GOOD WILL HUNTING

Though Will Hunting (Matt Damon) has genius-level intelligence (such as a talent for memorizing facts and an intuitive ability to prove sophisticated mathematical theorems), he works as a janitor at MIT and lives alone in a sparsely furnished apartment in an impoverished South Boston neighborhood. An abused foster child, he subconsciously blames himself for his unhappy upbringing and turns this self-loathing into a form of self-sabotage in both his professional and emotional lives.There the ambitious math teacher(Stellan Skarsgard) seeing his talent towards mathematics tries to help him and use his skills for maths and a bereaved shrink Sean(Robin Williams) who tries to turn Hunting's life around and a girl(Minnie Driver) he meets in a bar who likes him so much but cant break the wall that Hunting built because of his background but there are his best friends (Ben Affleck),(Casey Affleck)whom have the closest relationship due Directed by Gus Van Sant who is also the director of this year's Oscar nominee "Milk",written by both Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.There is so much to talk about the movie as it is one the greatest classics.The story of friendship,love,destiny and so on.........The cast as seen above fantastic and the story as well.

Much of the film's dialogues are good examples for a lesson in life.You don't even need to watch the movie but listening the dialogues would be enough if one must take a lesson.People around him wants to help him recover his life even his best friend(Ben Affleck) even in real life,though likes to hang out with him tells him"You are sitting on an winning lottery ticket.It would be insult to us if you are still around here in 20 years".And Sean,the shrink(Robin Williams)speaking of his wife and saying that he doesn;t regret a single day he spent with her even in her sick times or how he prerefered to have a drink with her when they first meet instead of going to the World Series of a baseball game.The most striking part is also the fact that Damon and Ben Affleck are also real life best friends and being raised in the same neighborhood in Boston also makes the film more touching as these best friends went after their dreams and became an actors.The touching story of a young talented man who had been abused by his father thus built a wall with the strangers and hardly lets somebody to enter his life and Sean trying to achieve that facing difficulties in the beginning but in the end achieves it and becomes like a surrogate father and the girl who loves this stubborn and not so open man but gives up in the end and leaves the town.Affleck as his best friend wishing the very best for his best friend even though that means Damon will leave the area to become what he is supposed to be.This film is one of the greatest drama with its dialogues,actings and the storyline.

"In essence, Good Will Hunting is an ordinary story told well. Taken as a whole, there's little that's special about this tale -- it follows a traditional narrative path, leaves the audience with a warm, fuzzy feeling, and never really challenges or surprises us. But it's intelligently written (with dialogue that is occasionally brilliant), strongly directed, and nicely acted. So, while Good Will Hunting is far from a late-year masterpiece, it's a worthwhile sample of entertainment".

James Berardinelli

Reelviews

MEET JOE BLACK

Bill Parrish, media tycoon, loving father and still a human being, is about to celebrate his 65th birthday. One morning, he is contacted by the Inevitable - by hallucination, as he thinks. Later, Death itself enters his home and his life, personified in a man's body: Joe Black has arrived. His intention was to take Bill with him, but accidentally, Joe's former host and Bills beautiful daughter Susan have already met. Joe begins to develop certain interest in life on earth as well as in Susan, who has no clue who she's flirting with.

Directed by Martin Brest,played by Brad Pitt,Anthony Hopkins,Claire Forlani.The film actually starts in a coffe shop where Pitt meets with Forlani(Susan) and starts a conversation with that beatiful women talking about the attributes of his future wife or what he could do to make her happy.The two both likes each other as they confess to each other in a relatively in a semi-serious manner.Both go their way but look back to each other but not at the exact time so they cant take the first step for a relationship or even more a love.That scene was more than great as it breaks the hearts as it continues by the bus crashing Pitt while still thinking whether to go after her or say something,very much confused and unaware he is in the middle of the road.There the death who wants a human body gets Pitt's and becomes Joe Black who comes to take the life of a tycoon Parish (Hopkins).In a Human Body,Death(Joe Black)enters Parish's house after a strange conversation which makes Parish realize that his time has come...

This movie is an emotional love story: one might like it, if imaginative enough to feel the same way, considering an angel of death falls in love with a human being and a sad story of a loving father whoose time has come and marches to his death.The most negative part about the movie is that kept longer then it is supposed to be.The running time is about 3 hours for a story like that while 1 and a half would have been enough.But the film is still watchable with it's memorable scenes which is the one mentioned above and the second where Parish marching to his death accepting his destiny,with a smile on his face which shows the death itself in it's least scary form.Th actors perforrmances especially by Hopkins's is beyond the film especially in the last scene and even that makes the movie watchable..

"The heart of the film can be found in Hopkins' William Parrish, a dynamic man who has been chosen by Death for observation as the best humanity has to offer. As Hopkins plays him, with tremendous verve and sympathy, he is all this, but the character also seems impossibly idealized, truly without flaws. Never is there an indication of the ruthlessness that must have been required to get as far as he did. He is even the perfect widower, forever living in the memory of his adored wife, without a woman to replace her".

