O Brother, Where Art Thou?

May 6, 2013 Leave a comment

brotherGenre: Comedy| Year: 2000 | Duration: 106 mins | Director: Joel & Ethan Coen | Medium: DVD (EAGLE Entertainment) | Trailer: HERE | My rating: 5*/5*

Favorite Dialogue: Everett: “Deceitful, two-faced she-woman. Never trust a female Delmar, remember that one simple precept and your time with me will not have been ill spent.”

O’Brother set in 1937 rural Mississippi during great depression is a brilliant comedy inspired in parts by Homer’s Odyssey. Dapper Dan hair cream obsessed Everett (George Clooney),  easily excitable Pete (John Turturro), and dopey Delmar (Tim Nelson) escaped from a prison chain gang, still chained to each other and goes looking for 1.2 million dollars that Everett claims to have stolen and buried at a farm before he was caught. They run together in chains through fields and even attempted jumping on a running train till they reached Pete’s cousin Wash’s farm. They get surrounded by Sheriff Cooley and his men  and escape with the help of Wash’s son in his car. On their way out they pick up a hitchhiker Tommy, who claims to have sold his soul to the devil in lieu of learning guitar from him. The four of them goes to a radio station run by a blind man, Root, and sing a song “Man of constant sorrow” under the name of Soggy Bottom Boys, conning Root for extra dollars. While they are their wild goose chase, their song becomes famous around the state, which eventually helps them getting pardoned by the governor.

This strangely beautiful, thoroughly eclectic and musically comic flick is my Movie of the day.

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Men in Black 3

May 3, 2013 Leave a comment

mibGenre: Sci-fi| Year: 2012 | Duration: 103 mins | Director: Barry Sonnenfeld | Medium: Theater (DT Cinemas, Saket) | Trailer: HERE | My rating: 4*/5*

Favorite Dialogue: Agent K: Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to”

MIB3 is the sequel to the 2002 film MIB2 starring Tommy Lee Jones as Agent K, and Will Smith as Agent J. Even though its not the best of the three MIBs, its still much better than its predecessor, MIB2, though the gap of ten years between them was equivalent to getting ‘neuralyzed’ had it not been for numerous movie channels on the telly showing repeats of the movies in last ten years. The movie revolves around the escape of a violent alien fugitive, Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement), who lost his arm in a tangle with Agent K back in 1969. When Boris arrives back on Earth after escaping from special prison on the moon, after 40 years, the Boglodite time travels to 1969 to kill-off K prior to their fateful standoff. When Agent J shows-up at MIB headquarters (with a temporal fracture and a craving for chocolate milk, as discovered by Agent O) and discovers that his partner actually died decades before they ever met, he follows Boris’ trail back to the 1969, a day in advance of the standoff in an effort to not only save K and implement a protective earth cover ArcNet, but prevent a full-on Boglodite invasion that the Men in Black had, in the prior version of reality, managed to thwart.

The Agents meet the alien Griffin (Michael Stuhlbarg), an Arcadian who possesses the ArcNet and is able to see multi-dimensionally in to all possible futures, gives them the ArcNet and instructs them to place it onto the Apollo 11 lunar rocket launch occurring in less than six hours. Boris then snatches Griffin, but the agents, on monocycles (another cool feature of the movie), give chase and recover Griffin. In the end, J & K (Young agent K is played by Josh Brolin) manages to kill both the younger and older versions of Boris, and deploys ArcNet.

This comic sci-fi with funny looking aliens is my Movie of the Day

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The Accidental Husband

May 3, 2013 Leave a comment

accidental-husbandGenre: Romance/Comedy| Year: 2008 | Duration: 90 mins | Director: Griffin Dunne | Medium: VCD (EROS Video) | Trailer: HERE | My rating: 2.5*/5*

Favorite Dialogue: Patrick: [with a mouth full of sample wedding cake] This cake is fantastic!

FDNY fireman Patrick Sullivan (Jeffery Dean Morgan) is a happy-go-lucky, soccer playing man about to marry a girl from Astoria, when his life goes topsy-turvy through an advise taken by his fiancee, Sophia, from this famed radio host and love expert, Dr. Emma Lloyd (Uma Thurman), ending with a break-up. Patrick wanted revenge and takes help from his Indian neighbor, who’s a whiz hacker, to falsely put his name as Emma’s husband in public record. Emma gets to know about this sudden change in her life when she goes for registering her marriage with her long time fiance, Richard (Colin Firth), and is asked to get Patrick’s signature on the annulment forms. These forms led Emma and Patrick to fall in love with each other, and eventually get married for real. The movie ends with Tamil music playing in the background.

Dunne’s ‘accidental & forgettable’ flick is my Movie of the Day

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Larry Crowne

April 29, 2013 1 Comment

larryGenre: Romance/Comedy| Year: 2011 | Duration: 98 mins | Director: Tom Hanks | Medium: VCD (BIG Home Video) | Trailer: HERE | My rating: 2.5*/5*

Favorite Dialogue: Mercedes: (mixing a strong frozen drink) “Mmmmm…brain freeze!”

Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks), a divorced middle-aged man and navy’s veteran cook, gets fired from his floor keeper job at a store because he lacked a college level education. Upon encouragement from his neighbor, Lamar, he enrolls at a local community college to pursue better opportunities in future, studying economics and communication. Larry befriends a bunch of young, scooter-riding young people, and strikes a special friendship with a free spirited girl Talia.  The saving grace of the movie is the subtle romance between Larry and ever-radiant Julia Roberts as Mercedes Tainot, the public-speaking professor with an alcohol addiction and a disintegrating marriage.

This tepid rom-com, which is neither full of romance nor comic is my Movie of the Day.

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THE ASSASINATION OF JESSE JAMES

April 27, 2013 2 Comments

jesseGenre: Western| Year: 2007 | Duration: 160 mins | Director: Andrew Dominik | Medium: VCD (BIG Home Video) | Trailer: HERE | My rating:4.5*/5*

Fav Dialogue: Jesse James: [last words] “Don’t that picture look dusty?”

Jesse James was an outlaw in 19th-century Missouri, USA, remembered in legend as the Robin Hood of the wild west. He was murdered in 1882 by Robert Ford, a member of his own gang, for a $10,000 reward. The story revolves around Jesse james (Brad Pitt) and Bob Ford (Casey Affleck), an insecure, unpopular man who has grown up idolizing and obsessing James. Bob joins James gang during a train robbery to prove his worthiness to Jesse.  The obsession is so intense that Bob wants to murder Jesse and take his place finally as he believes that he is better than his ideal. Towards the end of the movie Bob shoots Jesse in the back of his head while he was dusting a painting of a horse.

After the assasination the Ford brothers become celebrities, but Charley is guilt-stricken and eventually commits suicide in 1884.  Bob too suffer from the pangs of guilt and is considered a traitor in public opinion and eventually is murdered by Edward O’Kelley, who later got pardoned for avenging the death of Jesse James. The style of the movie is solemn and remote and hictorically as accurate as all available sources on Jesse James.

This superbly researched and brilliantly cinematographed psychoanalytical historical epic is my ‘Movie of the day’.

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