The Movie Recommendation Thread

[Kshatriya87]

the one with some street fighter characters in it? yes its totally bonkers movie.

Yeah.

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[OneGrimPilgrim]

oh & yes, JC + sammo hung + yuen biao, these 3 in a movie = action & comedy powerhouse!

all three were batchmates at the peking opera school.

 

[OneGrimPilgrim]

Ahh.. Yes. I've seen it. Didn't like it that much.

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ok. only two movies among a bunch of very few ones on the phenomenon that I liked were 'fire in the sky' & 'communion' (both old, and based on true incidents, former more). FITS was much better. have watched only one among the new ones, which are very few anyway, and wasn't very good. thus I look esp. for those (in this genre particularly) which are based on true incidents.

 

[Bharat Ek Khoj]

Few interesting Hindi Movies, different than typical masala movies

Ek hasina thi (2004)
Drishyam ( remake of a south movie)
Johnny Gaddaar (Excellent Movie)
Ek Chalis Ki Last Local ( Interesting and entertaining)
Manorama six feet under (Highly Recommended) > Available with English subtitles

 

[OneGrimPilgrim]

'ek hasina thi' has a very good action scene (regrettably only one), which looks like Kali/FMA (like in the Jason Bourne series).

 

[Bharat Ek Khoj]

Apocalypto (2006) - If you like Adventure thriller, this is the must watch movie.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472043/

 

[Bharat Ek Khoj]

Swedish trilogy. Excellent Movies.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ( Original Swedish movie is good than English remake )
The Girl Who Played with Fire
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

 

[ashdoc]

ashdoc's movie review---before the rains ( 2007 )

i bought this DVD because the movie is shot in some of india's most favoured tourist destinations in the south indian state of kerala---the hill station of munnar situated at the height of 5000 feet above sea level amidst magnificent coffee plantations , and athirapally waterfalls . and the photography and colours of the film are superb indeed , just as i expected .

so what conflict could be emerging in this sylvan bounty of nature ? in fact , it is not conflict but appropriately in the lovely settings it is love....love between a british plantation owner ( linus roache ) and an indian woman ( nandita das ) , during colonial times when the british ruled india . but the love itself is of the kind that inspires conflict , because both are married people who have spouses .

so an illicit affair is on between two lusty people , and it leads to some red hot kissing and love making scenes in the green settings of vegetation and waterfalls . but there is a difference between the positions of the two ; while linus is a scion of the master race the british , nandita is a servant belonging to a conquered race the indians . above all , linus is a man and can get away with anything but nandita is a woman and women are never forgiven for their sexual perfidies !!

so nandita's husband discovers that she is cheating on him , and beats her up . she runs for shelter to her lover , but he proves to be a man of straw . he asks his loyal indian friend ( rahul bose ) to send nandita off and rahul does so , but she returns back . linus refuses to take her , fearing the wrath of his wife ( jennifer ehle ) who loves him dearly and dotes on their son . out of sheer dispair , nandita shoots herself dead with a pistol that linus had given to rahul . linus and rahul dispose off her body in a rivulet despite rahul's misgivings that not giving her a proper hindu cremation will force her soul to remain unreleased from her body .

linus and rahul return to their work of building a road that will help export their plantation's spices to the outside world , and they hope to earn enormous profits after that road is built . this even though whether the road will hold after the onset of the heavy rains that plague this part of india is open to question . however all is not placid in the world around them ; an independence movement is gathering storm to drive the british out of india , and rahul has to resist calls to join the movement . he is torn between his friendship with linus and the call to drive linus's people the british out of his motherland . rahul's father accuses him of forgetting the traditions of his motherland and becoming a slave of the british ways and customs .

the situation comes to boil when nandita's brother asks his villagers to search for her , and her body is found with the bullet that matches the caliber of the gun that linus has given rahul . the villagers drag rahul in front of the elders because they suspect him of having killed nandita . and they ask him to undergo trial by fire to prove his innocence .

so will rahul come out of the trial by fire unscathed ? will he blurt out the truth of the affair of linus and nandita which led to her suicide ? will the real culprit ( linus ) be brought to book ? as the whole drama is being played out just before the onset of the rainy season ( hence the name of the movie ) , will the coming rains destroy the road that is being built or will the road survive ? watch the movie for the answers....

the movie is brought to life by director santosh sivan's great cinematography of the lush greenery of kerala , and some stupendous acting by rahul bose and linus roache and nandita das and jennifer ehle . linus roache particularly has a difficult job to do---play a person committed to his wife but also unwilling to be able to let go of his sexual attraction for nandita for whom he has begun to care , and being forced to dump nandita because he does not have the guts to face the consequences of his actions . music is beautiful too , though there are no songs despite the film being set in india ; it is an english movie after all and not a bollywood film , though some dialogues are in malayalam which is the language of the state of kerala .

the climax has some real meaning but will be disappointing for some viewers ; it will be liked only by those who like art films . the director has managed to create drama throughout the film and help maintain audience interest . but again the drama will be of interest only for the art film buffs .

verdict---decent .

three stars .

