My Favorite Movies

There is plenty that can be said about "Braveheart" which was release in 1995. It is the story of William Wallace's campaign against the British in order to secure the freedom for Scotland. Mel Gibson, who played Wallace, won both best director Oscar as well as best picture. the film has a beautiful music score by James Homer, who went on two years a music score Oscar for composing "Titanic." Six years after the film is released to theatres, it's still fresh in people's minds today. It's a powerful three-hour epic and I urge you to see this film. You're going to love it.






Mel gibson the true hero of all times.A true oscar film full of quality.

Ben-Hur has recently been ranked as one of the one hundred greatest films of all time, and with good reason. Forty years later it remains one of the classics of cinema, as well as a witness for the redeeming power of Jesus Christ.

Based on the famous novel, the film tells the story of Judah Ben-Hur, a wealthy Jewish prince living during the time of Christ who is wrongly accused of murdering the Roman governor. [The governor, however, is not killed during the incident of the falling tiles. He recovers. This is important because it means Judah is sentenced to die in the galleys not only for an accident, but for an accident which does not even result in permanent injury.] Judah, his mother and daughter are imprisoned for the crime by Judah's childhood friend, the Roman Masala. Judah is sentenced to be a galley slave and swears revenge on Masala. As Judah works to exact his revenge, a young carpenter begins his ministry. The film's story dovetails into a climatic confrontation between Judah and Masala, until finally Judah learns that love triumphs over hate, becoming a follower of Jesus, the crucified carpenter.

This film is one of the great G-rated biblical epics that Hollywood used to produce, and I highly recommend it. A few scenes of violence may be intense for young children, but little of it is graphic. Overall, the film's message of peace through salvation in Christ makes this a wonderful film and a testimony to non-believers.

Laughing in the face of adversity is the best way to triumph over it. This is a sentiment I share with Roberto Benigni, director of Life is Beautiful (La Vita è Bella) the only movie to ever make me laugh out loud and leave me with sad tears in my eyes.

The film has two parts to it. In the first part Benigni, who also co-wrote the script with Vincenzo Cerami, plays Guido, a waiter working for his uncle who owns a hotel in Italy. He keeps bumping (literally) into his principessa Dora (Nicoletta Braschi). By staging an elaborate (and humourous!) series of events which make it appear as if the Virgin Mary herself is cooperating with him, Guido rescues Dora from marrying the stodgy town clerk. Life appears to be going fairly well for Guido even though Mussolini has just signed a pact with Hitler to implement his Nazi policies with regards to Jews. Flash forward five years later and we see Guido owning a bookstore he manages with his wife and son Giosué. It's almost the end of World War II, but that makes the position of Jewish-Italians all the more precipitous. One day, the Germans come to take away Guido and his son. His wife, not being Jewish, chooses to go along.

Right from the start, Guido takes a huge risk by treating the whole exercise as a joke. He explains to his son that they've just bought tickets to take part in a contest to win a tank (not a toy one, but a real one, thought of which lights up Giosué's eyes) and proceeds to concoct an imaginative and humourous explanation for the happenings around, and to, them in the German concentration camp.

All of the things Guido asks Giosué to do are in the interest of saving Giosué. However, given Guido's personality depicted in the first half of the film, I don't think he could've acted differently even if wanted to. While the first part of the movie illustrates Benigni's talents as a slapstick comedian, some of the best humour is in the German camp. Here, Guido is not only funny to his son (and the audience) but he must also eke out humour in situations where people's lives are stake. We see Guido making a joke out of a German officer's instructions to the prisoners---a situation where a misunderstanding on the part of the prisoner could lead to their deaths.

Some may find this comparison sacrilegious, but Benigni reminds me of Jim Carrey in many respects. From his "performance" at the Oscars (climbing on chairs and rivalling Whoopi Goldberg in his one-liners), I assume Benigni very much lives his life the way he portrays Guido in Life is Beautiful, always cheerful, goofy, and smiling at and in the face of misfortune. Benigni's acting is terrific and believable. (As I write this, it's well-known that Life is Beautiful won the Oscar not only for Best Foreign Film, but Nicola Piovani won an Oscar for the Best Original Dramatic Score and Benigni won the Best Actor award.) The chemistry between Benigni and Braschi, who happens to Benigni's real-life wife, is excellent. The cinematography, the direction, and the pacing are all superb, except for the odd scene where Guido gets lost in the prison camp (which isn't that big) and stumbles across a pile of decaying corpses that have been through the gas showers. It is a jarring scene that simply does not fit in with the rest of the film.

