Golden Globe Nominations - 2009

The 67th Annual Golden Globe nominations have been announced for 2009. The nominations related to movies are as follows -

Best Motion Picture - Drama


Avatar
Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire
Up in the air


Best performance by an actress in a motion picture - Drama


Emily Blunt - The Young Victoria
Sandra Bullock - The Blind Side
Helen Mirren - The Last Station
Carey Milligan - An Education
Gabourey Sidibe - Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire


Best performance by an actor in a motion picture - Drama


Jeff Bridges - Crazy Heart
George Clooney - Up in the air
Colin Firth - A Single Man
Morgan Freeman - Invictus
Tobey Maguire - Brothers


Best Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical


(500) Days of Summer
The Hangover
It's Complicated
Julie & Julia
Nine


Best performance by an actress in a motion picture – Comedy or Musical


Sandra Bullock - The Proposal
Marion Cotillard - Nine
Julia Roberts - Duplicity
Meryl Streep - It’s Complicated
Meryl Streep - Julie & Julia


Best performance by an actor in a motion picture – Comedy or Musical


Matt Damon - The Informant!
Daniel day-Lewis - Nine
Robert Downey Jr - Sherlock Holmes
Joseph Gordon-Levitt - (500) Days of Summer
Michael Stuhlbarg - A Serious Man


Best Animated Feature Film


Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Princess and the Frog
Up


Best performance by an actress in a supporting role in a motion picture


Penelope Cruz – Nine
Vera Farmiga – Up in the air
Anna Kendrick – Up in the air
Monique – Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire
Julianne Moore – A Single Man


Best performance by an actor in a supporting role in a motion picture


Matt Damon – Invictus
Woody Harrelson – The Messenger
Chistopher Plummer – The Last Station
Stanley Tucci – The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz – Inglourious Basterds


Best Director – Motion Picture


Kathryn Bigelow – The Hurt Locker
James Cameron – Avatar
Clint Eastwood – Invictus
Jason Reitman – Up in the air
Quentin Tarantino – Inglourious Basterds


Best Screenplay – Motion Picture


District 9
The Hurt Locker
It’s complicated
Up in the air
Inglourious Basterds

In Bruges - Movie Review

'In Bruges' had received so many decent to good reviews that it always intrigued me as a movie which I had to simply watch given a chance, and when I did get around to watching it, I was not disappointed. Yes, the sheer offbeat plotline of the story, good performances from two of my favorite actors, Colin Farrell and Ralph Fiennes and the entire setting of the story managed to keep me glued to my seat. Unlike regular seat of the edge thrillers, this movie takes its time to build the plot, slowly increase the pace of action and finally end up with enough twists and turns to reach a logical conclusion.

The story revolves around Ray, a novice assassin who is riddled with the guilt of accidentally having killed a young boy, and Ken, an experienced pro assassin hiding out in the Belgian town of Bruges. They take in the sights and sounds of this quaint little town to kill their time, while waiting for further instructions from their boss, Harry. While in Bruges, Ray gets involved in a fight with a Canadian couple in a drunken spree. In the meantime, Ken receives a call from Harry, who orders him to kill Ray for having killed a child.

Ken, a good friend of Ray's, stuck with this unenviable task, manages to save Ray from committing suicide. He then tells Ray about his next target and Harry's orders. Convinced that Ray would be better off out of the killing business, he asks Ray to disarm and leave the city. And then after Ray leaves town, Ken calls up Harry and tells him about this. This enrages Harry who takes matters into his own hands and comes to Bruges himself.

A twist in the tale though brings Ray back to Bruges, and this forms the climax of the movie with all 3 assassins in the same town, Harry trying to kill Ray, Ken trying to save Ray, and a few innocent characters caught in between. Albeit this makes for quite a comic situation, the deftness with which the script and the screenplay have been handled make this movie a good watch.

Colin Farrell portrays a wonderful Ray who has the blood of a child on his hands, Brendan Gleesan as Ken and Ralph Fiennes as Harry show why they are the experienced actors who can infuse life into complex characters, and overall the script and situations make this wonderful black comedy a nice movie.

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The Shining - Movie Review

Now I personally am not a big fan of horror movies in which actual ghosts are picturized and blatantly paraded around on the screen, ie, I am not a big believer in the stereotypical ghost which walks around houses haunting them and its residents. This being said, there are a few movies which I really liked which do have ghosts walking around the house scaring the stuffing out of its inhabitants, and trust me, The Shining stands out on top of this particular list of movies.

