Films

The Boondock Saints [1999]

Director: Troy Duffy
Actor: Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus, Willem Dafoe, David Della Rocco, Billy Connolly

This is a fantastic, but unpolished gem of a film about two Irish brothers, Murphy and Connor, living in Boston, attending church as much as they can, and working out of a meatpacking plant, drinking at the local pub, yet being fluently multi-lingual (English, Russian, French, Italian, Spanish, German.) One particular St. Paddy’s day, they’re having a drink at their local pub, with all of their friends, when the local Vory thug decides to throw his weight around. What ensues is a bar-fight in which the twins and their friends kick the asses of the Vory and his men. The men find the boys in their condemned apartment building the following morning and decides to teach them a lesson. This sets off a long chain of events in which the two, together with their low-life mafia friend Rocco, decide to kill all the scum that’s running the streets in true vigilante style. Meanwhile, Smecker (Dafoe), an FBI agent who is in town to investigate the murders of all these mobsters, has a crisis of conscience about whether or not he should persecute these men, or join them.

The opening scenes are fantastic, especially the one during the sermon at church. Truly awesome. Yet, even with that scene, the directing and cinematography is a bit sloppy. And not in that Resevoir Dogs sort of way, where it just adds that much more to the depth of the film, no, it’s truly sloppy. The film remains fantastic, yet flawed, and perhaps it was always meant to be that way. Perhaps it could never be better than it is now.

Simple, straight-forward, with a few thin patches in the otherwise solid storyline. Very funny. Lots of gratuitous violence and sexy slow-motion shots, which eventually got the film from getting an actual cinematic release in the U.S. because at the time of its release, Columbine had just happened, and President Clinton was doing the Hollywood rounds trying to appeal to the good senses of filmmakers regarding violence in the media. It opened in five theatres for only one week, which is why this movie is probably the first example of large-scale viral communication by way of the Internet and Word of Mouth.

Black Snake Moan [2006]

Director: Craig Brewer
Actor: Samuel L. Jackson, Christina Ricci, Justin Timberlake, John Cothran, Jr.

What a great little gem of a film. I didn’t really know much about it going in, but I was very pleasantly surprised. The acting is pretty solid on all fronts, but Sam L. does an especially good job playing the elderly, god-fearing, blues-singer-turned-farmer who is lost his wife to his younger brother. Ricci does a fantastic job of playing the very beautiful, but damaged Rae, who, due to early childhood abuse, has become a nymphomaniac in the clinical sense of the word. (She compulsively engages in sex without any real desire to do so, and without actually enjoying it.) Timberlake plays Ronnie, a kid who joins the national guard in order to better the life of himself and his girlfriend Rae, but he finds that he suffers from anxiety attacks whenever his stress-levels go up, and so is kicked out of the army. A great performance for Timberlake, who had a lot of balls to play the man who gets cheated on, and is in essence a weak man who means well but falls up short.

Anyway, the story is as followed; Rae sees her boyfriend Ronnie leave for the army, even though she begs him not to go. Rae decides to party away her sadness, and ends up partying a little bit to hard. She gets beaten and left alongside the road in front of Lazarus’ house, a man who’s an avid blues fanatic, but has just been left by his wife. He decides to take in and rehabilitate Rae, even going so far as chaining her up so that she can’t escape until he has excercised her deamons. It turns out that Lazarus and Rae are eachother’s help through their hard times. They are exactly what one another needs.

A great film with solid acting, a refreshing story and fantastic blues performances by Samuel L. Jackson. Well worth it.

Jesus Camp [2006]

Director: Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady

I was looking forward to seeing this documentary, after I saw a bit of it on Real Time with Bill Maher, but I must admit that I’m a little disappointed. While I was as disgusted at the content of the documentary (more on that in a sec), I was disappointed at the form in which they presented it.

The documentary is about a summer-camp organised by the fundamentalist Christians in the United States, where children learn how to be better “soldiers of God.” The camp was introduced by the organiser, a woman who specialises in preaching to children, as the Christian alternative to Muslim fundamentalism, a society in which, according to the woman, children are being groomed to be martyrs and soldiers of faith. She, too, believes she should put her effort into “educating” the children on the word of God.

