Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

Pat: You have poor social skills. You have a problem.
Tiffany: I have a problem? You say more inappropriate things than appropriate things.

Pat Solatano (Bradley Cooper) is a man who lost the two things in life that meant most to him -his job and his wife - after beating up a guy who he finds with his wife in the shower. He ends up in a mental institution and starts realizing he suffers from bipolar disorder. After spending months in the institution, he is brought home by his mother on a plea bargain. Yet the only thing that still drives him is getting back with his wife and he believes that there never was so much of a problem. He refuses to believe, against everyone's advice, that she might have moved on. He also refuses to take his pills since that would make him bloated and he won't be able to stay good-looking and fit for his wife.

Enter Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence)  - an equally crazy young girl with problems of her own. After losing her husband and being in a state of emotional turmoil, she ends up sleeping with 11 of her office colleagues and gets fired from her job. When they meet at a dinner hosted by Pat's friend, she sees something in common with him and tries to strike up a friendship. So far, so good.

Pat is extremely optimistic about his life going forward and doesn't believe in playing the victim. After reading Ernest Hemingway's Farewell to Arms, he throws it out of the window since it doesn't have a happy ending.  The mood swings, the anger and his delusional obsession with his wife have been played really well by Brad Cooper. From the moment Tiffany starts stubbornly pursuing Pat while promising to get him to patch up with his wife, the movie looks promising, but only to move into the tried and tested territory of a romantic comedy. It could have been so much better if the director, David Russell, could have taken it in a different direction to show what Pat is most afraid of, i.e. things don't go as per your plan. People with BP disorder do not have a great grasp on reality of life around them and the delusional optimism usually ends in heartbreak, anger and more delusions. A tragicomedy where the fate of the protagonist runs parallel with that of the hero from Farewell to Arms, even while he tries to resist it, could have made the movie Oscar material. However, the way the movie plays out in the end with people finding "true love" and all that bullshit, I really hope the Academy can see through all the hype. Even though it wouldn't be fair to Brad Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence.

Rating - 6.5/10

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower (2012)

Charlie: So this is my life. I want you to know that I'm both happy and sad and still trying to figure out how that could be.

Charlie (Logan Lerman) is an outsider - a geek who would sit quietly in a class even while knowing all the answers rather than be called "a freak". When his English teacher sees the person that he is and offers him friendship, Charlie mentions it'd be depressing to have his English teacher as the only friend on his first day in high school. He is quiet and never speaks and the only friend he has is through a series of letters that he writes (probably to his best friend who shot himself the previous summer). He meets Patrick (Ezra Miller) and Sam (Emma Watson)  at a football game and we see a developing friendship that would take us on a journey through each of their lives.

Patrick is gay and pretty much open about it, while his boyfriend, Brad (Johnny Simmons) prefers to stay closeted. While Sam, Patrick's step-sister, is the tomboyish kind who has made certain mistakes in her life and wants to turn it around. Charlie obviously has a crush on Sam, but he knows she is already taken. When he hooks up with Mary Elizabeth, more out of not being able to say no and break her heart than from any kind of attraction between the two, he instantly knows it's a disaster. And finally when Charlie and Sam get together, Sam gets admitted to Penn State and she has to leave. Charlie revisits his old dark days again and memories of sexual abuse when he was a kid resurface. Although his past has never been shown, the movie keeps dropping hints of a period when he was in a hospital and when he used to see things and have blackouts. With the help of his doctor and his family, he is able to cope and get back on his feet and is finally able to keep thoughts of suicide at rest.

This movie by Stephen Chbosky (also the author) is a decent portrayal of teenage years and some everlasting friendships. The acting from most of the cast is really good and the stand-out guy is Ezra Miller in the role of Patrick. The last time I saw him as the evil, sociopathic Kevin in We Need To Talk About Kevin, he was really convincing and once again he has managed to play a completely different role with ease. Overall, a good one-time watch.

