Look Up For Hope

SUPER 8 (2011)

If I have to broadly name one theme that I subconsciously look for in movies, just one that makes me want to watch movies and return to them, it would be “innocence”. No, not because I find it cute or any other sappy equivalent. I'm talking about the innocence of childhood. The concept. The childlike wonder. The make-believe. That there is more to this world than what the eye can see. Luckily, children in movies can see those as well. If I have to look up at the screen and go on a ride for 2-3 odd hours, this is how I would define the ride fun. It is similar to a lot of characters in Spielberg’s movies that look up at the sky, be it to bid farewell to an alien or face the daunting might of a dinosaur. The awe, the awe. 

I Was Once Like You Are Now

REAL STEEL (2011)

I knew this would be a good movie when I read the name Richard Matheson in the opening credits. (Spielberg and Zemeckis too) He wrote the original story "Steel" on which Real Steel is very loosely based. If you don't know who this science-fiction legend is, look him up. Read some of his stuff. Two of my favorite movie adaptations of his stories are Steven Spielberg's own Duel (1971) and The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). He even wrote I Am Legend which has been made into better movies twice before the Will Smith one. "Steel" has been made into a Twilight Zone episode I was told, which I haven't seen. Although I have seen "Nightmare at 20, 000 feet", written by Matheson as well, one of the most iconic Twilight Zone episodes. Even Ace Ventura couldn't resist that one.

Free Man in Paris

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (2011)

Midnight in Paris is a movie which made me gush from start to finish. It must be rare when a film makes you perpetually exult. My eyes were moist almost throughout. I felt like Mia Farrow from The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), the last shot where she is watching Top Hat (1935), the twinkle in her eyes. This film matches the magic of films like The Purple Rose of Cairo and Top Hat. It is a feel-good film like no other. The feeling of nostalgia never transcended from screen to viewer as incisively and as beautifully as this. If you saw me watching this film (that would be mind-numbingly boring, I know) you wouldn’t find it difficult in the least to notice a constant twinkle in at least one of my eyes. My fingers were itching to rhapsodize my experience in words. But if I reveal much of the film, I will be corroding your rendezvous. To put it in a nutshell, it’s a swell time at the movies! (I had to use the word 'swell', I just had to)

Scream Without Raising Your Voice

DRIVE (2011)

Once in a while you get to watch a movie which enraptures your senses, puts you in a trance, shocks you and stirs your soul. This one does a wee bit more than that. It even makes you feel. Nicolas Winding Refn won Best Director at Cannes this year. Half an hour into the movie, I understood why he won it over names like Terrence Malick, Aki Kaurismaki, Lars von Trier, The Dardenne Brothers and Pedro Almodovar. Of course they have all won a Cannes prize before (for their film or for directing) but you mustn't obfuscate the issue at hand, my faithful reader. Refn who's my object of appreciation here, uses the tools of filmmaking and crafts a film that is perfect in every way. (Relatively, of course) (Rolls eyes). This is film directing at its finest.