 

[ashdoc]

Secret in their eyes

Julia Roberts plays a CIA agent who along with her partners is investigating a mosque which may have islamic radicals . But one day her own daughter is found murdered near the mosque . Julia is totally shattered by this , and looks haggard throughout the film---of course , she will probably look haggard in all her films after this unless she does some surgery...she's become old . Nicole Kidman ( her CIA boss ) on the other hand still looks good even at this age---so good in fact that her black colleague hits on her .

Julia's friend ( the black actor who played slave in '12 years a slave' ) decides to track down the killer , who is a psychopath who come from the mosque . He is a serial killer rather than an islamic radical . In fact , he is the contact who is going to give proof to the CIA about the islamic radicalism in the mosque . So the CIA decides not to arrest him , for tracking down islamic radicals ( whose information the man is giving ) is more important !! There are major showdowns over this in the CIA office .

In the midst of this the man escapes to nowhere . Julia is distraught . Her black friend vows to track him down and for 12 years searches for him , finally thinking that he has zeroed down on him . But trying to get to the man costs the CIA some men . In the end the whereabouts of the man all these years are a major surprise to us all---the viewers . That is the major shock at the end .

The movie is based on an argentinian movie , and the argentinian movie is supposed to be much better . This english copy has a 'thakela' flavour to it---if you understand the hindi word 'thakela' . The premise is good , but the movie is slow paced and sloppy .

 

[armyofhind]

For action/martial arts lovers, the raid series would be a good watch.

 

[Razor]

One movie I saw recently that I liked was a spanish language movie called "The Motorcycle Diaries."
It is a road movie.
I give this movie 7/10. Ref: Star Wars Force awakens=4.25/10. Bahubali (Tamil)=8.5/10.
@pmaitra Have you checked this out. You might like it, both the road trip aspect and the "Che" aspect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Motorcycle_Diaries_(film)

The Motorcycle Diaries (Spanish: Diarios de motocicleta) is a 2004 biopic about the journey and written memoir of the 23-year-old Ernesto Guevara, who would several years later become internationally known as the iconic Marxist guerrilla commander and revolutionary Che Guevara. The film recounts the 1952 expedition, initially by motorcycle, across South America by Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado. As well as being a road movie, the film is a coming-of-age film; as the adventure, initially centered on youthful hedonism, unfolds, Guevara discovers himself transformed by his observations on the life of the impoverished indigenous peasantry. Through the characters they encounter on their continental trek, Guevara and Granado witness firsthand the injustices that the destitute face and are exposed to people and social classes they would have never encountered otherwise. To their surprise, the road presents to them both a genuine and captivating picture of Latin American identity. As a result, the trip also plants the initial seed of cognitive dissonance and radicalization within Guevara, who ostensibly would later view armed revolution as a way to challenge the continent's endemic economic inequalities.

The movie is based on the book of the same name written by "che"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Motorcycle_Diaries_(book)

The Motorcycle Diaries (Spanish: Diarios de Motocicleta) is a memoir that traces the early travels of Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, then a 23-year-old medical student, and his friend Alberto Granado, a 29-year-old biochemist. Leaving Buenos Aires, Argentina, in January 1952 on the back of a sputtering single cylinder 1939 Norton 500cc dubbed La Poderosa ("The Mighty One"), they desired to explore the South America they only knew from books.[1] During the formative odyssey Guevara is transformed by witnessing the social injustices of exploited mine workers, persecuted communists, ostracized lepers, and the tattered descendants of a once-great Inca civilization. By journey's end, they had travelled for a symbolic nine months by motorcycle, steamship, raft, horse, bus, and hitchhiking, covering more than 8,000 kilometres (5,000 mi) across places such as the Andes, Atacama Desert, and the Amazon River Basin. The diary ends with a declaration by Guevara, born into an upper-middle-class family, displaying his willingness to fight and die for the cause of the poor, and his dream of seeing a united Latin America.

The book has been described as a classic coming-of-age story: a voyage of adventure and self-discovery that is both political and personal.[2] Originally marketed by Verso as "Das Kapital meets Easy Rider",[3] The Motorcycle Diaries has been a New York Times bestseller several times.

 

[ashdoc]

The gallows

The movie begins with a play gone horribly wrong in a school---the actor is to be shown to be hanged , but the base on which he is standing crumbles abruptly and he gets stuck in the gallows and gets really hanged to death .

Decades later , the same play is to be enacted again in the same school . All the sets are placed in position , including the gallows of the hangman . But the night before the play , a group of disgruntled students decides to play havoc with the sets .

