite, and neither American History X (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120586/) nor Primal Fear (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117381/) in the least diminish. What would you say of this man in the former (juxtaposed as he is against a young and impressionable Edward Furlong (T2 etc))? I would say that Mr Norton is as accomplished an actor as any, carries off venal hatred and cold malice well, but unlike many that deviate and die, is prone to morality tales - American History X, and Kingdom of Heaven and Fight Club to boot, have him "come round" and question his chosen path. Not so Primal Fear. It is exciting as Anthony Hopkins is exciting as Hannibal, and it is unapologetic and unredeemed. One wishes the actor really gave us some notice of where his heart really lies. Richard Gere - well, I didn't quite get what the fuss with his performance was all about - much like George Clooney in Michael Clayton, I'd say - reserved, strong and ordinary

Cast of The Great Debaters on Oprah

In other noteworthy movies I have seen of late, Barton Fink indulgently questions creativity - both the Hollywood Movie Mogul kind and the Broadway inspired scriptwriter kind. Yet again Forest Whittaker and Denzel Washington dazzle us in The Great Debaters, another pre-affirmative action movie, this time with a debate team of a *negro* college taking on Harvard and winning - some of the debates make for good listening, Indian viewers may well like the repeated references to Gandhi, a contemporary in the 1930s setting of the movie. Untraceable is the periodic catharsis of out Internet-and-all-that-it-purports conscience and one cannot help wondering whether parts of the movie were not meant to titillate. No such *moral ambuiguities* in P2, your regular urban horror flick - I only chose this movie because Rachel Nichols looks remarkably attractive in it!

Scenes from P2

Whew.

Its 2.50AM. Would like to catch up tomorrow on The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - I am not a reader of the series but it does seem to be more substantial than ridiculously ageing wizards