Watched L.A Confidential ('97) yesterday. We thought we would watch it for about half an hour and then hit the sack but we ended up watching till the end without pausing the video for a moment. "Awesome" is not good enough a word to describe this movie. Wonder how Titanic was given Oscar instead of this. It is definitely on my top ten list.
Don't miss it, that's all I've gotta say!
Once we start off on the topic of movies or books, I think we can go on discussing the merits and shortcomings endlessly and opinions vary as much as the surnames in a phonebook :).
Now, that said, I can comfortably call “The Departed” as one of the most illogical movies made and vehemently so because it is being praised as this year’s likely Oscar winning movie. We usually check IMDB for any movie review before watching and this time too we did the same but it turned out that this movie did not deserve all the praise it has got.
Well, the movie goes something like this… the state police force is trying to destroy one of the top crime gangs in Boston led by Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson).
Willy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), straight out of the Police Acadamy is assigned as an undercover cop to infiltrate the mob while Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), a criminal is planted into the police department as an informer to Costello. Both these spies rise to a positions of power gaining trust and respect from their new bosses. But soon, the mob and the police get to know that there's a mole in their midst and both Willy and Sullivan need to expose the other to save their skins.
Until this point,I should say the movie was gripping…
But the movie comes crashing down and all hopes of a logical conclusion are shattered when they show Damon discovering that Nicholson is after all an FBI agent (!!??!!) planted to find out leaches in the police force.
Wait a minute, was all that brutal, in-your-face violence and raw dialogues just a cover( ???!!) And why in the world is the whole Massachusetts State police force chasing a man who is an FBI agent??!! They have done enough Cops serials, i guess :)
To top this all, Damon who is practically raised by Nicholson gets tipped off for being a mole (???!!)
Thank God,they atleast killed everyone in the end, so that way there would be no loose ends.
Yessir!, Jack Nicholson’s whirling devilish portrayal of an untouchable, perverted mob boss is reason alone to see "The Departed" and Dicaprio and Matt Damon are as good as always. So if you can ignore the glaring obnoxious faults in the story-line, you can still enjoy watching it.
Boy, I would laugh my head off if this movie picks an Oscar for Best Picture.
It has almost been two years since I read the book “To kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee and today I finally watched the screen adaptation of this Pulitzer winning novel.The movie excels the book with delightful naration and perfect cast.
The story is set in Alabama during the times of depression where racial discrimination was the norm of the day. It tells us about a lawyer who dares to defend an innocent black man charged with rape of a white woman as seen through the eyes of his little girl Scout.
The sleepy town of Maycomb finds itself ensnared in a moral trial of Tom Robinson, a young black man falsely accused of raping an abused and ignorant white woman. Scout and Jem's widowed father,Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) is a deeply principled man and is appointed to defend Tom. It is a forgone conclusion that he would be charged for the crime and stands no chance of justice from an all-white jury. Though Atticus proves beyond doubt that Tom could never have done the crime yet he is sent to the gallows and even before Atticus can plead a second time, Tom gets shot in an escape attempt. The children come to respect their father for his values even while the villagers turn hostile.
Intertwined with this is the story of the children's encounters with their insane neighbor Boo Radley and how in the end he saves their lives from the blind hatred of the white woman’s father.
It is said that Harper Lee went through similar situations in her life and many characters in this story are drawn from her life.
Racism may be irrelevant in a world of today but sadly prejudice and injustice still are not.
Another novel on the same lines but more vehement and much more longer is "Roots" by Alex Haley...but the problem is this was made into episodes for television and I wonder if I can sit and watch all of it.
