District 9

Aliens.

This is as real as it gets.

No second thoughts.

Watch the movie wherever you are.

Not recommended for girls and kids.

Offbeat movies 2 - Apocalypse Now

At the end of this, some people might say that am talking blasphemy here. But I will stick to it neverthless. I consider Apolcalypse Now to be the greatest movie made than Godfather. Yeah..you heard it right.

Francis Ford Coppola made this movie (as he did Godfather) in 1979 (the year I was born!). Its about a US captain going in search of a colonel in the Vietnam war. His mission is to get into Cambodia up the Nung river and get to him. The boat crew is as bizzare as the captain and the happenings along the way (in the height of Vietnam war) and their journey to find the colonel makes up the movie.

Its a fairly long movie. A very intense and depressing one. The real picture of war opens up before you. The landscape is amazing and the camera work/direction is astounding. To think that this movie was made in 1979 beats me! I would recommend this movie to all who enjoy war movies. Not for people who get easily depressed or upset. If you can, try to catch the redux version of the movie (made in 1991) which adds extra scenes (and hence extra time) and gives an altogether more intense view. To see this movie, I would suggest that you free a day in advance; get the DVD and watch it in the morning itself. Plan some outdoor activity in the evening with friends. This will give you enough time to get over it by night. I watched it some night and ended up depressed the next day!

Some moments will just take you away. As you get deeper and deeper into the movie, you will agree more and more on how the crew feels and what the captain undergoes. By the end, Marlon Brando's appearance will freak you out and you would just wish you were away somewhere else!

As I said, I consider this the greatest work of Francis Ford Coppola. I met a Vietnam war veteran in US and asked him whether he has seen this movie. He said he sat for 10 min in this movie and walked out.

As the movie begins and ends, The horror...The horror..

Offbeat movies - 1

As has been asked often of me by a lot of people, am starting this section of writing a list of offbeat movies that I catch up on DVD or TV....and a short review with it. These movies are not going to have any of the mainstream releases that happened recently. So, it will be something that you can pick from a DVD shop...:)

The Ruins (2008) (Horror)

I am one who avoids horror at any costs but this seemed offbeat and hence I got hooked on. I wish I dint!I was completely freaked out on seeing this. On the lines of tourists-get-to-unknown-place premise, this one is too real and you will feel as if you can encounter something like this in a day-to-day life. And believe me..there are no ghosts! Its something more...:)

New Jersey Drive (1995) (Drama/Action)

Now, am a big fan of black movies. I like their style; the way they talk. Bro, am hooked! This movie is about a group of young black car thieves set in Jersey City in 1995. Its kinda slow movie with no big stars but its an interesting watch. And you can catch a lot of slang that might help you to throw around some air!...:)

The Hammer (2007) (Comedy)

This is a very simple and funny movie about an aged boxer who tries to get back to the ring. A guy named Adam Carolla plays the boxer and his straight face humor is a treat to watch. He has a Nicaragua friend who is like that uncle from Borat guy in terms of his comic sense. The scene where Adam wears the ipod and tries to show off before a girl is hilarious! And the girl in this is a next-door-girl and you will like her definitely!...:)

Event Horizon (1997) (Sci Fi/Horror/Thriller)

Lawrence Fishburne stars in this and I don't know how I missed this one earlier. This is an edge-of-the-seat thriller. A space ship gets lost for 7 years and when it suddenly appears, all is not what it seems. The idea in this movie will scare the s**t out of you!...:)

Naan Kadavul (I am God)

Watched 'Naan Kadavul' again. To people who do not follow Tamil cinema, this is a tamil movie directed by Bala. Came in the beginning of this year (Feb 2009). Here is the review I wrote then:

I was studying 6th or 7th standard then. My parents had left me and my brother in my mama’s place in Tanjore for the annual holidays. It was a very big house with lots of vacant rooms and a big garden. Since there were no kids to play, I usually spent my time loitering around. Watching movies on the VCR deck was another favorite pass time. One day, there was a movie called ‘Panic’ which was about an epidemic spreading around a city. People who catch that disease start biting other people and the disease spreads. That was the first time I saw a gory picture with lots of blood and zombies. Haunted by those images, I got very disturbed and it took my three full days to come out of it then.

Next time, I got that disturbed was when I read the fiction ‘Desperation City’ and ‘IT’ by Stephen King. This was during my college days. The former was an out of the world depiction of horror in a desolate city and the latter was about how a ‘thing’ in clown makeup goes about destroying a city. In both cases, I was haunted for a week and pushed to a depressing mood.

Now, two days after watching ‘Naan Kadavul’, am still making up my mind as to what is disturbing me in that movie. Bala has carved a hole in the world we live in (as we know) and made us peep into worlds which according to us don’t exist (or do so on newspapers as we sip our morning coffee). What will strike us more is that till date we have not made that attempt to see these worlds. Believe me all that talk about the aghoris being the main plotline of this movie is crap. That world is just an aberration to bring justice to the brutal world of begging. And as with all Bala movies, the humor elements will spring from the most uncanny places you can ever think. I think that part did me in. I am left wondering as to how such people can be humorous given their way of life. But without it, I guess, they are as good as dead. Or maybe I do not understand the ever fighting and resilient spirit inside a human. Whatever…it shook me too much, I guess. I could not eat that night at home.

I heard this climax was actually planned for Pithamagan (another Bala movie). It was a good way to end the movie. And I think we are now mentally ready for a Bala movie climax such that it does not surprise us much. Some of the dialogues mouthed by Arya are simply out of the world (for example, when Arya tries lighting up a ganja pipe in a temple fire, someone says “koil nerupa neenga asutham panniteenga..(you have made the temple lamp impure)”. Arya replies back “neruppuku edhu da sutham asutham?” (How can you make fire pure or impure?) !!. Thanks to Jayamohan for such crisp dialogues. And I think I need not mention the music part. There is no one else who could have done justice to this movie than Ilayaraja. Cinematography is very good (Arya’s intro and the shots of Arya in early dawn with the udukai are really awesome).

This movie is a definite ‘no-no’ to anybody below 21. And to lots of girls too, I think. I am surprised they got a U/A certificate. Also, there seems to be too many cuts in some places which make it a difficult viewing. And I don’t understand why the dialogue goes blank with a sound at a lot of places. If those are adult dialogues, then what are the scenes in any normal Tamil movie focusing on the girl’s not-to-be-mentioned parts or for that matter all those double meaning comedies? Sigh…..people at censor board, look at your Hindi brethren and learn a few things.

Some two weeks back, on a hot afternoon on Mount Road, I was walking after a very good lunch. All of a sudden, I saw a queer sight. A deformed lady was sitting on the tar road (along the sides). She was sitting with her legs (or whatever you can call as legs) completely exposed to the sun above and tar below. And she was not even sitting on any makeshift paper or anything to give her even a small comfort from the ruthless Sun. I felt bad and dropped a note to her. I asked her “Why don’t you sit up on the platform where there is a shade?” She looked straight at me and replied “In that case, I would not have got this note”.

Makes sense to me in a strange way now.