My Favorite Movies

funny, heartwarming, with well-planned snatches of historical detail. Love the soundtrack too.

Great pacing, hilarious and mood lifting.

Funny yet tragic. The music is beautiful.

Funny yet heart breaking.

In a class of its own

Great storytelling using using words and visuals. Hilarious and charming. Great cast.

Having read the available synopsis for Citizen Dog (2004), I walked into the cinema expecting to see some pretty weird stuff like people walking around with tails. What was presented were scenes, grotesque or fantastical, reminiscent of Dali but with exuberant saturated colours.

"It's like an experimental art project," says the director (Wasit Sasanatieng) who graduated from the Faculty of Decorative Arts at Silpakorn University. [source: The Nation]

For a simple story of a boy seeking romance, the movie is over-embellished with quirky snapshots of Asian idiosyncracies taken to metaphorical extremes. It skims lightly over a cesspool of urban troubles and myths - reincarnation, pollution, environmentalism, idealism and dreams, over-dependence on mobile technology, materialism, rural-urban migration, isolation and loneliness, de-personalisation, illiteracy and of course love - while re-iterating its over-arching mantra of being content and not be overly-persistent in seeking desires that are a lost cause. Along the way, meet and accept other urban individuals as they are no matter how surreal, or contradicatory their opinions/actions are to yours. It is this open-heartedness of Pod, the protagonist, that pushes the story along to its happy ending for all the friends he made in Bangkok. In so doing, it seems the movie is also coming to terms with and accepts Bangkok's many flaws. Yes, underneath all the mambo-jumbo Citizen Dog is an un-abashed celebration of Bangkok, its culture, its little people and its icons (read sponsor Singha beer).

To achieve the movie's rhetoric, Wasit pulled no stops when it comes to employing different cinematic techniques - "computer graphics, special lenses and camera angles, puppetry, innovative props and colour dying, his signature technique." - making it a visual fest.

In the end, Citizen Dog, with its vivid retro colour, MTV music sequences and fantastical visual imagery, is a nostalgic reminder of the days when I was still doing visual communication lessons in school. You may or may not agree with the director's message in the movie. But it doesn't matter. We all have our own tails to bear.

The movie may seem a bit too long for its own good and slightly cheesy at times, but it is still a refreshing change from all the slick Hollywood blockbusters in cinemas.

This film is a fusion of the talents of Jean-Dominique Bauby (used to be editor of French Elle magazine) and Julian Schnabel (American-born artist and painter who has made two other biographical films prior to this).

The late Jean-Dominique Bauby probably (I say "probably" because it is an assumption since I have not read the book) provided much of the script via his book which later became the title of Schnabel's film. However, Schnabel's influence on the film via the visual image is just as tangible.

Right from the start, the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby is told in the first person point of view whether it is the narrative or the out-of-focused and low camera shots and angles. A good portion of the beginning lingers over the slow-passing hours of Bauby's life as a victim of stroke and a prisoner of his paralysed body. The soft-focus scenes and cool colours will soon contrast with horrific moments such as when the doctors sew up Bauby's eye, ewwwww..... :( It's especially horrific because they shot it so that it seems like you are looking out of Bauby's eye as it is being sewn shut. (Ok I knew its probably two pieces of pig's skin being sewed together but the concept of it is still Yucks! ) Erghhh... shiver me timbers... (OK, according to the following paragraph it is not pig-skn, I apologise for being primitive >.<)

Schnabel's experimental approach kicks in with the first scene, a 15-minute sequence portraying Bauby's harsh new reality strictly from his point of view: the doctors and nurses examining him look and speak directly into the camera. Director of photography Janusz Kaminski uses a swing-and-tilt lens and cranks the camera at different speeds to convey his groggy emergence from his three-week coma; objects go in and out of focus as his eyes dart around the room, and light streaks the frame and flares up as his vision adjusts. After doctors advise sewing Bauby's right eye shut because it isn't blinking sufficiently, Schnabel portrays the procedure by stitching a piece of latex over the camera lens.

