The Normal Heart (2014)

Genre: Drama
IMDB rating: 8.1

The Normal Heart is a TV movie that is packed with brilliant performances and a moving story but unfortunatelly an ordinarily written script (for a film adaptation) that will not satiate you. The film is about the outbreak of AIDS in gay men during the early 80s in New York and how the society at large responded to this emergency.

Mark Ruffalo, who plays our protagonist Ned Weeks, is constantly found screaming the following words in the movie: “Why isn't anybody doing anything”. Well, in my opinion, he pretty much summarizes the movie on your behalf as well.

The problem is the lack of communication or rather the miscommunication between you and the film. In your head you may feel that the movie has progressed just a month or two but then suddenly you would realize that the movie has moved a couple of years ahead. 
The director fails to recognize that all great movies always have one thing in common, they translate events or actions into a script in a way that the film flows along and the timeline of events in viewer’s mind is in coherence with the narrative. However, The Normal Heart is deprived of this most important ingredient of film making and that does not help its cause.

The other thing irritating about the movie is that you will completely forget that you are watching a film set in the 80s in pretty much 80 seconds into the film. There is total disregard on the part of the director to recognize the innumerable differences between the 1980s and 2014 .

Well enough with the bashing, this isn't actually a bad film rather it is good. The point is, it could have been great.
The stellar performances by the cast are like the shining stars, which light up the otherwise dark and dull sky. Julia Roberts and Matt Bomer strengthen the movie with their strong performances, though, Ruffalo is the star that shines the brightest till the very end. 

Mardaani (2014) - Hindi

Genre : Action, Drama, Thriller

Before commenting anything about the movie, let us weight the positives and the negatives of the film.

Positive Aspects:

• It is NOT a “typical” Hindi film, and that is precisely the reason you should watch it. Though i must warn you it isn't very pleasing to the eye. Before setting off to the cinema hall make sure that you don't expect to laugh your guts out.
• The movie starts off brilliantly. You finally start to feel that Indian cinema may actually be beyond the "Dabbangs" and the "Rowdy Rathores".
• The casting of the movie is outstanding. No actor seems out of place. It is fair to say that only Rani could have played the role of senior inspector Shivani in the hindi film industry. She seems settled in her character throughout the movie. Tahir Raj Bhasin in the main negative role is surprisingly more than just good especially given the fact that the actor is practically unheard of.
• Indian cinema seems to be growing: They are moving on from seemingly unreal barbaric villains to the breed of sophisticated villains ; people that are “least likely to be suspected” due to their social background, and characteristically act in a very collected manner in the outer world.
• Also the camera work is commendable and noteworthy throughout the movie.

Negative Aspects:

• It gradually fizzes away : The movie builds up nicely before the intermission and you start to expect a lot from the it, but it delivers little.
• Mardaani never engages you for its entire duration. There are moments when there is just too much melodrama and “bollywoodish” dialogues (especially as it nears its end).

Overall

The movie is quite good considering the recent history of Indian cinema, where movies with no scripts at all are shattering the box office records week after week. It is not a movie that can be termed anywhere close to great. But, nonetheless, it is indeed a very good attempt to make a movie on the borderline of commercial and serious cinema.

P.S ~ For all Breaking Bad fans out there: There is a BB reference in the movie, completely took me by surprise :).

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

Jack London here has articulately penned an intense and absorbing life story of a dog, called as buck by his masters. The book offers myriad of emotions, strikes at the heart of reader and generates in him love and affection for the dog. 

It is a tale of this pampered dog, buck, who lived in an area which never saw a single flake of snow before landing up in the arctic where he is forced to toil hard for survival. 

Buck, sees a number of disparate masters in the arctic, unique in a number of ways. All of them in addition to his constantly evolving surroundings, play a pivotal role in shaping his character to a defiant and ferocious animal from a pampered and tamed one. The portrayal of his struggle, not just with the sudden change in his environment, but with the gradual change that happens in himself, the change that questions his morality, his sanity and the change that slowly makes him a wild beast, is the soul of the book and makes the book gripping and riveting till the very end. 

Moreover London here has highlighted the theory propounded by Nietzsche which holds that ‘the instinct for the acquisition of power is the prime factor that motivates all the activities of life’, by showing that it is not merely the will-to-live rather it is the will-to-power that supremely governs our actions and in light of the book it can be seen that is indeed what every animal’s (including man) ‘primal self’ desires.

Movies you must watch.

We all have heard of films like the The Godfather, Goodfellas etc. However there are movies that are absolutely brilliant but still do not become part of the popular culture due to a variety of reasons and lack of luck. 

