10 Things I Hate About You

With the bombardment of hopeless teen movies (High School Musicals-1, 2, 3...really hope they stop!) In the past decade many of us have lost the will to actual sit through another one of those bad boy-good girl movies. At a time like this, is when I came across Gil Junger’s 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU. Primarily, the fact that this movie starred an early Heath Ledger gave me the required push to watch the movie.

The movie is largely based on the Shakespeare play "The Taming of the Shrew" and caught me by complete surprise with its treatment of a regular high school story. Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is new to Padua High and is being shown around the school by Michael (David Krumholtz). It is here that he sees and immediately falls in love with Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) and on probing about finds out that she has an extremely uptight father who would allow her to date a guy only if her sister, Kat (Julia Stiles) is also dating someone. Cam and Michael cook up a complicated plan to get a jerk, who also has the hots for Bianca to pay Patrick (Heath Ledger), the bad boy of the school to make Kat, who tends to be an unmanageable bitch of a person fall in love with him. The rest of the story is about the repercussions of the plan made and resulting in a predictable yet happy ending.

What this movie has, that makes it different from the other million movies made in this genre is heart. The characters in the movie are very easy for us to identify with and understand what goes around in their head. Though the overall acting by everyone is extremely good it’s the chemistry between Kat and Patrick that really gets this movie going. Most importantly Kat’s character development as a royal bitch of a person to someone with a soul is shown in a very smooth way and it can be clearly noticed by how we respond to her character at different stages in the movie.

The only place this movie falls flat is the use of stereotypical high school characters who aren’t really necessary. But on the whole this movie is very entertaining watch and without doubt THE best teen movie of the 90’s.

EYE CATCHER:

Heath Ledger's singing of Frankie Valli's Can't take my eyes off you.

IMDB RATING: 6.8 ON 10

FIGHT CLUB

What does one do with all his frustrations? A job that’s so boring its driving you insane, a marriage in which happiness is something you just don’t get to fell, leading life with no purpose and feeling so small in this large universe of ours that we start to question our very existence. What does one do with all his frustrations?

Fight club, a David Fincher directed cult-classic starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton gives us the exact answer to the question asked above. The narrator (Edward Norton) suffers from insomnia and in his quest to find closure starts attending all sorts of support group meetings. It is here that he meets Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), another phony who tries to push him out of the support groups and for whom he has a secret crush on. It is in this crossroads of his life that he meets Tyler Durden, who he befriends and in a sequence of events, ends up living with him. On the night he moves in with Tyler, the narrator and Tyler end up fighting against each other for fun. At the end of this fight they realize that trashing themselves up has not only helped them relieve their frustrations but also got them feeling good about themselves. This leads to the founding of a secret underground club known as the FIGHT CLUB.

In the fight club guys meet up with the sole purpose of fighting each other and are given dangerous assignments to complete before they come in for their next fight. Slowly something that was started just for fun starts evolving into a nationwide phenomenon. Also Marla starts getting involved with Tyler making things hard for the narrator. Thus, how the narrator tries stopping fight club’s vandalism from going out of control and the repercussions of his actions makes up the rest of the movie. This movie is believed by many to have one of the best twists in a story that’s so good it completely changes the whole dynamic of the movie.

Other than the exceptional acting by Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, superb direction and extremely fast faced screenplay, the movie has superb music which gives the movie a feel of aggression and pure adrenaline. This movie is what can be called a complete ‘guy’ movie, not that girls won’t like it, just guys can relate to it in much better way. This in my opinion is one of the best ‘guy’ movie ever made and a must see for anyone who enjoys entertaining cinema.

EYE CATCHER:

The scene involving Edward Norton bashing himself up in his bosses office is of those few scenes that are intense at the same time have dark humor that hits you from nowhere.

WATCH OUT FOR:

The fight sequences involve a lot of blood. My advice to people who get grossed out by blood, just bear with it and watch the movie its too good to be missed.

IMDB RATING: 8.7 on 10

The Deer Hunter

Deer hunter is a Michael Cimino movie starring Robert De Niro (Michael), Christopher Walken (Nick) and Meryl Steep (Linda). This movie isn't attention grabbing when a person firsts reads about it, reason being it’s YET another Vietnam movie. People go to the war and return to the normal world and aren't just the same--post war depression. It wasn't until I watched De Niro in Taxi Driver, that I felt compelled to watch what many people regard his best movie ever.

This is a story of four friends in a small mining town in the States. Michael and Nick are best friends and they along with there friends go for hunting, drink beer and keep living a life minus responsibilities. The beautiful Linda is stuck between choosing one of the two men and keeps juggling them. There patriotism gets the better of them and they decide to fight in Vietnam. In Vietnam, they are forced to look at wicked world of war where a person's life is worth nothing. It is in Vietnam that the famous Russian roulette sequence happens where Michael is made to play against Nick. This particular scene is so beautifully enacted, that it makes a person watching feel like he is the one playing the game. Michael does return to the States after the war, but is a completely changed man. His perspective on life is forever changed and he becomes a better person. But Nick is so emotionally destroyed, that he stays back in Saigon to live a completely self destructive life. The rest of the story is about how Michael goes about trying to find and bring Nick back, ending in an edge-of-the-seat climax.

The movie is almost perfect in many ways-AMAZING acting, beautiful camera work, superb direction and mind blowing screenplay. The only problem with the movie is that it’s extremely long (3hrs 45 mins). If u are a fan of De Niro or war movies or even otherwise this is a must watch. The main reason as to why this movie is so amazingly superb , is that it helps capturing the human emotions so beautifully that after the movie you would feel that YOU yourself are a victim of the horrors unleashed by war.

EYE CATCHER:
Robert de Niro 's acting during the Russian roulette.

WATCH OUT FOR:
DON'T lose your patience when you watch the movie .Its worth each and every second.

IMDB: 8.2 ON 10.