a light rom com movie...a successful introvert writer, while making his novel suddenly have writer's block then instead wrote a piece about his dream girl...little did he know this "dream girl" suddenly manifested into a real one
good acting on both leads (Paul Dano & Zoe Kazan, who wrote the movie herself)
excuse me, my jaw is still on the floor while doing this mini review... what an awesome film... it is the ultimate anti rom-com...
a story of 2 young lovers in the backdrop of post-war tokyo... well, strip this film of it's subtle portrayal of japan under western occupation and you are left with a beautiful story of hope and despair interplaying almost as passionate as the 2 protagonists...
of course hope wins... i don't want to sound philosophical but hope is a very powerful thing... it was what kept the lovers sane and happy in the film despite the tough luck they faced during that wonderful sunday... with the limited yen that they have, they struggled to find enjoyment through it all... it was when they turned to hope they found themselves genuinely happy and their resolve get re-fueled...
the lead actor was good but the lead actress was transcendent... the act she did towards the end of the film caught me by surprise... oh well, what can you expect from the master akira kurosawa calling the shots?
this film is about beautifully intertwined contradictions... its about death and dying but it is so vibrant with life... its about being in doldrums and stagnancy but its also about getting free...its about going up against the system that you yourself helped built...
the scene in the restaurant where watanabe-san was descending the stairs while a very young woman was ascending to the tune of the birthday song was ****in poignant... (interestingly kurosawa used this same technique during the final scene in "i live in fear...")
a yojimbo remake, this sergio leone film has enough charms (the gritty setting and the superb enio morricone scoring to name a few) to enable it to stand on it's own side by side with the film that inspired it... an excellent anti- hero, a bad-ass villain in a superb backdrop glued together by leone's cinematic smarts make this really fun to watch... 9
a few dollars more
compared to the first, this takes time to really appreciate... it was only when lee van cleef's character faces off with the man with no name in front of the hotel one evening this film finds it's bearing... the villain isn't as compelling as the first and the roots of his mental illness was quite lame... nevertheless it was still fun leone goes more visual on this one and that unmistakeable score of enio morricone was still effin awesome... 8
the good the bad and the ugly
the most ambitious of the three, this is leone's finest moment as the king of spaghetti westerns... it was like getting the best parts of the first two films and improving it further... set against the backdrop of the american civil war, the man with no name is more vulnerable and more human than ever before... leone and morricone must've been on PEDS while crafting this classic...morricone's splendid film score alone is already worth the price of admission... 10
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