The students have discovered that a door to the interior of the school has a broken latch and they can enter the school at will in the night . So they enter and find that some attractive female students also want to come in .

Having created havoc with the sets , the students decide to get out---only to discover that the door through which they came in is now firmly closed and they can't get out . To be honest I was expecting this---what else could happen....?

Once trapped inside , the students try to search ways of getting out---only to go deeper and deeper into the quagmire of evil...for predictably , an evil spirit is out to get them inside the school ; indeed , it has haunted the school for ages....

As the body count piles , you wonder if anyone will get out alive . The scares in the movie are pretty routine stuff , but you do get the jolts every now and then . But then , I am a aficionado of horror movies---primarily because I don't get scared much of them and can sleep well at night even after watching them ; yes , not being able to sleep well after watching a horror movie is a major reason for people not watching them . But for me it is not an impediment .

In between the jolts old secrets tumble out and the doomed students realise why everything is happening ; nice to know the reason why you are going to die...

The ending is bad and the director should have thought of some way better to end it .

 

[Bharat Ek Khoj]

I have tried to watch few found footage movies, but never enjoyed it. The shaky camera makes it unwatchable.

 

[ashdoc]

The way we were ( 1973 )

The common saying is that opposites are attracted to each other , but this love story will make you lose belief in that saying . The story begins in the 1930s and moves in the 1940s .

Barbra Streisand is a committed communist , making fiery speeches in college espousing communist causes in various wars like the Spanish civil war inspite of fun being poked at her by her college mates . She is a jew . And with curled frizzly hair , she is no beauty . The one thing about her personality is that she is driven for her causes , and has a passion for them that others don't have .

Robert Redford is the the opposite---a person with a laidback lifestyle and no strong views politically , but with a talent for writing . He is a protestant of English ancestry and comes from an affluent family . Above all , he is conventionally handsome with blond hair .

Naturally it is Barbra who is attracted to Robert in college , as he can get any girl he wants . But she is not just attracted to his looks , but also to his writing skills . But they lose touch as the second world war interrupts .

They meet again after the war , and Barbra makes the first move . Opposites attract , and they are soon in a relationship . Barbra irons her hair in order to look conventionally beautiful .

But she begins to have strong arguments with his friends over what they feel are trivial issues for them---political issues , what else . Robert feels rightly that Barbra is does not have the temperament for becoming part of his circle , and tries to cut off . But Barbra is too deeply in love to let him go , and agrees to change herself in a desperate attempt to cling on .

Robert begins to write for TV shows and gets some real money , which allows the two to live a lifestyle . But once again Barbra wants him to do serious writing , and her driven personality clashes with his laid back lifestyle . As suspicion grows in political circles that Hollywood has closet communists , Barbra finds that she cannot keep herself away from politics which is her first love . This bring Robert in trouble .

Barbra is pregnant , but Robert has a one night stand with another girl . This pains Barbra greatly . Robert is however frustrated by her meddling with politics . Finally , they both realise that they are not made for each other . He is never going to realise the potential of the writer that he can become ( and that Barbra wants him to be ) and is satisfied with writing for TV . She is never going to quit politics . They agree to part ways after their daughter is born .

When they meet again years later , they both remember the way they were....and they remember with nostalgia . She has her curled frizzly hair again , and is again fighting for communist causes . He is with a conventionally good looking girlfriend .

And yet they both acknowledge that there was something special in the way they were....he was at his creative best , and that was due to her !! And remembering those times fills her with tears of nostalgia....'the way we were' will be forever in their memories....

Looking at Robert Redford's personality , I was reminded of myself---with some writing skills but not willing to go into serious writing ; instead writing frivolous movie reviews....When will I meet the Barbra Streisand in my life , who will egg me on for serious writing ?

I liked the emotional tone of some scenes , and was impressed by the music . The song 'the way we were' ( presumably sung by Streisand ) is simply beautiful , and so is the background music . A fine romantic movie full of nostalgia for the bygone times . But don't see it if you are in the middle of a break up with your partner

Verdict---good .

Three and a half stars .

 

[ashdoc]

Obsessed ( 1992 )

This movie I saw on youtube recently .

It's about a young woman ( Shannen Doherty ) who falls in love with an older man . She goes crazy over this man , to the point of trying to sacrifice her own life over him---attempted suicide what else....

She is in her early twenties and he is in his mid fifties . He even has a daughter who is probably older than her !! But she quickly latches on to him , and they make love on satin sheets several times . But she cannot adjust in his older circle and he decides to end the relationship .

On hearing this she is shattered and refuses to end it , forcing herself into his living quarters and his group of friends again and again in sexy clothes....and soon she resorts to increasing violence....

To me the whole idea of a sexy hot young woman falling so quickly in love with a man much older than her was corny to say the least . How many men in their mid fifties get to bed and have a full scale relationship with a much younger woman unless they have a fat account book---nobody I guess , and this guy is not that rich even though he is financially well settled .