Todd McCarthy

Variety

INTO THE WILD

After graduating from Emory University, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandons his possessions, gives his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhikes to Alaska to live in the wilderness. Along the way, Christopher encounters a series of characters that shape his life.Based on a true story and directed by Sean Penn.This Life story first written in a book"Into The Wild"by Jon Krakauer.Those who read the book says that Sean Penn stayed close to the book and scenes were shot in fact the real places that took part in Christopher McCandless life.Estranged from his family and friends trying to run away from that ordinariness and boredom.McCandless heads to Alaskan wilderness along the way he meets wonderful people including a beatiful girl who likes him but stiil carries on to Alaskan wilderness and there he finds an abondoned bus and makes it his home.It is difficult not to sympathize with the character for his choice as many of us at least think about running away and live at least for a while in a peaceful place but on the other hand it is also difficult not to call his decisions a stupidity when he left these people he met along the journey also whom he got on well.But he chose to be alone or live alone forever which also became his dead as he eats the poisonous plant and dies from starvation.Surely if someone was with him he would be alive but that wouldn't match his ambitions.The film had not been kept long so doesnt bore the audience and in many scenes ,like a documentary shot,enables the audience as if they are discovering the wild life along with McCandless.The story might be a lesson for many who chooses to be alone or to live alone because dying alone in your most vulnerable moment is terrible.

"This is a reflective, regretful, serious film about a young man swept away by his uncompromising choices. Two of the more truthful statements in recent culture are that we need a little help from our friends, and that sometimes we must depend on the kindness of strangers. If you don't know those two things and accept them, you will end up eventually in a bus of one kind or another"

Roger Ebert

Chicago Sun-Times

FINAL DESTINATION 2

The extention of Final destination and the story is the same like death has a plan and the youngsters who are trying to skip it.But this time instead of a plane crash,the pileup in the highway is the starting point of a big accident.And of course,as in the first one there is another premonition of the accident by Kimberley (A.J.Cook).She tries to warn everyone that there is going to be an accident but surely no one ignores untill the cause of the big pileup,The long truch passes by them exactly the same in her premonition and seconds later the catastrophe begins.

After the accident, again the victims fall one by one and Kimberley decides to visit Clear who is the only survivor from Final Destination 1 which means the only one who skipped the deaths plan but because of her fear confined herself in a padded room where no objects allowed,still try to defeat death but already death because of the paranoia.being refused for help Kimberley follows the signs as adviced.The death scenes is more genuine this time and more scary.

As in the first,again the death has a plan but this time by the advice of the creepy mortician only one think can spoil the deaths plan:only new life that intervenes can defeat death!.Whoever has even a little belief in destiny/fate will like the movie.after watching all this scenes where the insignificant objects becomes the cause of the deaths of the survivors,might make you temporarily paranoid.This time the movie directed by David.R.Ellis as opposed to the first one by James Wong.and the actress and the actors completely different apart from the Mortician and Clear but the performances for a movie like this is acceptable.

That movie depends on all the horror cliches of the Dead Teenager Movie (formula: teenagers are alive at beginning, dead at end). But it is well-made and thoughtful.

Roger Ebert

Chicago Sun-TIMES

Final Destination

Alex is boarding his plane to France on a school trip, when he suddenly gets a premonition that the plane will explode. When Alex and a group of students are thrown off the plane, to their horror, the plane does in fact explode. Alex must now work out Death's plan, as each of the surviving students falls victim.Sounds like that cheap teenage horror films but it is not as it is about the fight with the death itself.No bigstars played in the movie but the performance by Devon Sava (Alex) and Ali Larter (Clear) is great.After the plane crash when victims fall one by one Alex figures that victims die according to a seating plan in the crashed plane.It was their destiny to die in that crash but by getting off the plane they skipped it that time but now as part of the destiny death comes to haunt them.All the scenes especially the plane exploding was so authentic and the way victims died which to some may seem funny but in the end tells us there is no escape from death.Focusing the camera on a very insignificant and negligible objects which actually are the starting point of death isvery creative.Even when you got the impression that all the victims die after the first one,it still keeps the intense because of the authenticity of the scenes.Final destination delivers a frightening variety of mechenical and visual effects,many quite realistic and unsettling.The physics that occur in the mechanical world are very difficult to reproduce in the digital world, so a blend is the best way to get the most impact out of the shot," says Ariel Shaw, visual effects (CGI) supervisor on "Final Destination.".

SHINDLER'S LIST IS A TRUE MASTERPIECE

Set in the Second World War,Schindler's List" is the based-on-truth story of Nazi Czech business man Oskar Schindler who is a brilliant businessman and looking-for - profit type of man uses Jewish labor to start a factory in occupied Poland. As World War II progresses, and the fate of the Jews becomes more and more clear, Schindler's motivations switch from profit to human sympathy and he is able to save over 1100 Jews from death in the gas chambers.With the great vision of Steven Spielberg,an award hunter,Schindler's List wouldn't become any better and the casting wouldn't be any better.Liam Neeson as(Oscar Schindler) Ralph Finnes(Amon Goeth),Ben Kingsley as (Izhak Stern).The movie is 184 minutes long but I did not want it to end.Especially the newest generation must see this film as there are very valuable lessons and great to take from it.The idea of shooting the film in black and white which turns in the end in color mode was Spielberg's great choice as the black and white period represented those black days which were one of the most sickening human tragedy took place and when those days were over and people grew old while they were on the edge of a certain death,it turns the color mode which makes the audience smile.The last scene with the great of Liam Neeson was spectacular and I am sure very few people can resist crying.

SCHINDLER'S LIST IS A TRUE MASTERPIECE