Rating: 7/10

Adaptation (2002)

Charlie Kaufman: Do I have an original thought in my head? My bald head. Maybe if I were happier, my hair wouldn't be falling out. Life is short. I need to make the most of it. Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I'm a walking cliche......Why should I be made to feel I have to apologize for my existence? Maybe it's my brain chemistry. Maybe that's what's wrong with me. Bad chemistry. All my problems or anxiety can be reduced to a chemical imbalance or some kind of misfiring synapses. I need to get help for that. But I'll still be ugly though. Nothing's gonna change that.

Adaptation is as close to an autobiography that you can get from Kaufman. After the success of Being John Malkovich, Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) tries to adapt a non-fiction book, "The Orchid Thief" by Susan Orleans (Meryl Streep) into a movie. Trying to show that a movie can be just about simple things where nothing ever happens, he goes into a writer's block and is not able to get started.

Charlie has brought in a fictional twin brother, Donald Kaufman (Nicolas Cage), who is everything that he is not. As Charlie asks, "That you and I share the same DNA, can there be anything more lonely than that"? Charlie keeps feeling embarrassed by Donald's ways when he keeps flirting with women in his crew, and also the fact that Donald is not an intellectual like him. When Donald comes to stay with him while being enrolled in a seminar on how to make movies, Charlie pokes fun at the gurus who claim to know how movies are done. In a scene, he explains, "I don't want to bring in sex or guns or car chases, or characters learning profound lessons or overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end. Because life isn't like that. You know, it just isn't. And I feel strongly about it". As he struggles to get going on his task, he finds it increasingly difficult to find a story to make the movie. In the meantime, Donald's script of a thriller, "The 3", seems to have been liked by most people in the industry. Finally, in an act of desperation, he turns to his brother for help and finds himself attending a seminar on making movies by the same guru. While asking a question on how to deal with a movie where nothing ever happens or where the characters don't have a moment of epiphany,  he gets scolded by the guru for saying that nothing ever happens in life.  As he gets his brother to help him on his script, we see a twist in the movie with "sex, guns and car chases".

People who say that the ending was very "Hollywood style", well, that was the point. As the script for his movie and his own life run parallel, we get to see the whole joke about it. Like the guru says, "The last act makes a film. You can have flaws, problems, but wow them in the end, and you've got a hit".

Rating: 7.5/10

The Science of Sleep (2006)

Stephane on Stephane TV: Parallel Synchronized Randomness: An interesting brain rarity and our subject for today. Two people walk in opposite directions at the same and then they make the same decisions at the same time. Then they correct it, and then they correct it and then they correct it.....Basically in a mathematical world these two little guys will stay looped till the end of time. 

Stephane Miroux (Gael Garcia Bernal) is an eccentric, creative guy who returns back to France after losing his father to cancer. Ever since his childhood, he has lived inside his head, and more so after his father's death as there's no else he could connect with. On his mother's insistence and her help in getting him a job in France, he returns back from Mexico. On his first day at work, he realizes it's not a calendar illustrator role that he has, but more of a boring mechanical type. Like his colleague, Guy (Alain Chabat), on seeing him, mentions, "Fuck, an artist, he won't last a day!".

Cribbing about how he was tricked into coming back to France by his mother, he finds a little comfort in his newly-moved-in neighbor, Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg). While Stephanie's friend Zoe (Emma de Caunes) likes teasing him, he is still drawn to Stephanie as he sees something in common between them. Being nervous around people, he instantly lies about where he stays and doesn't admit to being her neighbor. And never knowing the right words to say, even after playing it a million times in his mind, he slips a letter under her door saying, "I'm your neighbor and a liar...And by the way, do you have Zoe's number?" Even though Stephanie reciprocates his feelings, she is much more grounded in reality and knows Stephane's childish behavior may not be something she could handle in the future. And also, like she mentions, she doesn't believe in marriage. When Stephane gets caught in her apartment after having broken into her house to fix her toy horse, she calls him a creep, only to find him sulking like a school boy. Stephanie always has to remain very careful about her choice of words around Stephane as he has a tendency to get hurt easily. So what we see is a one-sided tortured love affair (though not exactly one-sided)  where you can't tell the difference between fantasies and reality. Stephane, due to his inability to make connections in the real world, finally thinks about returning back to Mexico. Yet, while leaving, he meets her one last time to blame her for not being able to like him. To which Stephanie mentions, "You've a serious problem of distorting reality. You could sleep with the entire world, and still feel rejected". And what we have in the end is not being able to tell if that really happened, or it's just a figment of Stephane's imagination.

