A Pilgrimage to Cinema

Takashi Yamazaki's " Always: Sunset on Third Street " was an unabashedly melodramatic period piece, with practically each and every scene meant to exhaust the audience's tear ducts. It would've been an unbearable viewing experience if not for the meticulous attention to details, the engaging cast of characters and the carefully-mounted direction. But his latest feature, " Parasyte " (2014, Japan), a two-part science fiction based on a serialized manga written by Hitoshi Iwaaki, has a remarkable mood and restraint and deep philosophical implications. If last year, Japan had given us an excellent samurai film by way of " Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno and The Legend Ends " (also based on a manga ), this year they're giving us most probably the best science fiction yet to hit our screens through "Parasyte" (also a two-part film). If one thinks about it, the movie has a fantastically grotesque scenario. Worm-like creatures invade ...

Before I went on to see " Fifty Shades of Grey " (USA, 2015), the latest in a string of YA (Young Adult) viewing fare being shown in our theaters in the recent past, I was kind of hoping that it would join the ranks of such films that pushed the boundaries of depicting sexual aberrations (sadomasochism, fetishism, exhibitionism, obsessiveness, sex addiction, incest, etc) in cinema in such a way that they gave us a genuinely unsettling and provocative view of the darkest impulses of human nature, like Nagisa Oshima's " In the Realm of the Senses ", Bernardo Bertolucci's " Last Tango in Paris ", Adrian Lyne's " 9 1/2 Weeks ", Catherine Breillat's " Romance ", Michael Haneke's " The Piano Teacher " and Lars Von Trier's " Nymphomaniac ". "Fifty Shades of Grey" could have had such a distinct opportunity working in its favor, especially that not a few were eagerly anticipating since last ...

It really pays to see a film before reading all the reviews and feedbacks about it. It's so because one may actually like a film before all the others have started to hurl stones and sling mud at it. It's a case of not entirely joining the bandwagon. Such is my case with " Jupiter Ascending " (2015, USA), the new sci-fi adventure from the Wachowski siblings Andy and Lana. I did like the film. Yes, I did. I may be the one among the possibly very few affirmative voices in the huge wave of dissenting opinions about "Jupiter Ascending", but that's what film appreciation is all about - a diversity of voices and choices. It may be true that the film's weakest selling point is the screenplay (written by the Wachowskis themselves), which fails to lend even an ounce of credibility to a scenario that doesn't really make any sense and has its characters mouthing near-cryptic dialogues (somewhat akin to David Lynch's 1984 sci-fi debacle " Dune ...

There are film performances that border on the psychological. And there are those that dwell on the physical. Still, there are those that can be both physical and psychological. Reese Witherspoon's performance in Jean-Marc Vallée's " Wild " (2014, USA) belongs to the third category. Witherspoon's bold and deeply-felt portrayal alone is enough to carry an entire film that's otherwise a relatively common drama about exorcising the ghosts of one's troubled past and finding oneself in the process. As Cheryl Strayed, who self-embarks on a long and perilous journey (with a blue "monster" pack tagged along) during the mid-90s through a portion of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) as a way of dealing head-on with the devastation brought upon by the death of her mother, a recent divorce and years of self-destructive behavior, Witherspoon is able to bring us to the core of her pain - a pain that's both literal and figurative - without ever going the way ...