The International

Producer: Lloyd Phillips

Director: Tom Tykwer

 

Cast: Clive Owen, Naomi Watts

The International is an English movie that falls into the genre Crime/ Thriller and that indicates it is an exciting entertainer. The protagonist Louis Salinger is played by Clive Owen. 

Sounded OBVIOUS? It’s the movie’s influence, don’t blame us! 

Unless you are above 6 and below 10, the movie is more or less going to keep you busy, enjoying the ambience of the theatre, sending messages, playing a game, watching others doing similar things. 

Sometimes, you meet destiny on the road you take to avoid it. 

The plot is about nobility and the courage of a single man to stand by what he believes in inspite of all odds, sounds familiar? Apparently, the makers didn’t think so. 

There is a very intriguing murder, the solution to which our honourable detective/officer hits upon in a newspaper report.
He confronts the murderer (how indirect is that?) who covers his tracks with a very simple explanation, “There was an error in the report” and gets away. 

Next, there is the assassination of an honest and sympathetic Italian politician (keep reading, honest was followed by Italian followed by politician, not Indian) with aspirations to the country’s highest office, in a public rally. 

The excitement is in the fact that it is at the juncture when the Italian, Calvini was supposed to give our naïve protagonist some information, the suspense is extreme and the audience is wondering about the interval (please, please, tell me there is one!) when they discover a lead to the assassin. 

The next half an hour is about tracking this lead and then there is finally a key to this film maker’s real strength, action! 

Though, it’s not the stunts but more the location that catches your eye, giving you the answer that the choice of location and cinematography really are the only good departments in this guy’s team. 

Not to digress, just trying to be positive and appreciate. 

And after this, the noble Salinger, and the even more noble Naomi Watts make the hardest decision of their lives (did you forget she was in the cast?) and go separate ways.   

Owen travelling to a new and beautiful location (now you can forget her), he finally tracks the villainous banker (who earlier covers his tracks with a brilliant move) and aims the gun, but before he can shoot, the villain drops dead.

The Italians are known for two things, Pizza and Revenge.
Bottom line, order a pizza and stay home or else..

The Confessions of a Shopaholic

Producer: Jerry Bruckheimer

Director: P.J. Hogan

 

Cast: Isla Fisher, Hugh Dancy

Aren’t confessions private? 

Let’s just forget this one then because the movie though painful, is more or less forgettable, once it is over. 

If you choose to watch it because it’s a romantic comedy, a light hearted easy flowing movie that is sweet, funny and enjoyable, well let me make a confession, it’s not. 

It’s sour, dour and boring because though the book the movie was based on, was funny, adorable and even original in places, the transfer of medium misplaced those places. 

The story is about this young woman, Becky Bloomwood, (played by a much older one) who is a graduate and aspires to be a journalist. 

By the title, the obvious deduction is this woman is addicted to shopping, and what isn’t is that she is essentially a talented writer and uses excellent metaphors and is also prone to insecurity, of all types. 

She aims to write for one magazine and ends up writing for another purely by chance.

The sheer good luck continues and she becomes a household scarf, I mean name and gains tremendous popularity, all in the span of a couple of articles. 

At about the same time she gets her first pay check, she is famous, has her extra handsome and supportive boss (Dancy) falling for her, has to go to her best friend’s wedding (now, that is a romantic comedy!), is attending therapy for her shopping issues, has a huge debt and a mean debt collector stalking her and is invited to a TV show, phew! 

With all this going on in her life, things get tangled and messy, and its rock bottom time for Isla Fisher, for the character played by her.

Once there, things start looking up, and in a matter of frames it does.

The confession’s over and there is a concussion, happens when you hit your head so hard. If the movie was targeted at women and girls, here goes another confession, we like cute guys, sweet lines and romance, not chaos exuding actresses, meaningless platitudes and bad adaptations of girly novels.

Movies..an excuse in more ways than one.

The first review was written on March 6th 2009

Thought it was too soon, to post on the same day is inconsistent, considering the reputation I had to live upto, therefore to make up for it posting this old one along with the other two latesht ones!

Film: Pink Panther 2

Cast: Steve Martin, Andy Garcia, John Cleese, Emily Mortimer, Jeremy Irons, Aishwarya Rai Bachhan

Original Music Score: Cristopher Beck

Director: Harald Zwart

Producer: Robert Simonds

End of a stressed out day or week? Need a little cheering up? This is the movie you ought to see.

Revolving around the famous Inspector Clouseau who is not as stupid as he seems and on the contrary more ingenious than the smartest of his contemporaries, this is a very old fictional series that’s been made into cartoons, movies, TV Serials and movies again, spanning 4 decades. 

This is meant to be a sequel to the one made in 2006 (which it fails!) and is outrightly funny and whacky, filled with comic stunts that are signature Steve Martin, be it tumbling down the chimney or interrogating the Pope himself.

Throw in the clichéd LOVE Triangle and a little spice in the form of our very own Barbie Doll cum representative to Hollywood; we have a thoroughly entertaining combination.

With a series of thefts across countries and continents, and with very little hope of recovering them, a team of the world’s best detectives and sleuths is formed to be headed by the bumbling Frenchman, Inspector Clouseau,  and after running in the wrong direction, they finally outcaste him.

As expected, in this moment of professional grief, he also faces his personal fears but nevertheless sticks to his convictions and eventually finds the missing clue in time to establish himself as the greatest detective ever.

The music is as always catchy and the trademark detective tune that turns the audience into chorus has still not lost its charm.

Though it's a pretty good script and a fair enough screenplay, with fillers at the right time, it isn't even half as good as the original Peter Sellers film. The only other gripe with the movie was that Jeremy Irons was mostly wasted and that as far as duplicates go, it’s not good enough.

But if all you want is a few laughs and a dinner afterwards, this certainly fits the bill.