Cast Away

Cast:

Tom Hanks

Director : Robert Zemeckis

Year : 2000

imdb score : 7.4/10

Plot:

Tom Hanks stars as Chuck Noland, a Fed-Ex manager and a complete workaholic. His world revolves around the clock - He wants to be on time, every time. One fine day, when he boards a cargo going to Malaysia , the aircraft crashes and he is the only survivor. He lands on a deserted island with nothing but fed-ex packages and the island to help him survive. He stays on the island for 4 yrs with a picture of his girl Kelly to keep him going.Hanks is excellent in the role. Cast Away is gripping entertainment from start to finish.

Zemeckis’ directing is brilliant. The single most quintessential example of Zemeckis’ placed immersion into the world of Cast Away is Wilson. Wilson is a washed up volleyball. Literally. Hanks paints a face on Wilson in his own blood (insert metaphors here), eventually covers him in grassy hair, and treats him like his only friend. Correction: Wilson is his only friend. Hanks and Wilson seem like the ultimate odd couple. Even though Hanks speaks on Wilson’s behalf, we still feel we are getting to know a good character. Wilson is Hanks’ grasp on humanity, and onto sanity. It would seem easy to scoff at the idea of a friendly volleyball as “sanity,” but Hanks and Zemeckis allow us to understand the friendship, the relationship, by ending it in front of our eyes.

It’s one of those rare movies that makes you think and raises normal human problems in an extreme situation and deals wonderfully with the human condition. When the credits roll, it’s clear that we could all use some of the lessons Hanks learned, because the film is much deeper than being just about simple survival. The film is about being human, something many of us still have to learn.

Memorable Quote from the Movie:

The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.

The Untouchables

Cast:
Kevin Costner as Ness, Sean Connery as Irish-American beat cop Jim Malone, and Robert De Niro as Capone.



Director : Brian De Palma
Year : 1987
imdb score : 8.0/10


Plot:
Brian De Palma's film about Eliott Ness (Kevin Costner) and his struggle against Al Capone (Robert De Niro) in Prohibition-era Chicago is one of the best crime/drama movies in the last 20 years. Right from the start, we are introduced to the violence and corruption that gripped the city during these tough times. We understand that Al Capone all but runs the city, and when a clean cut, straight-shooting treasury agent (Ness) enters the picture, we know right away that this assignment will be far from easy.


It's lucky for the good guys that Ness somewhat accidentally recruits Jim Malone. Malone is a tough, street-wise, beat cop that seems to know more than could possibly be good for him about Capone and how and where his alcohol smuggling operations are run. Throw in a promising young police recruit in George Stone (Andy Garcia) and a wrong-place-right-time accountant in Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith), and you have your band of 'Untouchables'.


Elliot Ness and his team earned the nickname "the Untouchables", for Capone's failed attempts to bribe them on to his payroll. No matter what Capone tried, he could not deter Ness and his team from their pursuit of justice.



This quartet really starts getting Capone's undivided attention after successfully breaking up some very profitable smuggling operations. This is where the movie gets its punch. With Ness hitting Capone where it hurts, his money, and Capone doing likewise to Ness with respect to his family, it really is a man-to-man prize fight. For anyone who has taken a history course in recent memory, we know that Ness is the last man left standing, with Capone eventually getting indicted on tax evasion charges. Not the way you would prefer to take down Capone, but effective nonetheless.

Awards:

Connery received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the film

Memorable Quote from the Movie:

You wanna get Capone? Here's how you get him. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue! That's the Chicago way, and that's how you get Capone!

50 First Dates

Cast:
Adam Sandler,Drew Barrymore



Director: Peter Segal
Year : 2004



Plot:
Henry Roth (Adam Sandler), a Jewish marine veterinarian in Hawaii, meets Lucy Whitmore (Drew Barrymore), a beautiful blonde, at breakfast.
Both Henry and Lucy enjoy the company of each other and feels the start of a serious relationship occurring. Approaching Lucy the next day, Henry is confused when Lucy fails to recognise him. This is the moment Henry discovers that Lucy actually suffers from short term memory loss and can't remember each individual day.


Henry has to win Lucy’s love every day, since she is suffering from a short-term memory loss, he has to come up with a new idea to make her fall in love with him all over again, each and every day.

shawshank Redemption

Cast:

Tim Robbins as Andrew "Andy" Dufresne and Morgan Freeman as Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding.

Director : Frank Darabont

Year : 1994

imdb score : 9.2/10 imdb rank:#1

Plot:

Two imprisoned men bond over a number of years, finding solace and eventual redemption through acts of common decency.

The Shawshank Redemption is an eminently engaging film about two imprisoned convicted murderers in the nineteen-fifties.

Andy Dufresne (wonderfully portrayed by Tim Robbins), is innocent, however. Convicted of killing his wife and her lover (a crime for which he clearly had a strong motive), he really "didn't do it". Of course, as his jailbird friend "Red" (equally well- portrayed by Morgan Freeman) puts it, "Everybody in here is innocent." Well, Red is "the only guilty man" in Shawshank Prison. As their friendship develops, Andy learns the ropes of prison.