Similar to Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, this movie goes a step ahead in blurring the lines between dreams and reality. Though this one is much funnier and almost feels like taking a peek into the mind of Gondry himself. Charlotte Gainsbourg can still pass off as a twenty-year old and she looks gorgeous in her own simple way. Gael Garcia Bernal has evolved a lot as an actor from the last time I watched him in Y Tu Mama Tambien. And the conversations between Stephane and Guy are what sets French humor apart from the slapstick Hollywood style or the subtle English style. Not a movie to be missed!

Rating: 8/10

Les Miserables (2012)

Valjean: What have I done, sweet Jesus, what have I done?
              Become a thief in the night, a dog on the run
              And have I fallen so far and is the hour so late?
             That nothing remains but the cry of my hate?....
             If there was another way to go, I missed it 20 long years ago
             My life was a war that could never be won
            They gave me a number and murdered Valjean
            When they chained me and left me for dead........

Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) is a convict who has served nineteen years of his life in prison for stealing a loaf of bread for a starving child. After his release, he has been ruthlessly hunted by Javert (Russell Crowe) for breaking his parole.

After an act of kindness from a stranger, he looks for redemption and lets go of his hatred for the world. Eighteen years later, we see him as an owner of a factory where Fantine (Anne Hathaway) works. After Fantine is thrown out from her job due to concerns raised by other jealous women, she realizes her life is not the dream that she dreamed. Left alone to fend for herself and a child to feed, she turns to the oldest profession in the world. One night when she is attacked by a customer, she tries to defend herself while Javert seems to take her customer's side. When Valjean tries to defend Fantine, he realizes he has seen her before. Fantine asks him not to mock her situation by making it any worse than it is. She reminds him of how she was wrongly let go from her job by his foreman while Valjean stood there watching and not doing the right thing. Promising her that her child, Cossette (Isabelle Allen/Amanda Seyfreid), would be taken care of, he sees it done.

We are again taken a few years forward where we see the French rebellion in full force. As fate would have it, Valjean and Javert cross paths again. When Valjean finally gets a chance for revenge, he lets go of Javert while saying to him, "You were only doing your duty". Javert is not really the bad guy, but just someone without a heart and who follows the law to make sure every criminal is punished, regardless of the severity of the crime. Having doubts about his intentions all along, he finally has to decide whether it's Valjean or Javert....

Director Tom Hooper (of The King's Speech fame) has a strong cast on his side and they all deliver. We even get to see little cameos from Sasha Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter who play the role of the crooked couple in charge of Cossette. Overall a decent watch, but a tad too long....

Rating: 7/10

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Millicent: What was once before you- an exciting, mysterious future, is now behind you. Lived, understood, disappointing. You realize you are not special. You have struggled into existence, and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone's experience........As the people who adore you stop adoring you; as they die; as they move on; as you shed them; as you shed your beauty, your youth; as the world forgets you; as you recognize your transience; as you begin to lose your characteristics one by one; as you learn there is no one watching you, and there never was, you think only about driving- not coming from any place, not arriving at any place. Just driving, counting off time. Now you are here at 7:43. Now you are here at 7:44. Now you are ....gone.

Caden Cotard (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is, in the words of Millicent (Claire Keen), "a man already dead, living in a half-world between stasis and anti-stasis.....Up until recently he has strived valiantly to make sense of his situation, but now he has turned to stone." When his wife, Adele (Catherine Keener), leaves him along with her daughter Olive to "be around joyous people", his life slowly starts to disintegrate, as does his physical health. His doctor tells him he suffers from a condition where he cannot salivate or cry. He starts losing all sense of time. A year after, when Hazel (Samantha Morton) asks him out, he mentions its only been a week after his wife & daughter left. We see him dragging along, consumed by thoughts of his impending death.

