The Passion of the Christ - Movie Review

Now any of us who watch movies and somewhat follow the movie industry would remember the controversy that “The Passion of the Christ” caused the world over when it was released to the movie halls. While I personally was aware of some kind of controversy, I wasn’t a movie geek then to completely understand what it was all about. I assumed that it was just another one of those ‘religious controversies’ that movies dealing with Gods cause, and thought it had something to do with how Jesus Christ was represented in the movie.


However, after watching this movie, I realize (at least to some extent) how it might have hurt the sensibilities (not necessarily religious) of movie viewers worldwide. The extent to which this movie gets graphic cannot be described well in words and has to be seen to be believed. While Quentin Tarantino’s movies also get graphic, the audience is fully aware that it is ‘make believe’ to a large extent, but Mel Gibson pushes the envelope just a tad too far in a movie whose very premise had such historic, far-reaching religious connotations. The fact that he chose to depict some of these scenes the way he did speaks volumes about the extent to which he believed in himself, his material and his audiences. Kudos to him for having successfully pulled off a movie of this magnitude and nature and living to tell the success story.


The Passion of the Christ specifically deals with events surrounding the capture of Jesus of Nazareth by the Romans, his subsequent trial and crucifixion. More than half the movie revolves around the physical travails and punishments that Jesus has to undergo at the hands of the guards, how he is made to carry the cross and his final crucifixion itself. And it is common knowledge by now that these probably are the most disturbing scenes of the movie, at least visually.


Wikipedia quotes Gibson as saying “This is a movie about love, hope, faith, and forgiveness. He [Jesus] died for all mankind, suffered for all of us. It's time to get back to that basic message. The world has gone nuts. We could all use a little more love, faith, hope, and forgiveness." And believe me I really think this is an apt quote and I completely agree with the same.


Watch this movie only if you are not faint hearted, and have the stomach to see a lot of blood being spilt on screen.


LAMBScore for this movie





Related links


Wikipedia link to the movie

IMDB link

Allmovie link


Trailer

Read more...

The Mummy - Tomb of the Dragon Emperor - Movie Review

Now if any of you have ever seen ‘The Mummy’ or ‘The Mummy returns’, then you obviously are fans of the Mummy movie franchise. Suffice to say that in my opinion, these movies are the closest that any of the movies made in the 21^st century can match up to the Indiana Jones franchise. Yes, yes, I know I am overdoing it by comparing the Mummy movies to Indy Jones and his adventures, but then, as a series of movies where continuity of the characters, and style of story-telling the Mummy movies are as close as they get.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor takes off around 13-15 odd years after the events of The Mummy Returns. Alex O’Connell, son of Rick and Evelyn follows in the footsteps of his father and unbeknownst to his parents, is bang in the middle of an excavation in China. He locates Emperor Han’s tomb and excavates the mummy out of its resting place and puts it in a museum. Rick and Evelyn, brought to China on an errand bump into Alex.

All 3 of them are then captured by the evil General Yang whose devious plans are to bring back the Dragon Emperor to life and to make him the undisputed ruler of China and serve as his Chief of Staff. The Emperor is then brought back to life and what ensues is complete chaos as his first mission is to locate Shangri-La which would then point out to the exact location of his entire undead army. The story then shifts to the Himalayas where the O’Connells unsuccessfully try to prevent the Emperor from locating his armies.

Once the Terracota army is raised, what follows is the final battle between the army and some of O’Connell’s friends as they try to send back the Emperor to his ‘final resting place’, ie, to his final death.

What makes this movie a must-watch is the sheer entertainment value it brings to the table. Not one moment is wasted in unnecessary dialogue, slow paced action. The entire movie is riveting in terms of the pace of action, and the fact that we have familiar actors playing well-loved characters makes this movie all the more fun. The action and battle sequences have enough in them to excite fans of this genre, and the well executed CGI sequences add just that bit more fun to the movie. All in all, one movie to see if you are a fan of the Mummy franchise. However, if you didn’t like the earlier ones, you are better off giving this one a miss.

LAMBScore for this movie

Related links

Wikipedia link to the movie

IMDB link

Allmovie link

Box Office Mojo link

Trailer

Read more...

