Movies I’ve seen over the past few months..

Cinema Paradiso: Now this is an interesting Italian movie. It’s set in a small quaint little town in Italy and it tells the story of a little boy and his passion for the movies… and how he grows up to become a famous director. Salvatore the mischievous little boy befriends Alfredo (the town’s projectionist) and before long the two of them become inseparable. Alfredo becomes sort of like a father figure to Salvatore and gives him advice (dialogues from movies) from time to time. Anyway, so Salvatore grows up into this deadly handsome guy and falls in love with a girl… and circumstances cause Alfredo to lie to Salvatore about this girl. Salvatore believing the girl no longer cares for him is convinced by Alfredo to leave the town and make something of himself. As decades pass, we hear of Alfredo’s death, which causes Salvatore to return home and what follows next is heartbreaking. Salvatore learns that Alfredo lied to him, but you can’t really blame the dead old guy because he loved Salvatore like a son and wanted to see him become something… and staying in that town would only limit Salvatore’s talents. Eventually Salvatore comes to realize that the man he loved, the man he trusted, the man he looked up to was the cause of the greatest love, the greatest happiness and the greatest pain in Salvatore’s life. Bittersweet ending…

The Holiday : I liked this movie too… and everybody was nicely cast. Kate Winslet’s little house in Surrey England was so cute, so was Jude law… he looked dashing. All in all a fun movie to watch when you are a wee bit down or when you are in a mood to watch something romantic.

The Killing Floor: Now, this was something else… Tonio watched it and was behind me to watch it too. It’s about this literary agent (rather cute) who is arrogant, obnoxious and so full of himself that he hurts other people’s feelings by rudely ignoring their manuscripts. One such ignored person wants to take revenge on him… and it is spooky.

Kung Fu Panda: Saw this in the theater and it was okay, not bad… more for kids though, childish kinda humour.. The way people were talking about it, I was expecting something along the lines of ‘Shrek’ or ‘Ice Age’. This was a disappointment that way, it was more juvenile in nature.
Chronicles of Narnia – Prince Caspian: This was interesting, I read the first book online… I still remember the Aslan chant
Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more
When he bears his teeth, winter meets its death
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.
I didn’t read the second book yet but the movie was engrossing enough. Aslan gives the kids some time to cope with responsibilities before showing up… Prince Caspian was nice enough, a sturdy lad with wavy hair. But the two kids Peter and Susan won’t turn up again in the rest of the series, apparently they have learnt all that they need to know so they don’t have to return to Narnia any more. I wish the same had happened to Harry so that he wouldn’t have appeared in all the seven books and whined away to glory about being the chosen one.
1408: Now this is a movie I really really like… it’s based on a story by Stephen King. It’s nice in the sense that there’s no blood and gore and all that stuff, it scares you by playing with your mind. John Cusack plays Mike Enslin the author who writes books bout haunted places and ghosts… he tries to refute such theories by staying at these spooky places for a night. One day, Mike receives a postcard with a hotel’s name and the number 1408 on it. Mike decides to look into the matter and he ends up checking into the dreaded room 1408. The rest of the movie centers round Mike and his ordeals in room 1408… there are two alternate endings to the movie. In one, the evil rampant in 1408 eventually conquers Mike and in the other ending, Mike triumphs over the mind encompassing evil and destroys it. I loved John Cusack in Serendipity and he has done a good job here too.
One of my twin brother’s, Vinod has started his own blog (probably influenced by me), and you can see it here.