The movie has been criticised as an exercise in holocaust revisionism. In my view, the fantasy Benigni creates (and it is a fantasy) is done primarily to enable us to laugh at one of the most terrible atrocities to occur in human history.

It's debatable how much children (or anyone) should be shielded from real-life horrors (I'm of the belief that it's generally better to know sooner than later), but in this fable, Guido's gamble (with a high risk) pays off. The emotional ending which made me cry is all the more powerful because up till the end, we do not know what is really going to happen. And given that most of the films I see comes out of Hollywood, I was shaking my head in disbelief long after the movie ended. This is the kind of a movie I've waited for a long time to be made and in my view deserved the Oscars for all the categories it was nominated for but didn't win. In so much as comparisons can be made, Life is Beautiful is a better picture than Shakespeare in Love and Benigni does a better job of direction than Spielberg in Saving Private Ryan.

here have been numerous documentaries and dramatic productions focusing on the Holocaust, including a television mini-series which many consider to be the definitive work. As a result, in deciding to film Schindler's List, director Steven Spielberg (Jurassic Park) set an imposing task for himself. His vision needed to differ from that of the film makers who preceded him, yet the finished product had to remain faithful to the unforgettable images which represent the legacy of six million massacred Jews. Those who see this motion picture will witness Spielberg's success.

The film opens in September of 1939 in Krakow, Poland, with the Jewish community under increasing pressure from the Nazis. Into this tumult comes Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a Nazi businessman interested in obtaining Jewish backing for a factory he wishes to build. He makes contact with Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley), an accountant, to arrange financial matters. For a while, there is no interest and nothing happens.

March 1941. The Krakow Jewish community has been forced to live in "the Ghetto", where money no longer has any meaning. Several elders agree to invest in Schindler's factory and the DEF (Deutsche Emailwarenfabrik) is born - a place where large quantities of pots are manufactured. To do the work, Schindler hires Jews (because they're cheaper than Poles), and the German army becomes his biggest customer.

March 1943. Germany's intentions towards the Jews are no longer a secret. The Ghetto is "liquidated", with the survivors being herded into the Plaszow Forced Labor Camp. Many are executed, and still others are shipped away by train, never to return. During this time, Schindler has managed to ingratiate himself with the local commander, Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), a Nazi who kills Jews for sport. Using his relationship with Goeth, Schindler begins to secretly campaign to help the Jews, saving men, women, and children from certain death.

Spielberg elected to film this motion picture in black-and-white, and it's impossible to argue with his choice. Director of Photography Janusz Kaminski has made effective use of shadow and light, meticulously limiting the application of hue. The opening scene is in color, as is the closing sequence (which features the surviving "Schindler Jews", each accompanied by the actor who played their character, placing a stone on their savior's grave). There are also two instances when color is allowed to bleed into the blacks, whites, and grays. One little girl's jacket appears red so that she stands out from the masses, and a pair of candles burn with orange flames. When color is used, it makes a point and an impression.

Schindler's List gives us three major stories and a host of minor ones. First and foremost, it tells the tale of the Holocaust, presenting new images of old horrors. These are as ghastly and realistic as anything previously filmed, and Spielberg emphasizes the brutality of the situation by not pulling punches when it comes to gore. The blood, inky rather than crimson in stark black-and-white, fountains when men and women are shot in the head or through the neck.

The second story is that of Oskar Schindler, the Nazi businessman who saved 1200 Jews from death. Schindler starts out as a self-centered manufacturer, concerned only about making money. He hires Jews because they're cheap, not because he likes them. But his perspective changes, and he risks losing everything to save as many lives as he can. His eventual lament that he couldn't save more is heartbreaking.

The third story belongs to Amon Goeth, the Nazi commander of Krakow, a man who teeters on the brink of madness. Despite his intense hatred for Jews, he is inexplicably attracted to his Jewish housekeeper, Helen Hirsch (Embeth Davidtz). Disgusted by his feelings, he lashes out at her with a display of violence that is almost Scorsese-like in its blunt presentation. As written, Goeth could easily have become a conscienceless monster, but Spielberg works carefully to show unexpected depth and complexity to his character.

Often, the experiences of the minor characters provide the most lasting images. Helen's story is memorable, as is the plight of young Danka Dresner and her mother as they strive to avoid death while staying together. There's a Jewish couple that marries in the Plaszow camp, even though their chances of survival are dim, and a Rabbi who survives a close encounter with a Nazi gun.

