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Apocalypto

It took me some time but I am glad that I watched this film. This is the stuff to be cherished in a DVD collection.
It has ORGANIC, INDIGENOUS & VISCERAL written all over it. Much has been said about the film. The film deserves more resounding applause because of the courage and non-attempt to be perfect.

I would like to add that it worked for me perfectly at the Eclipse scene. It is at that point that it becomes a classic. Just one scene. May be it is a combination of the brewing undercurrent of the basic human emotions that rise like a high tide, or it’s the underplay of mercy, in the film maker’s POV, something that refuses to sympathesize with all the visibly disturbing scenes of atrocity. The success of the film, and like no other in its genre (Powerful scenes, edited like a man, can be put into the league of New World, The Thin Red Line, Platoon, and Apocalypse Now.), lies in its successful transition from Macro to Micro, from dealing with a holistic view of a civilization as it goes through its rise and fall to the small but harrowing tribulations a deserted family goes through. It is through Jaguar Paw’s perspective that the film achieves it wonderfully respectable stature. If not the best, it IS one of the best films to have been made in recent times of ‘cinema without balls’.

300

300 creates new rules for Graphic Novel Cinema, and how!
After First Half
A little disappointed, the film lacks in pathos, something which put Apocalypto in a separate league, lacks in the Sin City poetry, tears and the shock factor, which juxtaposes the tender with the cruel. I am pointing out the minuses because they are few…

After second half
OK..I finally got that feeling climbing down the rolling titles, in true Spartan fervor!
This is it! What else could I want?! Burning screen, Humane blood, Paused Motion, Red against Sepia. Even a text book drama to satisfy ‘them’. Controlled Insanity. Muffled thud of war drums. A play with sexuality-both visceral and phallic. A reason to hope in the craft. A historic clear sky slowly gets dirtied in a rising inferno of an inevitable moment.
A war in soul.
A breathing mortality.

300 achieves that rare combine of comic book crispi-raci-ness and historic beauty. The images on screen are proudly loud; they are comic book characters with a cinematic voice that rips the screen apart. And it is this uniqueness that is making it rewrite film collection history all over. It works with absolutely everyone. It is a fantasy if you want, an epic (seated in a heady conflict-resolution flava) if you want, and a daringly different FILM, if you want.

Thank You for Smoking
Having heard rave reviews about this film, I jumped into watching it with a great build-up working the predictable response. But I was sadly let down.
If you have a black humor film taking Smoking as a subtext, you do expect (moderately, at least) some experiments. They hardly exist in this film. All you get is the same old mundane Hollywood corporate gab humor, speeches dripping with cynicism, self-indulgent characters talking to the screen more than half the time, and a cockiness that sadly doesn’t help the affairs. This is not a bad film, but something that I could not enjoy beyond a point of time.

Rocky Balboa
Sly returns with dignity. A dream treatment, underplay of Heroic lines. A narrative which is more human than superhero (I don’t mean that superhero aint human! But…), and a lingering memory of Rocky makes this a good Sunday afternoon watch. Kinda walk down memory lane. Don’t go expecting lots of punches; you might get a pale ‘Punchy’. But Stallone delivers, equally good as a director and the actor. It’s his words that you love more than his punches (which are few and far between anyways).

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