In the cut and Meg Ryan's ghost

Ok let me get straight to the point, this movie is by far one of the worst movies I have yet to see. Meg Ryan has either aged or had some cosmetic surgery that made her nose do funny erratic things the entire movie (that make you feel like punching her in the face coz she looks disgusted all the time!). She looked absolutely awful and artificial. The sex scenes were the big joke in this movie.(...)
Anyway, the so called thriller has a very forced twisted ending that will keep you beating your head for wasting your time watching this crap. In short, if you buy this movie for the idea, it is a stupid movie with a stupid idea. If you buy it for the sex scene, prepare for the disappointment of your life time watching Meg Ryan statue making love, lol. If you are a Meg Ryan fan, buy this movie to start being a fan of another.
Ah, one more thing. The commentary on the DVD (you know this SPECIAL EXTRA FEATURE thing) is absolutely useless. I have not heard commentary as naive as the one for this movie from the producer and director. One of the comments she said was: “Safe sex is not using condoms, safe sex is being considerate". What the hell does that have to do with anything?
Am outta here, just watched the movie and commentary and feel like breaking my DVD player.

Stephen King's Storm of the Century.. typically a Stephen King movie!

A movie for Stephen King and a movie for David Lynch are guaranteed to leave you dis-satisfied. You will want to know MORE, lots of whys and hows. However, David Lynch movies leave dis-satisfied but you know that seeing the movie again and again will unlock more mysteries and give you more clues to understand the movie. Stephen King on the other hand gives you the best entertainment during the movie time yet, watching the movie a million time will leave you clueless because Stephen King deals with the super-natural things he introduces in his movies as normal things that need no explanation. In the Storm of the Century (I won't spoil the movie), we are introduced to this man-like person who does all sorts of supernatural things like killing people who are miles away from him, making things disappear, changing his looks, having silver vampire teeth every once in a while, a real weirdo. And all the movie he is asking the people to 'give him what he wants and he will go away'. Well, the hook of the movie for me was not what is it that this guy wants, nor was it the storm that cut off the island from the world, not the wierd deaths happening nor why did he kill this and not that, the hook for me was WHO was this man? Was he the devil? Was he an alien? What was he? How did he get all these supernatural powers? Well, Stephen King offers a one liner explanation in the 5.5 hours running time of the series/movie which is most frustrating. This movie is a masterpiece to watch, get entertained, and get frightened without being disgusted from blood and all these slashers. However, if you are looking for more than entertainment, if you are looking for a movie analysis or a deep meaning to the super natural, then you will be as dis-satisfied as I was when the movie ended.
I love Stephen King's works, I love his movies, they keep me excited from beginning to end so I decided I will watch his work in the future with that objective in mind: entertainment while it lasts. I see his movie and then life goes on, no analysis, no deep thinking, nothing. Just the mere entertainment and joy of watching his great buildup of characters and classy horror.

The butterfly effect.. The one and only mistake in this gorgeous movie..

This is one of the very good thrillers I have seen. I saw it in the cinema 2 times and then decided to buy the DVD. Kutcher's performance is remarkable and the story is original. It is time travelling but not physical like back to the future and Time machine, it is mental time travel. The movie starts with Kutcher as a kid who blacks out in certain times and his mom takes him to a doctor who advises her that her son should start writing everything he does in a journal. That would help him control/minimize black outs. The boy starts doing that and the only things he does not record in his journal is his blackouts because he simply can not remember what happens. He grows up and stops having blackouts. When one day he opens one of the journals on a certain page that he blacked out in the middle of as a kid, something weird happens. He goes back in time with his mind and suddenly he remembers. Throughout the film he does things in his past, little little things that make huge impacts on his present. So every time he goes back in time to fix something, the present changes drastically. So throughout the movie he is trying to fix what he has done. There is only one problem. Let us assume that the blackout times for him were as follows: when he was 8 then when he was 10 then when he was 12. If the movie starts by him going back to the most recent blackout there wouldn't have been any problem. But the movie jumps from one blackout to the other irrespective of their time of occurrence. Now, if Kutcher goes back in time for the first time when he was 8, my question is: How come do the journals stay the SAME every time his present changes? When you watch the movie you will see it better. In any case, that does not make the movie bad or anything, it is one of my most favourite movies!

Nicolas Cage KNOWING it all!

OK, I will try to write my thoughts down as they come without thinking much of the words I use before all my thoughts escape me as I have just watched this movie.. The review below has spoilers, so do not read if you have not seen the movie.

I think the movie is trying to discuss the subject of determinism and randomness as Nicolas Cage briefly talked in the beginning of the movie.. It doesn't matter if the people in black turned out to be aliens or whatever, I think the message is: the universe is not random and everything is done in a determined way and you KNOWING the future changes nothing because everything is already pre-determined..

It was only when Nicolas Cage submitted to this faith, that he was able to give up his son (he believed he would be with him in another world forever and ever) although in the beginning of the movie he didn't believe in God or heaven or anything.. I have read some reviews about this movie and they mostly discuss it as a movie about disaster prevention: IT IS NOT.

