Cast: John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, John Malkovich

Director: Spike Jonze

Screenplay: Charlie Kaufman

Running time: 1 hr 53 mins

Genre: Comedy/Drama/Indie



CRITIQUE:


Odd films are hard to pull off. Some can overturn itself due to failed premises, or perhaps just too many oddities involved. But Charlie Kaufman, a man accustomed to eccentricities, the peculiarities of life, the purveyor of strange situations yet strangely, movingly human, may it be in Adaptation or the perennial classic Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – crafts this debut screenwriting gig, which landed him his first Oscar nom (two more afterwards, and won the third), and hits the bulls-eye. Being John Malkovich has a concept that producers might have found their selves scratching their heads. But in the deft writing dexterity of Kaufman, the innovative directing of Spike Jonze, and the spot-on performances of its actors, a band of screwballs: John Cusack as the failed but still aspiring pupetter, the undistinguishable Cameron Diaz under the loony hair as the sexually ambiguous wife, the kohl-lipped, sarcastic Catherine Keener as the seductive work colleague, and John Malkovich, fantastic and kudos-worthy, as Malkovich himself, fearless and so game in satirising his persona without fuss, this film has pulled off its central ambition. To portray a world that is out of kilter where every character longs to be another person, or wanted their loved ones to be somebody else more perfect, a world that is very much like our own. This Alice-in-the-Wonderland head-trip down the rabbit hole is referenced in here, albeit a small door in this version that lands anyone into the wonderland that is Malkovich’s mind and eyesight. But before it gets just too weird for anybody’s taste, particularly that warped, mind-fucking ending of old people crawling into the subconscious tunnel – sit down and behold that tour-de-force of a scene, where John Malkovich enters into his own brain, a barroom filled with other Malkoviches where all words said were attuned to his own name. Nightmarish, but handled with spectacular humour.


VERDICT:

Nevertheless flawed and a tad too peculiar, Being John Malkovich should be praised for its audacious originality and quirkiness. Rarely do films are admired like that these days.



RATING: A-

Cast: Will Ferrell, John C., Reilly

Director: Adam McKay

Screenplay: Will Ferrell

Running time: 1 hr 45 mins

Genre: Comedy



CRITIQUE:


What one could exactly expect from a Will Ferrell movie? Fart jokes, check. Sex organ banters, check. All that crude lot, ever prevalent in the book of Ferrell comedy – but suffice to say, the gags in Step Brothers are traipsing on a very been-there-done-that territory that barely little feels consummately refreshing. Then again, what can we exactly expect from a movie with a plot that revolves around two forty-something slackers who kick, fart, burp, wallop, cry and throw tantrums like a pair of fourteen year olds? Comedy duo Ferrell (in typical blustery shlub mode) and Reilly (quite versatile, on the other hand) provides enough crackle and funny-bone mojos (both literally and figuratively) to this script, which creaks so obviously that it feels and sounds like five rewrites away from being completely, and effectively hilarious. It is borderline funny when Ferrell and Reilly assimilate teenage behaviour, but whereas the comedy setpieces, they are as freewheeling as they come, sporadically masking holes in the plot of what-if incredibility. Just how many single parents in the world who have scumbags for sons and end up marrying together, with the step-sons sharing both likes and dislikes? Because this is burnished with Hollywood sheen, it is supposed to end up with a family group-hug. But before that, lament at the very silly, and immaturely, conceived finale of Brennan and Dale’s rock-operetta at a wine mixing party, followed by a montage of characters and villains, slowly realising how fantastic and talented these two dunderheads really are. Honestly, if you could flip the channel, please do.


VERDICT:

This alleged laugh-fest comes into question when the mask of Chewbacca is actually funnier than its actors. Step Brothers is a comedy of infantile proportions that it needs to grow up.



RATING: C

Cast: John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Natalie Wood

Director: John Ford

Screenplay: Frank Nugent

Running time: 2 hrs 35 mins

Genre: Western



CRITIQUE:


Influencing myriad films from George Lucas’s Star Wars to Martin Scorcese’s Taxi Driver, infusing filmmaking visions to Spielberg and Eastwood – who ever knew this Western film would cause such repercussion the day John Ford decided to make The Searchers. Built on lavish, spectacular panoramas of the West, specifically the vistas of Monument Valley, one could actually freeze-frame and mount it on your wall. The cinematography is that gorgeous. Perfectly lit, the West has never better captured than through the adroitness of Ford’s framing, from one stone structure to the next, from one position of horse to the cascade of battle scenes in the river. Ford, arguably an auteur himself who made filmic hymns to the old West from My Darling Clementine, Stagecoach to She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, has a keen eye on his pictures. But all the same, it is his actor John Wayne who makes this his show: portraying a no-bullshit cowboy who ruthlessly hates American Indians, kills them for merciless vengeance, even shoots a lifeless one, and overtly fancies his brother’s wife without apologies. Much to the debate about the unfair treatment to the native Indians, The Searchers starts as a black-and-white view of the West, whites as heroes and Indians as villains. But that changes as nothing is ever simple in the plot and its central protagonist. Ethan Edwards is not a clean-cut hero. He is a bastard without much of a brain and compassion. Flawed as the hero, one couldn’t help but consider some imperfections in the film as well. Albeit scored to magnificence by Max Steiner, the orchestral music just blares and blasts in any opportunity, not letting its picture to sigh in silence. And the narrative time that spans in five years seemed like five months depicted, both Edwards and apprentice Pawley barely grow beards as though they just stepped out of their cabins. But these are nitpicking in a film that is obviously regarded as a largely influential, classic Western.