GI Joe - The Rise of Cobra - Movie Review

As a small kid of around 8-10 yrs old, I massively used to enjoy the GI-Joe cartoons that used to be telecast on Doordarshan. And when my cousin got a complete set of the GI Joe dolls from his uncle in Dubai, we were thrilled to bits playing with them. In fact, if memory serves me right, these were the first dolls in India where the elbows and shoulder joints could actually be turned around, which gave these dolls more flexibility.

And therefore, when ‘The real American hero’ franchise was taken up by Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Entertainment (with a franchise license from Hasbro Inc), I readily knew what to expect. A plot by the omnipresent Cobra to end the world, with the Joes coming together to save the world from imminent doom, and I also knew that Cobra Commander would invariably find a way to slip from the grasp of the Joes at the end and make the way for a return to his evil devious ways.

And GI Joe – The rise of Cobra doesn’t disappoint on any of the above respects. A fun-filled action fest peppered with enough action and chase sequences to keep even the most skeptical action-movie fan engaged for almost its entire running time. Given that this is the first movie of the franchise, it was to be expected that the script would include introductions to some primary characters such as Duke, Ripcord, Scarlett, the Baroness, Snake Eyes and Cobra Commander himself.

While the movie script itself has taken quite a few liberties and deviated significantly from the comics or cartoon series, it still retains the primary elements of each of these characters. What makes the movie all the more interesting is the fact that although it contains more than a few flashback sequences, they are interspersed with all the action happening around, and are brief enough to retain the audience interest in them.

Some decent casting with a good mix of new faces, well known faces, absolutely lovely location choices such as Paris, Prague, Egypt, and some mind-boggling set action sequences make this action fest a front-runner for this summer’s Hollywood ‘mindless’ action fests. GI Joe, in all respects adds to the growing list of cartoon character turned movie franchise list, and by no means a weak member to the same, given the merchandizing opportunities it presents to the brand.

Am not giving away the script or what the movie deals with here in this review, but suffice to say that if you had enjoyed the cartoon and the comic book series, you will surely love this movie. And even if you haven’t read or heard about the Joes before this movie, it still remains a nice action movie to be seen on a widescreen TV. My only grouse is that maybe the director could have shot some sequences with an IMAX camera, and that to me, would have added a lot more weight to the movie itself.

LAMBScore for this movie



Related links

Wikipedia link to the movie
IMDB link
Allmovie link
Rotten Tomatoes link
Box Office Mojo link
Metacritic link

Trailer

Read more...

State of Play - Movie Review

Now any movie that stars actors of the caliber of Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Helen Mirren and also has talented actors such as Rachel McAdams, and deals with journalists, a corporate scandal waiting to be made public and American politicians is bound to be a good watch. And ‘State of Play’ doesn’t disappoint in this regard. This Universal Pictures adaptation of the British TV Series of the same name, deals with the shady dealings of American Senators and their clandestine dealings with military contractors.


The movie itself starts off as a simple investigation of the murder of a petty-thief and a pizza delivery man who was also murdered as he witnessed the incident. How this story links to an apparent suicide of the principal researcher and secretary to an American Senator forms the crux of this movie. The script and screenplay stay taut throughout except probably for the last 5-10 mins of the movie when all the loose ends are wrapped up one by one.


Regulars to this site will know by now that I personally am a big fan of movies which deal with the shady undercurrents of corporate scandals and their possible linkups to politicians, especially in the American landscape. This movie in many respects resembles ‘Michael Clayton’ whose review I had put up some time ago in the blog.


And similar to ‘Michael Clayton’ this movie also relies on a few characters and actors carrying forward the story. Unlike most conventional studio movies, there is no central villainous character or actor here who all of us would love to hate, but rather presents the stereotypical large multinational conglomerate as the villain that all of would love to see go down. This movie barely stops of achieving its logical conclusion and indicting the corporation and bringing it down for its crimes, but knowing what we know by the end of the movie, the result is pretty much a foregone conclusion.