Feeling alone and misunderstood, Caden finds no one to relate to. He enters into one relationship after another in search of companionship, while being completely oblivious to the needs of his various partners. His self-indulgence and self-pity eventually become too much to bear for everyone around him. Although Hazel has been one person who has always been loyal and loves him unconditionally, even while she is married to someone else. In his darkest hour, he receives the MacArthur award for his brilliance. He intends to spend all this money in planning a grand project which will be about his life and the various people who have been a part of and an influence on his life. As he spends years on this project, we see the actors who play the parts of his family and acquaintances also becoming a part of his life, and in turn being played by other actors. This is Kaufman's surrealism at its best. When Caden feels disturbed by thoughts of having abandoned his daughter, he tries to find her, only to see her working in a porn booth. Just like his own life, his daughter's has also disintegrated and she is on her death bed after a life of drug abuse. He feels wronged when he learns that her mother had lied to her all along about her father being gay. And finally the time comes when after spending a night with Hazel, she too dies in her sleep. Caden remarks that the day before Hazel's death must be the happiest day of his life and he has realized how to finalize the play...... However grand his project might be, we never see his play coming to an end, even though his life does.

This is Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut and probably is his best work, even though some would favor Adaptation. Unlike other sad and depressing movies/books that I have watched or read (Blasphemy by Tehmima Durrani and Requiem for a Dream are the ones that come to my mind), I could watch this movie over and over again.

Rating: 8.5/10

Being John Malkovich (1999)

John  Malkovich: This portal is mine and must be sealed up forever. For the love of God.
Craig Schwartz: With all respect, sir, I discovered that portal. It's my livelihood.
John Malkovich: It's my head, Schwartz! See you in court!
Craig Schwartz: And who's to say I won't be seeing what you're seeing......in court?

I guess I'll go on a Charlie Kaufman movies spree now. There's so much more to see every time you watch his movies. The movie starts with a puppet show named Craig's Dance of Despair and Disillusion where the character snaps and breaks the mirror on seeing and realizing the strings attached to his every move. Puppeteer Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) is a frustrated artist, who probably has the talent but not the right connections to make his dream a reality and help his career flourish. On his wife's insistence and comment, "Not everyone can be Derek Mantini", he finally takes up a low-skill job as a file clerk. This has been a constant theme in some of Charlie Kaufman's movie, as we can almost hear him through Craig's words, "You're lucky to be a monkey. Because consciousness is a terrible curse. I think, I feel, I suffer. And all I ask in return is the opportunity to do my work. But they won't allow it. Because I raise issues." Craig's office is situated on the 7 1/2 floor where there's a story going around on why the roofs are so low.

One day, while looking around in his office, he finds a secret passage that's like a portal to the mind of the actor, John  Malkovich. While he mentions his experience to a lady from the same floor, Maxine (Catherine Keener), it doesn't really impress her. He also mentions this in front of his wife, Lotte (Cameron Diaz), who seems more than fascinated and wants to experience it. Maxine, being the bitch that she is, changes her mind later and wants to make it work for her after knowing that John Malkovich is a popular actor who starred in that "jewel thief movie". What follows is a gradual taking over of the man, Malkovich, by Craig and Maxine as they try to make a fortune out of it. Maxine realizes that puppeteering is not just about playing with dolls, but "it's playing with people".

The movie shows us so many themes about unfulfilled dreams, self-obsession, identity and mind-manipulation. It also touches briefly on the point whether the wronged will commit wrong till life goes full circle to haunt them. As in one of the scenes where Lotte is chasing Maxine and as they enter Malkovich's sub-conscious, we see Malkovich's life playing out in reverse chronology where he seems at first like a jerk and then we go on to see his childhood where he was bullied. Overall, a brilliant movie where first-time director Spike Jonze would take us through a bizarre and surrealistic journey that has become a trademark of all Kaufman's writings. The acting is also amazing with special mention for Cameron Diaz where she actually acts and is in a very un-glamorous role! Though among all the three, it's Catherine Keener's Maxine who takes the prize.

Rating: 7.5/10