VERDICT:

One of the most beautifully shot, lit and framed Westerns of all time. John Ford’s direction is impeccable. John Wayne’s presence is profound. The Searchers manages to be flawed like its hero, ringing a dark, morally complex hymn to the old West.



RATING: A

Cast: Liv Ullman, Bibi Andersson

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Screenplay: Jenny Lumet

Running time: 1 hr 54 mins

Genre: Drama/Art



CRITIQUE:


Ingmar Bergman’s Persona is not an easy film to digest. If literature has metafiction, then this plays on the form of metacinema, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy and always, persistently, reminding audience that this is an artform. The Swedish master, who directed Persona during the years when the self-conscious cinema of the French New Wave was flourishing in the early 60s, slots in images upon images, visions within visions, until the story of psychological exploration lap over, creating a bewildering, even frustrating experience. He begins this picture with a montage of a morgue, footage of old movie reels and a boy putting a hand on a screen with a projected image of an actress. This is cinema, and it does not pretend to be real.


The story revolves around two women; Elizabeth, an actress who suddenly become taciturn in a middle of performance, and Alma, a nurse who tends to the other’s wordlessness. The latter becomes the voice of the two individuals, and soon, identities shift and personalities merge. Built with such sharp and stunning monochromatic imagery, the idyllic seaside town in Sweden is nothing compared to the incredibly fine-tuned performances by its lead actresses, Liv Ullman and Bibi Andersson. One powerful scene that has gone down to history books is that confession by Nurse Alma, as she confides her deepest secrets to the mute about her steamy tryst in the beach with two boys. There is no flashback, no superimposed techniques employed - but rather raw, impressive control of voice and face close-ups that the words said become images themselves for the audience to imagine and play in our heads. The result is erotic and tormenting. And if that doesn’t compel enough, Bergman defies cinematic conventions and burns his celluloid after a sudden fallout between the two women; he blends and overlay the women’s faces to resemble a one haunting individual.


VERDICT:

Deep, disturbing stuff. Persona is one film that defies cinematic conventions and will leave you stunned, disorientated, vexed and speechless. Tell me how many films have that effect...



RATING: A

Cast: Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford

Director: George Lucas

Screenplay: George Lucas

Running time: 2 hrs 10 mins

Genre: Action/Adventure



CRITIQUE:


Let’s face it: George Lucas’ Star Wars isn’t exactly a serious piece of cinema. It picked up a Saturday matinee concept of outer space opera and made it bigger, louder and more epic in scope to overwhelm cinema silverscreens. Kids were its target audience, but even this generation-spanning blockbuster of 1977 had drawn even adults, luring millions of fanboys that when one declares ‘Star Wars sucks’, you’d be whacked by a lightsaber stick by a teenager wearing a Darth Vader helmet. Sure, it’s a wondrous piece of entertainment that has probably changed the face of technological special-effects wizardry like no other film produced that time, and along with Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, Star Wars has deeply penetrated the consciousness of the mass film-viewing that defines ‘spectacle’ and ‘blockbuster’. The sights are magnificent to behold, but then this is flawed, ridden with clunky dialogues and the plot predictability factor is as noticeable as Jabba’s tremendous body mass. Nevertheless, there should be an element of respect given to Lucas for having the fantastic imagination to kickstart this cultural groundbreaker into a trilogy (and even more cashing-cowing of its prequel trilogy).


The story is fine. Darth Vader is legendary. Obi Wan Kenobi is awesome. But enough of fanboy talk; Star Wars is an unashamedly a postmodernist take on the Arthurian legend: Kenobi as Merlin, and even the interplay between Princess Leia, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker is that of Guinevere, Lancelot and Arthur. And of course, they have lightsabers instead of swords, and they have Jedis instead of Knights of the Round Table. The comparisons never stop. The film’s save-the-girl plot histrionics is reminiscent of John Ford’s The Searchers. It’s easy to say that Lucas had adopted the Westerns and put these cowboys into space. But Star Wars is indeed an important film because of its cultural influence. It preceded the BIG, BOISTEROUS action movies of our time. It defied the ambiguities and anxieties of New Hollywood, the tragicomic countercultural Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Riders and The Graduate and brought back new morally cleansed, squeaky black-and-white pictures of the battle between good and evil. And it heralded the blast-off of Hollywood’s obsession with franchise, sequels, and blockbuster mentality.


VERDICT:

A technical special-effects showstopper, Lucas’s original Star Wars is as magnificent a picture that has been profoundly embedded into popular culture as Spielberg’s Jaws and Raider of the Lost Ark. But alas, its plot is nothing profound.


RATING: B+

Cast: Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Maria Lara

Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel

Screenplay: Bernd Eichinger

Running time: 2 hrs 36 mins

Genre: Drama/History/War



CRITIQUE:


This aptly-titled WWII drama is unlike anything you’ll ever see in the war film canon. It puts one of the greatest monsters in the history of mankind as the movie’s central character. In other words, we are watching a story about a villain, which makes this film strangely out of the ordinary. And surely, crafting a film about Hitler, it takes colossal balls to mould an unbiased, accurate, authentic picture without stirring the perilous waters of controversy. We know what happened during the Holocaust, but German director Oliver Hirschbiegel sidesteps every bit of cliché and kitsch and dared to portray the last days of Adolf Hitler insider his underground bunker with his bunch of Nazi commandants and secretaries. The result is harrowing and claustrophobic. The cinematography is hued in the grim shades of green and grey, bleak blank walls with people in monotonous military costumes; the corridors and passageways resemble almost labyrinthine, serving a story that’s complex yet gripping. And outside this fortification is a realm in ruin, ravaged by war as the Red Army encloses and German civilians are dying. In this story there are no heroes; only a pointless savage war that claim lives.


But this is really a story about an oligarch’s downfall and his servant’s betrayal of their loyalties. This is where the picture escalates above an ordinary war movie. Bruno Ganz as Adolf Hitler is horrifyingly accurate – a mesmerising, tremendous performance; a testament to an actor that vanishes into the character he is portraying. Hitler comes to the fore as a moustached beast, with a rasping voice throwing tantrums in every opportunity, his left hand shaking in its own volition, but a very, very sad morose man who dwelled in his own flawed genius, extremely detached from the reality, the brutal, unsympathetic aftermath of his ambitions. Hirschbiegel doesn’t glorify anything, and the cruelty and horror of it all, seen by Hitler’s secretary Junge (a layered performance by Alexandra Maria Lara) who lived to tell the story. And if that particular scene of Magda Goebbels, a National Socialist mother, who takes away the life of her own children by feeding cyanide didn’t shock you enough, nothing else will.


VERDICT:

A compelling, heart-in-your-throat depiction of Hitler’s final days in his Berlin bunker. Audacious and staggering, Downfall is directed with fearlessness and acted with scarily cut-glass precision by Ganz. This may be one of the most indispensable movies made about the Second World War, portraying the collapse of the greatest of evils.



RATING: A

Cast: Lamberto Maggioriani, Enzo Staiola

Director: Vittorio De Sica

Screenplay: Cezare Zavattini

Running time: 1 hr 36 mins

Genre: Drama/Italian Film



CRITIQUE:


The quintessential Italian Neorealist masterwork; one has to scour the annals of cinema to find a better film that is as influential, as extraordinarily transcendent as Vittorio De Sica’s seminal Bicycle Thieves. Even Danny Boyle’s Oscar underdog triumph Slumdog Millionaire owes much to this cinematic movement, which is to convey reality, the harsh ramifications of life, in its rawest proportions. Watching the backstreets of Rome in black-and-white, the everyday lives of its populace unfolds, and much to the gruelling journey of a workman’s loss of his bicycle – as fundamental a tool to maintain his employment status is a very tough post-World War Two Italy – is one that expunges heartache and infuriation from its audience. Anger for the thieves who stole the bicycle, and pity for the sufferers. The film is framed with Antonio’s finding of employment, sticking film posters around the walls of the city, and his loss of it, all because of the stolen vehicle. There are heart-tugging moments here: the wife sacrifices their bed linens to purchase her husband’s mean of transport, the father and son’s pursuit of the lost item, the father’s treat to his son in a restaurant where they can’t afford to eat, and the slow, painstaking corrosion of moral uprightness of the father, seen as a hero by his ten-year old child. It maintains that poverty, in the times of destitution, has a transformative power that makes the innocents become petty thieves. There are political and religious metaphors siphoning underneath its daylight cinematography, but it’s the powerful, uncompromising tale of hardship and loss of innocence that becomes almost a legacy to many films that follows, awestruck at the idea that even the simplest concepts can make the biggest of impressions. Even De Sica’s ending proves haunting, like most great art films, it makes its audience be reminded of the harsh reality.


VERDICT:

Poignant filmmaking to the highest order. Bicycle Thieves is one of cinema’s most resonating pieces, it would cross boundaries and generations, and would still have its message in pure crystal form: poverty has a corrosive power for desperation.



RATING: A+