The little girl in the beginning of the movie writing the prediction paper is nothing, just a tool to give you the future on a piece of paper, it could have been anything else (a paper falling from the sky, or Nicolas Cage dreaming of dates, etc...). I believe the girl writing is not important to the message the movie is trying to convey, she is just the tool the director/author used to give the future on a paper (because of you think about it, there is no purpose for the aliens for humans to know the dates..it is not like they believed humans can stop disasters from happening). So, the alien thing is totally irrelevant to the story. In fact, you can think of the aliens and space ship as God sending angels to save the children, but again it is irrelevant and does not serve the main message at all so I will not dwell on this.

The box movie unboxed!

I saw this movie on the plane and I wished my flight was longer so I could see it again. This movie, for me, depicts the story of man. It narrates the story of Adam and Eve as we know it from the Bible (Quran has a different point of view about the story but I can get to that later).
If you have not seen the movie, please do not continue reading.

Norma and her husband are living a happy life together (Adam and Eve in Heaven before the fall). One day a stranger knocks on their door and lures them with a box that will give them a million dollars if they were to press a button in it (Satan luring Adam and Eve to eat from the forbidden tree). The husband resists when he knows the other part of the deal: someone you dont know will die. But Norma keeps nagging and finding excuses why it is ok to press the button. The husband thinks of the worst (a child could die), but Norma thinks only of what can make her feel ok about pushing the button (it could be a criminal waiting for his death row). Again this is a depiction of the Bible's story about Eve being the one who pushed Adam to eat the fruit. Then, when the button is pressed, hell breaks loose (Adam and Eve fall from heaven to inhabit earth). Norma and husband are faced with choice after another, none of which is reasonable. The movie portrays that human beings are faced every day with choices that are all bad ones and we choose the one that we think is less bad. There is nothing that is good. Even when something good happens, it is short-lived and one doesn't have time to enjoy it (they took the 1 million USD a didn't get to spend it and enjoy it). Life is about tests and unfortunately, it seems that no matter we do, we lose in the end!

Twilight.. Bella.. Eclipse and the disappointment!

My biggest disappointment with eclipse was the fact that it ended the SAME EXACT ending as New Moon. I mean, didn't New Moon end with Edward proposing to Bella to marry him? And isn't that exactly the ending of eclipse? The movie does not move an inch. If someone misses to watch it and goes directly from New Moon to the next one, s/he wouldn't miss a thing.

Bella is quite cold in this movie, the beautiful sexual tension between her and Edward is feeble and whatever she feels to Jacob is something I could not feel. There is no intensity, no progression, no convincing me or others that she does love him.

I was disappointed and yet, even if I had read this before seeing the movie, I would have still gone and seen it :)

Bram Stoker's Dracula: Jonathan Harker

Read on if you are a Dracula fan!

Many people discuss how passive Jonathan Harker is in Dracula and how he is aloof compared to others. Depends which Jonathan Harker you mean: the one in the original novel or the one Francis Coppola made in the 1992 movie Dracula. In the movie, Jonathan was such a bad example of the real Jonathan Harker in the novel. I believe it is one of the worst performances by Keanu Reeves. He doesn't speak, doesn't share opinions, he let women sexually abuse him and he conforms to everything everybody says, and just like someone commented before, he manages to say to Dracula in the beginning of the movie, "I have offended you with my ignorance, Count. Forgive me", uhhhh.

As for the novel, Harker is traumatized after his experience in Transylvania and for the second half of the story, he is only a wreck of a man, especially after Mina gets bitten by Dracula. He is not the wittiest of the 4 men, but being a solicitor, he knows the minute details of how things work and he is organized and passionate about getting the job done. He is very meticulous and this is exactly what the team needed. Everyone in the team had something to offer and this is what Jonathan offered.

Dracula and Francis Ford Copola's disgrace!

I am a great fan of the original Bram Stoker's Dracula Novel. I believe Coppola's movie is a disgrace to the real novel because it disrespects a lot of major themes in the original novel. Having said that, Stoker's novel never told us why Dracula was moving from Transylvania to England neither did it give us information on how Dracula became a vampire. The only good thing about Coppola's movie is the establishment of a background to the story and this is what he did when he showed us how Vlad The Impaler became Dracula and also by showing us why he was obsessed with going to England (to meet what he believed to be the re-incarnation of his beloved wife who committed suicide).
In reality, Coppola probably got this idea from Vlad's wife who is said to have been a kind and humble wife with a heart of gold. Whenever Vlad took his sword and led his army into battle, his wife's heart grew sad. One night a strange thing happened. An arrow entered through one of the windows of the fortress and put out a candle in their bedroom. Striking a light, she discovered a letter in the point of the arrow which said that the fortress was surrounded by the Turks. Approaching the window she saw many flickering fires in the valley. Thinking that all was lost, and without waiting for her husband's decision, she climbed up on the wall of the fortress and threw herself into the Arges River.
So the suicide part is real in the movie however, as I said, this is all Coppola's idea of how to establish the story and in my opinion, it is the only merit in this movie.