Below, i have listed some of those movies which i feel are still unknown or are not popular to the extent they deserve. The list in no way means that these are the best movies ever produced (though some of them are, in my opinion). Rather, these movies do deserve to be watched at least once. 

1. Awakenings (1990) - Biography, Drama

2. The Butler (2013) - Biography, Drama

3. Flash of Genius (2008) - Biography, Drama

4. The Machinist (2004) - Drama, Thriller

5. American Psycho (2000) - Crime, Drama

6. Dead Poets Society (1989) - Drama

7. A Beautiful Mind (2001) - Biography, Drama

8. Zodiac (2007) - Crime, Drama, Mystery

9. Enemy (2013) - Mystery, Thriller

10. Seabiscuit (2003) - Drama, History, Sport

11. The Way Back (2010) - Adventure, Drama, History

12. Miracle (2004) - Drama, History, Family

13. Midnight in Paris (2011) - Comedy, Fantasy, Romance

14. Misery (1990) - Thriller

15. Hysteria (2011) - Comedy, Romance

16. Munich (2005) - Drama, History, Thriller

17. Valkyrie (2008) - Drama, History, Thriller

18. Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) - Drama, History, War

19. Flags of Our Fathers (2006) - Drama, History, War

20. The Terminal (2004) - Comedy, Drama

21. Non-Stop (2014) - Action, Mystery, Thriller

22. Locke (2013) - Drama

23. War Horse (2011) - Drama, War

24. The girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) - Crime, Drama, Mystery

25. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008) - Drama, War

26. The King's Speech (2010) - Biography, Drama

27. Black Hawk Down (2001) - Drama, History, Thriller

28. Freedom Writers (2007) - Biography, Crime, Drama

29. Now You See Me (2013) - Crime, Mystery, Thriller

30. Good Will Hunting (1997) - Drama

31. The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005) - Drama, History, Sport

32. Cinderella Man (2005) - Drama, Biography, Sport

33. Invictus (2009) - Biography, Drama, History

34. Scent of a Woman (1992) - Drama

35. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011) - Comedy, Drama, Romance
36. Rush (2013) - Action, Biography, Drama

37. Blood Diamond (2006) - Action, Drama, Thriller
38. Last Vegas (2013) - Comedy
39. Rescue Dawn (2006) - Adventure, Biography, Drama

Despite the popularity if you have not watched the following films , please do for god's sake :D 

1. Schindler's List (1993) - Biography, Drama, History

2. 12 Angry Men (1957) - Drama

3. Taxi Driver (1976) - Crime, Drama

4. The Shawshank Redemption (1994) - Crime, Drama

5. Se7en (1995) - Crime, Mystery, Thriller

P.S ~ Watch #18 and #19 back to back . #18 Letters from Iwo Jima is based on the battle of Iwo Jima from the perspective of Japanese soldiers and is a companion piece to #19 Flags of our fathers, which depicts the battle from the American viewpoint.

Dead Poets Society (1989)

Genre: Drama

IMDB rating: 8.0

Synopsis:

The movie is set at a conservative prep school, Welton Academy in the US in 1959. Neil Perry, Todd Anderson, Knox Overstreet, Charlie Dalton, Richard Cameron, Steven Meeks, and Gerard Pitts are some of the senior students of the school.

Their lives change when they meet their new English teacher John Keating, played by Robin Williams.

Review:

Dead poets society is a movie that can be watched at any stage of life, and still you can learn something from it. The movie is brilliantly written and directed. Each character has been beautifully developed and equally well played by the cast.

The movie is not about any dead poets or anything like that as the name might suggest. Its prime focus is to highlight the fact that we are running after things that are necessary to survive but have forgotten everything about the things that make us feel alive. In this fast paced world this movie can force you to stop for a moment and re-think about how you want to go ahead with your life? Are you on the right track?

The sheer brilliance of Late Robin Williams can be seen in the movie and days after watching the movie if you hear the name dead poets society, you will find yourself thinking about Robin Williams. Also all the students especially Robert Sean Leonard as Neil Perry and Ethan Hawke as Todd Anderson have given remarkable performances.

I do not want to reveal much about the movie as it will lose its essence for the people who have not watched it yet.  

Scent of a Woman (1992)

Scent of a woman is not just another movie, it’s an experience.

Genre: Drama

IMDB rating: 8.0

Synopsis:

A financially underprivileged young boy named Charles Simms, played by Chris O’Donnell, student at a prestigious school on merit scholarship agrees to house-sit a blind colonel named Frank Slade, played by the “Al Pacino”, on a particular weekend to raise some money.  However,  the things do not turn out as anticipated by Simms.

