My Favorite Movies

The Absolute Best!

this film has defined for ages what can broadly be called "the cinemas of the mind": the opening scene where mastroianni crawls out of his car's window and flies off in a balloon is a symbol of cinema's escape from the limits of Reason; it culminates in another scene when he shockingly grabs his mother's face to smooch her only to discover that the face belongs to his paramour...fellini demonstrates with 8 1/2 cinema's sinister capacity to penetrate our minds...and touch our souls.

no other hollywood film has been copied by bollywood as many times as this one: from raj kapoor's chori-chori to mahesh bhatt's dil hai ki mantaa nahi, it happened one night has been duplicated frame by frame...and despite the passage of four decades or so, lost none of its brilliance...perhaps, this is THE love story of- and for- our times...every scene is to be savored...

absolutely groundbreaking...after kane, cinema was no longer a prisoner of time (or to be more specific, linear story-telling)...one wonders why welles didn't come up with anything remotely as good as his debut?...together with fellini's 8 1/2 it defines modern cinema...

which is better- the book or the movie? usually such questions have only one answer: the book of course. but with coppola's adaptation of puzo's masterpiece there can be no easy answer...both the book and the film have sought rather blatantly to glamorize the mafiosi; neither offers any regret...but they do it with such unbridled panache- class even- that one can't help but fall in love with the Godfather...brando no doubt steals the show with his unique hanky-stuffed-in-mouth portrayal of don corleone...

for sheer rawness of performances- for all we know, the actors could well have been animals in human clothing-, acerbity of golman's dialogues delivered with unmatched primordial gusto, and a crazed lust for power- that is the hallmark of all ages including ours- this is the film to watch- and then watch again and again...to me, this is the very anti-thesis of a love story; and for that reason alone, i love every moment of it.

charles chaplin had said that had he known about the true horrors of concentration camps, he would never have made the great dictator. it is difficult to agree with him. it's all very well to have schindler's list...but films like this one do what they cannot: they look Evil straight in the face and laugh at it, tell it to go screw itself; more importantly, they are symbolic of Art's- and Humor's- triumph...

the best film ever made about films; it takes the viewer on a magical joyride through cinema's golden age...the dancing, the singing, the acting...everything is perfect...in my opinion, it is by far the best musical ever!

an eternal classic epitomizing the craft of filmmaking at its very best.

this has got to be the best biopic of all time. curiously, then, the secret of sir richard attenborough's encapsulation of a life as complex and charismatic as gandhi's owes much to his subject's demonic antithesis: adolf hitler who famously wrote "read the essentials, forget the non-essentials" (mein kampf). gandhi- the film- does indeed, by focusing on the essentials of gandhi's overpowering humanity even at the risk of oversimplification, mytholigification and caricaturing, create a character far more real than the mahatma...not surprisingly, people in india find ben kingsley to be more of a gandhi than gandhi himself...other auteurs who have taken on gandhi- shyam benegal, for instance, in his film 'the making of the mahatma'- fail precisely because they couldn't escape the pitfalls of non-essentials...

possibly the best cinematic adaptation of lear...on second thoughts- that may be a bit unfair on kurosawa for two reasons: one, ran's visual vocabulary owes very little to the bard- by juxtaposing the gruesome violence- physical but also moral- that is lear against the backdrop of an otherwise placid idyll, japan's premier cinematic auteur has taken lear beyond the strictly shakespearean interpretation- wherein- and this is my second point- Nature itself becomes as ethically ambiguous a character as any other; kurosawa, like the bard, has deftly left all moral judgments to the viewer...this is by far his best work.

Hitchcock's best!

Not surprisingly, everyone associated with the cast of this film went mad, much like the character played by Jack Nicholson. Kubrick proves that the real horror lies within us; and isolation, more than anything else, is the best catalyst for awakening the demons inside...

This is perhaps the sexiest film I've ever seen: don't ask me why. Kundan Shah did a superb adaptation with Jaane bhi do yaaron, turning it into the best comedy Indian cinema has produced. Antonioni cannot be surpassed in his mastery of the Desolation of contemporary life: everything, it seems, becomes an object, beautiful but without feelings; incapable of arousal...Ironically, then, this is what makes Blow Up so sexy!

A brilliant film about unrequited self-love...

no film has made me think more about the meaning of life- monty python included- than matrix. the world it propounds cannot be denied (or for that matter, verified); therein lies its true horror. the wachowski brothers, however, should have left it at that. the sequels are an unequivocal disaster- given to much pointless philosophizing.

Among the best all-time feel-gooders; this is one movie I am going to love viewing again and again!

the definitive romance for- and of- our times. guaranteed to make those butterflies in your stomach flutter. pity the real-life romance b/w the lead couple didn't play out like the movie though.

the best western to come out after dances with wolves...there is something uncanny about the relationship between russell crowe and christian bale's characters, which our conventional sense of morality- right and wrong, good and evil- can't quite comprehend...more than anything else, this is what makes this movie so great. go see it!

The Casablanca of Indian Cinema: no other film has embedded itself so deeply into our nation's collective conscious as this one.

As a child, I saw this 18 times. Even now, I think everything about Mr India is perfect.

Absolutely brilliant.

The best children's film I've seen. Watching it made me feel like a child all over again.

For millions like me raised on a staple-diet of commercial Hindi cinema, there's nothing particularly novel about its plot: the relatively lukewarm response it has gotten from Indian filmgoers compared to the rapturous applause elsewhere is proof of this. Its rags-to-riches tale, adapted from a novel penned by a diplomat, could well be a cinematic-metaphor for India's own rise during the period in which it unfolds. In so many ways, it is the story of India as well as those of us who have lived here through the tumultuous past two decades.

Its phenomenal 'rules-breaking success'- to paraphrase the longtime film-critic, Roger Ebert- therefore owes equally if not more to the disenchanted times the world suddenly finds itself thrust into as it does to the movie's delightful intrinsic-charms (of which there are several): after all, what better medicine than a good healthy dose of unbridled Hope wrapped in wondrously uplifting Jai-hos to cure the globe of its seemingly insurmountable Recession-blues?

All the other films nominated for Best Picture at this year's Oscars reflect the Gloom around- but also, within- us; none with the solitary exception of this film offers a way-out: even- or, especially- if the way-out is an implausibly exhilaratingly happy ending. And that is precisely what makes it work.

I leave you with this particular mise-en-scene: as Jamal weaves his way through Mumbai's reptilian traffic to answer that one last remaining two million-rupee question, a wrinkly old beggar knocks at his car-window. Thinking she has come to ask for money he ignores her at first only to be confronted with the realization that she doesn't want his money at all; on the contrary, she wants him to win it all. 'Beta,' she beams to Jamal as he is driven away, 'jeet ke aana.' (Son, win & come.) His victory, after all, would be hers as well. Much as Slumdog Millionaire's victory on Oscar Night would be India's- and of Underdogs everywhere.

The film loses none of the book's charm: a tale of innocence lost and ultimately reclaimed, it would no doubt lift your soul.

This film isn't about piracy, prostitution, blackmail or even murder- although it has loads of all that. At its heart, Diva is about music- no, not the loud jarring sort but the kind that occupies the space between silences.

And we don't just listen to it; what is more, we actually see this music: in the eerie emptiness of Diva's cinematography; in the uncluttered labyrinth of Parisian urban lofts; on an enchanted castle by the sea; in the meaningful relationships between strangers; and in the wild applause of an empty opera house.

Beineix's weaves a world that is, for lack of a better word, hypnotic. And we, his viewers, simply drift to it.