The Beach

I remember seeing The Beach staring Leonardo DiCaprio in 2000 when it was released. I enjoyed it then and I enjoyed it again a few nights ago. I think that young Americans should watch this adventure and strive to emulate the main protagonist, Richard.

Richard, DiCaprio, is an American backpacker who we initially meet in Bangkok. He is there for an adventure, and an adventure he gets. He meets the slightly deranged Daffy who leaves him with stories and a map to a beach on a remote island off the coast of Thailand. Richard meets up with two French travelers and they  set out to reach this mysterious island. They find it is inhabited by a mix of young people living as a small idyllic community, along with Thai farmers who grow weed. Over the course of the movie internal conflicts rise in the community with their arrival, but things go terribly wrong when four more people show up as a result of  a copy of the map that Richard gave them.

I particularly like Richard's idea for life: "Never refuse an invitation, never resist the unfamiliar, never cease to be polite, and never outstay your welcome." I think this should be the motto of people who are younger than 25 years old.

I would see this movie again or for the first time.

In the Land of Blood and Honey

I am very impressed with Angelina Jolie. She wrote, produced, and directed In the Land of Blood and Honey. It amazes me that she would tackle such a difficult film about such a difficult and emotional subject. For those who do not know the story, it is a film about the genocide by Serbian nationalists against Bosnian Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Most of us Americans knew little of this war other than what we told on the evening news from 1992 to 1995. Typically we would see  footage of snipers killing civilian men, women and children in Sarajevo as they attempted to get food and water. The Serbs lobbed bombs from the hills surrounding the city, killing anyone who happened to be in the way. The world looked on as heavily armed Serbs murdered civilians and destroyed what had been one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

Jolie takes us to that war and we see it horrors through the eyes of a Bosnian, Muslim lady named Ajla (Zana Marjanovic), and her lover who is a Serbian, name Danijel (Goran Kostic), the son of a general who wants to wipe every Bosnian Muslim. Yes, this is an extremely complicated love story because Ajla is a prisoner and slave of Danijel and his Serbian fighters.

I thought that Jolie did a really good job with this film. Some of the story is a little disjointed, but she does a great job of showing the horrors and terrors of being a woman slave and whore in the clutches of a military leader who is part of an ethnic cleansing operation directed by his radical father.

I think that most Americans should see such a stark, and violent film about war. Possibly, they will not be so anxious to send off American troops to be part of such horrors.

Hugo

Finally, Hollywood has produced a quality movie that excels in every aspect of film making. Hugo has beautiful visuals, talented cast, magic, love, heart, feeling, and emotion. Hugo was directed by the iconic Martin Scorsese and stars Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, Ben Kingsley and Christopher Lee.

Hugo, Asa Butterfield, is a young boy who lives inside the walls of a train station in Paris in the 1930's. His father dies, leaving behind a mysterious broken automaton that, when fixed, can write. Hugo makes it his mission to fix it, believing that it will reveal a message from his father. With the help of an eccentric girl named Isabelle, Chloe Grace Moretz, he tries to uncover a magical mystery about the old man (Isabelle's godfather--Ben Kingsley) at the toy booth in the train station and his entertaining early films.

Hugo is definitely a film that is meritorious of winning the Academy Award for best picture of the year. You should see this fabulous movie.

The Tuskegee Airmen

The Tuskegee Airmen is a really fine film. I remember seeing it back in 1995 when it was released. It stars Laurence Fishburne, Allen Payne, Malcolm-Jamal Warne, and Cuba Gooding, Jr. For those who do not know this celebrated story of how black soldiers were trained to be fighter pilots in the Army Air Corp during World War II. It is the story of how they went from be despised and ridiculed as inferior human beings incapable of flying planes to revered as one of the most successful divisions in the Army Air Corp. They did not lose one bomber that they protected. The acting is good and the story is great. You should see this movie.

2012

I had heard that the movie 2012 was a good adventure/thriller to see. I have waited a long time for it to be shown on TV; thus, I recorded it and watched it last night. It was okay only because I did not pay an admission fee to see this global disaster flick, but I am tired of seeing movies that rely on CG rather than good acting and well-written screen plays. Just about everything in this movie is implausible. For example, the principle characters, among others John Cusack, and Thandie Newton, while escaping the US by flying a Soviet-era plane to China to reach the "arks" that will be able to survive on the seas discover the Hawaiian Islands where they were going to refuel have been reduced to molten lava. With little fuel the pilot says they will be going down into the sea, but miraculously they reach the coast of China thousands of miles away not far from the arks. If such rediculousness does not bother you and you enjoy one implausible action/adventure scene after another you will enjoy watching the almost three hour long 2012.

