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.