Princess

Princess is a danish mixed-media movie directed by Anders Morgenthaler. Most of the movie is animated with some live action scenes.

The movies starts with August, a priest visiting his sister and seeing her in action making a pornographic movie, while heavily pregnant. Jump forward five years and the sister, Christina, has died and August takes his five year old niece, Mia into his custody. As the movie unfolds, we get a glimpse of August and Christina when they were teenagers and how they gradually moved apart. Christina found fame as a porn star nicknamed Princess working for her former lover Charlie.

As August tries to begin his life with Mia, Christina's past keeps coming back to haunt him in many different form. He requests the porn company to recall pornographic materials involving Christina and is turned down. He also finds out that Mia had been physically and sexually abused. He then sets out to destroy all pornographic materials featuring Princess and to avenge her downfall.

The movie is NOT meant for kids, not even for teenagers. It is a complex, disturbing and emotionally draining movie. The mixed media, especially the underdeveloped anime media is jarring in the beginning, but as the movie progresses and gets more and more violent, it blends in with the theme very well.

Two emotions run amuck through the entirety of this movie, innocence and guilt. August and Christina. Christina and Mia. Mia and Multe. August, Mia and Multe. The use of anime probably heightens the impact of innocence while the narrative edges the viewer to a realization of the guilt.

Why, o why, do we not have more directors who treat their audience with respect as this director does?

If and when you watch this movie, be prepared to be left feeling breathless and hollow in the stomach.

El secreto de sus ojos

There are movies that are good, and ones that are horrible; and then there are movies that jolt you to the realization that despite such sincere efforts by hollywood and bollywood and such other 'woods', you still have not been completely desensitized or jaded. 'The truth in their eyes' did that to me, and I am still feeling the tremors. S had put the movie in queue as we had decided to try and watch more international movies than we have been, and also as I had been taking spanish classes and watching movies in spanish may help.

But I digress.

'The secret in their eyes' or El secreto de sus ojos is an argentinian movie and I suppose it can be categorized as a thriller save that the movie does not quite allow you to make that decision. The direction is brilliant, and I have rarely seen a director who's capable of having such a control over his audience (the audience being me) that the audience (still me) has no way of looking at the movie than how he wants it.

Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darin) is a newly retired court investigator and post-retirement he has begun writing a book on his life and the one case that he could not let go of - the rape and murder of a newly wed woman. His involvement in the case was made more complicated by the presence of the alluringly beautiful Irene (Soledad Villamil in a spectacular role) who's a new judge and his superior and their feelings for one another; as well as his relationship with his brilliant but depressed assistant. They are able to capture the killer and send him to prison. However, later on, during a political turmoil, the killer is set free, and he sets out trying to take his revenge on them. The case changes his life, and the way he looks at life; and twenty-five years after the rape-murder and the apprehension of the killer, after his retirement, Benjamin decides to look back and write it down just so it may make a little bit of sense; and they slowly begin to make sense till Benjamin makes a very disturbing realization.

The actors are very good, the script is very taut and the cinematography is brilliant. But the best attribute of this movie is that the protagonists are achingly human. Oh, did I mention that the movie is very very cerebral? It is, trust me.

You belong to me : A review

This was a movie S and I opted for rather offhandedly to watch over the internet after we were done with dinner and "The Informers". "The Informers" had been vaguely dissatisfying primarily because of the editing; but that's another story.

So we chose "You belong to me", or rather S chose it after I read the blurb on it that mentioned a vaguely gay plotline, and I am very very happy he did.

This was a very well made, very understated and very well enacted movie. The movie starts with an architect named Jeffrey (Daniel Sauli) sort of stalking his disinterested one-afternoon-stand Rene (Julien Lucas -- very rakish) and moving into the same apartment complex as Rene. And right about the time when I was about to say "...not another gay fatal attraction movie plzzz..." the plot swerved in a completely different direction and evolved into a very urbane gothic suspense thriller.

The movie is worth at least one watch simply because it blends the gay subplot into the background without even a single moments worth of melodrama.

Coco Chanel apparently had said once " Before you leave the house, take one thing off your self." Writer-director Sam Zalutsky may have used that philosophy to trim off any extra drama from the movie, and the result is a slick, gripping thriller.

Mmmm..shiny!

I watched X-Men Origins - Wolverine on sunday...(take that Betty) and it was better than I had expected it to be after the debacle The Last Stand was.

It's a prequel to the X-Men trilogy, and while there are a few lapses/differences when compared to the original comic, its good. Liev Scheiber as Sabretooth is particularly good. Lynn Collins is almost ethereal. The movie is however essentially, and justifiably dominated by Hugh Jackman. It is sort of amazing, as well as a tad disconcerting how he has refined the character of Wolverine from its comic origins. It is indeed difficult to think of anyone else performing that role.

And now for a very personal opinion; I thought Gambit stole the show everytime he was present in the frame. I guess it has to do with the fact that I like Gambit as a character in the comic than I like wolverine, and that the character in the movie had an amazing aura of grace about it. Again, it is a very very personal opinion, but I will stick to it.

If you have not seen this movie yet, go see it. Here's a preview for you.