RIFLE RANGE BOY

Youth without youth (2007) Quite a bizarre movie which never got much of a positive review, especially as this film was Francis Ford Coppola’s offering after a ten years hiatus. This movie tried to marry the mysticism of philosophy, the charm of the era circa pre-WW2 Continental Europe and the lure of lost love. Unfortunately, the marriage looked unpromising from the start with the broody faced Tim Roth (of ‘Lie to Me’ TV series fame). A 70 something professor is hit by lightning and miraculously survives his ordeal after what seems like a near 100% burn of total body surface! His body regrows his teeth and skin appendages and gives him a youthful glow of a 30year man. Before the accident, he used to be a multi-lingual seeker of knowledge and learner of languages. Amidst the sprawling Nazi troops, who are very anxious to discover the secret of his recovery in their quest for making the superior man, the professor, manages to fall in love with a lady who, after being caught in a...

Persona (Swedish, 1966) Director: Ingmar Bergman A highly complex film which showcases the human emotions in a rather abstract manner. Viewers of left to interpret the story in their own way. It starts with Elizabeth, a famous theatre actress who is brought in to the psychiatric ward after she just went blank during a performance and just refused to speak afterwards. Sister Alma is assigned by the psychiatrist to get close to her and tries to get to the root of her problem. All the while, Elizabeth does not talk, refuses to talk when spoken to. She does her own things, she reads, watches TV etcetera. She is visibly shaken by violence shown on TV - self immolation of a monk in Vietnam, pictures of Auschwitz. In the meanwhile, Sr Alma seem to be talking all the time revealing a lot about herself. She is engaged to be married soon to a doctor. Secretly, in her bed, Alma is grateful with her life, apparently complete and soon to have a few kids. Within the next second, she question...

In our everyday life, we see many who walk around with an aura around them exuding confidence as though they know all the answers to all of mankind's age old secret of the universe. Unfortunately, things in life are not so black or white, they always come in various shades of grey to complicate things. If you think you have covered all angles in dealing with a problem, then you would receive a knock on the head on a yet another angle that missed your scrutiny. If you think you have to move with the times and embrace modernity, then again you will be disappointed with equally dismal outcomes. Then you would tell yourself, 'Old is Gold'! The dichotomy of choices are driving everyone nuts. If only you could turn back time... Then you would tumble upon a new sets of hurdles to cross. At least, the people who go with their noses and shoulders up in the air shower confidence to the masses and hopefully provide yet another path to tread upon those who are lost for direction...

The Tree of Life  ( 2011) We are left wondering what is happening a good hour into the movie. First, Brad Pitt (set it 1950s) and his wife receive news, not in words but by their expressions that one of their son (the second) has died. Then the characters go into a soul searching mode and the movie goes into a frenzy of cinematographic extragavanza of abstract cinematographic adventure with psychedelic hue of sky, clouds, erupting volcano, waterfalls, electron microscopic views of organelles in a cell, dinasours, Sean Penn in the present time in mammoth building, back to the time when Brad Pitt becomes a first time father accompanied by excellent musical background. One by one the sons are born and the movie shows them growing, learning to bond with nature and siblings, their first fall, exposure to death through death of a fish, a Christian upbringing under a strict father Brad Pitt who believes the regimental disciplinarian way of doing things...Father teaches him way of t...