Of course the Holocaust images are grim, but scenes of mass graves and exhumed bodies are not unique to Schindler's List. While it's impossible to deny their power, potentially more distubing are the instances of callous, individual murder. Spielberg doesn't spare his audience when it comes to sudden violence or the dehumanizing factors involved in such events. After all, Jews were viewed as "vermin." Schindler's List is replete with moments like this.

The acting is uniformly excellent. Liam Neeson's Schindler is shown in all his complexity, and his transformation is played with studied control. This is no sudden reversal of philosophy, but a matter of conscience that slowly dawns on the man. With a keen sense of Schindler's character, Neeson depicts the metamorphosis from self-centered businessman to driven messiah.

Ben Kingsley, whose Gandhi transfixed audiences years ago, has the movie's most understated role -- one that he acts with simple sincerity. Equally as impressive is Embeth Davidtz, who snares the viewer's attention during her limited screen time as Helen Hirsch, the object of Amon Goeth's twisted affection. Speaking of Goeth, Ralph Fiennes stuns with his intricate, savage portrayal of the Nazi commander, a man fascinated by power and murder. Fiennes' Goeth has the rare ability to both mesmerize and repulse, and this is a performance that will long be remembered.

Despite the grisly subject matter, this movie is essentially about uncovering a kernel of hope and dignity in the midst of a monstrous tragedy. The story of Oskar Schindler's sacrifices for the Jews sets this apart from other Holocaust dramas. Uncompromising in its portrayal of good, evil, and all the shades in between, Schindler's List offers a clear view of human nature laid bare: hatred, greed, lust, envy, anger, and, most important of all, empathy and love. Because this film touches us so deeply, the catharsis has a power that few -- if any -- other moments in film history can match. And that's what establishes this as a transcendent motion picture experience.

A Beautiful Mind is a beautifully written, effectively acted, and meticulously crafted effort that is likely to remind many viewers of a simple axiom: a movie doesn't have to be groundbreaking to be compelling. Originality is a prized commodity because there is so little of it in Hollywood these days, but, when filmmakers do such a skillful job with familiar elements, their efforts should be acknowledged. Affecting without being overtly manipulative, A Beautiful Mind tells the life story of John Nash, a Nobel prize winner who struggled through most of his adult life with schizophrenia. As directed by Ron Howard, this becomes a tale not only of one man's battle to overcome his own disability, but of the overreaching power of love - a theme that has been embraced by films as diverse as It's a Wonderful Life and Rocky.

A Beautiful Mind may have been developed to be a crowd-pleaser as well as a tear-jerker, but genuine craft is evident in the way the pieces were assembled. The movie never becomes cloying, nor does it threaten to drown us beneath an outpouring of false sentiment. This is no Patch Adams, filled with saccharine-coated artificiality. The characters are effectively drawn and their plight touches an emotional chord. A Beautiful Mind offers a catharsis without insulting the intelligence. Sadly, too few movies these days can make a similar claim. This film argues that there are still instances when Hollywood-produced, big budget movies are worth a viewer's investment of time and money.

A Beautiful Mind purports to tell the true story of Professor John Nash (Russell Crowe), but, while the gross facts may be accurate, one must expect embellishment of the details. Narrative features are not constrained by the same rules that limit documentaries. We first meet Nash as a student at Princeton in 1947. He is brilliant but erratic - a mathematical genius who lacks social skills. He is aided in making it through those difficult years by his roommate, Charles (Paul Bettany). Years later, following an astounding breakthrough that revolutionizes economics, John is teaching at M.I.T. and doing code-breaking work for a shady government agent, William Parcher (Ed Harris). It's at this time that John meets, falls in love with, and marries Alicia (Jennifer Connelly). But his happy world soon starts to crumble. John is afflicted with paranoid hallucinations; by the time he is taken to a mental hospital under the care of the mysterious Dr. Rosen (Christopher Plummer), he is diagnosed as having an advanced case of schizophrenia.

For Russell Crowe, the winner of last year's Best Actor Oscar, this is another opportunity to broaden his range. Crowe successfully buries his personality beneath Nash's, allowing the character to come to the fore (a necessity, considering the actor's current load of off-screen baggage). Much as he did in The Insider, Crowe shows no difficulty inhabiting the skin of a real-life individual who has a stronger intellect than physique. And, when it comes to the sequences depicting Nash battling his demons, Crowe's performance is utterly convincing. Meanwhile, Jennifer Connelly is luminous as Alicia. Although the showier performance belongs to Crowe, it is Connelly's complex work, depicting a woman torn by love for and fear of the same man, that elevates the film to a higher level. The actress was unjustly overlooked for Requiem for a Dream; hopefully, the Academy will not repeat that mistake. Solid support is provided by Ed Harris and Christopher Plummer.