But the idea of him tiring of her was even cornier , and I wondered why he wouldn't give even his arm and leg to date a woman so young and hot and sexy . How come he wants to cut off from someone who gives us the hots....??

Who cares anyway---Shannen looks good enough to eat , and shows enough of her body to keep us interested . Her cleavage , her thighs , her legs , her face---all are good enough to not shut off the film . There are one or two love making scenes .

In the end she goes totally bonkers over his rejection and blows off his luxury boat by gasoline . Tries to kill herself and when that fails , to kill his daughter . That fails too---the director was sensible enough not to convert this into a tragedy....

She is admitted to a mental institution by the authorities , and on being released ( how come a person who has committed crimes gets released so quickly ?? this the director only knows ) she latches on to another older man !!....does she not have interest in young men , who would presumably make a beeline for her if she gave them the chance....?

Verdict---film with a stupid premise of a young woman going mad over an older man , but reasonably well executed . Maybe it is for letting old men indulge in their fantasies about bedding young women .

 

[rishivashista13]

Do anyone able to understand the movie , 2001 a space Odyssey in first attempt ?

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[Bharat Ek Khoj]

Do anyone able to understand the movie , 2001 a space Odyssey in first attempt ?

Thanx for reminding. The movie is in watch list since a long time. Its a Saturday night and I was already thinking to watch a movie right now.

 

[Bornubus]

Platoon

Full metal jacket

Saving pvt Ryan

 

[ashdoc]

Warrior ( 2011 )

Spoiler alert

A lethal dose of action mixed with real emotion---that's what this movie is all about...about broken family ties and loss and pain and about recovering from it all---but a lot of sweat has to go , a little bit of blood spilled , and a lot of punches traded to make everything all right in the end....

Nick Nolte's family has splintered long ago , primarily because of his heavy drinking . His wife left him long ago , and her younger son ( Tom Hardy ) chose to go along with her . She was sick due to a fatal disease , and Tom had to take care of her alone---because his father and his older brother ( Joel Edgerton ) never knew about that .

Joel too broke ties with his father , but chose to remain in town because he was in love with a local girl ( Jennifer Morrison ) and he married her . He became the more stable of the two brothers because his life was settled by domesticity . But misfortune struck as his daughter was having a heart condition and he had to mortgage his house for treating her . So he decided to earn money by taking part in professional fighting . However , the news reached his school where he has a job as a teacher and he was suspended .

Younger brother Tom Hardy however has been emotionally shattered by his mother's death , which he had to face alone when he was young . He becomes an ace marine who is a real hero because he saves the lives of other soldiers , but is too emotionally distraught to try get a medal for his brave act . He is further emotionally wrecked when he and his comrade are attacked mistakenly by his own country's warplanes in Iraq and his comrade is killed . He deserts the marines and gets a new name because he feels forsaken even by his country . But he decides to help his comrade's wife , and decides to fight in a mixed martial arts tournament to win 5 million dollars and give the wife that money . And whom better to train him than his father Nick Nolte , who was an ace trainer....but as his father ( who has given up alcohol now ) tries to make a bond with him , Tom rejects any personal feelings and refuses to rebuild their relationship .

Nick Nolte now tries to reach out to his older son Joel , and Joel is not ready at first and refuses to let him meet his daughter and wife . But being the more stable of the two brothers , he finally forgives his father . His more pressing concern however is to earn money by entering the mixed martial arts tournament himself .

So both brothers are destined to meet in the ring . It is Tom who is the more powerful of the two , as his life's experiences have made him a meaning killing machine....without emotion , rentless . On the other hand Joel is more capable of taking a beating without backing down and then persisting and beating the opponent . And soon news spreads about Tom's heroism during his marine days and the marines turn up as spectators to cheer him . Joel's students ( whom he taught at school where he was a teacher ) too come to know of his new career and they turn up to watch the tournament to watch him . So both brothers have their own supporters . But whoever of them wins , it's all going to be in the family....or is it ? For there are other fighters in the tournament as well including the unbeatable Koba from Russia .

As the movie gets more violent with what the punches being thrown and kicks landed and wounds inflicted , it also gets more emotional as the three ( father , brother and brother ) grapple with their feelings for one another . But out there in the fighting ring , it's a cruel world where the one who can take maximum punishment can survive . The climax is a gem where inspite of all the animosity that Tom has with Joel for not choosing his mother over his girlfriend , the two estranged brothers are able to make a connection in the ring---but not before we are treated to some real action of mean fighters having a real go at each other .

The acting of all concerned makes the film worthwhile to watch , and so does the fighting in the ring....what is emotion if not mixed with sizzling action after all....

Verdict---Good .

 

[rishivashista13]

Is this movie available in hindi ?
Cant find hindi dubbed version .

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