The Usual Suspects

May 28, 2013 3 Comments

Photo source: http://imdb.com

Photo source: http://imdb.com

Genre: Thriller| Year: 1995 | Duration: 106 mins | Director: Bryan Singer | Medium: DVD (Sony Home Video) | Trailer: HERE | My rating: 4.5*/5*

Favorite Dialogue: “Verbal: Keaton always said, “I don’t believe in God, but I’m afraid of him.” Well, I believe in God…and the only thing that scares me is Keyser Söze.”

A group of five unlucky small time criminals, Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), a corrupt former police officer; Michael McManus (Stephen Baldwin), a short-tempered professional thief; Fred Fenster (Benicio del Toro); Todd Hockney (Kevin Pollak), a hijacker; and Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey), a con artist with cerebral palsy, are brought to a police station for interrogation in regards to a mass murder on a ship by a semi-mythical Hungarian crime kingpin feared as ‘the devil himself’ and known by others as ‘Keyser Soze’. With the promise of $91 million and the opportunity to keep their lives, the enigmatic Keyser sends this group on a fool’s errand in San Pedro harbor to stop a competitor’s huge cocaine sale that would interfere with Keyser’s own drug operation, using Kobayashi. In the end, the director brilliantly reveals the identity of Keyser Soze.

This visually stunning thriller full of black comedy with intricate twists is my Movie of the Day.

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Phantoms

May 17, 2013 Leave a comment

Photo Source: http://imdb.com

Photo Source: http://imdb.com

Genre: Horror | Year: 1998 | Duration: 96 mins | Director: Joe Chhappelle | Medium: VCD (Eagle Entertainment) | Trailer: HERE |  My rating: 2.5*/5*

Favorite Dialogue: “Stu Wargle: Hey, you want to see somethin’?”

This movie is based on a novel with the same name by Dean Koontz. Dr. Lisa (Rose McGowan) and Jenny (Joanna Going) arrive at Snowfield, Colorado, only to discover that nearly the entire town is mysteriously dead, without any telltale sign of struggle. While trying to get themselves to a secure location they come across the Sheriff Hammond (Ben Affleck) and his deputies Steve (Nicky Katt) and the lecherous Stu (Liev Schreiber), who too are trying to find clues to this mass murder, and soon lose Steve and Stu to some unseen perpetrator. They successfully contact the FBI who gets Prof. Flyte (Peter O’Toole) an expert on ancient epidemics, who’s throughout squirming uncomfortably in the role of a loony scholar-turned-tabloid writer. After losing a dozen of highly trained soldiers to this ‘Ancient Enemy’, the team of the two sisters, Hammond and Flyte discovers the enemy to be a highly evolved form of Petrolatum, similar to petroleum formed of complex hydrocarbons. They load up their guns with syringes filled with a genetic strain of oil-spills clearing serum to kill this enemy who has the ability to enter any living being and control them and their collective memories through, which this mass believes itself to be equivalent of god. In the end, they manage to end the petrolatum, but the director cleverly leave an opening hoping to make a sequel.

This badly directed, awfully acted, with low grade animation and so called horror flick is my Movie of the Day.

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The One

May 16, 2013 Leave a comment

Photo source: http://imdb.com

Photo source: http://imdb.com

Genre: Sci-fi | Year: 2001 | Duration: 87 mins | Director: James Wong | Medium: VCD (ASIA VISION) | Trailer: HERE | My rating: 3*/5*

Favorite Dialogue: “YuLaw: I am Yulaw! I am nobody’s bitch! You are mine.”

The movie is based on the idea of ‘multi-verses’ consisting of parallel universes where events are intertwined. A group of Universes that decoded this formed a special multi-verse police force to stop the abuse of ‘quantum wormholes’ for inter-dimensional travel travelling across the parallel universes. Gabriel YuLaw (Jet Li) who was once an officer with the Multi-verse Authority becomes rogue and discovered that his strength increases when he kills a version of himself from another Universe. He then goes about killing the 123 copies of himself that are known to exist and their life energies flow to him and his one remaining counterpart, Gabe (Li again), in the 124th Universe, making him believe that after he kills Gabe, he will become ‘The One’, become the god. This idea seems to be based on a flawed zen-like concept of the First law of thermodynamics (conservation of energy).  Gabe, a regular cop in a Universe similar to ours, is unable to explain his sudden increase in strength. Helped by two Multi-verse agents, Roedecker (Delroy Lindo) and Funsch (Jason Statham), Gabe stops Yulaw before Yulaw becomes “the one” and rule the Multiverse as a despotic god. The gadgets used for time travel looks cool (thought very much like a mobile phone), and I expected the multi-verse guns to have lasers instead of bullets, and certainly humorous to see Bush proposing universal health care in one of the Universes!

This science fiction with mindless fight scenes is my Movie of the Day.

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Alexander

May 15, 2013 Leave a comment

alexGenre: Action | Year: 2004 | Duration: 175 mins | Director: Oliver Stone | Medium: DVD (EAGLE Entertainment) | Trailer: HERE | My rating: 2.5*/5*

Favorite Dialogue: Alexander: “Conquer your fear, and I promise you, you will conquer death.”

The screenplay of this epic movie based on the life and times of ‘Alexander The Great’ king of Macedon, who conquered Asia Minor, Egypt, Persia, and part of Ancient India, is based on the book by the same name written by historian Robert Fox. The story of Alexander (Colin Farrell) is narrated by Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins) throughout the movie while he’s getting his autobiography scribed 40 years after 323 BC from Egypt. The story moves from his childhood and his closeness to his mother Olympias (Angelina Jolie) and teachings of Aristotle to his youth and his love for his childhood friend Hephaestion (Jared Leto), who was charecterised more like a cock tease homosexual than his heroics throughout, to his conquests across Asia Minor defeating Darius, and later marrying a tribal girl, Roxana. Towards the end he gets poisoned by his own generals fed up by his eccentricities and lust for war.

However the movie failed to capture the greatness of Alexander, and nearly succeeded in making a mockery of it all. Unfortunately, this awfully directed cinematic disaster is my Movie of the day.

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The Avengers

May 13, 2013 Leave a comment

avengGenre: Sci-fi | Year: 2012 | Duration: 143 mins | Director: Joss Whedon | Medium: Theater (DT Cinemas, Saket) | Trailer: HERE | My rating: 4.5*/5*

Favorite Dialogue: “Steve Rogers (Capt. America): Stark, we need a plan of attack!

                               Tony Stark (Iron Man): I have a plan: attack!”

Nick Fury, director of SHIELD assembles a team of super heroes (Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Hawkeye, and Black Widow) to counter from subjugating Earth, and protecting Tesseract.  They all assemble on a freighter, which takes shape of a spaceship with stealth capabilities and make it their base of operations to launch counter strike against Loki and his army of Chitauris, an alien force from space. Loki brings his army for invasion of earth through a portal into space using Tesseract. The super heroes fight tooth and nail and defeat the highly mechanized (very much reminded me of the machines from Matrix) Chitauri fleet, with Iron Man nailing the Mother ship parked in space using a nuclear missile and setting its course through the open portal. In the end, Thor arrests Loki and surrenders him and the Tesseract to Asgard. Among all assembled super heroes, I wondered at the usefulness of Black Widow in the team other than glam factor. Guess they should have borrowed Cat Woman from DC who would have been better choice, adding both power and glam together.

This science fiction out of Marvel’s with impressive feat of cinematic engineering is my Movie of the Day

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