Inception cracked to the bones!

Below is the movie Inception spoiled. So, please stop reading if you haven't watched the movie yet!

So, is the whole movie a dream?

Is the last scene where Cobb meets his children real or is he dreaming?

Is the whole movie shot in Cobb's state of Limbo and everything around that is a mere construction of his mind?

I had to watch this movie three times to get my theory out!

Three times of pausing and rewinding and jotting down sentences said and clothes worn!

Three times of mind boggling challenge to KNOW what the director really meant!

And in the end, it was worth it!

I have read many complicated reviews and many complex theories that left no impression on my mind.. I knew the writer/director was sitting there somewhere with a sarcastic smile reading all these over engineered hypotheses and saying in his mind "it's much simpler than this, isn't it obvious?!"

So, in the coming paragraphs, I will try to lay down what I believe beyond doubt has happened in this movie, what was real and what was a dream, and in the course of doing so, I will unfold the reasons behind my beliefs. I'd be happy to discuss counter theories from Inception enthusiasts like myself.

So, without over complicating things and talking about dreams within dreams within dreams, let me put down some basic principles:

1- A minute in our life is equivalent to almost 10 minutes in the first level of dream which is equal to probably a 100 minute in the third level of the dream and so on. Bottom line: the more levels down of a dream one is in, time extends to hours and weeks and years. Remember, Cobb and Mal were sleeping in their house while doing the experiment for a couple of hours and in their dream, they lived over 50 years.
2- If someone dies in a dream, s/he wakes up immediately. However, if they were heavily sedated and are in several dreams within dreams, they are lost in Limbo. Limbo is an expanse of infinite raw subconscious. It is the deepest anyone can travel into the mind and the person will not know they are in Limbo nor that they are dreaming.

Now that the above is established, here is what happened:
1- Cobb is truly unable to go to his country because he is accused of murdering his wife. He believes that Saito's proposal is the only way for him to be with his children again.
2- Cobb accepts the job and the part in Mombasa and the aeroplane are all true.
3- Saito gets shot in the first level of the dream and they fear he will go into Limbo in which case he will not honour the agreement with Cobb simply because he would forget when he wakes up everything that happened prior to him getting on the plane.
4- The team continues in the dream travelling till we see Saito dead in the ice stage.
5- Ariadne and Cobb decide to go to Limbo to get Fisher and Saito.
6- Ariadne brings Fisher back and Cobb goes to look for Saito.

Now, the part where the movie starts, Cobb on a deserted shore and some security people taking him to an old man is actually Cobb dreaming in Limbo. Cobb knows that Saito is dead and is now in Limbo. He wants to go bring him back but remind him to honour his promise. If Saito forgets everything else, he should not forget to make the phone call that he promised to make. Otherwise, Cobb lands in the airport and will be forever prisoned for murdering his wife.
Cobb meets Saito, the old man and reminds him of their agreement. The question is: why is Saito so old and Cobb is still young? Cobb knew that Saito died and hence dropped in Limbo. The long minutes that passed from Saito dying after throwing the bomb at the projections in the ice field and Cobb and the others discussed what is to be done, these few minutes are years and years in Limbo. Remember what I mentioned above about the experiment Cobb and Mal did. They only stayed dreaming for possibly an hour or two, but they lived over 50 years in Limbo. This explains why Saito has aged so much while Cobb is still a young man.

Everyone wakes up in the plane and starting this point in the movie everything is real again. It is clear that Saito doesn't quite know what's happening. Possibly he lost a big part of his mind while in Limbo but we know one thing when he picks up the plane phone: he remembers he has to make this phone call. The phone call is made and Cobb passes through immigration with no trouble. His father meets him and takes him back home.

A lot of controversy that revolved around this last scene is because of the totem spinning. People say, the totem didn't stop spinning, therefore, Cobb is still dreaming. They also say that the children didn't age and they were wearing the same clothes as they wore in his dreams.

In fact, if you see the movie three times like me, you will know that the children clothes did change. The girl was wearing a pink dress and black shoes in his dreams. In the end of the movie, she was wearing a pink dress with brown shoes. The boy was wearing a brown shirt and shorts and in the end he is wearing a different shade of brown and a different shirt and short! I am sure the director intended to do that in order to confuse us, which I think is awesome. About the totem, despite the fact that Cobb was in the real world, I believe the director was just trying to tell us that it didn't matter to Cobb whether he was dreaming or was in the real world. What mattered to him was that he was with his children, in his home in his country. This opens the door for a widely debated subject that is discussed in the movie: what is real and what is illusion? If one is living in a happy beautiful illusion, does it really matter? Should our experiences only count if they were experienced in the real world as we know it? And for that matter, how can one know that this whole big world is not another dream and that we are not sleeping somewhere waiting to wake up?

Hope that was a helpful illustration for the amazingly condense and brilliant movie that made me change my mind completely about Leonardo Di Caprio and actually put him in the list of the greatest actors there is!