Wrapping it Up: March

Another month, another wrap-up post full of this month's viewings. I spent most of March trying to wrap 2013. It involved multiple lists like my Favourite Performances - Male and Female and most importantly, Favourite Films of 2013. Take a look, if you haven't already and then we can head on to month at hand.

March

Inception(2010)(Re-watch): So I was watching Bull Durham the other day(more about it little down the line) and in it there is a scene where Tim Robbins tells Susan Sarandon to open the door, that he knows she is in there as he can hear 'that weird Mexican lady' singing. And she is listening to is 'Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien'. Generally I wouldn't know shit about stuff like this but in this case, I instantly went "That's Edith Piaf and she is French! Everyone knows that!" That's enough of a reason to watch your all-time favourite, right?

The Social Network(2010)(Re-watch): Another personal favourite I had not watched in over a year, almost two. I was almost beginning to forget lot of its dialogues. After Inception, I had to watch this as well. There are handful of others that contribute as well but these two films are principal reason that I think you can make a strong case for 2010 being one of the best years of decade so far for cinema. It is certainly not better than 2007 but it can certainly be close behind. 

Diabolique(1955): Blind Spot of this month which turned out to be one of the Best films I have seen for this series so far and I have seen a few notable films. Best thing about this film was the way Clouzot keeps on building the tension till the end. Come to think of it, the way this film ends should not be as surprising as it was. There are only a couple of ways it could and it does go that way. But there is something going on constantly that is so interesting that it never gives you time to stop and think about it. And then ending drops!   

30 For 30: Survive and Advance(2013): ESPN probably should stop calling it 30 for 30 because I am pretty sure I have seen about 35 of them by now. I am not complaining because they always fascinate me but it's rather odd that there are 35+ 30 for 30 docs, right? Like all other documentaries, Survive and Advance is an incredible story of one team achieving the impossible. As fascinating as they are, I only fear falling down this pit again, watching as many as I can on binge. I saw a dozen first time I did that.

M(1931): Did anyone else confuse it with Touch of Evil(1958) or was it just me? I don't know why, mostly because I saw Peter Lorre in the poster looking behind and thought he was Orsen Welles. To make matters a little more confusing, M had the dubious honour of being the highest ranked film on IMDb Top 250 I had not seen. Now baton has been passed to Touch of Evil. It is probably to be expected of a 1931 film but it was little jarring technically but I love how well it captures mentality of the whole society and how little hasn't it changed over the years.






Mr. Smith Goes to Washington(1939): I feel like I have watched what could be, or rather should be, Aaron Sorkin's favourite film. This sort of overly idealistic political world we see in his series is probably something we all would love to live in but know for certain will not be possible in million years. I know something like The West Wing(1999) is just a right wing patriot's political fantasy and I still like it. Mr. Smith also treads on similar waters and I like it too but mainly because Claude Rains, Jean Arthur and Jimmy Stewart's usual earnestness.

In a Better World(2010): With Marty this month, now I have seen 69 Best Picture winners. You know how many Best Foreign Film winners I have seen? 23. Including this. I am going to go after remaining Best Picture winners for now but after that, I will have another goal. As for the film, all I knew about it was it beat Incendies(2010), my favourite film of 2010, for that Oscar. Did I think it was better than Incendies? No way! But I can't hold that against it either as it was quite good. Depressing as hell but good film.

Laura(1944): Probably not one of the most well-known noirs but I certainly had heard a lot about this film before. Almost halfway into the film and I wasn't really feeling it but then it put a spin on it. And even though I saw the end coming before, it only got better from there. It is probably one of the early noirs where not all the tropes were stone etched but I like the way it plays with genre itself. You get murder, shady characters, low key lighting but key ingredient is femme fatale and Laura isn't your typical femme fatale, is she?

The Wild Bunch(1969): So after Marty, I had an impromptu Ernest Borgnine double feature one day with this one. Though it isn't as much Borgnine vehicle as Marty is, watching him play these two so different roles in a day was so worth it. It's a typical Western! Everything and anything you think of when someone says the word 'Western', you will find it here. But it's one of those who just get it right. It's long, it's slow, it's stylish and it's beautiful, intriguing and interesting. Plus, any movie that can pull off that ending wins in my book!

Lust, Caution(2007): What I am going to say next is going to sound stupid but I am going to say it anyways. I know Ang Lee is Chinese, Taiwanese to be more precise, and this is not his first Chinese production I saw but I am always surprised to see how authentically Chinese movies are. Ideally I should be surprised at how authentically American his films appear but since that is how I was introduced to him as a director, it doesn't. Lust, Caution has good story, great leads but what I was more impressed with is everything that gives it authentic Chinese feel.