A viewer certainly doesn't have to be a mathematical expert to appreciate what A Beautiful Mind offers, although those with a strong left-brain component may relate better to John Nash than right-brainers. The movie tosses mathematical theories and theorems in the audience's direction, but explains them simply and lucidly; no one is going to become lost or bored. A Beautiful Mind isn't about mathematics except as a symbol. It's about human frailty and the ability to triumph over it. Nash could just as easily be a doctor, a lawyer, or a construction worker and the essence of the story would not change.

The strength of the writing and production values elevate A Beautiful Mind far above "disease of the week movie" quality. At the core of the picture lies the relationship between John and Alicia, and the tribulations that the strength of their bond allows them to overcome. On one occasion, a friend asks Alicia how she can continue to stay with her stricken husband, and she replies with a succinct explanation that everyone who has ever been in love will understand. A Beautiful Mind defies the conventional Hollywood wisdom that love is passion and romance. For John and Alicia, it is painful, heartbreaking work. And, while hearts and flowers are great for a fantasy, this is the kind of expression of emotion that touches a deeper chord.

Bombays slums , a part of India's economic capital is bombay ,it loves , it sleeps ,drinks , and it dies with every present beating moment .The protagonist of the story Jamal Malik , shows us that everything we do is written and that if u love a person love her the most effective way you can,Jamal loved Latika and saw that her beau was molested ,raped by many still he loved her and when the polic constable called latika the "bitch" of the slum he went on to hit him.This is the way one needs to love a person and that love is not so easy .Brilliantly compiled with questions and answers and the story of a dharavi slumdog who makes us cry ,laugh and finally cement a picture in our monotonous life style .Many oscar winning stories bring life onto us and this does with characters brought out from slums , it shows the life of an indian slumdog ,his journey of escape and victory ,his lover who is exploited by all even his own brother , a quizmaster who shows his vested interest and does everything in not letting the boy win and "Allah" or "God" who finally gives him the last laugh .Is this life ? we think at the intermission of the movie and at the end we think that that this is really life .

And it gives a fact of the Indian philosophy that yes everything is written and destined .The word destiny used in the cinema is something which is used with wit which makes it even more dramatic and the last question when Jamaal answers it with a guess and chooses option A) and on the other part his brother who thought himself to be number one of the three musketeers dies t cements a fact that the three musketeers could never stay with each other.Thus placing the fact that Jamaals wish of his group the musketeers being three was never possible.
Lastly the film ends with a happy ending , and danny boyle's magic is seen throughout the film he is like julius caesar in shakespeare's julius caesar , his spirit is throughout the film .Th music is so so ,rahman has produced much better tracks but this is a global reckoning for a masterpiece of a man like rahman.and i wud give it 4.5/5 . To sum up I will say "Jai ho".

The Ten Commandments" is great. De Mille has found the formula. Simply list the rules of human conduct, then go ahead and break 'em and see what happens. It makes a marvelous sin-and-virtue melodrama of the oldest and best school.

The picture is divided, sixty-forty, into a prologue depicting the adventures of the Israelites before, during, and after the notable occasion on which the Tablets of Law arrived from heaven, and a less elaborate, but still more interesting modern story about good people, bad people, and worse people.

The prologue is where the expense was incurred. De Mille has spared nothing, except, possibly, imagination. Everything is so enormous your eyes pop with strain and excitement. One set, the City of Ramases, is unquestionably the most tremendous thing ever created for the cinema. A charge of a brigade of chariots across the desert is just too dangerous for words. And the carousal of the forgetful Israelites about the Calf of Gold is quite the most stupendous petting party ever petted.

But in two trick scenes is the high tide line reached. Moses arrives at the shore of the Red Sea. Close behind him and his following tribe comes the Egyptians. Moses stretches out his arms. With a terrifying bubbling and roaring and a sweep of surf the ocean divides into two tremendous masses of moving water, flanking a dry lane of earth. The Israelites, tiny specks in the immensity, make their way safely across. The Egyptian chariots arrive. Into the passageway they charge and then, like tow vast, amorphous glaciers, the walls of water leap together, and with frightful flying of bodies and foam and chariots the Egyptian are destroyed.

No, we don't know how it's done, but we do know it's marvelous. Neither do we know the inside dope on the equally remarkable stunt of having the Ten Commandments come to Moses on the mount out of fiery whirling balls of smoke and lava bigger than all outdoors. But that too, is good. Darned good.

The modern story concerns two brothers, one awfully good, the other contemptuous of the importance of the commandments. Naughty brother become rich and temoraraily gains the girl. God brother stays poor but honest. After a succession of perfectly lovely tragedies and misfortunes, the wages of sin are paid with interest, and Virtue is left to collect the leavings.

