Sunday, November 18, 2007

"Rain Man", "Bee Movie", "A Clockwork Orange"

Well... those movies have nothing to do with eachother, I know, but I happened to watch them one after the other in the past three days. I re-watched Rain Man on TV. The first time I had watched this movie I was in Iran, and it was perhaps three years ago. I used to be quite interetsed in autism in general, and had done a thorough reseach on it, just to satiate my personal curiosity. To me, autism is so puzzling (as it is still a mystery) and I think so far, I agree to Carl H. Delacato's views on it in his book, The Ultimate Stranger: The Autistic Child : A very heart-warming book on autism for those who are not familiar with medical terms and references.

My favorite scene in Rain Man is when Charlie (Tom Cruise) tries to show Raymond (Dustin Hoffman) how to dance. Unforgettable scene. Hoffman has his own little tricks when he wants to seem hesitating and doubtful about a situation. He moves his eyeballs and contracts his face muscles in a certain way. Remember him in Papillon , in the escape scene, and you'll know what I'm talking about. I have not seen any other actor or actress who can do it just the way he does it. Superb.

I watched Bee Movie with John in cinema. He was having nachos and I was having popcorn while watching it, I guess he was bored a bit, but when we were back home he said he had enjoyed it much better than this other movie Hairspray which we had watched couple of weeks ago and had found it boring to death. Bee Movie is fun to watch; it's like a quick relief. It's full of imagination and subtle visual wonders. At least I can say I enjoyed i, if John just liked it.

About A Clockwork Orange ... I watched it with my mother-in-law. She likes weird movies, and I like Kubrick movies in general. After watching Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut, I knew that I definitely wanted to watch more movies from Kubrick. I didn't get a chance to do so, until a few days ago, when my Netflix movie A Clockwork Orange arrived. We could find time to watch it together, mom and I. I admit even after reading the plot, I still got baffled, annoyed, excited and delighted by watching this movie. I expereicned all those contrary feelings simultaneously and to a degree, it reminded me of my feelings when watching David Lynch movies (by the way, here you can find a wonderful source on David Lynch). A Clockwork Orange is definitely a masterpiece of psychological comedy/drama and I can simply say, concerning the time it came out, Kubrick was hell of a lot ahead of his time and ahead of all of us!
I am going to keep an eye on TV, since I guess A Beautiful Mind would be on sometime and although I have watched it and re-watched it in Iran, I still want to watch it here in the US. Perhaps that'll make a difference in my perspective, who knows?

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