Bull Durham(1988): I don't like Baseball. I now basics of it but it gets boring to sit and watch. I always thought that would be a problem when I'd watch baseball movies. Surprisingly, I have seen quite a few and have enjoyed them to varying degrees. This would probably count as one of the bests. They rarely make us sit through 9 innings of game, up and down and human stories of it is what attracts us viewers more anyway. Better those human stories are, better the film. And it also helps when actors bring their A-Game like Susan Sanrandon does here. She was on Fire!

To Die For(1995): I did not know much about this film apart from Nicole Kidman is in it and for whom I have heard a lot of praises. She certainly was every bit worth it but to me, Gus Van Sant was as much hero of this film for me as Kidman was. Off course, it's Kidman's show and she never drops the ball for even a second but Van Sant's presentation of this film - everyone is talking straight to us as if they are being interviewed by someone - was certainly intriguing and made it a further more interesting.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade(1989): Funny thing about it is I had two almost polorising experiences watching this film. Initially, I was taking it too seriously. It involved a lot of rolling my eyes and shaking my head. But just about when Sean Connery enters, I realized film itself isn't. Why should I? It almost instantly became better. It was a fun, action film and when I looked at it as just that, I really enjoyed it. I might even go back to Raiders and watch it again because, wait for it..., I didn't really care for it the first time. Now that I know how to enjoy them, I just might like it better.

Notes on a Scandal(2006): A forewarning, this will venture into spoilers territories. I am not sure why but I was sort of underwhelmed by this film. If it wasn't for Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, who BTW looks radiant in this film, I probably would have liked it much less. I guess, I was irked by the dynamics of story - Blanchett, cheating on her husband with her student, a 15 year old boy, and Dench, constantly seeking companionship of a woman much younger than her. And I never got over it.

Julia(1977): There were many female-oriented films I saw this month. Julia was one I saw on Women's Day and I wish I had more positive things to say about it but I don't. I didn't 'not' like it but it was told in such a way that I never really found it interesting. Actual story certainly was; storytelling of it wasn't. Even contrast between Jane Fonda's character and Redgrave's, something Zinnemann must be going for, came off as little off putting. I guess he was going for bleak since original story is so grim but it came to me as little too cold.

Marty(1955): As I said earlier, this is my 69th Best Picture Winner. As a film, it was very charming and easy-going film and Ernest Borgnine was really good in his simple, straight forward everyday man role. As a Best Picture winner, it feels too lightweight, like The Artist(2011). There is no such rule that it has to be heavy, meaningful film to be the best of the year but it is hard to imagine that there was no other film that would represent 1955 better than Marty. Another one that suffers just being an Oscar winner, I guess!

The Mist(2007): This one goes into 'The shit you see on TV' category though it wasn't all that shitty for a couple of reasons. Probably the most important reason was Marcia Gay Harden. She played a character I absolutely loathed and I love that she played it so beautifully to get that reaction out of me. Second is its ending. I knew where it was going but I still like the way it took to get there. It is not some sort of ground breaking, trend setting horror film or anything but it certainly is a generic but above par thriller.

Noah(2014): The month I close books on 2013, I open new log for 2014 with Noah. My first 2014 released film. I know we are already three month into the year but, hey, we are still getting the Oscar releases here. I am actually not sure what do I think about this as a whole. There are parts of it I liked but there are parts, as good as they were, which I felt were completely unnecessary. Aronofsky's films usually are cold and brutal but they usually leave us with some strong emotion. Noah didn't.

Total Count: 18. 16 First Time Watches and 2 Re-watch .

2014 YTD Count

Total Count: 53. 48 First Time Watches and 5 Re-watches.

It is certainly not the most productive month I have had, only 18 films. But I think it could be my best month in terms of quality of films I have seen. I usually have most number of films in 3 and 3 and 1/2 bucket. This month it's predominantly 3 and 1/2; almost 50% movies have come from that. And there are couple of movies each in 4 stars and even 4 and 1/2 stars range which is becoming more and more rare. And even those with 3 stars aren't much inferior at all. I feel like saying something like Tarantino. If The Mist is the worst film I have seen all month, I think I will take that month over any other.

So, how was your month? Did you see anything interesting? What do you think of the movies I saw? Any favorites?

There Will Be Blood or How I loved the outrageous!

This post is 8th entry into my semi-regular feature in which I go through some of my favourite films. Even though all the 7 films I have written about in this series before are some of my favourite movies, most of which fall within #20 in my Top 100, I never touched my Top 3 – Inception(2010), There Will Be Blood(2007) and Pulp Fiction(1994). In fact, the only time I have said anything about them on this blog is when I covered their respective directors in another one of my semi-regular features, Profile of a Director. Probably the main reason behind doing so was when I started blogging back in 2011, it felt like blogosphere was over saturated with conversations about at least two of them and I could hardly find anything original to say that someone else didn't already. I am not sure if I still can add something valuable to discussion but at least now it feels like enough time has passed for people to be ready to talk about them again.

There were so many great films released in 2007 that I am almost certain it is ‘The’ year of 21^st Century so far and even one of the best in the history of cinema. I have always advocated 1957 as my favourite year but if there is one that might pose a serious threat to it, it must be 2007. Back in 2007 when There Will Be Blood was released as well, I was in the last year of my college and even though I did watch more movies than a casual movie-goer, I was nowhere near being a cinephile. My earliest memory of this film is its fierce Oscar race with No Country for Old Men(2007). It would be another two and half – three years until I'll watch either of the two and until then confuse them with each other referring both as 'movies with long names that were in the Oscar race that year'.

Along with Christopher Nolan, I consider director Paul Thomas Anderson to be the defining director of their generation. Only reason I still hesitate calling them ‘one of the best ever’ is both of them have not made many films but they certainly have multiple decades ahead of them to prove us right. In the 15-odd years both of them have been working, they have left their definite impression and I am more than confident will continue to do so. Knowing my adoration for this director, saying this sprawling epic of oil, family, religion and most importantly greed is PTA’s crowning achievement itself is speaking highly. But I will go even further and add my voice to everyone else saying that it is the film that has most potential to be a future classic. Many years into the future I really believe we will consider it a masterpiece, if aren’t already.

I am saying this right away because I know lot of people do not think of There Will Be Blood as the masterpiece that I think it deserves to be and quite frankly, I can easily see how it can rub someone the wrong way. It is not as polarizing as The Master(2012) but PTA doesn’t make it very easy for us to like it either. I doubt if PTA ever did or will. It might be paced laboriously but every once in a while it gets it rolling and; let it be him trying to convince certain community his worth(“I am an Oil Man”), his baptism in the Church of Third revelation(“Louder, Daniel. I am a sinner!”), dinner in the Sunday household(“Do you think God is going to save you for being stupid? He doesn't save stupid people, Abel”) or that beautifully shot and paced oil explosion scene. I can go on and on; he hits it out of the park every single time. I am a novice at best when it comes to scores or music in general but Greenwood’s groovy score and Robert Elswit’s gorgeous cinematography that won his Oscar go long way in elevating to that status as well.

One of my friends believes that the natural acting is the only pure form of acting. His philosophy is if you have to go over the top, you are doing it wrong and I always plead Daniel Plainview as a counter argument to him. Daniel Day-Lewis is at least two feet over the top throughout this performance but it still is the best performance I have ever seen by anyone and that is saying a whole lot. It’s kind of interesting that as much as I love subtle, down-to-earth performance that still manage to catch your eye, majority of my favourite performances are flashy, over-the-top kind that are anything but subtle. Thing with such performances is there is a very little room for maneuvering. If you underplay it a little, it may not make its impact and if you go too overboard, it might get ridiculous. But when someone gets it right, it can be a sight worth seeing and damn me if DDL doesn’t get it just right!

Plainview is at the center of everything here but he gives us every reason to despise him. He is cold and conflicted; a terrible father and proves repeatedly he wouldn’t skip a heartbeat stepping over you if it is for his benefit. All he ever wants is to get filthy rich and is ready to pay any price for that. Any! That greed consumes him in most spectacular fashion. I might despise Daniel Plainview to the core but Daniel Day-Lewis makes it impossible to take my eyes off him for even a second. Once again, I completely understand anyone who can shrug it off as over-acting but his deep, borderline scary voice, formidable body language and even his misanthropy; everything about him fascinates me to no end. Add Paul Dano and his Eli Sunday to the equation and you have a knockout 1-2 punch.

I think it is pretty obvious by now that I will choose There Will Be Blood over Best picture winner No Country for Old Men but you will never find me flaking it for winning over TWBB. No Country is as respectable Best Picture winner as you can find; a rare example of AMPAS doing something right despite getting it wrong. Remarkable thing about either of the two is they are both near perfect films in every aspect. Both can test your patience in parts but when they pick up, they can take your breath away. Both have some of the best performances I have seen, enthralling story, stunning visuals and incredible philosophy behind them giving each as much depth as you are willing to explore.

If I have to choose one aspect of TWBB that makes it so much dearer to me, it would obviously be tour-de-force performances of Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview and Paul Dano as Eli Sunday. For No Country, that aspect would have to be its philosophy. As much as I loved everything else, I have often wondered if I would consider TWBB as highly if it wasn't for these two towering performances but then I know No Country wouldn't be what it is without Anton Chigurh and Sheriff Bell or even with anyone else playing them and that is not even what I like the most about that film.

Over the past two and half years of my blogging, one thing has certainly changed for me and that is exhilaration you feel after watching something memorable. Not that I don't feel it anymore but it has certainly become less frequent. I remember waiting 6 months for Inception, watching a late evening show on the opening day and then discussing the hell out of it till 2:30 in the morning in theater parking lot. I remember being in awe of Daniel Plainview and going batshit crazy in bowling alley scene. I remember being stunned by the greatness of Rashomon(1950), by the audacity of making a film in one room of 12 Angry Men(1957) and the beauty of Ingrid Bergman and Notorious(1946). Maybe I have become more cynical or more experienced and ante-up my own game but that rarely happens anymore. Maybe that is what makes these movies special.

Rating(out of 5):

Past Favorites:

Notorious(1946)

Rashomon(1950) 

City of God(2002)

12 Angry Men(1957)

Bicycle Thieves(1948)
Wall-E(2008)
City Lights(1931)

Introducing myself to non-Ghibli Anime

The Girl who Leapt Through Time(2006): Funny thing about this movie is, back when I was a novice into this whole anime genre, this was one of the first movies that were recommended to me and I am watching it after watching something like 20 animes including every movie Hayao Miyazaki directed(except his very first Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind(1984)). The Girl who Leapt Through Time is a story of Makoto, a regular teenager who is having a kind of bad day. She runs late for school, fails a surprise test, causes a minor accident in her cooking class. While on her way to drop some manuals, she passes through her science lab where she sees a strange object on floor. At the same time, she feels like someone else is in the room and while trying to see who, she falls on to that strange object. As she falls, she experiences a bunch of strange images flying past her. She gets up quickly but that someone is long gone. However on her way to her aunt's workplace after school, she gets in an accident with train that would have killed her certainly. But instead of dying, as she closes her eyes in anticipation of the accident, she finds herself safe distance away from it, watching the train past. When she tells her aunt about this, she says that Makoto experienced a time leap. She finds it hard to believe but when she successfully goes back a whole day that evening, she realizes her aunt was right. With this power at her hands, she uses it for something a typical teenager would - to ace the surprize test she failed last time, to make karaoke session longer and to get out of an awkward situation with one of her closest friends, Chiaki. When she talks to her aunt about this, she advices her to be careful the way she uses her powers and with many things that follow, Makoto soon also realizes that there is much more to time travel than she can understand. 

I saw this same week that I saw Looper(2012) and Twelve Monkeys(1995). I know, too much time travel for me. As for this one, I only have one problem and that is I didn't understand how did she get that last time leap after her counter went to 0? If there was any explanation to it, I missed it. Otherwise, it was delightful. If I didn't know better, I would bet that it is a Ghibli movie. You will find every trademark that Ghibli is known for in this movie. We have a female protagonist. She is young, innocent, exactly like any normal girl her age would be. We find her in extraordinary circumstances and she shows maturity beyond her years to get through it. It touches themes like love, longing, doing something for greater good and is shot beautifully and is aesthetically brilliant. Trademark Studio Ghibli movie. I knew there is a reason I liked it. :)

Rating(out of 5):

Millennium Actress(2001): First of the three Satoshi Kon movies I saw and probably favourite of all four. It's a story of an old actress, Chiyoko Fujiwara, leaving in a kinda exile for many years. Tachibana - One of her devotees finds out her where-abouts and convinces her to do one last interview for him. He also has a gift for her that he is excited to give her - A key but probably it is the most important thing to her and has been throughout her life. She lost that key many years ago just before she went into anonymity and looking at that back in her hand, it opens all the floodgates and she tells them the whole story of that key and her life. She tells them about how some painter gave her that key when she was just a teenager, how she accepted the acting offer despite her mother's opposition just because that movie will take her in Manchuria where this mystery man is supposed to be and then continued doing them just so as to keep looking for him. We see the complete story of her life told through brief excerpts from movies she did in her career as if they are relevant to the central story of her looking for this man. This approach of storytelling is probably the biggest highlight of this movie. Throughout the movie, Tachibana and his cameraman watch the whole story as if it is being played out right in front of them but none of the actual characters can see them. Tachibana being one of her biggest fans soon gets drawn into that world and assumes the role of Chiyoko's saviour as we go from one movie to others. After few repetitions of same scene is different setting, this part of the movie becomes rather ridiculous and formulaic. But there is also a small comic element with director so immersed in the story and his camera-man is rather uninterested.