The performances of the players are almost uniformly fine. Theodore Roberts as Moses, however, is a trifle disappointing. From the Grand Old Man of Israel was just a step, but he took it with a slight limp. Rod La Rocque as the youthful villain definitely establishes himself as one of the very greatest players on the screen, and Leatrice Joy adds materially to her laurels.

The customary De Mille absurdities- such as dyeing the spectacular Red Sea and Exodus scenes in pale and wishy-washy colors- are discoverable, but they aren't frequent enough to do serious damage.

My best actor ,Tom hanks produces one of the undoubted performances,Forrest gump is not a film for the dumbos, it needs to be given to those who think and not just satiate themselves with nitwit films.It is a film to watch out forI've never met anyone like Forrest Gump in a movie before, and for that matter I've never seen a movie quite like "Forrest Gump." Any attempt to describe him will risk making the movie seem more conventional than it is, but let me try. It's a comedy, I guess. Or maybe a drama. Or a dream.

The screenplay by Eric Roth has the complexity of modern fiction, not the formulas of modern movies. Its hero, played by Tom Hanks, is a thoroughly decent man with an IQ of 75, who manages between the 1950s and the 1980s to become involved in every major event in American history. And he survives them all with only honesty and niceness as his shields.

And yet this is not a heartwarming story about a mentally retarded man. That cubbyhole is much too small and limiting for Forrest Gump. The movie is more of a meditation on our times, as seen through the eyes of a man who lacks cynicism and takes things for exactly what they are. Watch him carefully and you will understand why some people are criticized for being "too clever by half." Forrest is clever by just exactly enough.

Tom Hanks may be the only actor who could have played the role.

I can't think of anyone else as Gump, after seeing how Hanks makes him into a person so dignified, so straight-ahead. The per formance is a breathtaking balancing act between comedy and sadness, in a story rich in big laughs and quiet truths.

Forrest is born to an Alabama boardinghouse owner (Sally Field) who tries to correct his posture by making him wear braces, but who never criticizes his mind. When Forrest is called "stupid," his mother tells him, "Stupid is as stupid does," and Forrest turns out to be incapable of doing anything less than profound. Also, when the braces finally fall from his legs, it turns out he can run like the wind.

That's how he gets a college football scholarship, in a life story that eventually becomes a running gag about his good luck. Gump the football hero becomes Gump the Medal of Honor winner in Vietnam, and then Gump the Ping-Pong champion, Gump the shrimp boat captain, Gump the millionaire stockholder (he gets shares in a new "fruit company" named Apple Computer), and Gump the man who runs across America and then retraces his steps.

It could be argued that with his IQ of 75 Forrest does not quite understand everything that happens to him. Not so. He understands everything he needs to know, and the rest, the movie suggests, is just surplus. He even understands everything that's important about love, although Jenny, the girl he falls in love with in grade school and never falls out of love with, tells him, "Forrest, you don't know what love is." She is a stripper by that time.

The movie is ingenious in taking Forrest on his tour of recent American history. The director, Robert Zemeckis, is experienced with the magic that special effects can do (his credits include the "Back to the Future" movies and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit"), and here he uses computerized visual legerdemain to place Gump in historic situations with actual people.

Forrest stands next to the schoolhouse door with George Wallace, he teaches Elvis how to swivel his hips, he visits the White House three times, he's on the Dick Cavett show with John Lennon, and in a sequence that will have you rubbing your eyes with its realism, he addresses a Vietnam-era peace rally on the Mall in Washington. Special effects are also used in creating the character of Forrest's Vietnam friend Lt. Dan (Gary Sinise), a Ron Kovic type who quite convincingly loses his legs.

Using carefully selected TV clips and dubbed voices, Zemeckis is able to create some hilarious moments, as when LBJ examines the wound in what Forrest describes as "my butt-ox." And the biggest laugh in the movie comes after Nixon inquires where Forrest is staying in Washington, and then recommends the Watergate. (That's not the laugh, just the setup.) As Forrest's life becomes a guided tour of straight-arrow America, Jenny (played by Robin Wright) goes on a parallel tour of the counterculture. She goes to California, of course, and drops out, tunes in, and turns on. She's into psychedelics and flower power, antiwar rallies and love-ins, drugs and needles. Eventually it becomes clear that between them Forrest and Jenny have covered all of the landmarks of our recent cultural history, and the accommodation they arrive at in the end is like a dream of reconciliation for our society. What a magical movie.