Saturday, August 22, 2009

Volver

It is no wonder that Pedro Almadovar announced that Penelope Cruz was his muse; there could be no one else who would inspire Almadovar more than what Cruz does. I previously had not seen too much of Penelope, but after watching Volver, I became her fan. No one could have done it better. Though the subtitles kept me busy and there were times when I missed the facial expression on Cruz’s face, but she did one heck of a job. The mother-daughter relationship is beautifully portrayed here; between Raimunda and her mother and also between Raimunda and her daughter Paula. Tragedy encompasses the whole family which has brutal consequences, but inspite of all that they face, the women do not reject life, but accepts all the challenges that life throws towards them. To me it was Penelope Cruz all through the movie and it is no wonder that she bagged the nomination for the best actress at the 2008 Oscars. She was just…..I’m at a loss for adjectives. This magical tragicomic melodrama may be Almodovar's most restrained work to date, but it still features his trademarks: a strong attention to color and detail, a celebration of the trials and tribulations of women. The lovely Penelope Cruz has shone more brightly than ever as she does here. I realize that it is a hard movie to lay your hands on, but if you do, please do not let it go, because you would be a total idiot if you did not watch this great piece of art.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Wanted

I know that I already mentioned that I am a huge fan of Angelina Jolie but after watching Wanted I did repent for watching it. Yes I repented. Wanted is such a mindless action movie with no story whatsoever. I am totally clueless as to why the big names like James Mcavoy, Angelina Jolie, and Morgan Freeman agreed to do this kind of a commercial flick. None of them actually acted; they entered the scene, delivered their lines, packed a few punches fired a few bullets and went out. Sloan played by Freeman is the head of an assassination fraternity who goes corrupt and starts assassinating people to meet his own selfish ends so that he can always stay the boss. Mcavoy’s father, who was also a member of this fraternity finds out and leaves to stop Sloan at this corrupt business. Sloan’s existence is threatened since he is the best assassin that the fraternity possessed. So to get rid of the father the fraternity hires the son, trains him to be an assassin to kill his father by feeding him another story. The son manages to kill the father but later comes to know about the truth and thus sets out for revenge and manages to kill Sloan – the end. Such mindless shit man! And what role did Angelina play? Oh she did play a super cool assassin with a lot of tattoos on her body, who manages to manoeuvre her car through traffic which is running at a 160 miles per hour and is also an awesome shot. That’s it, she just helped train Wesley (Mcavoy) and later assisted him in his initial missions. I have never been so very disappointed with an Angelina movie before but Wanted disappointed me big time. Infact if I were you I would even skip this review that I have written about Wanted because it is just a waste of time. So you can afford to miss it.