Vita è bella, La (1997)

‘La Vita e Bella’ or ‘Life is Beautiful’ is a fabulous movie which shows how a man uses his humour and spirit to keep himself and his son alive at the concentration camps during the World War II. The movie can be divided into two parts, first which is really humourous where Guido (Roberto Benigni) tries to woo his love, and second where he prevents his son from finding out that they are in a concentration camp and are going to be killed very soon.

Guido works as a waiter in a restaurant and falls in love with a high society girl. He uses all his humour and wits to gain the love of the girl and succeeds in doing so. A few years later when the German army has control of the town, Guido and his son, Giosue are sent to a concentration camp. Guido tells his son that they are playing a game where whoever makes a 1000 points will win a huge tank. Guido conjures ways to convince his son about how they are earning points while undergoing all kinds of tortures at the camp. He manages to keep his son hidden from the Germans who would have killed the kid if they had found out about him.

A lot of people complain that the movie loses its humour when translated in English but I find the movie pretty funny, at least the first half of it. This movie also draws a lot of criticism for portraying the holocaust in the above manner. People say that this movie makes fun of the grim realities of the hideous events that took place during the holocaust. I am very lucky to have had no relation whatsoever with the shameful acts committed by the Nazis. That might be the reason why I can really appreciate the message of the movie. All I can say is that one needs to keep an open mind while watching this one. Now without much ado I would suggest you to go and see the movie.

X-Men - The last Stand (2006)

You don’t need to watch the first two movies of the series to appreciate the last movie in this trilogy. Nor do you have to be an ardent comic superhero fan to appreciate the movie. For the newbies, let us first understand something about X-men. Simply put X-men are a genre of superheroes who possess superpowers due to mutation in their genes, and hence they are also called as mutants. Now, if you appreciate this idea, armed with this knowledge, you can safely watch an X-men movie, and I can promise that you will enjoy it. But no better than the third.

Like any other movie, there are two groups of mutants - one good, and the other evil. The good ones are led by Prof. Xavier (the bald one on a wheelchair, who controls minds) and lend their name to the movie series, being known as X-men. A few notable X-men being Wolverine (aka Logan), Storm, Iceman and Beast. The evil ones are led by Magneto (one having magnetic powers) and his group has a wide array of mutants like Multiple Man, Fireman, etc. The movie is about the battle of these two factions. At stake in this version of the movie is a "Cure", that can heal the mutants and make them human again. Also at stake is the very powerful mutant "Dark Phoenix".

The battle leads to an action extravaganza laden with a variety of never-seen-before unbelievable special effects. While I can put them in words by saying flying men, blazing cars, the destruction of Alcatraz, breaking of LA bridge, etc. you need to see them to believe and appreciate them.

Ardent X-men comic fans have lambasted this part compared to the earlier ones, the principal points of argument being the lack of emotional build-up in this part as against the first two. Another area of complaint being the blatant ignorance of some comic concepts and storyline by Ratner (the director), while Singer (director, for the earlier parts) upheld all the concepts and the original storyline. So, unless you have been reading X-men comics since your childhood, you won't notice. I would hence suggest that you watch this as an action movie.

Relationship with the earlier parts: The movie stands clear from the earlier two parts. There are a very few linkages to X-men 2, and none to the original X-men movie. The characters introduce themselves well in this part and the plot is largely independent of the earlier parts.

The Incredibles (2004)

Let us make this clear at the very outset - I am not a fan of animation movies. They are supposed to be cute movies with not much of a storyline and built around simple characters. The leading examples would be the leading animation movies like "The Lion King", "Ice Age", etc. So, I never saw this movie, though it has been a number of years since it was released. I finally saw it a few days back, when all I had was about an hour and a half, while the other movies that I had were well longer than the time I had. Having run out of choices, I finally paid homage to this animation extravaganza.

Basically put, "The Incredibles" is an animation superhero movie. But wait, it is not another animation superhero TV series like He Man, Batman or Spiderman, that we have grown with. The animation quality is much better, but that doesn’t make the movie look like a 3-D superhero series from "Cartoon Network". The story is of a superhero, rather a superhero family, or even better put a retired superhero family, who have retired from saving the world.

Like a zillion other movies, the movie can be described as a battle between the good and the evil. However, the conflict here is more subtle and represents the fight of superheroes with themselves and their inner desire to be the superheroes again. As an interesting aspect, it is also a fight of the superhero with the superhero wannabe, and especially the evil and brilliant ones of the kind. The superhero comes out victorious in the end, but it is the battle and its representation that will hold you for much longer than one and a half hour of movie time.

