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  Ryusuke Hamaguchi ’s Drive My Car will appeal to different folks for totally different reasons. Those familiar with Haruki Murakami’s written work flock to watch cinematic adaptations of his written works such as the Korean director Chang-dong Lee’s Burning (2018), Japanese director Anh Hung Tran’s Norwegian Wood (2010) or the Japanese director Jun Ichikawa’s Toni Takitani (2004), among the nine such feature films already released.   Drive My Car is the latest cinematic adaptation of the nine films and is based on a short story with the same title as the film.   The film Drive My Car is equally interesting for readers who love Anton Chekov’s famous play Uncle Vanya . They will be pleasantly surprised that it still can be staged in myriad ways, though purists will find Andrei Konchalovsky’s 1970 film version of Uncle Vanya with Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy, Sergei Bondarchuk and Irina Kupchenko, as the definitive cinematic adaptation. However, director Hamaguchi leaps...

“ I saw a drive in him” — Terence Fletcher in Whiplash, referring to his former student Sean Casey  “ The next Charlie Parker would never be discouraged ” —Terence Fletcher in Whiplash A quick assessment of Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash would be that the film is about a music student carving out a drumming career in a jazz band. Another would be classifying the film as a tale of a musician’s long and winding journey to acquire recognition by the critics who matter.  Others would only remember the film as one that forces the viewer to hate and cringe at the actions of an inhuman mentor, a perfectionist, who wrecks the lives of young creative diligent minds by physical and verbal abuse, all for his own goal in life. While all these are justifiable perceptions of the film, young Damien Chazelle’s script and film offers more than the obvious. The film’s opening sequence is of the camera (the viewer’s point of view) entering a darkened corridor at the end of which the student Andrew ...

A   half century after La Strada was made and widely accepted as a world classic, the film needs to be evaluated by its content as much as by its often touted “neo-realist” style.  Interestingly, Pope Francis considers La Strada to be the film that he loves the most. Director Frederico Fellini considered this work  to be his most “representative film”, most autobiographical, and one which he had the greatest trouble “realizing” and finding a producer (p. 85 in Edward Murrays’s Ten Film Classics ). Fellini also felt close to all the three principal characters in the film (p. 115 in Gilbert Salachas’ Federico Fellini ). F irst, it is interesting to study the three lead characters--three distinct types of idiots/fools—that Federico Fellini and his co-scriptwriters, Tulio Pinelli and Ennio Flaiano, presented us. These are characters  that provide the basic, pivotal elements of the film. What made them create the three major characters? Were these characters fools or in...

V iewers of this Oscar-winning Argentinean film are likely to enjoy the experience for varied reasons. It is definitely an engaging thriller with loads of subtle humor.  It is therefore not surprising that the film was a commercial and critical success in the country of its origin, Argentina. The best foreign film Oscar, the second for Argentina over the years, bestowed on the film would have boosted its popularity at home even further. However, the film can be enjoyed by non-Argentinean audiences as well for several additional elements beyond the obvious thrilling tale the film unfolds. The film is at a basic level a detective story of tracking down a rapist and killer and ensuring that he gets a fitting punishment for the crime. At a more complex level, it is a tale of love of two sets of couples and a strong camaraderie of two detective colleagues. And finally, the screenplay captures the mood of Argentina’s “dirty war” period from 1976 to 1983 (during which tale is set) when cr...

A mour is the best film that this critic viewed in 2012. There are two ways to appreciate this film. One way is to appreciate its subject and the second is to appreciate the artistic manner the contents of the movie are presented to the viewer.  The following review attempts to appreciate both aspects separately. The subject of the film would win the hearts of the larger segment of its viewers.  Amour is French for “love.”  However, the subject of the film deals also with inevitable appointment with death for all of us. Both subjects intertwine in this movie.  Love depicted in the film is the rare kind of love not often elaborated on screen; it is the love between couples in the evening of their lives. The only types of viewers who might not like the subject are those who themselves are already beginning to experience situations similar to those depicted in the film. Amour has already won the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, the top four awards at...

A ng Lee needs to be congratulated for making an engaging movie Life of Pi.  Few other directors would have dared to even attempt the feat. As a Taiwanese director, the odds were stacked against him—filming an award-winning book populated with Indians talking in authentic Indian English accents about their quilt of culture, religion and even politics. Add to these problems, the technical difficulties of creating credible scenes of various animals and then editing all the visuals to match the tale is truly daunting. Ang Lee had earlier proven his incredible skill of incorporating computer graphics (CG) and special effects in his Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000--a movie  that went on to win a bagful of Oscars and worldwide popular acceptance).  Some will point out that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon never won a major award at any major film festival of repute. So also, a keen cineaste will note, that Life of Pi, which can boast of the finest CG in cinema to date in ...