Recent Good Movies Watched

The Whistleblower

Macbeth (PBS)

Jane Eyre

The Beaver

The Music Never Stopped

Oranges and Sunshine

Incendies

The Tree of Life

These were movies that touched me emotionally. Some made me angry, others made me laugh, or drove me to the verge of tears. I mostly enjoyed the dialogue, other than Macbeth which was strange because it used Shakespeare’s language while set in World War 2. Incendies is a film set in the Middle East that had a twist at the end. Let me see if I can get this right because it's a little complicated. A mother's will asks the twin son and daughter to go to the country where the mother was born to find an older son she gave up for adoption. In the end, the older son turns out to be the father and the brother of the twins. Confusing? You will have to watch that great film yourself. You can of course look up reviews on IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes.

By the way, why is it when actors throw up in the movie they always touch the rim of the toilet bowl? Even if it was the cleanest toilet by sight in the world, I wouldn’t touch it if I had to throw up. Another thing is nurses always seem to work round the clock – day, evening, night shifts without leaving the hospital or having a day off. Hospitals always have dark corridors. You go to a real hospital, it’s never dark in the hallways. And did you notice that car windows are never dirty? Too much artistic license, I say.

About The Tree of life – my coworker didn’t like it, but because of his impression and after reading a synopsis, I watched it and was able to understand what was going on. I don’t think my coworker made the connection between the father, the son, and what I think is the other son who supposedly died in the Vietnam war. It also shows the evolutionary process at the start.

I recommend all of the above other than Macbeth, but if you are into an alternative Shakespeare experience, you may enjoy that too. While watching a movie and I see an interesting scene, I sometimes feel like clicking the “Like” button ala Facebook, but there is none, of course.

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Movies Watched In The Past Week

Hachiko: A Dog Story, The Hurt Locker, Avatar, & Passing Strange

Has anyone heard of or seen the movie – Hachiko: A Dog Story, with Richard Gere, or one of the Oscar nominees – The Hurt Locker? It’s one of the best realistic movies made that hardly anyone saw in the theaters as opposed to Avatar which just about everyone has seen. I can understand the popularity of Avatar. At first I thought it was only because of the special effects, but after watching it, it was not so much the effects that I liked but the story itself. The Hurt Locker was already out on the internet a couple of weeks before it opened in limited release in the U.S. theaters and probably because it was released early in Europe or Asia. You can tell by the Oscar nomination and the good reviews how outstanding this film is. Another must rent or buy if you were to ask me.

In the meantime, I didn’t know about Hachiko until last week. There isn’t much of as story for this one and it seems to have been made just to tug at your heartstrings. It’s based on a real life dog from Japan in the 1930’s which has been adapted for the present time and it’s a tearjerker of a film. If you have a chance to rent it, don’t forget the box of tissues to go with the popcorn and soda. I guess Richard Gere’s name didn’t draw too many people to the box office for this movie.

Another movie I enjoyed watching was directed by Spike Lee and the title is Passing Strange which is a musical. It is funny and emotional at times, but always with great music. The IMDB plot states: A young black artist leaves his Los Angeles digs and travels to Europe to find himself. A theatrical stage production of the original Broadway musical.

Well, as you can see, I’m not much of a movie reviewer but I just wanted to let you know what I’ve watched lately and how I felt about them.

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The Lost Movie

There is a new movie opening this weekend that’s well reviewed by the critics, but which I cannot mention here. The only reason why I’m writing about it is because I thought I had seen that movie before and I thought I archived it. Despite attempts to look for it in my one terabyte external hard drive and about a hundred DVD discs of backup files, I couldn’t find it. It was getting frustrating because I know I enjoyed watching that movie and I could not have deleted the file. When I first found that movie, I had never heard about it before so I thought it was something that was released abroad but not in the U.S., and is probably being released straight to DVD here. Then I started seeing the promotions and reviews last week which led me to my current search for it from my archives. After wracking my brain and doing repeated searches, I finally checked IMDB to find out if the movie came with an alternative title. Eureka! It did! When I searched my archives again, I found the movie. It was in the one terabyte hard drive after all. Now I’m satisfied. I can go out for a run now.

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My Sister’s Keeper

No, I don’t have a sister. This is about my reaction to the movie I just finished watching. It’s called “My Sister’s Keeper”(you can read the plot summary here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1078588/ ) , which gave me a very strong emotional response. Essentially, my lacrimal glands got a fairly good workout expelling salted water while watching this movie in the privacy of my living room, which is a good thing. Darn it! I’m a middle aged man and not supposed to be doing that, but please excuse me because emotional movies still make me feel that way. I dare anyone, male or female, young or old, to watch this movie and not have a similar reaction. How’s that about putting it out there for anyone to read in a blog? I was feeling crummy from the side effects of the swine flu shot all morning, but after having lunch and dropping some saline solution from my eyes, I felt better.

Born To Run & Run For Your Life

Please forgive me. I don’t really know how to do a book review or a movie review for that matter. What I can tell you though, is that I have been reading and watching some running related material in the past week. Not intentionally, but only because the opportunity presented itself. The book is called “Born To Run” by Men’s Health magazine contributing editor Christopher McDougall, and the movie is “Run For Your Life”, a story about the life of Fred Lebow (now deceased), the founder and former race director of the New York City marathon.

The book was lent to me by one of my running friends, Rick G., who had been telling me about it in the past couple of months because the author was also suffering from ankle injuries before he set out to find out what was causing it. Thank you very much Rick, I really enjoyed reading it. It took me only about three sittings to finish it and it is the first book I have read in so many years.

