010. Ratatouille

Ab 3, Oktober! I'm guessing that's a day

before my birthday. Cool international posters.

Watch the trailer here

Ok, ok. I have been slacking. I apologize. I am trying to actually get this going again. Granted, it will require a lot of work and effort on my part. I have watched ten movies from the list since I started this project half a year ago. If my math is correct (and thanks to some hardcore math-loving asian genes in my genome, it usually is) that means I have to watch one hundred and seventy-ish movies in the remaining half of the year. Sounds possible! I like challenges, anyway.

So, back to the movie. It's hard to review a Pixar animated movie. Not because it's particularly challenging to watch, but the idea of coming up with something insightful or novel (especially when you are reviewing a movie that is close to 4 years old) seems a bit ludicrous to me. Everyone knows that it was a good movie. Even those weird people that don't like Pixar movies and would rather watch Bee Movie or Over the Hedge. I mostly mean my friend Jayme. In any case, Ratatouille is (you guessed it!) awesome.

One thing that detracts from the movie is the plot. Ratatouille tells the story of a young rat named Remy that embraces being different and being special, as opposed to being one more of the pack. Not that it is a bad idea, or sends a bad message but it's been done before, no? If I'm not mistaken it's the exact same plot of Jonathan Livingston Seagull-- or Juan Salvador Gaviota, as it was known to me. Weirdly enough, I once read a book that was also a rehash of JLS but with dolphins. I'm not entirely sure how that got published. Anyway going back to Ratatouille, it's definitely a plot that's used often because the message is important and rather timeless. Be yourself. Be great. As Dr Seuss would say "Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive that is youer than you." I guess I just think that when compared to Up or Wall-E, it falls a little short. To be fair, I'm probably doing it a huge disservice by watched it after Pixar's latest hits. It was made before those movies and they have probably grown since then.

On a completely illogical level, another minor gripe I had with this movie is Patton Oswalt. I'm sure he has his fans and some people find him funny. To me he is and will always be that small guy from King of Queens. I'm not much of a Kevin James fan and anything related to him, automatically (and unfairly) loses points.

Don't get me wrong, there is still plenty of excellence in this movie. The animation is spectacular from the facial expressions on the rodents to the beautiful Parisian background that is peppered throughout the movie. It really is awe-inspiring to see how much animation has developed in recent years; Pixar, of course, being at the forefront of that pioneering.

It had cute little strokes of genius here and there, like having Remy control his human friend Linguini by pulling his hair. The man is now the horse and the little rat is the jockey. The scene where Remy's family of rats fall from an attic is both the most disgusting and the most exciting scene I've seen in a while. It's rather eerie how real it feels to see a bunch of animated rats fall from the roof.

Overall, it is a very strong effort by Pixar. It won't ever be remembered as their best movie, but it's hard to imagine someone not liking this little gem.

Recommended, unless you are grossed out by rats.

007. Taxi to the Dark Side

Stomach the trailer here
Taxi to the Dark Side is a documentary that tries to understand the circumstances that led to the death of Dilawar , a taxi driver that along with his 3 passengers was captured and sent to Bagram, an air base where suspects of terrorism were held. There his head was covered and he was submitted to stress positions and severe beatings to the legs until his body gave out. Dilawar died in Bagram. He was 22 and had a daughter and a family that were given a death certificate in a foreign language and no real explanation of what had just happened. The worst part is that Dilawar is not an isolated case.

Taxi to the Dark Side explores the American policy on torture and it is a really eye opening documentary that while graphic and at times very difficult to watch, is essential to understand if the human race ever wants to better itself.

Throughout the movie , vaguely familiar scenes of dehumanization of suspects in Abu Ghraib are shown and peppered with interviews of former soldiers (most of which were discharged), its the sort of stuff we saw on the news and decided maybe its best if we changed the channel. We hate torture, it disgusts us but lets not ruin our dinner by paying it too much attention. I think this sort of attitude passive allows this sort of intrinsically human, disgusting behaviour to carry on unchecked. You need to want to throw up. You need to hate humanity a little for what its capable of. This is the gasoline that lights the fire.

I think its easy to look at this documentary and conclude "Those Americans are awful people." You have people that are almost caricaturesque in appearance and fit the role of villain perfectly. From Yoo to Rumsfeld (who is quoted as saying "I stand 10 hours a day, why do terrorist suspects stand only 4."), these are the people that are destined to fill all circles of hell. Regardless of how easy it may be to cast them as the dark side, the USA are not alone in doing these awful things. They were using old torture chambers that belonged to Hussein. Canada is currently investigating claims that Canadian soldiers also took part in similar scenarios. Tony Blair gets called "war criminal" more often than he gets called Tony Blair. And the list goes on and on. I don't think the US, nor those military people responsible should get to wash their hands of what they did, but to simplify the situation is to minimize its real effect and that's the last thing families of victims, such as Dilawar's would want right now.

As a side note, I was actually pretty ecstatic about how fundamental to this investigation journalists were. It's definitely something that I considered when choosing my new career path and I find it inspiring. As difficult as it may be to be the first to see these things, its necessary and it changes lives and the world. So go journalism!

Recommended, definitely recommended. You need to know and see this and let that disgust motivate you to do something about these sort of things.

005. Kramer vs. Kramer

Please watch the trailer here.

When I decided to add this movie to the master list I did it for 2 main reasons. The first one was that my infinite amount of anal retentive rules for this project obligated me to watch a certain amount of academy award winning movies--easy enough had I already not made myself watch most of the recent ones. I had to go all the way back to 1979 for this one. The other reason is that I like Meryl Streep as an actor. She's amazing. She takes over whatever scene she's in and everytime she's on screen she makes me wonder what's going to happen to movies once her generation of actresses die out. Will we be left with Hilary Duff and Lindsay Lohan? Or will the Dakota Fannings and Jacob from Twilight prevail (I'm kidding about the Jacob part. Team Edward.)

   Anyway back to my original point, Meryl Streep is amazing. Surprisingly enough, she's not even the best actor in this movie. Dustin Hoffman plays Ted Kramer, abandoned husband, impressive father, survivor. It's really the best acting I've ever seen him in--the only other role my mind seems to remember at the moment is Bernie Focker from those awful Ben Stiller movies. Hoffman did an excellent job of showcasing his anger at his wife leaving, his patience (or sometimes lack thereof) for his child and his desire to do what he thought was best for his son--namely full custody. It's really disappointing he decides to link himself to Ben Stiller every now and then because he's a really good actor.

 The kid himself was really good, too and according to wikipedia is the youngest person to ever be nominated to an Oscar. So yeah. Go, kid! He doesn't seem to have a very active imdb so maybe this was a fluke for him.

 A cool aspect of Kramer vs Kramer was the weird contradiction (purposefully mentioned in the film) of the wife sort of embracing that wave of feminism from the 70s and finding her own purpose beyond being a mother/wife while at the same time the father that embraces his importance in child rearing doesn't get the same sort of respect even though in a perfect world he should. I hope nowadays the courts are much more fair independent of gender because I know from personal experience that fathers can singlehandedly do a great job at raising children.

Also for those who have been living under a rock or don't understand the title, this movie is about a custody battle. I'm not entirely sure how accurate this is legally-- Law and Order taught me that appeals don't usually involve new evidence and that seems to be somewhat important towards the end. I don't really care though. My parents divorced pretty early on and while I imagine they were more like the Roses than the Kramers, I know both my parents did what they had to do with our best interest in mind. The emotions portrayed by the Kramers during this movie are among the most real and relatable I have ever seen during a movie.

Recommended. If you will only watch one movie I recommended from this list, so far this is it.