The Hurt Locker

My Rating : 5/5

One of the most riveting movies that I have watched in recent times. There are numerous movies depicting iraqi war, the plight of iraqi people, insurgency & ethnic conflict in Iraq. But this one is an entirely different war movie. It portrays the life of elite soldiers who have one of the most dangerous jobs in the world: disarming bombs in the heat of combat. The movie does provide a sense of what it must have been like to experience that harrowing conflict.

When SFC William James joins Bravo Company in Iraq, they have a month or so left in their tour of duty. He's a bomb disposal expert and he is replacing Sgt Matt Thompson, a long-standing member of the team who was recently killed disposing of an improvised explosive device.
When James arrives on the scene, Bravo Company has thirty-nine days left on its current deployment. It will be a long thirty-nine days for Sanborn and Eldridge whose styles do not mesh with their new leader. James is a renegade for who the thrill of the dismantlement seems to be the ultimate goal regardless of the safety of his fellow team members, others on the scene or himself. On the other hand, Sanborn is by the books: he knows his place and duty and trusts others in the army to carry out theirs as well as he. And Eldridge is an insecure soldier who is constantly worried that an error or misjudgment on his part will lead to the death of an innocent civilian or a military colleague.

Thanks twitter..its b'coz of a tweet from Rajeev Masand that I thought of watching this movie.

Kanchivaram

My Rating : 5/5

This was one movie that I wanted to watch for quiet some time but couldn't make it. In trivandrum, it was premiered first during soorya film festival. I went to the festival but because of the huge rush I couldn't watch that time. Then it came during IFFK 13 but that time I opted to watch some foreign movie instead.
This time it was shown during Signs Film festival for John Abraham Award.
I liked this movie very much. The shots, the texture, the story line, the sets, everything was superb. This is priyadarsan's revenge to all those who criticized him - may be for plagarism, or slapstick, watever it is.

The film begins with an aging man named Vengadam (Prakash Raj) being released from jail in 1948. He is only being escorted for two days (the reason not revealed) back to his hometown of Kanchipuram, known at that time as Canjeevaram after British rule. He is being transported under the custody of two policemen on a bus from Coimbatore to Kanchipuram. As the journey takes place, Vengadam recalls his past symbolically as several events that occur in the bus (such as sounds) remind him of his past.
It is a period movie set in the pre independence era in a small town of Kanchivaram in Tamil nadu, the protagonist Prakash Raj works as a Vengadam, the best silk weaver in the town. He pledges that he would provide a silk saree for his daughter when she is getting married, which becomes the talk of the town as a weaver simply can't afford such a humongous price. He does save up some money but his brother-in-law ruins his plans, so to attain the inevitable he starts stealing a single strand of silk from the workplace, every single day and secretly weaves a saree for his daughter for 19 long years. He is involved in communism and heads a strike against his owner who gives paltry amount to the weavers, which comes as a deterrent to his daughter's marriage, which is drawing near. As the day comes close, he has to finish the silk saree on time. He suddenly goes against his own words and asks all weavers to rejoin work immediately, and is branded a traitor. At work, he secretly smuggles strings of silks out of the temple in which he works to help him finish the saree in time. But after a while, he gets caught suring smuggling, which causes him to get beaten up and sent to jail.
The story returns to present day, where it is revealed that his daughter has slipped and fell into a well, leaving her paralyzed, with nobody to take care of her (Vengadam's wife passed away sue to a mysterious illness, presumably cancer, when his daughter was still young). He asks his sister to take her in, but his brother-in-law says it will hurt his dignity to have a thief's daughter stay in his house. Not knowing what to do, Vengadam poisons his own daughter and she dies shortly thereafter, ending her suffering.

As her dead body lay in front of the house, Vengadam opens up his old properties and finds the half-vowen silk saree he had before. He takes the cloth and uses that silk to cover his dead daughter's body, in a resemblace to what Vengadam said at the beginning of the film (at his father's death, Vengadam complained that despite his father being a silk weaver his whole life, he do not have a single silk cloth to cover his body, apart from a small piece tied at his leg fingers as per tradition). The films ends with a freeze frame shot of Vengadam smiling towards the camera after covering her daughter's body with silk, before credits reveal how communism has become a forefront movement in contemporary India. marriageable age.