14. The late Italian director Sergio Leone's US masterpiece "Once upon a time in America" (1984): A great swansong
Not many realize that Sergio Leone was offered the chance to direct Puzo's The Godfather but opted to make Once Upon a Time in America. They say he regretted this decision later in life--but it would be pertinent to know why someone like Leone would have made such a decision.
Any Leone fan would know the importance the director gives to music, structure of the story, the importance of money and how it corrupts many values. All these elements are underlined in this gangster film. In Coppola's work, the story afforded more importance to social details, character details and fabulous camera-work. Both works are monumental--but I preferred Leone's work, truncated to less than 4 hours than his original cut of 6 hours.[Read More]
Posted at 06:04PM Oct 01, 2007 by zubinabraham in Personal | Comments[0]
9. Paolo Sorrentino's Italian film "Le conseguenze dell'amore" (Consequences of Love) (2004)--Laugh and then reflect on why you laughed
I saw this interesting film back to back with the Chinese/French film 2046 at the 2005 Dubai Film festival. Both were intelligent works made the same year (2004/2005). Both had the main characters living in a "hotel". In both films, the hotel is more a metaphor of exile than a location. Both dealt with love between a man and a woman. Both had wonderful music and riveting performances. What a coincidence and yet how the two films differ in treatment of the subject! Somewhere at the beginning of the film, a man walking on a pavement turns to look at a woman and in doing so hits a lamp post. The audience erupts in a volcano of laughter [Read More]
Posted at 06:02PM Sep 01, 2007 by zubinabraham in Personal | Comments[0]
37. Italian Frederico Fellini's "Le Notti di Cabiria" (Nights of Cabiria) (1957): Christian Marxism of Fellini and Pasolini
It would be far too simplistic to feel that the film merely presents an optimist's commitment to live and enjoy life in an imperfect world. Nights of Cabiria has always intrigued me among the many Fellini films that I have seen—-it is great cinema that asks more questions than it provides answers. It's a fascinating cocktail of Christian Marxism of Fellini and Pasolini—an elegiac social and religious commentary. Noted director Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote the screenplay of the intriguing film. Years after it was made, one realizes that the film was not as simplistic as it appears. It offers considerable questions for the viewer beyond the obvious.
Question one—who is the altruist who provides alms in the night to the wretched of the earth? [Read More]
Posted at 06:01PM Aug 01, 2007 by zubinabraham in Personal | Comments[0]
35. Canadian David Cronenberg's "Spider" (2002): What is real? Detection within the world of the insane mind
Insanity has been captured on cinema in myriad ways. David Cronenberg leads the viewer into the world of the unsettled mind in a manner few directors have been able to do in the past. And the film from a medical standpoint is rather accurate… Many of my friends swear by A beautiful mind, which though based on a real living person, I find to be the typical Hollywood dose of wide-eyed awe of a personality with capabilities that tower over the ordinary—in this case a mathematician tottering on the thin line ...[Read More]
Posted at 05:47PM Jun 01, 2007 by zubinabraham in Personal | Comments[0]
Latest posts from 'Movies Sans Frontiers'- Jugu Abraham.
Movies that make you think
'A selection of intelligent cinema from around the world that entertains and provokes a mature viewer to reflect on what the viewer saw, long after the film ends--extending the entertainment value.'
http://moviessansfrontiers.blogspot.com/[Read More]
Posted at 10:46AM Jun 01, 2007 by zubinabraham in Personal | Comments[0]
36. US director Terence Mallick's "Days of Heaven" (1978): Seeing heaven by twilight on earth
Director Terrence Malick strides the world of cinema as a colossus in the company of Soviet directors Andrei Tarkovsky (www.nostalghia.com), Sergei Parajanov (www.parajanov.com), and Grigori Kozintsev. After viewing Days of Heaven for the third time in 20 years, the film touches me the same way as did the works of the three aforementioned Soviet filmmakers.
The title is from Deuteronomy 11:21:
"That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the Lord swore unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth."
Technically the movie can be appreciated by each of the three elements that build the final compound product. [Read More]
Posted at 12:37AM Jun 01, 2007 by zubinabraham in Personal | Comments[0]