Jack Nicholson, in the role of a lifetime pretty much shows how the paranormal and ghosts in particular can drive an already edgy character completely over the edge and ruin his life and that of others around him. The story starts off slow where Jack, a struggling writer, takes the job of the caretaker of winter caretaker of a hotel which gets completely snowed in. Jack's son, Danny has a special ability where he can see and feel paranormal beings (read ghosts and spirits), which simply adds to the fear-fest that this movie actually is. The first few days when Jack, Wendy and Danny move into the Overlook Hotel are good, when they enjoy the facilities of the hotel and Jack gets to work on completing his latest manuscript.

However, things start going wrong when Danny drives his tricycle past Room 237. This is the room where the movie brings out its true colors. When Danny comes out of the room injured and visibly traumatized, the audience learns more about Jack's alcoholism and how he has injured Danny in the past due to his violent behavior. This particular incident begins Jack's descent into insanity and mental turmoil. What transpires in the rest of the movie is something that would be better seen on the screen rather than read about here.

This movie features Jack Nicholson in probably the role of a lifetime, with him portraying the manner in which a reasonably normal person is driven to complete insanity due to the circumstances around him. Roger Ebert's words - "That leaves us with a closed-room mystery: In a snowbound hotel, three people descend into versions of madness or psychic terror and we cannot depend on any of them for an objective view of what happens. It is this elusive open-endedness that makes Kubrick's film so strangely disturbing." could not be truer in terms of describing how the vast empty hotel drives each one of the characters in the movie to the edge. Jonathan Romney, in his critique describes the movie thus - "The final scene alone demonstrates what a rich source of perplexity The Shining offers. At first sight this is an extremely simple, even static film. A family move into a Colorado hotel for the winter so Dad can write his great literary work in peace while perform ing his function as caretaker. But the ancient blood -soaked visions recorded like old movie scenes in the hotel's walls emerge, and Jack is possessed, driven homicidal...."

Now if all of the above doesn't tempt you to go watch the movie itself, the fact that it is based on Stephen King's novel should make you do so. Go watch Jack Nicholson at his best.

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LAMBScore for this movie




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The Jackal - Movie Review

'The Jackal', whose main storyline is based on Frederick Forsyth's all-time great novel (and also one of my all time favorite movies, 'The Day of The Jackal') had almost always eluded me for some reason or the other. Either the DVD was scratched, or I had other commitments whenever the movie was played on TV. However, yesterday, I finally did manage to catch the movie in its entirety, and I don't know whether it was all the anticipation and the long wait for this movie, but somehow the movie failed to really impress me.

What starts off quite promisingly slowly gets reduced to a dull, predictable story where you pretty much almost know what is going to transpire in the next scene. An assassin who nobody recognizes, another terrorist with a heart of gold who recognizes him, his ex-girlfriend, his current love interest, a honest-to-goodness FBI Agent, most of these characters are very stereo-typical. These coupled with a plot which any of us can easily predict makes the movie fall flat on its face.

What disturbs me is the fact that actors of the caliber of Bruce Willis, Richard Gere and Sidney Poitier are reduced to playing caricatures of each one of these characters. There are absolutely no layers to any of their characters. All of them are either black or white with not a hint of grey in their personalities. And this according to me is probably what brought the movie down, and made it dull and boring.

All this being said, the movie is reasonably decent and probably could be watched one time, provided your expectations are sufficiently kept low enough.

Related links

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LAMBScore for this movie

Terminator Salvation - Movie Review

Terminator Salvation, the fourth (and hopefully the last) instalment in the Terminator franchise was universally panned by movie critics and audiences worldwide when it released (sometime around mid 2009). However, given the fact that I am a big fan of the first 2 movies, and Judgment Day in particular, to me, it was a must-watch movie. That being said, I didn't have too many expectations from the movie itself, given the considerable amount of criticism surrounding the movie, and the fact that Christian Bale (who plays John Connor in the movie) has pretty much made it his standard modus-operandi to give his trademark 'Batman drawl' to all characters that he plays nowadays since 'Batman begins'. Suffice to say, I wanted to watch this movie only because of my loyalties to the franchise and not necessarily anything else.

The plot itself was nothing remarkable given that the first 2 movies pretty much set the stage for what to expect from the movie. Given that, the character of Marcus Wright (played wonderfully well by Sam Worthington) was quite a revelation, both in terms of the layering of the character within the plot, and in terms of the sheer intensity brought to the role by the actor. It is hard to believe that this movie is his first big screen role, and he displays the panache and intensity of a seasoned actor in this particular role.

The movie begins with Marcus Wright, a prisoner on death row donating his body for medical research to Cyberdyne Systems, and his subsequent execution by lethal injection in 2003. The movie picks up in 2018, where John Connor leading a Resistance attack on a Skynet base. This results in a nuclear explosion out of which Marcus emerges unhurt albeit without any memory of what has happened to him. The movie then takes up two parallel narrations, one in which John's activities with the Resistance are depicted, and another in which Marcus' journey to try and figure out what happened to him is shown. The two stories cross paths, courtesy Kyle Reese, who is on a Skynet "kill list" (which happens to contain John Connor's name as well) and who happens to rescue Marcus from being killed by a T-600 terminator. John, who knows that Kyle ultimately will become his father then sets off on a search and rescue mission with Kyle which puts him in touch with Marcus, who in turn wants to rescue Kyle from Skynet.

What follows it the climax of the movie in which Marcus and John try to rescue Kyle from Skynet, and whether and how they manage to do that makes up for the last action sequence of the movie. Needless to say that like the other movies in this franchise, this one also contains enough terminators, action sequences, chase sequences, gadgets, explosions, guns and the works, in generous quantities. What sets this movie apart from the other ones in this franchise is the absence of Arnold Schwarzenegger in a significant role, and the fact that this movie for a large part contains two stories running in parallel.

LAMBScore for this movie


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Breach - Movie Review

Eric O'Neill, a young and upcoming FBI Intelligence Agent is assigned to the case of a Robert Hanssen, a senior agent who is believed to be a sexual deviant. He is assigned an undercover assignment where he has to work as Hanssen's assistant and report any and all activities of his boss to nail him with some evidence. However, from his first few interactions with Hanssen, Eric realizes that if anything his new boss is devoutly Catholic and yes, maybe a little disgruntled with the Bureau itself. On more than one occassion he strongly makes his point that the Bureau appreciates and respects only the agents who 'shoot guns' and that the Intel folks are considered only pencil pushers.

Eventually when Hanssen gets closer to Eric, so far as to suggest Eric and his wife to join them at church and for a family breakfast thereafter, Eric confronts his handler for this assignment to find out what exactly he is trying to achieve by this assignment. In his opinion, Hanssen posed no threat to anybody and did not deserve to be spied upon. It is then that his handler gives him the complete picture as to how Hanssen has been suspected of being a traitor and selling vital intelligence information to the Soviets, and that he has been suspected of doing so for the past 25 odd years. His handler also informs Eric as to how Hanssen managed to get himself into a position where he was actually heading a committee whose only mission was to identify and weed out the Soviet mole in the system.

Given the gravity of the situation, and his relationship issues with his wife (primarily caused by Hanssen's interference), and his slowly increasing respect for Hanssen, Eric is now faced with a situation where he has less than 2 months (before Hanssen's retirement) to try and actually catch him red-handed passing on information. The second half of the movie deals with how Eric almost loses Hanssen's trust, manages to regain it and nabs him in the act.

Although the movie deals with a reasonably small premise and pencil thin storyline, two facts make it a really good espionage movie. First is the fact that it is based on a true story, a story of possibly the worst security and intelligence breach in the history of the FBI. And secondly, although the viewer knows how the movie will end (halfway into the movie), the twists and turns it takes towards the end makes it an 'edge of the seat' thriller. This is one movie which all spy-movie lovers will really enjoy. Unlike the James Bond series which relies on the antics of a field agent, this is one movie which deals with the Intel side of the Bureau, more in the "Spy Games" genre.

Chris Cooper as Robert Hanssen plays the role of a lifetime and brings a lot of depth to the character. It is always difficult to play someone real, and Cooper adds that much more to this character by bringing in his gruff demeanour, angry looks, and brooding realism to the role. All in all this is one movie which would surely be enjoyed by people who like 'cloak and dagger' stuff.

LAMBScore for this movie


Related links

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Wikipedia link to Robert Hanssen
IMDB link
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Trailer