The Way

Last night I saw an enjoyable and quality movie called The Way staring Martin Sheen, Emilio Estevez and Deborah Kara Unger. The screenplay was written by Emilio Estevez. He also produced The Way. It is the story of Tom, a California ophthalmologist (Martin Sheen) who must fly to France to view the body of his son Daniel (Emilio Estevez) who died on the first day of his 500-mile trek on the El Camino de Santiago, also known as The Way of Saint James. Tom makes a split-second decision that he will hike the path of his son and spread the ashes of his son Daniel throughout the trail. He meets up with four pilgrims who have different reasons for attempting such an exhausting journey. They are Joost (Wageningen), a Dutchman who is hiking the trail for exercise purposes, Sarah (Unger) who is trying to quit smoking, and "Jack from Ireland" (Nesbitt) who is suffering from writer's block and is trying to collect information about fellow hikers and their separate journeys. I strongly recommend this excellent movie.

Three Days of the Condor

Three Days of the Condor is a 1970s political thriller staring Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway and Cliff Robertson. Redford plays Joseph Turner, whose CIA code name is Condor. While he is buying lunch for his fellow CIA research workers (OTL) in NY City, a hit team kills all of them. When Condor returns and sees the devastation it sends him on the run from whoever killed his team and the CIA. Along the way he hijacks Kathy Hale played by beautiful Faye Dunaway. While the rest of the story is predictable and the ending is ludicrous, I enjoyed be transported back to 1975. It is fun to see the "high tech" computers used by the CIA at that time. For those who were not living at that time computers were not ubiquitous as they are in 2012. They were used by people like me, academics, and by law enforcement and governmental agencies like the NSA and CIA. Phones play an interesting role in this movie. Again it is hard to believe how much phone technology has changed since 1975. Most will like this dated movie.

Night of the Iguana

Again I am so glad that I am revisiting some of my favorite films. Last night it was such a pleasure to see Night of the Iguana. Why can't we see such great films with  great actors today. For those who have not seen Night of the Iguana. It stars Richard Burton, Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr. It would be difficult to find three better actors to star in this emotional drama. It follows the Burton character, Rev. Dr. T. Laurence Shannon, a troubled minister who is fired from his pulpit in Virginia. Not being able to find a preacher job in the US he travels to Mexico where he works as a tour director for religious teachers. Ultimately on a troubled tour he hijacks the tour bus and takes it to a hotel on the Mexican coast. The owner is one of his friends Maxine Faulk, played by Ava Gardner. Shortly after his arrival Hannah Jelkes (Deborah Kerr) arrives with her 97-year old grandfather. Now the movie/play begins.

In this Tennessee Williams play you will see the principal characters struggle with the passions, prides, and egos exposing their true nature--unhappy with the world. Essentially they struggle with self identity and where they are in their lives. In one of the best exchanges between Burton and Kerr, she describes what she thinks is the meaning of her life. She states the following: to connect with people, to help people through each day, to meet, to see, hear, and feel, and to share what we have experienced.

I think that this is almost as good as a movie can be. I especially recommend this film to young people. There is lots to learn from this intense movie.

Under the Volcano

I was so happy to see that Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano was being aired this week on TNT so that I could once again see the masterful performance of Albert Finney who plays the alcoholic British consol Geoffrey Firmin who lives in Cuernavaca, Mexico in 1938. The entire book/movie covers one day in the life of Geoffrey Firmin, his last day. Coincidentally, this day is the Mexican celebration called the Day of the Dead. Under the Volcano was one of the most difficult and enigmatic books that I had ever read. This means that it was almost an impossible task to create a movie out of such a book. Nonetheless, John Huston did a creditable job of portraying the man, Geoffrey Firmin, even though it in no way covers this multilevel book. I agree with an IMDB reviewer that to do justice to Lowry's book would have required a "12-part miniseries." The same reviewer states the following:

"That's the difference between the novel and the film: though no fault of the director or writer (16 different film treatments were attempted before this version) the movie simply scratches the surface: it's merely about a drunkard unable to forgive his wife--who cheated on him with his half-brother--returning to him on the auspicious Day of Dead fiesta in Mexico; while in the novel, with its complex back-stories the three main characters--Firmin, his wife Yvonne and half-brother Hugh--are bound together by worldly and inexplicable spiritual forces, and we get an insight as to why they can't tear away from the train-wreck that is Geoffrey Firmin, while retaining the sorry universal aspect of the main character (Firmin) as God's Man itself."

I highly recommend this movie. You will be thinking about it for a long time after your viewing.

Moneyball

Last night I watch Moneyball. Not being a big baseball fan, to say the least, I was impressed with all aspects of this film. The story is excellent, and the acting is worthy of two Academy Awards. If you are considering seeing this movie I can tell you that you do not have to be a baseball fanatic to enjoy or understand it. It stars Brad Pitt, and Jonah Hill. Pitt plays the Oakland Athletics general manager who has lost three star players after a good season. Somehow he has to construct a new competitive team with a small amount of money compared to the Red Sox and Yankees. He hires Peter Brand, played by Hill, to assist him in rebuilding the team. Peter, a Yale economics graduate, has come up with a radical new idea on how to evaluate players. He quantifies them! This is the basis for the storyline of Moneyball. I recommend that you see it.