Review:

The captivating performance by Pacino and the enthralling dialogues makes it a very powerful movie. The focal point of the film is indeed Pacino and his sheer brilliance in the movie also earned him the academy award for the best actor that year.

Pacino gets into the skin of the character and his portrayal of the blind colonel is deeply touching. The character is not all broken and shattered, instead this man lives each moment of his life and that too on his own terms:  A very charismatic personality and a romantic at heart.

Donell has also played his part very well. His character of a young boy, from a humble background gives a nice balance to the film. 

Scent of a woman is a movie brimming out with human emotions. The movie evokes laughter, empathy, sorrow, anger and tears.

V for Vendetta (2005)

V for Vendetta is a film adaptation of the comic book series of the 1980’s by the same name. 

Genre: Action and Drama 

IMDB rating:  8.2

The film is set in the dystopian future United Kingdom where it is ruled by a totalitarian government under the fascist norsefire party. 

The party with its atrocious and dreadful history still continues to rule with severe oppression.  The movie highlights the fact that every dictatorship survives on one thing and that is “control”, control over the people. This is generally done through invoking fear or limiting knowledge, ideas, and information. The protagonist of the film referred to as ‘V’ (Hugo Weaving) who had survived and escaped an unjust and traumatic imprisonment and spent decades preparing to take vengeance on the party seeks to  right their wrongs for a better tomorrow. In his path he encounters a young woman Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman) who plays an instrumental part in bringing down the party.

V for vendetta other than the totalitarianism deals with many issues of homosexuality, islamophobia, and terrorism. The societal conditions are essayed as very poor and oppressive with great deal of censorship, random audio surveillances, spreading of misinformation and denial of truth to give a false sense of the state in which the country is, to its citizens. 

The script is wonderfully written which has been turned even more beautifully into a movie. The dialogues are very magnetic and thrilling accompanied with brilliant acting and cinematography. 

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

The catcher in the rye’ is a monologue of Holden Caulfield, a young boy  in his adolescent years. Unlike any typical literary work it is written in spoken English which makes you fall deeper into the abyss of thoughts of the protagonist. Holden seems to possess quite an enigmatic personality, he has a knack of being getting expelled from schools and the novel begins with him being getting axed from his current school. 
After his expulsion he decides to live off some of his days alone in the hotels and streets of New York till the news of his expulsion reaches his home. The book revolves around his experiences of these lonesome days in New York. J.D. Salinger has portrayed Holden as a young teenager struggling with the dilemma of preserving the innocence of his childhood, because all he sees in adults is lies and hypocrisy. Though coming from a wealthy family, materialism does not interests him, he seeks purity and honesty in a person , of which he now finds even himself lacking, adding to his fury and depression. Lost in the maze of such desolated thoughts, he alienates himself from the outside world and begins to loathe the society which takes him closer to the abyss of misanthropy. But even though Holden’s character seems to be ill-disposed sometimes, his love for his little sister and his deceased brother underlines the fact that somewhere underneath all the loathing and hate, was buried his kind and affectionate heart for the pure and the innocent. 
With The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger has certainly produced one of the best bildungsroman novels of English literature.

Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

‘Notes from underground’ is the veracious confession of a tormented soul, fathoms deep in the sea of his sorrows and misery, eloquently penned by Fyodor Dostoevsky who himself had a very eventful life. Through This memoir of an un-named man living in the shadows, Dostoevsky has put forward his existentialist ideology. 
Though at the time the novel was unpopular with Soviet literary critics as many of the other Dostoevsky’s novels, it has later drawn tremendous praise around the world and is referred to as the founding stone of existentialist novels.
From the very beginning Dostoevsky draws the attention of the reader with an enigmatic introduction of the narrator, making the reader curious. The novel then divided into two main parts with Part 1 of the book giving an insight into the mind of this terribly suffering man, his outlook on the value of individualism in regards to utopian socialism, his perception of his own self and people around him. After describing his disposition the novel enters into the part II where he recalls one of his many regrettable incidents, an incident which still haunted him even after 15 years of its happening. The underground man thinks of himself as completely different from the world, he envies others yet he calls them stupid and himself intelligent, he seeks sympathy from the reader and yet he himself takes pleasure in his suffering. As a reader you might mock at him, might ridicule his thoughts but at some point you might agree with him or even relate to him. And this is the essence of the novel, unlike the conventional novels the narrator himself is an anti-hero and though he is self-contradictory at times, he is still honest. 