Russell Crowe, as Cal McAffrey, a reporter for the Washington Globe who is grudgingly admired by his editor, Helen Mirren, has in my opinion, played a wonderful role in this movie. His approach to work, while being ruthlessly professional, is also ethical and humane in terms of the fact that he does everything he can to bring out all sides of the story rather than sheer commercial interest in achieving ‘breaking news’. Indian news channels can learn a thing or two from the portrayal of Cal McAffrey’s character in this movie, in terms of how to be completely thorough before publishing news in widely read public media.


Ben Affleck, although competent, fails to really impress us with his portrayal of an enigmatic American Senator. To be just to him, the role demanded him to be one of the slimy ones who has had a sexual affair with one of his aides (which seems to be the ‘in-thing’ in American politics nowadays), and yes, he has done reasonable justice to his role.


Please catch this movie if you like movies which deal with how American politicians and big corporate work glove-in-hand to pull the wool over our eyes.


LAMBScore for this movie




Related links

Wikipedia link to the film
IMDB link
Rotten Tomatoes link
Allmovie link

Trailer

Read more...

One flew over the Cuckoo's nest - Movie Review

Jack Nicholson as Randle Patrick McMurphy is probably the earliest memory I have of him as an actor. Him with his black woolen cap playing basketball with the Chief (played wonderfully by Will Sampson) is probably the only thing I remembered about this movie which I had probably seen first when I was around 12 yrs old or so. I didn’t quite remember either the rest of the movie or worry about how I was watching one of the best movies of all time back then, but then the second coming of “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest” in my life pretty much cleared all the hype and hoopla surrounding the movie and I understood why it is rated so high up there in almost every list of all-time great movies.


McMurphy is a criminal serving a sentence for rape and is transferred to a mental institution (where the rest of the story plays out). The whole transfer is just a ploy by him to avoid hard labor and serve out the rest of his time relaxing and fooling around. Although his anti-authoritarian mindset doesn’t help his cause at the hospital. The ward is run by a calm but unyielding Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher, who didn’t need too many words to convey the contours of her character in this movie). Nurse Ratched uses a variety of methods including group therapy sessions, unpleasant medicines and a strict daily regimen to keep the patients under check and calm.


When McMurphy is introduced to the mix, he notices that most of the inmates are reasonably unfriendly and are highly institutionalized in their lives which have no place for an outsider or a new friend. He kills time playing cards with some of the inmates, and trying to bait Nurse Ratched to amuse himself. The Nurse amuses him for a while but increasingly stifles her control levels over him to assert her authority over the ward.


Slowly McMurphy becomes friends with the mute Chief who in turn reveals to McMurphy that he is not in fact mute at all, but is playing the role just to keep the Nurse and the other inmates off his case. The Chief does so also because he is as distasteful of the hospital establishment as McMurphy is, but wants to deflect unnecessary attention off himself completely opposite to what McMurphy was currently doing.


McMurphy, meanwhile couldn’t control himself from making the most of his relaxed lifestyle at the ward and indulges in activities which necessarily don’t go well with the image and discipline that Nurse Ratched had created for the rest of the inmates. This lands him into a lot of trouble with the Nurse, which is when he realizes that she has the authority and the power to retain him in the ward for as long as she pleases, even beyond his specified prison sentence.


What happens in the rest of the movie makes for more than interesting ending. Now while the story in itself might not sound too appealing or entertaining, it is power packed performances from the leading characters, McMurphy, Nurse Ratched and the Chief which make this movie a mandatory must-watch for every serious cinema lover. The fact that it has a pencil-thin story line but still manages to keep you riveted to what’s happening is testimony to its greatness. This would not be classified as a blockbuster, but a ‘classic’ for sure.


Jack Nicholson in probably his second best role (barely behind the role in The Shining) puts in everything that is expected from an Academy Award winning performance. The scene in which he calls for a vote in the group therapy sessions and the other one in which he makes a show of trying to lift a fixed plumbing fixture make for probably the most memorable scenes in cinema.


A must-watch movie for any serious cinema lover and Jack Nicholson fans.


LAMBScore for this movie –


Related links


Wikipedia link to the movie

IMDB link

Allmovie link

Read more...