Having said that, the movie is simply brilliant and while being different than the other animation movies, it retains the simplicity of characters and the cuteness of the storyline, which has become a hallmark of animation movies.

Rope (1948)

‘Rope’ is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpieces. It is completely different from the other Hitchcock movies. It’s not a whodunit yet it has loads of suspense throughout the entire length of the movie.

The movie opens with a couple of guys, Brandon Shaw (John Dall) and Philip Morgan (Farley Granger), strangling one of their classmates, David Kentley and hiding the body in a trunk. The idea behind the murder is to commit a perfect murder. Brandon and Philip consider themselves to be intellectually superior and believe that they should have the right to murder the inferior beings. This belief of theirs is influenced by the thoughts of Rupert Cadell (James Stewart), their former teacher. After the murder there is a party where the family and friends of the victim, including Rupert, are invited and are literally served from the victim’s grave, the trunk being used as a serving table. The madness doesn’t end here! Brandon keeps throwing hints for the guests to figure out that poor David will never make it to the party. This causes a few repercussions with Philip, who being the mentally weaker of the two, becoming nervous and making it very apparent that something is wrong, and Rupert becoming suspicious.

The movie has been shot in only 10 takes and is unique in that respect. It lends a different kind of an experience with the camera constantly focused somewhere or the other, esp. in one of the scenes where the trunk was in focus for quite some time. The suspense is heightened because of this technique.

It would be an understatement to say that John Dall was brilliant in his portrayal of Brandon Shaw. It’s a pity he hasn’t done many movies. James Stewart was good as usual. All in all this movie is definitely worth watching at least once. If you like it see it again!

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

The Shawshank Redemption is a movie about hope, faith and friendship. The friendship that is depicted in it is of a different kind as compared to most of the other movies. It is a story about two friends, Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), a white banker wrongly charged with his wife’s murder and Ellis Boyd ‘Red’ Redding (Morgan Freeman), a black convict.

The movie starts with Andy being convicted with the murder of his wife and her lover. He is sentenced to a double life imprisonment and he lands up in Shawshank prison. Here he meets Red who is also serving a life sentence. Red is a guy who is ‘known to locate certain things from time to time,’ i.e. get things for a price in prison. The ‘sisters’, a bunch of homosexual guys, take a liking for Andy and are always after Andy. Andy lives the usual prison life without ever losing hope. Red, on the other hand, says to Andy that ‘Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.’

One day Andy uses his knowledge to help one of the officers in saving some taxes. Thus, begins a new chapter in his life. News spreads about Andy’s expertise in taxation matters and he starts doing the tax returns for all the prison guards. Warden Samuel Norton comes to know about Andy and engages him in his own financial matters, bulk of which involved covering the illicit money which he earned from various sources. If I say any further I will be spoiling your experience of watching the movie. So all I want to say is go and see it for yourself.

The Shawshank Redemption is an adaptation of the novella ‘Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption’ by Stephen King. Like all the movies adapted from books this arouses the question as to which is better. I have had the opportunity to read the novella as well as watch the movie (the latter a great many times). I liked the novella as well as the movie but I find the movie better. The novella fails to maintain the suspense which is brilliantly done in the movie. Also, the novella isn’t as successful in depicting the friendship of Red and Andy.

The Shawshank Redemption was nominated for 7 Oscars but was unable to win any of those. The best film award went to ‘Forrest Gump’ that year. There has been a lot of debate about which is a better movie and whether Shawshank should have won the Oscar instead of Forrest Gump. A few facts may help here. American Film Institute has ranked Shawshank at number 72 in the list of all time top 100 movies while Forrest Gump has been placed at number 76. IMDb, which is an internet database of movies and ranks movies based on the ratings given by users, puts Shawshank at number 2 (at times becoming number 1) while Forrest Gump languishes around 75. This in itself is enough for me to conclude that the Academy is nothing but a bunch of morons.

Shawshank was a flop at the box office. There can be many reasons which can be attributed to this. The name in itself was considered to be inappropriate for a movie; most of the movie being shot inside a prison didn’t inspire people to go to the theatre and watch it. As word spread around that this was a really good movie people started renting the VHS and the following year it became the highest rented movie of the year.