P.S~ I read the one translated by Mirra Ginsburg

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Crime and punishment considered by many as the magnum opus of Dostoevsky, graphically essays the tragic tale of murder, guilt, suffering and redemption, unfolding in an utmost dismal setting of St. Petersburg of the mid-19th century. The central character of the story is Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikoff , a man with little means oftener found lost in reverie gets possessed with an idea, a theory of his own about ‘ extraordinary men being above the law’, and in order to bring ‘’ new thoughts ‘’ into the society they have a moral license or authority to even deprive a man from his basic right to live . He then sets out to put his theory into practice and as a consequence murders an old woman. The story gyrates around this murder. Through Raskolnikoff Dostoevsky provides an in-depth exploration of the psychology of a criminal. The inner world of Raskolnikoff, with all of its doubts, deleria, second-guessing, fear, and despair, is the heart of the story. Dostoevsky does not lay emphasis on the actual repercussions of the murder but the way the murder forces Raskolnikoff to deal with tormenting guilt. Indeed, by focusing so little on Raskolnikoff’s imprisonment, he seems to suggest that the actual punishment by law is much less terrible than the stress and anxiety of trying to avoid this punishment.  Further through the portrayal of extreme guilt, suffering accompanied with love Dostoevsky paves the way for Raskolnikoff’s redemption from the crime committed. Not only Raskolnikoff but other characters especially the soft and timid Sonia, the beautiful and strong-willed Dounia, the quite enigmatic Svidrigailoff , the shrewd and astute magistrate Porphyrius are also very eloquently painted by the author. The novel has all the ingredients of an engrossing read..

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

In the words of Malcolm Gladwell the tipping point is the “one dramatic or magical moment in an epidemic when everything can change all at once “. The book quintessentially describes this very moment, the process of achieving it, and our idiosyncrasies and stereotypical notions about the emergence of social epidemics.

Gladwell with his enormous research and deep knowledge into the subject has given 3 ingredients for achieving this tipping point – Law of the few, the stickiness factor and the power of context. Throughout the book he has punctiliously described a variety of social epidemics and has comprehensively argued the reason for their tipping.

The book provides us with a completely different vantage point to observe how something becomes a social epidemic, how little things can make a big difference.Though I must say the extensiveness of the book make it a dull and boring read at times. One can argue that Gladwell has given so many examples to build a strong case, to provide coherency to his theory, to put everything in perspective and indeed that is the case. But as a reader I feel that his idea is so compelling that it does not require so many examples and so much elaboration, it seems he is constantly trying to convince an already convinced reader.

Despite of saying so, the book is truly worth reading and it will certainly change your perception and understanding of everything around you. This ‘little book’ will make you see the ‘world’ in a different way

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway’s the old man and the sea takes you on a three day journey into the sea with an old fisherman Santiago on his skiff. The fisherman lacking the agility of youth, without any catch for 84 days sets out the next day far off the coast into the sea to put an end to his unlucky streak.

“Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.” 

The character of the old man is acutely reflected in the above lines. Hemingway in this novella has described the old man’s dedication, perseverance, hard work and unbelievable courage throughout this journey, up close.

Also by virtue of the dreams of the old man Hemingway paints a very beautiful and subtle picture of the desires of the old man - still relishing his past, the vigor and strength of his youth. His unending bravery in hardest of times and the description of past life indubitably portrays him as a warrior. Hemingway, also has masterfully described the profundity and vastitude of the sea and the beautiful marine life.

The book’s essence lies in its simple and yet powerful language, the words form a picture in your mind and take you a million miles away. Hemingway has weighted each word and there is not a word too many

White Fang by Jack London

White fang, written by Jack London, is a story accoutered with a myriad of emotions. The story in its major part revolves around a cub, describing his journey to adulthood. 
After being born in the wild, the cub is soon domesticated by man who gives him the name 'white fang'. Parted from his mother at the very beginning of life, white fang finds himself in an environment that moulds his clay of life in a way that makes him a ferocious, cunning and swift fighter. 
His struggle in keeping pace with his ever-changing life has been wonderfully narrated by Jack London and equally well has London painted white fang’s dilemma to choose between: his intense yearning for the wild, or his necessity to be by the side of his master that he found in man. Through the book London has pointed out that man and animal are not much different. Each yearns for power and can be as wild or as gentle as the other. It is predominantly the environment that moulds their character. London has provided many such instances where he has lain emphasis on the type of treatment given to an individual. As according to him when treated with love the wildest can also calm down, on the other hand evil treatment can bring out the wild out of the gentlest. 
With each passing page the story becomes more absorbing and at the end it leaves the reader drenched with the feelings of love and affection for white fang. .