Many years pass, she still hasn't found the guy she is looking for but she remains hopeful. Couple of times they come on cusp of actually meeting but fate eludes them every single time. There is an everlasting tint of sadness in the story but with the motifs of jealousy and betrayal introduced in the mix, story takes an interesting turn in last stage to the heart-breaking finish. There are two things that make Millennium Actress memorable to me, first it's editing which is something special as movie travels through lot of different eras in Japanese history and second is it's story. After Grave of the Fireflies(1988) which I rate as high as one of all-time favorites, this is another movie which tackles a story that we almost never see in an animated movie. It easily could have been a sprawling epic in live-action format. Instead, Satoshi Kon made such an heartfelt anime.

Rating(out of 5):

Perfect Blue(1997): So after I loved Millennium Actress, I went right into the second Satoshi Kon - Perfect Blue, movie that Arofonsky liked so much that he bought the rights of to base his Black Swan(2011). This time it's a story of pop-sensation Mima. It starts at her last concert where she declares her retirement from singing. He wants to take her shot in the acting career. When she comes home from it, she gets an anonymous fax message calling her traitor. Soon after, one of the fan letters she receives explodes; injuring someone on the set. She also finds out a site called Mima's Room, a fan-site where to her astonishment she stumbles on what is supposed to be her own diary. What really freaks her out is that diary contains so many details that no-one would know about her. Her acting career starts to take roots soon. Her agent gets the writer of the drama series she is working in to expand her role. Writer agrees but takes her role in drastically different direction by making her a rape victim. Even though she agrees to it, this would tarnish her image as a sweet, innocent pop idol probably beyond repair and may not go down as easily in her fan-base. In her diary on Mima's Room she reads that she or whoever is writing that diary blames writer of the series for this derogatory turn of events. To her Horror, that writer ends up dead the very next day and things just continue to go south from there.

It should be clear from the fact that Arofonsky based Black Swan on this but this is one of the darkest movies I have seen. It does a great job of showing her in two minds about if she did a right thing by quitting her singing career even though she keeps on telling herself that it was her choice, especially when all the craziness starts. I also think the ending wraps up the story very well. But, Ghibli has spoiled me. I didn't think the animations were as great as Ghibli. For last 15-20 minutes or so with multiple cuts in and out of reality, I had no idea what was happening. Also, not necessarily a dig against it but I have rarely seen as much as a kiss in an animated movie but there is SO much nudity in Perfect Blue, it's startling.

Rating(out of 5):

Paprika(2006): Some of you probably know that Inception(2010) is my favorite movie. I have heard a lot since I got into anime about how similar it is to Paprika and hence I have always been itching to check this out and see what the whole fuss is about. Last week I did and I swear, I had absolutely no Idea what the hell was going on in it. Here, I will usually write a little about what's the plot of the movie is at least in some detail but I really don't know what happened and that puts me at a loss as what to say. Something about DC Mini which can be used to enter your dreams being stolen and then dreams and some kind of carnival of weird looking toys and then dreams collapsing into reality and then something like two giant inflated dolls fighting and that's about it. If you have seen it and have understood anything more than this, please tell me. Please. I will forever be grateful to you. I am not even joking. Off course, it goes without saying that I did not like it as much as Inception, in fact even thinking about comparing the two is like a mortal sin for me. For first hour or so, I was really trying hard to understand what am I watching. Some of it, I did. Most of it, I didn't. After that I just gave up. It was just too much of an effort. I just sat there watching images come and go. From the three previous entries in the post, you must have guessed that I like anime movies. I always try and find something in them to praise about. But, unfortunately, I wasn't lucky this time. I am sure that as a concept, it must have looked great on paper and to its credit, I will also say that it LOOKED quite good on screen as well but as a movie while executing it on-screen, it failed miserably. Maybe they just overshot, went too overboard with their ambition. It went so over the top, there was so much to take in it that my brain almost fried and I don't mean it in a good way.

Rating(out of 5):