Suhail Parvez

A disillusioned (but still feisty) King Arthur is on his way back from the Romans to take back his throne from his illegitimate son who is all out to marry the Queen (Arthur's wife) to legitimize his own claim. The worst part of seeing this is when one keeps on waiting for the always interesting wizard Merlin to make an appearance - he did so ultimately but by that time my granddaughter had long given up and left. A good thing she did for this Merlin was not anything like what I had described to her. Even the ending is with rather a whimper cause of the Queen so yearned for leaving the scene without so much as taking ones leave. Just one more to add to the Camelot list - among the ones at the very bottom.

This movie is based on a true story of the period 1930 to 1970 and deals with the story of a Parisian robber who was framed and then sent to the penal colony of French Guiana. It deals with this man's repeated attempts to become a free man again - he tried escape after impossible escape against every odd and each time being caught leading to more and more curbing of his freedom and reprisals which would have broken down almost any other man. It was only his indomitable will to survive which ultimately led him to finally live as a free man. Even to write his own story which book became a world bestseller. The acting of everyone concerned is of a spectacular level as is the locale - even the sometimes cruel and sadistic characters, including some among the authorities, fits into the mould of the overall picture and forces us to judge all of them with the same scale with any bias of good or bad completely missing. A must see movie even if only to prove what a determined individual who refused to be put down by anything could end up accomplishing.

This WW movie is meant for die hard aficionados of this superhero - it moves straight from her childhood bringing up maxim of "never resort to cheating however justified" to her living a solitary life in a metropolis. Pure magic also makes an appearance in a relic of the ancient 'Gods' granting wishes no matter how complex to which everyone succumbs. What makes the movie work ultimately is just the good acting displayed by all the three main actors (not counting her 'pilot' ex partner). In particular, the central character who ends up looking good even when in distress or crying. Also, a noteworthy thing is that not even the villains are totally bad - there is some hope still left for this current human civilization yet.

The movie starts on an end of the world scenario with even the Arctic stations being completely evacuated. Soon everyone dies except for an elderly scientist already incurably ridden who had chosen to remain behind at the top of his world. He soon finds something to do - warn the only human space venture still out there not to return to an already dead Earth. He finally gets through to them right bang at the time when they are experiencing their own first fatality in a meteorite strike. Meanwhile, the enveloping radiation on Earth is about to take out this last man out too. Hopefully the young couple left on the spaceship - with the woman also pregnant - heed the warning and turn back to the habitable far out moon they had just finished visiting. This brings the movie around a full circle as their extra-terrestrial exploration had formed part of the opening sequence of this tale. A good disaster as well as survival film - one only wishes that the acting of most of the people concerned had also been as good as the effects, treatment and photography so that the emotional content had also got its due place.

A very rich & influential businessman dies of a sudden heart attack leaving it all to his wife and two grown up kids - the eldest a daughter (who is very slight and looks in her teens) is the DA while her younger brother is a sitting Congressman up for re-election. The daughter who was always very righteous in her ways is left with a buried (but very much alive) secret bequeathed by her father to sort out after his death - its potentially a disaster for everyone in the family. From here the story carries on with her torn between looking after her family and righting the wrongs of her father in a decent albeit clandestine way. This 'skeleton in the closet' sort of drama is quite watchable right up to the end.

A quite long and equally quite slow moving film of an Austrian young man quite happy with his beloved wife and farm in a small mountain village. When World War II starts, like all young men there he joins the German army and sees some fighting. Soon enough the inhumanity of war itself is too much for him to bear and he heads back on leave to keep up his farm which is the only livelihood for his family which now includes 3 baby daughters too. His quest to reconcile his faith with his role in the war is not answered adequately by his village priest or even the city bishop. On joining back he refuses to say Heil Hitler and becomes a declared conscientious objector. He is put in jail and refusing each and every step or alternative to renounce what he thinks is right (even to the extent of playing a non combat role of caring in a hospital for wounded soldiers) progresses up (or rather down) the judicial ladder of the army until he is sentenced to death. This film is all the more remarkable as it only depicts life as it was on the Nazi's side then - showing somewhat more leeway in humane treatment and proper procedures than is sometimes given even in current times by the so called modern societies. Besides, the acting of all concerned actors is of a very high quality - our hero himself is no good looker in the traditional sense but comes across as most convincing. And, if nothing else, the photography of the mountainous village and daily farm life as well as the nearby cities and even Berlin itself are enough to make sitting through the entire movie a rewarding exercise at the very least.

A young orphaned boy is sent to live with his Warlock uncle (and his adoring neighbor who is a witch), they all live in a magical house where the uncle's ex-partner used to live and experiment. That now dead partner had towards the end become deranged & blew himself up after planting a doomsday clock inside the house. It’s a well done movie which, towards the end, takes on a Halloween twist with a host of dangerous pumpkins to the attack. Good triumphs over evil with quite some fun in between - the house also changing its character to assimilate with this now happy family of three.

A perfect young family - well off & smart with a small daughter - get embroiled with some elite but dangerous people who are out to have a nice time indulging in their sexual fantasies in a very discreet way. The guy, a medical doctor, caught off guard in a weak moment after his wife confides her fantasies to him, is swept into the flow after a night of gate crashing into escapism. The more he tries to do the right thing after that, the more he is drawn into the web. Acting is superb all around, the suspense is well managed. The ending is very subtle when a single word uttered by his very smart wife serves as a panacea to all their earlier troubles.

Set almost entirely in the then apartheid South Africa of the late 1970's this "dramatization based on facts" follows the life of a Boer from an established and respected family. He joins the South African Police force to do his duty to 'save his country from chaos and ruination like the other nations of the African continent' following in the footsteps of his father as well as his older brother. Soon enough he is forced to fire at (and kill) an unarmed black protester in a civil 'unlawful' gathering in support of Nelson Mandela. He also gets married and seems to enjoy to the full both his home and work life until, on a whim of his conscience provoked by the incident, he starts robbing banks incognito and simply giving away the loot to the first black poor person he comes across - perhaps to help assuage his guilt in the senseless 'murder' episode he was involved in. From then on it’s a roller coaster of a ride in this raw earthy film in which the leading actor's vitality and love for life is a pleasure to watch. All in all, a must see film to understand, rather just get a glimpse of, this bygone era of a proud people who failed to change with the times.

An old movie when both of the lead actors were looking quite young - its not very slick but the multitude of the well known faces (to a regular Indian audience) of comic playing secondary actors carry the show - some of these later went on to become almost comic legends on their own. Good fun for all slapstick comedy lovers in the ever changing scenarios of fortunes shifting around from the grasps of various concerned groups.