2009 so far………
Now that the first two months of the year are over I think it’s safe to look back at all the great to good films I’ve seen and reminisce about.
First the must watch
The Good, The Bad and The Weird – The best masala spoof western ever and yes it’s Korean.
The Station Agent – Who needs plot and stars to make a great film. An absolute gem.
Waltz with Bashir – I was stunned after watching this. Visceral to the core.
The Hurt Locker - Kathryn Bigelow has bigger cojones than many of the male directors around.
Luck by Chance – One of the best hindi films ever and it just breaks my heart that it didn’t get the success it deserves.
Stop Making Sense – The greatest concert film ever. PERIOD. The Talking Heads rock.
Let the right one in – The second greatest vampire film ever after Murnau’s Nosferatu.
Searching for Bobby Fisher – A must watch for every parent.
Grizzly Man – Werner Herzog just rocks my world time after time.
The should watch
Crossing the Line – Fascinating docu about an American soldier who defected to South Korea during the Korean War and has been living there ever since.
Capturing the Friedmans – Intensely disturbing docu about a family who stand accused of child abuse.
Hamlet 2 – I thought this film was really hysterical and I absolutely loved the music numbers.
Bottle Shock – Cool film about the “Judgement of Paris” which changed the way the world drinks wine forever.
Choke – A decent adaptation but felt too low budget for me somehow.
Pat Garret and Billy the Kid - Tarantino isn’t a patch on the original bad boy Sam Peckinpah. He can make even gruesome shots and extreme violence look poetic and balletic. A fab cameo from Bob Dylan who wrote and sang Knockin on Heaven’s Door especially for the film. The song feels even more brilliant when seen in the context of the film.
Rolling Kansas – One of the funniest stoner films ever.
Madagascar 2 – Shades of Lion King but still very enjoyable and funny.
A complete history of my sexual failures – A docu which has to been to be believed. Incredibly funny and sad at the same time.
Linha de Passe – The great Walter Salles returns with this evocative portrayal of life in a favela. The anti City of God.
The Escapist – Extremely well crafted prison escape film though the cimax felt like a huge cop out.
Tell No One – One of the best French thrillers in recent times.
Stevie – Steve James made one of my fav docus in “Hoop Dreams” and this film is as depressing as that one was uplifting.
The Could Watch
Repo: The Genetic Opera – Great visuals but I didn’t care for the music which sucks for a musical.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona – Penelope Cruz really did deserve the Oscar but this film has an unbearable VO which just ruins it for me.
Waitress – Def has it’s moments.
I also watched an unholy number of bad films but my new year resolution is to only focus on the good and fuck the bad so I’m not even gonna mention them…..except for the biggest WTF film I’ve seen in a long time.
Punisher: War Zone – OMFG this film is a travesty on so many levels. The undisputed worst comic book ever. More than Catwoman and Elektra. Makes the orginal Dolph Lundgren film look like TDK in comparison.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
i think the VO in Vicky,… is quite appropriate…bardem and cruz ar fantastic though…they and the city of barcelona take the film to a different level altogether…
Well, the only part of your post i disagree with is VCB.
1. because the VO does really ruin the proceedings, its taking the easy way out and i never expected that from Woody Allen.
2. The humor was way to forced. again, a huge disappointment from Allen who usually has me in splits.
3. and most importantly, the whole pretentious point behind the pointless plot seemed to be “Oh, we are artists, therefore we are different, and have different needs and perceptions of love!” seriously? come on! and the whole thing about the marriage working only because of the presence of Scarlett Johanson. thats more illogical that most of the sequences in god tussi great ho!
Penelope Criuse was good in it, although i dont think she deserved an oscar.
@Ayush
I had some issues with the film but the points you raise aren’t one of them. Firstly you are making assumptions and assigning your own sense of morality on a culture which is completely far removed from yours or mine. I personally know of trios and quartets who have the exact same situation as depicted in the film. If you think that such a scenario is too far fetched then I assure you that it’s not. Apart from the VO my biggest problem was the casting of Johanssen who fell quite short when compared to Cruz and Bardem.
thanks for the list
Nice list… should check out the ones I have not seen (and there are quite a few in here).
I am glad I am not the only one who thought the VO in VCB was god awful! Did Woody think he was showing this to a bunch of school kids or was there something more profound that I did not get? Either way it was annoying!
To Ayush’s point – I kinda agree with you but most of Woody’s films (invloving artists) have that as a recurring theme – artists are different creatures and their perception of relationships are different. But he is also good at poking fun at that shallowness and their insecurities