A Real Curious Case

First of all I am feeling bad as I was not able to post my reviews for some time now as I was busy in my main blog. So posting all the 3 movies I saw late last month.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button comes from Director David Fincher who earlier gave technically brilliant movies like Se7en and Fight Club. This time he comes with his best ever offering, but only in designing & technical department. The art direction, make-up and visual effects are outstanding. The direction is well intended at making an epic and the length of the movie suggests so. You can guess that this movie is nice contender for awards just for it's wide appeal. 

The story is quite a fictional one and it is about a child who is born as an old man of eighty years and as he grows up he becomes younger. Tough to believe, but the narrative is nice and the flow is equally supporting to the screenplay. Cate Blanchette who plays the roll of Daisy, the love interest of Benjamin, does a very good job though she has got limited scope in the script. But again the movie belongs to one man, Benjamin Button played by the immensely talented Brad Pitt. I would rank this roll of his more than Troy. After Babel these two are seen together again. The rest of the cast suits into their own respective roll with ease.

The movie is based on bizarrely unrealistic story which is pretty hard to believe. But the narrative, acting, screenplay and the direction blended with immaculate and astonishingly perfect make-up and visual excellence. You feel for Brad Pitt every time he comes to the screen with a new look and delivers a nice shot, one after another. They best part is there are so many emotional moments, but none of the character gets animated. It's the audience who might need a tissue paper. There so many moments in the movie that you can carry back home. The runtime of 166 minutes is slightly high considering it a Hollywood movie, but after long time (infact after Tom Hanks movies) I enjoyed the movie without complaining about the pace. This itself speaks for the brilliant direction.

Go for it and watch it for it's cinematic brilliance.

Verdict: 4 / 5

Pure Milk...No Impurity

Well, I am not a big fan of Sean Penn nor I have seen all his movies. But he surely made me & all who has seen Milk. One word that I will use for this movie is "inspiring".

When the plot of a movie is based on acceptance of homosexuals and standing tall for such kind of a cause, it takes hell out of you as a Director, Actor or even for that matter the support team. To make things more complicated for the makers of this movie, the story is based on true incidents that took place in 1977 in San Francisco. After moving to San Francisco, the middle-aged New Yorker, Harvey Milk, became a Gay Rights activist and city politician. On his third attempt, he was elected to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors in 1977, making him the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the USA. The following year, both he and the city's mayor, George Moscone, were shot to death by former city supervisor, Dan White.

The movie is shot so beautifully that you can easily recreate the late 70s era throughout the movie. There are few intimate scenes where Sean Penn is seen with his 1st and in some with his second male-love. But the director has to be given credit for successfully able to pull of those scenes brilliantly. The screenplay is really good and the depiction of characters has been done really well. There is a poetic flow to the entire movie. There are very few flaws that one can catch. I believed that the movie could have been slightly more imaginative as that could have made an emotional attachment with the audience. The ensemble cast has done a decent job, but this actually is Sean Penn's movie. And he rightly deserved the Academy Awards for the best actor 2008.

One final comment where I would like thank the make-up artists and Sean Penn to get into the skin of the exact character of Harvey Milk whose life he was portraying. There are snapshots shown in the end where all the real characters are shown and you will astonished to see the striking similarity not just in the looks but the attitude and body language of Mr. Sean Penn. Hats off to you Sir.

Verdict: 3.5 / 5

Valkyrie...Too Big A Star for Too Small a Script

History has always fascinated me, and if it is about Hitler and a plan to assassinate him, then it becomes more interesting. Directed by Bryan Singer whose earlier notable offerings were Superman Returns & X-Men series comes with drama based on a period that saw the brutality of Hitler. 

Valkyrie opens in Africa, penning in a journal his thoughts about Col Claus von Stauffenberg (played by Tom Cruise) during World War II, and how he feels Hitler is destroying Germany. He meets a group of people who holds high ranks in Hitler's regime and they meet in clandestine meetings to discuss on their further course of action on how to dethrone Hitler. They have planned may failed attempts to assassin Hitler. When Col. Stauffenberg joins them, they again plan to assassin Hitler; this time with with new combat plan named "Operation Valkyrie". Operation Valkyrie (German: Walküre) was an emergency "Continuity-of-Government" operations plan developed for the Territorial Reserve Army of the Germany to execute and implement should; for whatever reason; there come to be a general breakdown in civil order of the nation. The key role was played by German Army  officer Col Claus von Stauffenberg, who was in charge of German Reserve Army's Walküre, a role which allowed him access to Hitler for reports, and required his presence in the coup—which ruled out another suicide attack as planned earlier by other officers. After the first attempt had to be canceled and declared an "exercise", Stauffenberg placed the bomb on July 20 and hurried back to Berlin to assume his pivotal role.

This is a movie that is rich in it's portrayal of the exact scenarios that took place on July 20th of 1944.  But there is a basic flaw that made it dull. Everybody on this earth knows that this was a failed attempt (to be precise this was the last of total 15 failed attempts to assassin Hitler), so the curiosity will not be there. Secondly, Tom Cruise has delivered a run-of-the-mill act and he simply is underutilised. Bryan Singer has failed in one department hugely, that is the lack of excitement. There are moments that may make you get to edge of your seat but only for some moments. As far as the other casts are concerned they have done more than a decent job but overall the movie slips due to lack of pace and moments that one expects out of these historical thrillers. The use of camera and sets were excellent and the best part of the movie. With a run time of 121 minutes it is slow in more than one occasion.

Verdict: 2.5 / 5