17 again(2009)

Last night, I saw this movie twice. Yes, twice in theatre on a working day. Since today morning, I was thinking, what would I do differently, if I was 17 again. :-).

I am upset to see only 6.3 rating in IMDB. So, I wanna publicize it a little more.
If (you like basket ball),
or if (you ever played in a high school team),
or if(you are/were ever a teenager),
or if(you are a father),
or if (you like the movie "family man(2000)"),
you will like this movie.

I went to see how Matthew Perry acts in a movie. He played the protagonist, but his role is a little more than a cameo. Zac Efron, the teenager of protagonist carried the entire movie nicely. The movie starts like this. In year 1989, Hyden high school basket ball team captain Mike O'Donnell, stops playing a game in between and runs away to promise marrying his pregnant girl friend Scarlett. Next scene is present day's Mike(Mathew Perry) coping with divorce case from Scarlett and his unsuccessful professional life. He wishes he could go back 20 years and do it all over again, differently.

He completely freaks out, when his wish came true after he fell into a vortex. He gets his 17 year old body. Frankly, this is crazy but, I guess a fantasy for almost every body. From then on, the actual movie starts. He decides to join Hyden school again and plays basket ball. He realises he was a bad father, an irresponsible husband and tries to rectify all of it.




Most of the movie is hilarious, although it has some serious dialogues. I like this scene, when Mike consoles his teenage daughter by saying. "When you are young, everything looks like the end of world. Its only the beginning. The sun rises and sets with us only." I hope this movie becomes a hit and would love to watch Zac Afron rise to fame.

Schindler's list(1993)

I went to Philadelphia during last christmas and one night we (myself and Gunjan Patel) were at home with some time to kill. While browsing through the DVD collection, we came across this movie and I wanted to watch this movie. Gunjan obliged, even though he watched it before.

It's a must watch if you have any interest in history or World war II or AntiSemitism. Steven Speilberg got best director Oscar that year and if not for Tom Hanks, Liam Neeson(who played the role of Oscar Schindler) might have grabbed one too. Infact, Tom Hanks admitted the same during his Oscar speech.

Half way through the movie, I was completely confused guessing the climax and character of Oscar Schindler. Circumstances turn the Nazi businessman into a secret saviour of Jews and was awarded righteous gentele after the war. So sad he died poor. Ben Kingsley(Oscar for lead role in Gandhi) too played an important role in the movie.

I think the scene depicting the inside of the concentration camp is very daring and shameful for humanity. One more touching scene was, when one of ghetto's engineer informs German soldiers about flaw in a construction's design, she was shot in the head for correcting Germans. Even more humiliating, the officer orders the structure be changed exactly the way she said before.

I first read about Jews and World war II through Mein Kamph, when I was in bangalore. I read Anne Frank-the diary of a young girl and saw many Discovery channel documentaries about world war II stories, but this movie was too touching.

I saw few more world war movies since then, viz., Life is beautiful(1997), Letters from Iwo Jima(2006), Valkyrie(2008) and recently Defiance(2008). I am trying to watch Charlie Chaplin's: The Great Dictator (1940).

Martian Child(2007)

I hand picked this DVD one Saturday along with some other movie from rental stores, being sure it was going to be yet another long boring freezing winter weekend. I was in mood to watch any comedy/drama with some decent dialogues.

It was a moving story about an adopted kid Dennis with social anxiety. He strongly believes he descended from Mars and earth is too warm for him. Widower science fiction novelist David Gordon(John Cusack cast) decides to raise him up and tries to put up with his eccentricities.

Dennis tries to adapt to Earth's way of life temporarily, thinking he might return to Mars some day. Once he visits a Mars museum and realizes that existence of life on mars is impossible, He gets crazy and climbs a tower awaiting a space ship.

The movie is worth watching once. Since this movie got released after the hindi movie Taaree Jameen Par, it draws some similarities. However dialogues are good. I like the long dailogue in which David tells Dennis, about earth's greatness and why humans reach out for each other. I enjoyed the baseball scenes in the movie(it being baseball season at that time).