Of course, anyone who doesn’t believe that this is correct, or any non-fundamentalist (Christian or otherwise), will consider that education as indoctrination and brain-washing. The kids who are followed certainly do posses all the qualities of little brain-washed munchkins. They talk about things like “wanting more out of life” and “giving up [their] life to God” at a time in their life where I don’t think anyone is capable of having made up their mind about things like spirituality.

There is no narrator, and context has to be generated by the words and images of the documentary itself, which can be a bit annoying. Nowhere near as good as Michael Moore’s documentaries, but it does have a more sober feel to it, and it feels less of a pre-masticated cup of broth than most of Michael Moore’s sensationalistic documentaries feel like.

The Namesake [2006]

Director: Mira Nair
Actor: Irfan Khan, Kal Penn, Tabu

Gogol is the son of Indian parents who immigrated to the United States when they were just married. He wants to fit in with people around him, but it doesn’t always seem to happen as easily as one would want it to be. His name, Gogol, after the Russian author Nikolai Gogol, seems to be the embodiment of that difficulty to fit in. His name invokes jokes and jest from his peers, and slowly but surely he starts to resent his father for giving him the name. Of course, the name holds a very special significance to his father, and it causes a rift between Gogol and the rest of his family.

This is a coming of age tale that’s probably very familiar amongst Indian immigrants in the United States and will strike a chord with them. I thought the film was well-shot, but badly cut, and the story kind of roams and strays off course a bit. The acting is solid, however, and not so exaggerated as Bollywood films. It’s also more risqué than the standard Bollywood film. It’s more of a straight-to-video type of film, but one that’s not to be overlooked, especially when you get tired of Michael Bay films. :)

Devdas [2002]

Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali
Actor: Shahrukh Khan, Madhuri Dixit, Aishwarya Rai

This is the first Bollywood film that I’ve seen that I wasn’t bored with after the first ten minutes. It’s relatively easy-access for westerners, despite the massive amounts of unrealistic over-acting that happens, which is staple-diet for Indian movie-goers, and the relatively ridiculous story which offended a lot of my western sensibilities. What was interesting, however, (and I might spoil the sliver-thin story for you,) is that this story does not have a happy ending.

The story is of Paro (Rai) and Devdas (Khan), and their childhood affection turning into a sincere love for one another as Devdas returns from being in London for study for over ten years. Devdas is from a wealthy family with a high status, and while Paro is from a family with relatively a lot of wealth, their status seems to be beneath the family of Devdas, regardless of the close relationship of these two families for decades. However, Paro’s mother seems oblivious to the possibility of Devdas’ parents denying the marriage because of Paro and Devdas’ obvious love for one another. She is horribly emberassed when she is publicly scorned for the idea of Paro and Devdas to be married, and she vows to find a family for Paro who is even wealthier and of higher status than Devdas’ family.

She succeeds and Paro is married to an older man who’s first wife had died. He wants a wife in order to complete the household, and to be mother to his children (while Paro is almost as old as his children), but not for love or affection. Paro is still madly in love with Devdas, who, after Paro’s marriage, is slowly drowning himself and his misery in a bottle of expensive wine, and so finds peace in her new role and new family.

Devdas’ self-destructive misery forces him into neighbourhoods of ill repute and into the presence of courtesans, of which Chandramukhi (Dixit) is one. She’s a girl of low birth, but has made a fortune with her work. She’s a dancer and entertainer, and while she’s not a prostitute, most people of higher status treat her that way. Initially, Devdas wants nothing to do with her, but her love and devotion to him grows, and she tries to get him to stop his destructive ways. She can’t help but love him, even though his heart belongs to Paro.

Massive amounts of unncessary drama, dancing and singing, with a lot of beautiful people. It’s a fun flick, even though the running time is something like eleven-million hours, and it’s worth checking out if you’re interesting in trying out this genre of film.