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janakagoon
Reviews
Memento (2000)
does he have a "condition" - WARNING, SPOILERS
WARNING - SPOILERS - WARNING - SPOILERS
This movie is not about a grieving man's search for his wife's killer.
It is about a psychotic murderer's decent into violence
and total madness.
Leonard is a psychotic murderer who brutally kills people and takes Polaroid pictures of the corpses.
He doesn't have a memory problem - he remembers *everything*, he acts as if he forgets, which is part of his psychosis.
This movie is brilliant in that by making us empathize with him though out most of this movie, it in fact takes us in to his world, his mind - the mind of a killer - where he is somehow manages to justify his actions and seeks sympathy for himself
- until Kenney presents arguments which forces him to doubt the delusion he has created for himself... which he overcomes by murdering Kenney.
many people complain that the movie leaves too many questions unanswered at the end - but the point is, it doesn't matter. These are just questions in the mind of a mad man, thus they are not real; he may or may not have killed his wife, his wife may or may not have been diabetic, he might not even had a wife, it could all be the delusion of his psychosis.
In retrospect, observe that what he did from the beginning are the actions of a madman; who in his right mind would would *tattoo* cryptic "facts" on his body. Who in his right mind would search for his wife's killer, knowing his condition and knowing the risks of killing the wrong person.
his record keeping is just as shoddy, his notes are confusing - but this is deliberate, he doesn't need any of these pictures or notes, because he remembers. They are just props which he uses to populate his psychotic world.
If he really did have a memory problem, he wouldn't be able to do any of those things he does in the movie, he won't be able drive - once on the road he wouldn't know where he is, where he is going or where he came from.- he would be totally helpless and would - like Sammy Jenkins - sit in a room forever, every moment, new.
He doesn't keep a calendar, as he wants to get lost in his mad repeating day, waking up everyday imaging he can't remember where he is, going through all the motions of opening the drawer and looking at the Gidian bible.
however, note that although he is mad, he does pay attention of self-preservation. At suitable times he "feels" that this is not his room etc, since he doesn't want to pay for the extra room in the motel, and "knows" that he has to attack the gangster who runs in to him while taking a shower, and finally refuses to kill him because he knows to do so would be to let himself be used by another person - he also steals the car and the money from one of his victims.
Leonard is an utterly frightening individual, who can go on killing people, taking pictures, every time, his psychosis will lead him to destroy the last picture of the corpse and then continue to find the next "George G.", ad infinitum...
Titan A.E. (2000)
mediocre
This movie had some innovative rendering and animation as well a reasonable sound track. However the plot, characters and script is highly mediocre. There is really not a single surprising plot twist in the whole show. The whole thing was highly predictable. The script was marginally witty but overall disappointing.
The point is, good animation and well executed rendering cannot hide the disappointment due to a mediocre script
Megacities (1998)
groovy landfill bangra
This movie documents the lives of the poor and social outcasts in four mega-cities of the world - Mumbai-India, Moscow-Russia, Mexico City-Mexic and New York-USA.
Some of the scenes makes your skin crawl, like the scene where scavengers are wading through an open sewer and the stripper being groped in a peep show club.
Some of the scenes were deeply personal and extremely disturbing.
But the movie had a very acid-wit ending when the credits rolled. In Bollywood movies, you have scenes where there are lots of good looking actors doing a Bangra dance in beautiful landscaped backgrounds. But here the, director got a nicely choreographed Bangra, except instead of a lovely landscaped garden in the background, we have a massive landfill, extending all the way to the horizon, and instead of nicely dressed good looking actors, there are the ordinary, poor, dirty workers and students who live their lives in this terrible place... yet they dance well :)