- Andrea Gronvall, Chicago reader

Yet Jean-Do retains his humane characteristics despite being unable to speak, eat and move at will, and this helps the film escape the trap of mobidity or any prolong and tedious sense of despair. Instead it soars through landscapes of Jean-Do's imagination, demonstrating Jean-Do's persistent (if repetitive) imagination and freedom in mind, if not in body. Only when we see him for the first time do we get a true sense of the loss the once glamourous ladies' man suffered.

"I look like I came out of a vat of formaldehyde." - movie quote

One comes to develop a lot of respect for Jean-Do not just because he wrote a book by blinking his one good eye but because he had the mental stregth to overcome a personal tragedy, while retaining his wit and self-deprecating humour, qualities that make him humane, compared to his mistress* who could not bear to visit him.

"Have you heard? Jean-Dominique is a vegetable."

"What kind of vegetable? A carrot? A pickle?" - movie quote

Jean-Dominique Bauby died two days after his book was published, but not before he left his mark with his story.

Some scenes may come across as gratuitous artistic license taken by Schnabel, example artisitc cutaway metaphors for Bauby's musings/feelings do take a fair amount of screen time. But I do think the film does show us a tiny slice of reality that we never come to terms with outside of our happy little lives - the tragedy and the amount of care required for stroke victims. And of course despite his flaws, one does admire Bauby for his sense of self. So this film is something that I highly recommend.

* In real life Baub's wife Sylvie left and it was Bauby's mistress who stuck with him. Source : http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/moviereviews/2007/071220/

A deeply imaginative visual tale of an emotional subject, Marjane Satrapi takes the audience back to her childhood days in turbulent Iran and explores her struggle for her own identity growing up first in Iran and then in Austria.

True to the human spirit even in tenuous times, the film is peppered with humour here and there. Nevertheless it is one of those unfortunate stories which gives meaning in sadness. An animation that is more real than most of the life action movies out there. Persepolis is not without faults, it is rather slow at times, and some animation are pretty pointless. Still, it is a must watch for those who like a bit of history and humanism in film.

Enchanting music, augmented by the warm colours and ethnic motifs.

Strong storytelling using spectacular visuals. Memorable.

A lot of homework done in terms of learning and incorporating details from Chinese culture and metaphors. But the heart and soul of this movie - Po's irrelevant humour - is still American. I would be interested to see China's reaction to the movie, where the national treasure is depicted as a bumbling, under-achiever who stumbles upon success by virtue of the bounciness of his belly.

All in all a fun movie with lots of memorable quotes. The concept of Tai Lung's high security prison and his escape is reminiscent of Magneto's prison escape in X-Men.

"Ther's no charge for awesomeness... or attractiveness"

I enjoyed the truly beautiful visual experience and action/adventure sequences that this movie presented. Overall, it was excellent enough for me to close an eye on any flaws. Perhaps because of the high production values and smooth flow of scenes, I found myself immersed in the movie and was more emotionally engaged to this compared to Princess Mononoke, which Avatar reminded me strongly of. There were just so many similarities between the two.

Environmental themes are not new in film after all, but Avatar is a timely update for the category. Whereas Princess Mononoke like Lord of the Rings dwelled on the conflicting relationship between nature and industrialisation, Avatar leapfrogs the conversation to preservation of nature vs capitalistic exploitation of nature in the context of technological advancement. The virtualisation of the hero extends the rhetoric of digital technology and the empowerment that the hero feels in his avatar form certainly makes the film socially relevant to the Internet generation.

Ironically, while the main character connects with his senses and nature via his avatar. Real life requires one to remove oneself from the network (i.e. get your ass out of the chair in front of the computer and go out!!!) in order to do so. After sitting through 2hr 40mins of Avatar, it was indeed time to get out, stretch those legs and smell the roses!

An imaginative movie that pulls together members of a large family (despite their different ages and preoccupation with various online/offline matters) in a progressive showdown with a virtual hacker virus that threatens to destroy the family's homestead. Pretty strong in characterisation and plot. I enjoyed it immensely.

Definitely a masterpiece, although it starts feeling like a marathon towards the later part of the show.

Light entertainment that is definitely a keeper. There is nothing not to love about Meryl Streep as Miranda and all the other spunky characters that revolve around her. The story of Andrea's struggles in the catty fasion magazine world is engaging because of the fine acting and the plot twists.