Meanwhile, the warden (Bob Gunton) decides that Andy, a well-educated former banker could carry out something more useful than laundry. So, he installs Andy as the prison librarian, and later, as his an accountant (he does taxes for all the jail's employees). Andy also assists the warden in laundering money (as he tells Red, "I was always an honest man - I had to come to jail to become a crook!")

All the actors were terrific, and the film is intelligently plotted. Although normally it's hard to find likeable criminals as film characters, Red's personality is strangely genial. Andy's quiet knowledge is also interesting to watch; you always know he's thinking several steps ahead of everyone else around him.

Best Quote From The Movie:

"Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."

- Andy Dufresne

Life Is Beautiful

Cast:
Roberto Benigni , Nicoletta Braschi

Director : Roberto Benigni
Year :1998
imdb score : 8.4/10 imdb rank:#87

Plot:
1939 Arezzo, Italy.
Guido and his friend arrive in town. Guido, who's Jewish, is a funny, happy, naively sophisticated, imaginative man, who falls in love with a school teacher(Dora). With his wits and his imagination, he wins the heart of the teacher, who in spite of having agreed to a marriage proposal with an other guy, doesn't hesitate for a moment to run away with Mr. Guido, who was just a waiter by then. They have a kid who always enjoys the special imagination of his father. During WWII, the happy family gets swept off to a concentration camp, where the father, in order to make his son believe that the predicament is just an game his family is participating in, uses that very imagination and makes his son believe that it is a game they are playing and the 1st prize is a tank. Various levels of creativity are used by Guido to protect his son in the camp, where the old and the children are killed because they are not strong enough to work.

Roberto Benigni writes, directs and stars in Life Is Beautiful, an Italian film that has won three Oscars and nominated for four others. Benigni plays the role of Guido while his real-life wife, Nicoletta Braschi, co-stars as Dora.

Life Is Beautiful is a funny but heartwarming film. Benigni really gets into his character. His humor and charm in the film not only impress Dora, but woo the audience at the same time. There’s no doubt that Benigni deserves the 1999 Oscar for Best Actor.

Awards:

Oscars Won
Best Foreign Language Film
Best Actor in a Leading Role
Best Music, Original Dramatic Score

Reviewed by Mr.Shankar:

(shankar@livecjobs.com)

Chinatown

Cast:
Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston


Director : Roman Polanski
Year :1974
imdb score : 8.5/10 imdb rank:#59
Language: English



Plot:

Chinatown , perhaps acclaimed director Roman Polanski’s finest movie. It’s a classic movie, and it’s highly regarded for a good reason. It’s well-crafted, engaging cinema with a great eye for detail.

Jack Nicholson plays Jake Gittes, a cynical wisecracking private eye with a past. A former police officer in Los Angeles, where he still works, he is hired by one Mrs. Mulwray, played by Diane Ladd, to spy on her husband and produce proof of his affair. Jake gets the proof, which somehow winds up on the front page of the local newspaper.

The next day, another woman, played by Faye Dunaway, shows up in his office and demands to know if Jake remembers ever meeting her before. When Jake assures her he has never met her, she reveals that she is the real Mrs. Mulwray and therefore, by his own admission, she could never have hired him to spy on her husband. Her lawyer serves him with some legal documents with the comment he will wait for the reply from Jake’s attorney.

Worried about his reputation in what he refers to as a small town (the movie takes place during the 1930s), Jake decides he needs to get to the bottom of things and fast. His investigations slowly peel back layers of deceit and untangle a very snarled web of intrigue and secrets with everything leading up to a fateful meeting in L.A.’s Chinatown.

The way in which the mystery is gradually revealed, with every answer leading to further questions, is heightened by the directing and editing. The camera work is simple and elegant, with a minimum of shots compensated for by fluidity and efficiency.

Reviewed by Mr.Varun:

(varunchandru@gmail.com)

Taxi Driver

Cast:
Robert De Niro , Albert Brooks, Harvey Keitel, Leonard Harris, Peter Boyle, Cybill Shepherd, and a young Jodie Foster.



Director : Martin Scorsese
Year :1976
imdb score : 8.6/10 imdb rank:#38
Language:English


Plot:
Vietnam Veteran Travis Bickle is 26, a loner in the mean streets of New York City, slipping slowly into isolation and violent misanthropy. In solving his insomnia by driving a yellow cab on the night shift, he grows increasingly disgusted by the low-lifes that hang out at night: "Someday a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets." His touching attempts to woo Betsy, a Senator's campaign worker, turn sour when he takes her to a porn movie on their first date. He even fails in his attempt to persuade child prostitute Iris to desert her pimp and return to her parents and school. Driven to the edge by powerlessness, he buys four handguns and sets out to assassinate the Senator, heading for the infamy of a 'lone crazed gunman'...




Shot on the streets of New York in the summer of 1975, Scorsese and director of photography Michael Chapman were set out to focus not just on Travis, but document the world he lived in. New York became its own character, and the street scenes pound with a hallucinatory intensity; gritty, sad, and at times, disturbing.
The film plunges us right into the heart of darkness, through impressionistic imagery, acute dialogue and character, and the fear and self-loathing of performance.

Awards:
won the Palme d'Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival.

American Film Institute recognition:
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies #47
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills #22