THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES (SPANISH)

An EXCELLENT movie. A crime thriller fused with a subtle love story..

Set in Argentina, over a period of three decades, it covers the investigation into a brutal crime by an investigation team consisting of a poor, sullen investigator who has fallen head over heels for his boss - an upper class assistant judge educated at Cornell - and an alcoholic assistant investigator.

Populated by "passionate" characters played competently by stunning leads, this Academy award winning movie straddling multiple genres is A HIGHLY SATISFYING WATCH !

Thank you very much Visalatchy Rose for the recommendation !

GO GOA GONE

A different attempt for Bollywood.. It has some genuinely funny moments.. Kunal Khemu is impressive although Saif's phoney Russian act is just that & is contrived.. Overall, a good watch if you can put up with a bit of gore !

KNOWING

A sci-fi movie that is built around the eternal debate between determinism & fee will (& even random occurrences)..

In 1959, a school girl, apparently disturbed by unnatural whispers that she hears continuously puts a sheet of paper filled with seemingly random numbers in a time capsule buried in the school yard which is opened fifty years later. The paper is received by the son of a widower (Nicholas Cage) who teaches astrophysics at MIT.

Strange things begin to happen & the professor accidentally finds the possible meaning behind those seemingly random numbers.

The movie builds up nicely to what I felt was an underwhelming, albeit visually stunning finale ..

Nevertheless, the movie is worth a watch !

BARBARA (GERMAN)

This year's Oscar entry from Germany is an edgy political thriller set in East Germany of 80s.

Nina Hoss plays the titular role. She is a doctor from Berlin banished to work in a small hospital in the provinces as punishment for her attempts to emigrate to the West.. Despite being choked by the omnipresent & omniscient secret police - Stasi - & surrounded by people she cannot trust, Nina Hoss brilliantly personifies a defiance that is as resilient as it is understated.

The movie is almost completely devoid of any background score. But, the silences, natural sounds, even the door bell ringing & clock ticking have been used to such great effect to underline the oppressive existence.

A tour de force in film-making !

GOODBYE SOLO

Another wonderful movie from Ramin Bharani (the director of Man Push Cart). It tells the story of interaction between a middle-aged Senegalese taxi driver Solo in a small town in USA and William, his aged (& apparently weathered) white passenger who presents him with a curious deal.

Solo & William are a study in stark contrasts. While Solo is loquacious, needs no reason to beam his warm smile at anyone and is genuinely warm to everybody (especially his passengers), William is copybook taciturn & guarded to the extent that we end up knowing almost nothing about him at all. Although he is initially annoyed with Solo's advances to connect to him, he is unable to resist the genuine warmth of the taxi driver and opens to him a bit (just a bit). Solo's has a Hispanic wife & cute stepdaughter. He is studying hard to realise his dream of becoming a flight attendant. William seems to be winding up his affairs in every sense of the word.

The beauty of the movie is the simplicity with which the interaction between these two are captured and the gravity in the relationship which engrosses the viewer. The director ably harnesses the emotinal energy in many a silent moments and the eyes of the lead actors which are pregnant with several unanswered questions and unuttered answers. 


A beauty from the realms of bare-bones movie making !!

MAN PUSH CART

A Slice-of-life movie .. it tells the story of a former Pakistani singer who is toiling to eke out a decent living in New York by vending beverages & bagels in a push cart..

Abjuring any cliches or melodrama, this movie sensitively captures the daily rigours of this widower who is still haunted by his lost love and is struggling hard everyday to realise his dream to take the responsibility for his three year old son who is with his in-laws..

The frustrations, aspirations & melancholy of the protaganist are captured authentically .. This gently paced movie draws you in slowly and gives you an up-close account of a protaganist who represents a class of people we come across daily and momentarily co-habit our lives soon to be forgotten till the next momentary meeting..

Poetic, Sad, Authentic & above all BEAUTIFUL !!!

THE SILENCE (GERMAN)

Two murders separated by more than two decades.. committed at the same place .. victims sharing similar profiles..

A very different thriller, devoid of gore & kinetics associated with the genre... grows on you gradually ... A whydunit instead of the regular whodunit..

Moving at a meditative pace which could border on the glacial, this thriller plumbs great depths into the minds of its characters sinking in melancholy ..

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED !!