Road to Bali (released in 1952) - starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour

The wacky trio Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour star in this penultimate movie of the road series. This is the only movie to be pictured in Technicolor and the last movie to star Lamour. The director of Road to Utopia, Hal Walker makes a come back with this movie.
So again the two vaudeville actors Harold Gridely and George Cochran leave their act mid-way to get away from fathers of the daughters who were romancing them. The fathers armed with boomerangs want a shot gun wedding and the two con artist complete with disguises flee across Melbourne to reach Port Darwin. Here they get the job nobody wants; which is to get Prince Ken Aroke's sunken treasure. Many deep sea divers have lost their lives to a gigantic sea creature who seems to guard the treasure.
But the treasure belongs to the deceased king, who has the beauteous daughter Princess Lalah whom Ken wants to forcibly marry to usurp the throne. Lalah likes George but cannot forget Harold as he resembles her childhood friend – a chimpanzee. This is really one of the most hilarious resemblances in the history of motion pictures. Princess Lalah warns George about the Boga-Ten or the underwater squid which guards the treasure. George tricks Harold in to diving and he is soon accosted by Boga-Ten. Harold slips out of his suit and comes overboard with the treasure only for it to be yanked off by Ken. But the squid pulls out Ken in a deadly embrace leaving the trio rich beyond dreams.



But to escape from Ken, the duo move on with the treasure and the princess towards home. But Harold gets distracted when Lalah says that she loves both of them and the ship gets wrecked on another Island. Here Harold and George are taken in by a very smitten gorilla and even see the mirage of Humphrey Bogart, Hilarious scenes which leave you clutching stitches on your sides.
But as the Gorilla leaves them, barbaric natives cart them off to their homes ostensibly to shrink their brains and skulls. The tribes medicine man Bhoom Da is a friend of Lalah's Father and tries to help them. But their chief Ramayana, is in cahoots with Ken and he tries to persuade Bhoom Da to host a two groom wedding. Both Harold and George are told separately about the wedding and get excited. But they are drugged and wake up only the next day. They soon learn Lalah's fate and rush to rescue her. By that time the volcano erupts scattering the natives and the mad trio escape again.
Harold and George ask Lalah to pick one of them and Lalah picks George. A dejected Harold conjurers up Joan Russell to be his companion. But alas she picks George who walk away in to the sunset with two girls. Howzatt!!! for a perfect ending. Nothing should induce you to keep away from the Road series. Perfectly unbalanced fun, Top class.

The Ghost and the Darkness (released in 1996) - starring Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer

How often do you find a movie getting awards both from the Academy awards and also a Razzie award? Well, "The Ghost and the Darkness" is a movie that got both these awards, an Academy award for Sound Editing, as well as a Razzie award (for Val Kilmer for Best Supporting Actor). The movie got critical praise and was well received, although there were some differences between the book (The Man-Eaters Of Tsavo, by J. H. Patterson) and the movie, especially around the character of the hunter, Charles Remington (played by Michael Douglas). The concept is that since Douglas also stepped in to part-produce the movie, he decided to enhance the role of Remington from the original role that was supposed to be much more mysterious. In the process, this also reduced the scope of the character of Col. John Henry Patterson (the hunter who is brought into the project to bring it back to schedule, played by Val Kilmer), given that it was Patterson who killed 3 lions, including the 2 monster ones who killed a large number of workers at the site.




There is some dispute over the number of workers killed by the lions, with Patterson claiming that there were 135 workers killed, while new research claimed that there were around 35 workers killed. The actual lions who were killed by Patterson can now be seen on display at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois, and these are magnificent specimens, worthy of scaring workers.
The movie centers around a railroad project in Tsavo, Africa, where the project is running behind schedule. Col. Patterson is sent to take command of things and reaches the site. There he starts on his mission, killing a lion quickly, but then unable to prevent the lions from killing off the workers one by one. To everybody's surprise, 2 lions attack the camp, and lions never attack in a group, but are single hunters. This is seen as a bad sign. Then a famous hunter Remington is sent in to help, and in the meantime, the workers are not willing to stay. The lions are a tough hunt, especially when they don't fall for a ruse and attack a new hospital, killing all the inmates and the camp doctor. Patterson finally manages to kill one lion, but the other one manages to kill Remington. In a final stand-off, Patterson finally manages to kill the remaining lion, and the bridge gets built.

The Terminator (1984): An incredible action movie

Movies that are based on science are sometimes successful (take Spielberg's movies - Close Encounters.., ET, Back to the Future, etc), but many more are unsuccessful. All of these movies portray science as not very hostile, and then came in the hard science fiction movies, with Aliens and The Terminator being movies that were more action oriented, less warm and fuzzy, and very successful. For example, The Terminator cost around $6.5 million to make, and earned around $78 million worldwide. It was a critical success as well, and set the stage for sequels to be made. The movie also played a big part in making Arnold Schwarzenegger that super-star that he became.



The irony around this is that Schwarzenegger was not the first choice for the role, the role of the terminator was initially envisaged to be a small person, not particularly unremarkable. Schwarzenegger was first offered the role of the human from the future, but there was a realization that Schwarzenegger was better suited for the role of the terminator, and that automatically made the role of the terminator to be a big muscular man.
The movie is based on the concept of a future where the machines rule and the humans are fighting back, led by a brave and great hero, John Connor. The machines are able to plan a great deal, including creating robots with living tissue over a metal skeleton (cyborg) in order to better infiltrate the rebel humans, but are unable to score a clear victory. And then the machine leader, the intelligent network Skynet, thinks of a diabolical plan (although would be apparent to anybody in the age of time travel). A cyborg is sent back to 1984 to kill the mother of the rebel leader, Sarah Connor (based in Los Angeles). The humans are able to also send back a rebel soldier, Kyle Reese, to try and protect her.
And thus start the action. The cyborg is a robot, it cannot be reasoned with, it cannot be destroyed with small arms fire, and is ruthless. The robot starts with the phone book, where 3 Sarah Connors are listed. It kills the first 2, and is hunting for the third. When he is trying to kill the third, she is protected by Kyle, who explains his mission and who the cyborg actually is. He can only use current machinery since time travel did not allow him to get back superior weapons, a handicap against the cyborg, aka the Terminator.
When the terminator attacks again, there is a chase, where they are arrested. Typically, the police see a number of weirdos every day, and if you start to spin a story about a robot from the future trying to kill, then it is unlikely that you will be believed, especially if being examined by a shrink. And so their story is not believed. The terminator arrives at the police station and asks for Sarah and Kyle, but is thwarted. Then comes an epic one liner, "I'll be back !", and so he does, attaching the police station with a powerful vehicle.
A full scale attack on a police station ? The police fight back, but against a terminator incapable of being killed by their weapons, useless. The terminator kills 17 policeman, but Reese manages to escape with Sarah. They try to hide at a motel where Reese shows Sarah how to make pipe bombs. The scene turns a bit romantic, no doubt furthered by the close escape from the terminator, and they make love (ending up conceiving the future leader, John).
The Terminator manages to track them down, and the situation is now near the end-game. Reese is wounded in the attack, but are able to attack the terminator with a bomb, causing extensive damage to its metal skeleton. However, even the remaining shell of the skeleton is after them, and they escape into a factory. Reese manages to destroy the legs of the Terminator, but at the cost of his own life. It is Sarah who finally destroys the upper part of the skeleton in a machine press, where finally the terminator is killed / terminated / made inactive.
The movie ends with scenes showing Sarah preparing for the future, pregnant with Reese's son (who will become John), traveling in Mexico, staring into an uncertain future.
The movie has a big cycle around time that could confuse you if you started thinking around it. The man who will save the rebel humans is John Connor, son of Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese. Reese in turn is a man from the future, who only came into Sarah's life because he was sent back by John. This is a cycle, with no start and end.

Jaws: Fearful of the sea

(This review will contain the story of the film, so if you feel that your surprise of the movie is being spoiled, feel free to stop reading at any point of time)
For thousands of years now, humans have been traveling on the vast waters of the seas and oceans. And just like there are massive predators on land such as tigers, lions and others such, there are massive creatures in the sea. The shark is one such predator, it is the pinnacle of evolution in the water, and has been there for millions of years now. The shark is one of the true rulers of the water, being a very accomplished killing machine in terms of razor-sharp teeth, sensors that can sense animals in the water, and so on. It is only man with his superior technology who has managed to start decimating the shark, and given the fearful reputation of the shark, there are not that many people signed up to save the shark (as opposed to more lovable creatures such as whales, dolphins, and so on). With more research, it has been found that most of the initial theories regarding sharks are more misplaced, they are not natural man-eaters who will sneak upto you when are in water and attack you. A lot of shark-attacks happen because the shark mistakes a swimmer from underneath as a seal.
And then there was this movie. It single-handedly exploited the fear of humans about the unknown in the water; you can imagine the fear when you are going into the water not knowing that there is a shark nearby, and this movie was actually about a great white shark, the largest of the sharks. Shark attacks have happened before, making the story all the more believable, and people did not know enough not to be spooked by the movie.



The movie was directed by Steven Spielberg as a young aspiring director who had just directed 2 movies before this (one of them was a made-for-TV movie). The movie was based on a novel of the same name by Peter Benchley, with the general consensus being that the movie was better than the book. The movie was shot in Martha's Vineyard, and had a number of problems during shooting. However, the movie was splendidly made, with the right amount of menace, suspense and horror and was an incredible success (the movie grossed more than $400 million in its release and is still earning from the DVD market; in comparison the total cost of production was only around $12 million). The movie essentially revolves around 3 people, Roy Scheider (as the local sheriff Chief Martin Brody), Richard Dreyfuss (as a shark specialist, Matt Hopper), and Robert Shaw (as the old fisherman who offers to hunt the shark down, Quint).
Imagine the start of a movie that did not have too many movies of the same genre, and suddenly you see a young girl who has gone into the water in some amount of drunkenness, suddenly being attacked by a massive creature, and you don't even see the full size of the creature. And this is how Jaws started. This is a small town 'Amity', dependent on the tourist season for a fair amount of business. A mention of a shark in the water, and you will see tourists voting with their feet and the collapse of the business. On the other hand, if you don't do anything, then any more shark attacks will anyhow be public knowledge, and you risk the lives of innocent people. This is the choice facing newly arrived Sheriff, Martin Brody. He is helped in this decision by the cold nature of the town mayor who can't see the business lost, and constantly over-rules the sheriff.
While the first victim is being evaluated to see whether this is a shark attack, eventually it is business as usual. And then a second attack, where a young boy is killed in a busy tourist beach session almost in front of her mother. It is now open season on the shark, with many shark-hunters going out in all sorts of boats. It also sees the arrival of the know-it-all expert Matt Hopper and Quint (nursing a grudge against sharks when his ship was downed in the Second World War and sharks killed a number of his fellow sailors). In all this, the shark claims one of the hunters; while a different tiger shark is killed and proclaimed as the killer shark, and hence the people are safe now (an illusion that will claim more lives).
These scenes lead onto the final confrontation where the true size of the Great White Shark is revealed to these 3 hunters who are out on a small boat to get the shark. In a cat-and-mouse game with the shark, including a terrifying sequence where the shark actually tears into a metal cage, their boat is almost destroyed by the shark. How do they save themselves and get the shark ?

E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial

How many people would there be who have not seen or hear about this movie ? This was one of the movies that made Steven Spielberg famous. Released in 1982, it was a financial super-success. At the time of its release, it was the most financially successful movie released; costing a bare $ 10.5 million, it made upwards of $ 790 million. The movie was such a great success, it was re-released in 1985 and again in 2002. The movie was to a large extent based on an imaginary alien companion that Spielberg invented when he was a young child, primarily to overcome the trauma of his parent's divorce.
The cast of the movie included Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Robert McNaughton, Drew Barrymore and Peter Coyote. Out of these, Drew Barrymore is the one who is the most famous now. But the one who got the most credit out of this movie is Steven Spielberg who became extremely famous after this movie, and he rightfully credits it as one of his best movies. The character of E.T in this movie was a delightful creation, every small child's dream, a very good companion. The movie touched the hearts of a whole generation of people and is still remembered as a eminently watchable movie.



The story is not very complicated. A group of aliens are collecting samples of vegetation in the forest when Government agents approach. In their haste to leave, they leave behind one of their own. He is discovered by a young boy Thomas Eliott, who tries to entice the cute looking alien to his room.
He manages to avoid going to school the next day to find out more about the alien and to play with him. He also gets his elder brother Michael and sister Gertie to meet the alien, but hides his from his mother. They get into a sort of conversation with the alien where it floats balls to represent its own solar system and also brings a dead plant back to life.
The two, Eliott and E.T develop a close bond, that also causes Eliott some trouble in school since he does some strange activities that get him sent to the Principal's office. E.T learns English by watching a television serial called 'Sesame Street' and takes Eliott's help for building a device so that he can call home. On Haloween, they dress E.T as a ghost and take him out of the house and into the forest where E.T successfully calls home.
The next day, both Eliott and E.T seem to be dying, at which time Government agents invade the house and set up a quarantine for Eliott and E.T. E.T suddenly dies, breaking the link between them, and then comes back to life and says his kind are returning to take him back. The kids decide to help E.T escape and stay a step ahead of Government agents in a chase. At this time, one of the most famous sequence of the movie happens where E.T lifts the bicycle in the air when they are trapped in a dead-end. And finally, E.T returns home.