I can compare the way the book is written to my rudimentary knowledge of the old BASIC computer programming where a flowchart is created from top to bottom with subroutines (gosub command) going off in different directions depending on what you want the program to do, then when you finish the subroutine, the program goes back to the center of the flowchart (return command). I say that because McDougall starts with the main topic about his injuries, then branches off like a subroutine to tell stories about other characters, then returns to the main topic before branching out to describe another character. This goes on several times and somehow he manages to put all those characters together at the end where they engage in a 50 mile race in the Copper Canyon of Mexico.

Like I said, I don’t do book reviews but here are a couple of articles which I think describes the book very well: http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/story/1439309.html and http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/19/AR2009061901078.html

The movie “Run For Your Life” is basically the Fred Lebow story and how the New York City Marathon came to be. It is a good documentary that runners would enjoy, especially those who have run the New York City Marathon and would like to know more about how the five boroughs race started. I don’t know if the DVD is available at your neighborhood video store, but it’s available through Netflix. This is the IMDB plot summary: Without one eccentric first-generation Jewish immigrant from Transylvania, the New York City Marathon simply wouldn't exist. Ehrlich's fun, loving, and inspirational tribute to the late Fred Lebow shows how one man's imagination, determination, and love for running created one of the world's most popular sporting events. Written by Tribeca Film Festival

I think that runners would enjoy reading the book and watching the movie as well as I did, so if you get the chance to buy, borrow, or rent one or both then it would be worth your while.

Romantic Filipino Movies

Romantic Filipino movies are usually corny, sappy, with some slapstick added to it. It usually involves some kind of breakup, parental disapproval, societal status differences, or separation due to moving abroad for work or immigration (the last part I know I cannot identify with because I’m sure I didn’t leave anyone behind). Heavy drama interspersed with humor now adapted to modern life is a common formula for the script. Parts of it may be so syrupy sweet that you can pour it on your pancakes. Of course it would be incomplete without an equally sappy soundtrack of Filipino and English songs. I don’t watch it often and I could probably count within the ten fingers of my two hands how many I’ve watched since I moved here in the U.S. That’s because I don’t have cable TV so I don’t get TFC (The Filipino Channel). So it was a surprise that while watching a Filipino movie today, it elicited the same emotional responses that it did when I was growing up in the Philippines. I won’t get into details on what those emotional responses were, damn it! Hahaha! It took me on a sentimental journey where you tend to empathize/sympathize with the characters like only a Filipino could probably feel. If you didn’t grow up watching movies like these, you would probably feel that the characters, script, music, and the movie as a whole is laughable. Most movies made in the Philippines are still rough around the edges in terms of cinematography and transitions from one scene to the next. But I can understand that it’s built for a specialized audience. It has been almost 30 years since I left that country but while watching this movie, I’m finding out that a piece of my heart still remains a Flip.

Okuribito

I'm watching a movie called “Departures” (Okuribito) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1069238/. It's a Japanese movie which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for 2009. I'm only thirty minutes into the movie and already I'm finding it quite funny even though the subject matter is about “a newly unemployed cellist taking a job preparing the dead for funerals” (per IMDB Summary). It's 130 minutes long so I hope it takes the subtle humor all the way to the end.
During the second half of the first hour the preparation of a body is finally shown and it is done with so much sensitivity, care, and dignity in front of the deceased family. Undressing, cleansing, grooming, and dressing the dead is done with such precise movements, it's almost like a dance.
The conflict comes going into the second hour when his wife finds out what his new job is. She and his friend find his kind of work unclean and not a normal job. So she leaves him because of this. All this time his thoughts go back to his father who started him playing the cello but left him and his mother when he was six years old.
In the last quarter of the film, the wife comes back and witnesses for the first time how her husband does his job when the owner of the bathhouse they visited in the past suddenly died. The owner's son happened to be the friend who vilified him for his job and now ironically, he has to prepare the mother's body for her funeral.
The end of the movie involves the cellist/undertaker's father but I shall leave this review at this point because I hope whoever reads this will get the chance to check the movie out for themselves. The film evolves slowly but beautifully. In the end, it had nothing to do with subtle humor like at the start, but turned out to be a very well composed drama which also illustrated how the Japanese people take care of the dead.

Recently Watched Unknown Movies

I watched two movies today: The Burning Plain with Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger in it, and Revanche, an Austrian film. I don't believe these two movies got any press here in the U.S., because I've never heard of them before. Both had beautifully and carefully crafted stories and I think deserved to at least be nominated in the recent academy awards for best director and screenplay.

This is the plot of The Burning Plain as described by IMDB: A drama with a two-tiered storyline concerning a mother (Basinger) and daughter (Theron) who try to form a bond after the young woman's difficult childhood.

OK, big mistake, I just discovered that Revanche was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year during the last Oscars. Here is its plot courtesy of IMDB: Ex-con Alex plans to flee to the South with his girl after a robbery. But something terrible happens and revenge seems inevitable.

I hope that if you have the time and if they are available at your local video store, then you can check them out.

The Reader

I just finished watching the movie "The Reader" with Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes. The movie was slightly long but the pacing was very good and even the slow parts were not boring and kept me engaged. The script was also well written and I highly recommend to anyone to watch it. I even think this is better than Kate Winslet's other movie "Revolution Road".

Movies I liked over the holidays (Originally written December 26, 2008)

Christmas pic - I'm the one with the eyeglasses

December 26

Movies

After the aforementioned gimp run, I retired home and watched a couple of very, very good movies which I would recommend to anyone. If you have the chance to see them, please do. They are: "Slumdog Millionaire" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1010048/
and "Seven Pounds" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0814314/
Watched them while icing my ankle of course.
A few days ago, I also watched "Gran Torino" which I also highly recommend. Initially you would think that it was a very serious movie until you see Clint Eastwood snarl at the beginning then you would see how funny most of the movie really is afterwards.