Most of the people who have seen the movie will agree with me that for almost 3/4ths of it one doesn’t think much about it but the last half an hour simply blows you away. Most of the movies which have a twist ending end up not being seen twice but this is not the case with this movie. When I saw the movie for the first time I liked it but my respect for the movie has been growing with the number of viewings. The more I see it the better I feel about it. In the last 4 months I have seen it 3 times. Also, I loved the movie so much that I went on to buy the book ‘Different Seasons’ which contains the novella. By this time I guess most of you would have understood that Shawshank is my favourite movie of all time and I believe that there can never be any other movie which comes close to this.

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Apocalypse Now is probably the best war (or shall we say anti-war) movie ever to be made. It is one of my favourite movies if not the favourite (it’s difficult to decide with Shawshank and a few others coming close).

If I were to be very honest, I didn’t like the movie when I saw it for the first time. The reason being I was thinking it to be a war movie which would have grueling war scenes with gruesome battles ala Saving Private Ryan. Alas that was not to be! All it showed was a journey of a young captain through the jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia. I had failed to understand that the movie was beyond the usual war movies. It was much more than that!

Though I had not liked the movie I kept on thinking about it, such was the impact of the movie. I decided to watch it once again and there was no looking back after that!! The movie is set during the Vietnam War. A young captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is sent on a mission which officially 'does not exist - nor will it ever exist'. The mission is to ‘terminate with extreme prejudice’ a renegade Colonel Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando). This colonel had set himself up as a local God in Cambodia and was waging his own war. The movie shows the journey of Captain Willard where he experiences different adventures ranging from a surfing crazy Lieutenant Colonel (Robert Duvall was simply amazing) to Playboy bunnies. Most of Captain Willard’s thoughts are communicated to us through his voice-over which provides for a really gripping atmosphere throughout the movie. As the journey progresses, sanity evaporates his and his fellow travelers’ minds. The dossier on the Colonel makes him wonder why it is that the powers that be want to kill the Colonel. The closer he gets to his destination the more confused he becomes about what he is going to do when he comes face to face with the Colonel.

The movie shows the insanity that prevailed during the Vietnam War and the way the war affected the minds of the people involved in it. It shows the inner battles which take place within all the participants in a war. It shows the horrors of the war without becoming a gore fest!

Francis Ford Coppola has made a masterpiece and proved once again that he is a genius. The acting was superb with Martin Sheen giving a very convincing performance as the young Colonel. Excellent performances by his boat crew as well especially by Sam Bottoms as Lance B. Johnson. A special mention needs to be made regarding the cinematography and sound effects for which the movie received Oscars. Some of the scenes are simply breath-taking while the music is amazing, haunting at times. The opening sequence is probably one of the best with the bombing of the jungle with ‘The End’ by ‘The Doors’ in the background. You can view the video below:



The movie was released in 1979 but a new ‘Redux’ version was released in 2001 with an added footage of about 45 minutes. There have been a lot of debates as to which is better – the original or the redux version. I have never seen the original (though I have read about the differences between the two versions) but I agree with some of the critics that some of the scenes in the redux version could have been done away with. However that does not, in any way, reduce the greatness of the movie.

I have seen a lot of discussion regarding the ending of the movie and how disconcerting it is for some of the viewers. All I can say is that the ending only adds to the eerie atmosphere of the movie and it results in the culmination of the madness that this entire movie is all about. To sum it all up, I will use the words of the director, 'This film isn't about Vietnam. This film IS Vietnam'.

---- Vikash Harlalka

Welcome to Movie-buffs, the blog!!

What is this blog?

We see on an average 2 movies every week and the average number of watchable released movies every week is 1, sometimes zero, so that leaves us with no option but to go scurrying to the video library and pick up a movie. And, it is not as if we dont know which one is what. We can check websites like IMDB - their ratings and comments. But more often than not, it is a biased picture of what freaks in Arakansas and Alaska may have felt. Or, it may be the state of mind of a movie critic that will be coloring the imaginations and thoughts of other viewers. Or, it may so happen that the reviewers are mostly aged between 40-60, and the rating will be as old. The end result is the same, in all the cases: You end up being misled.

The Indian movie reviewers dont have enough time left from rating crappy copies of Hollywood movies, and the so called Yashraj blockbusters - same story with different actors - repeating since 1920 BC.

So, a couple of people in their twenties - just like you, who like to watch movies, we will write reviews on the best movies that we have seen across genres. So that when you want to watch a movie the next time, you can check which ones to watch and which ones to watch again.

More about the bloggers:

We are two "Movie-buffs", who love watching movies in their pastime, and leave aside the Hindi potboilers, between them they will have seen more than 1000 movies across genres and ages, recommended or not recommended.

We will keep on posting regular reviews on the movies that we have seen.

Watch out this space for more!!