Blade Runner: Dark portents of the future

There are many science fiction movies that take on interactions with aliens such as ET, Aliens, etc; there is another breed that takes human conflict on a galaxy wide scale such as Star Wars, but there are few movies that take humanity in its home in the future, and portray it in such a dark canvas. Blade Runner is a classic movie set in the society of the future (set in 1982, it looks at Los Angeles of 2019). Looking at where we are now, 2019 does not seem to be like this, but maybe 2039 could be. Blade Runner is a movie that takes a look at the future, and takes all our fears of the future along with mad uncontrolled technological development and delivers an astounding gripping film. Many have called this film as the greatest science fiction movie of all time, and it could be reckoned among the top ones at any point of time.
The movie is loosely based upon a maverick science fiction author; if you have ever read any of Philip K Dick's novels, you will know what I mean. The movie was based on his novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. With all the current discussion around cloning, stem cell research and the mixed attitudes around this, it seems unlikely that society will so easily accept the notion of creating beings that resemble us and are yet mechanical; but with a mind of their own, Asimov's Laws of Robotics not figuring anywhere.
This movie had a major production history in terms of difficulty in getting made, and with further collection releases, for more details refer to the Wikipedia entry. It was directed by Ridley Scot (fresh from the euphoria of Aliens in 1979) and was another classical movie in the sense that it was not much of a success initially, only gaining name and applause over the years.
The movie is about the common fear, of robots who are indistinguishable from humans and who are guided by their own thoughts, and thus can be very deadly for humans. And about the blade runner (Harrison Ford) who is almost retired, but is brought back to kill (retire) these robots (replicants). The Tyrell corporation, a leading corporation developed robotics technology to the advanced level of the NEXUS 6 series, where they were able to develop androids identical to humans, but with a designed life of 4 years (as a mechanism to control them). They were being used in off-world colonies as slave labor for dangerous tasks.
These robot slaves do a mutiny in one of these worlds, and an order is passed that any replicants found on earth will be executed (retired) by units called blade runners. No questions, no worries, just a quick execution for any robots found on earth.
Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a retired blade runner who is brought back for another mission when 4 of these replicants make their way to earth after hijacking a shuttle from an off-world to earth. He has to hunt these 4 - Roy Batty (the leader of the 4), Leon Kowalski, Zhora, and Pris. They are on their way to earth to somehow extend their life span of 4 years (going to be over shortly). Deckard also discovers that Tyrell's secretary Rachael, is also a similar robot, showing the true sadistic nature of her creator. She does not know that she is a robot, and she was been implanted with memories from Tyrell's niece in order to make her feel human (although she retains her life expectancy of 4 years).
In the meantime, Roy and Leon are trying to make their way to Tyrell, first using an eye designer called Chew to direct them to Sebastian (who plays chess with Tyrell and can thus get them to directly meet Tyrell). In the meantime, Rachael is humiliated by Deckard, she had come to his apartment to convince him about her humanity, but he exposes her replacement memories to her, thus showing her that she was also an android. In the most human of emotions, she cries at this disclosure.
Soon after, in an incredible chase at the ground level of this dirty city of the future, Deckard shoots Zhora, but shoots her in the back, something that he regrets (even though he has only retired an android). His feelings towards these replicants somewhat change when he is attacked by Leon, and in the nick of time, Rachael saves him by shooting Leon. In another sequence, Roy and Pris convince Sebastian to take Roy to Tyrell, which he does (through the chess game that he normally plays). Once in, Roy asks for an extension to his life, and when denied, he eventually crushes Tyrell's heads in a quick gesture and then kills Sebastian.
As the story reaches onto the last stages, Deckard reaches Sebastian's apartment after a phone call and after a bitter battle, shoots Pris. By this time, Roy has returned, and begins the last bitter fight, over empty apartments and roof-tops. Deckard is getting beaten by the superior power of Roy's robotic self, and after a series of escapes and fights, finds himself hanging onto dear life from a beam. Roy, is also hanging on for dear life with his 4 year limit just about over, and his life form dying away. In a last minute demonstration that the androids have human qualities, Roy saves Deckard and then dies. Deckard returns to his apartment and finds Rachael over there, and they move out to an uncertain future, given her 4 year limited life span. One question remains, was Deckard also a replicant? Never answered clearly.

DVD	5 DVD Collector's version

Movie: Predator

Predator was the first movie of Arnold Schwarzenegger that I watched, and it was a fairly impressive movie from an action perspective. The movie was made in 1987, and starred an extremely impressive creature, whom one is sure could scare the daylights out anybody stuck in a jungle.
The movie story is deceptively simple. There are a group of commandos on a rescue mission, but not told the real story. In a jungle, they start to sense something wrong, and find the bodies of the earlier team. What they eventually find is the Predator, a creature who hunts humans using some special weapons, beyond human-vision perception, and a stealth that is incredible (invisible is a good way to fight). He starts picking off the commandos one by one, killing them in different ways, until it's only Arnie.
The finale is about how Arnie manages to extricate himself from the clutches of the Predator, and flees from there.
The movie is a taut piece of work. The way that the sequence in the jungle leads to the point where they suddenly see the Predator (and then don't), the terrific scene where they try to bait the Predator ending in an incredible scene where the whole group fires a massive burst into the jungle, the fear on the girl's face, and the scene at the end where you know that the Predator, even when dying, is upto no good. This is all edge of the seat action, and the movie is a must see.