Movie Marathon

This sunday was a movie marathon day. Here is a list of some of the movies i watched (at home) and how good/bad/ugly they were


1. Easy A

Started with this one as it promised to be a chick flick. And it was. Loosely inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic novel on adultery & romance,Scarlett Letter, this movie tells the tale of a high school socially inept teenage girl, Olive Penderghast who uses a rumor of her apparent promiscuity to climb the social ladder - stitching a red A to further add to her new reputation. The movie then becomes predictable on how she begins to  dislike her popularity, the guy she likes (who was uptil now ignoring her) suddenly falls in love, and other over-used plots of a teenage flick. The movie is a good for one watch- Emma Stone has done justice to her role- acting like a vamp in one scene and an innocent victim in the other. Penn Badgely (of the Gossip Girl fame) is totally wasted (though he does look good in his shirtless scenes :)) is the love interest of Olive. 
I'd give the movie a 6/10 for Emma Stone's performance only and making my Saturday afternoon thoroughly enjoyable.
(image source: mymoviecinema.com)


2. The Devil's Backbone

This one had been lying in my harddrive for a very long time, and i thought it was high time i watched it. This spanish horror/thriller by Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro is a MUST WATCH. Set in the Spanish civil war era,this movie is about a young boy Carlos who is left at an orphanage in the middle of nowhere  by his tutor and how he discovers that the place is haunted, what he does thereafter. Quoting AO Scott of the New York Times, "The director, Guillermo del Toro, balances dread with tenderness, and refracts the terror and sadness of the time through the eyes of a young boy, who only half-understands what he is witnessing".
I give the movie a 9/10 for keeping me hooked right till the end. 
(image source: moviescreenshots.blogspot.com)


3. Buried

This one is NOT for the ones who don't like closed spaces. I rarely like movies that follow a single character plot line and without many scene changes or character development.I tend to lose my patience watching such movies This one was no exception. While buried has received good reviews & it IS a good film, i fast forwarded it to the end mostly because i could not bear to watch any longer. It is about a truck driver (Ryan Reynolds) in Iraq who is ambushed and buried alive under the desert with a blackberry, knife, glow sticks, lighter & a hip flask. The ending is a surprise ( i read it in Wiki and then forwarded it to see it for myself) but is a good watch for those (especially men!) who like the how-will-he-survive kinda single plotline. For me, the movie is a 5/10.  


4. Animal Kingdom

I ended my movie marathon with this fabulous movie. Animal Kingdom is an Australian crime film which shows how a young teen is unwittingly caught in the drama that unfolds in his grandmother's life- who incidentally happens to be the matriarch of Melbourne's crime family. This award winning movie has Guy Pearce as the cop who tries his best to bring the family down. Watch the movie for its intensity & excellent character development. I'll give it a 9.5/10. An absolute must watch!

Perfume: The Book vs The Movie

I saw Perfume : The Story of a Murderer movie a few months back and i chanced upon a copy of the novel while browsing through the shelves in a bookstore. I picked it up to find out what elements of the book had the movie failed to capture. The main character, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, is described as "one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages".
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The story then moves to describe how as a baby (one who is born in the middle of the filthiest and smelliest parts of Paris), Jean Baptiste does not have a baby-odour or in other words, Jean Baptiste does not have personal human odor. What he does possess is an extraordinary "olfactory" functions- his heightened sense of smell. As he grows up, he develops an uncontrollable desire to create the perfect perfume- one that will make up for his lack of personal scent and transform him into a human. Grenouille is a cold hearted, emotionless individual who in the entire plot is only driven by his incessant need to create the perfect scent. As a reader,one cringes at Grenouille's life and ultimately at how it ends.


However, in the movie, Grenouille [played by actor Ben Whishaw], one cannot help but feel sorry for Grenouille and in a strange way, understand his need for creating the perfect scent.All in all, it was definitely the movie over the book for me. The book drags at times when it goes into details of the various processes that are deployed in creating a perfume- making one skim over several chapters. I'd give the movie a 8/10 and the book 6/10 for keeping me hooked

Strictly Sexual

When you hear about a movie called Strictly Sexual, you dismiss it immediately for you assume that all it would have is sex, loads of crappy disgusting jokes on sex and silly humour with a too-good-to-be-true ending. That’s exactly what I thought when I first stumbled upon the movie.

But Strictly Sexual is just the opposite. This 2008 movie about two women (Donna and Christie Ann) who hire two out of work construction workers (Stanny and Joe) as their sexual partners manages to delight you and at the same time does not lose itself by focusing simply on sex. It explores friendship, love and relationships in a very refreshing way.  Donna is a writer who is afraid to share or show her work to anyone. She is also very rich and loves to experiment in bed. Christie Ann is her sexually timid friend who is an aspiring fashion designer. It is her idea to hire the two men so that she can “practice” with one of them and hence become better at sex. Stanny is the cynic and Joe is the sweet dumb guy who you fall in with. The movie is about how what starts out as a “strictly sexual” encounter evolves into something so much more beautiful and practical.

I loved the movie because it’s romantic without being too corny or unrealistic. It presents you with situations that you can relate with and in no time feel that it could happen to you too.  If you love non-clichéd romantic movies, this one is definitely for you.

(poster image source: http://shufilm.blogspot.com/2009/01/unit-4x13.html)