Movies of the week

China Town:
When my good friend offered me the DVD, I thought he meant the Hindi ’36 China Town’. I was about to refuse it when I learnt that it’s Roman Polanski’s ‘China Town’. Well I don’t mean I hate the Hindi one. I love it for the slutty aunt who comes in for Johnny Lever’s wife. (She had a difficult time getting into the tiny skirt.)
Anyways Polanski’s had walked away with many Academy awards. It’s a kind of thriller movie starring the talented Jack Nicholson. Not just him but the entire cast gives a superb performance and even Polanski makes an appearance.
It’s about a private detective who gets himself involved in a murder case and finds himself sucked into a world of deception, adultery, money power etc. China Town is a place where rich and powerful owns the place and runs it. They are the law and order. He realizes that people and world aren’t what it seems outwardly and he is a mere pawn. The ending is poignant and heart rending.
I will stay away from doing a review of a master’s but you will find traces of Hitchcock style. I bet Tarantino would have been inspired by him. It’s stylish, powerhouse performance and sadly very few nude scenes. But you will be surprised at the parallels that can be drawn in society today.
I won’t say it’s the best. But a normal commercial movie lover would like it.

Don’t tell:
If you hate the slow movies, don’t watch this.
I love Christina Comaneci for the beautiful frames. Most of her films are about relationships and you will never see a huge turbulence. Her film flows in a steady pace.
This is an Academy Award winner too. This one deals with fragility of relationships and restless of people until they settle down into a ‘perfect’ one.
The protagonist is happily living with her boy friend. She is happy or it seems so. But she is haunted by strange nightmares. This gets worse when she gets pregnant. So in search for the answer she goes to her brother in USA. She is confronted with troubled family secrets. She decides to take some harsh decisions.
In parallel, there is a lesbian friend of hers haunted by loneliness and her boss deserted by her husband for their daughter’s friend. There is also a director facing a creative block and the boyfriend who gets into a relationship when she is away in USA.
Don’t say I didn’t warn- this is a slow and long movie. But watch it for the frames and some hot scenes. The climax train sequence is one of the best I have ever seen.