2010 (1984) has always been an unfairly maligned film. Sure, it pales in comparison to the perfect 2001: A Space Odyssey but, as a standalone film, 2010 is not without merits. Despite the overall unevenness of its plot, it’s immaculately paced and stunning to look at. For a film that used a combination of practical effects and CGI (shot on 65mm film as opposed to the 35mm film used for live-action shots), the editing seems almost seamless. Maybe it’s because I watched this movie after years and that too, on Blu-Ray but there are shots in this film that took my breath away. Case in point, this shot of the Leonov approaching the Jovian atmosphere.

There are also a couple of beautiful shots reminiscent of 2001.

If there was ever an underrated sci-fi classic, this is it.

I’ll regret doing this (like every other year) but here are some of the films from 2011, in no particular order, I haven’t been able to get out my head.

• Beginners: Mike Mills

(Sure, it wears its twee and hipster sensibilities on its sleeve, but it was sweet, honest and beautiful to look at.)

• Drive: Nicolas Winding Refn

• Kill List: Ben Wheatley

(I was completely blindsided by this perfectly executed, unrelentingly brutal film that transcends genres.)

• 50/50: Jonathan Levine

(I loved that this movie about a cancer patient in his 20s was funny, brilliantly written, amazingly well-observed and moving without descending into cloying sentimentality.)

• Attack the Block: Joe Cornish

(Genre-mashing done right.)

• The Guard: John Michael McDonagh

(The Guard was arguably the most I giggled through a crime-thriller since ‘In Bruges’.)

• Hanna: Joe Wright

• Super: James Gunn

• The Trip: Michael Winterbottom

• Midnight in Paris: Woody Allen

(I’m not going to apologize for loving this film. While it wasn’t anywhere near his best work, it was tremendously enjoyable fluff that only Woody Allen could come up with.)

Honorable mentions: X-Men: First Class, Delhi Belly, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Super 8, Fright Night.

PS: I still haven’t watched Hugo, The Artist and Shame.

(Image from Kill List)

Bookstores are dying if not already dead. So it was nice to come across this wonderful little hole-in-the-wall vintage book store in Launceston, Tasmania. It’s run by an affable gentleman who told me that most of the books came from estates in and around Tasmania. I found tattered old copies of books gifted to sons and daughters and nieces and nephews. Some were signed and dated as far back as 1912. The place has this really pleasant vibe too; Billie Holiday’s My Man played as I made my way around the store.

There’s a scene in which Michael Caine’s Jasper, an ageing hippie, and Clive Owen’s Theo, the reluctant hero, share a blunt (‘Strawberry Cough’).  Jasper points out that marijuana remains illegal even in a post-apocalyptic world where women can no longer give birth and the government rations out suicide kits (‘Quietus’) to the elderly. At the brink of certain extinction, unreasonable and ridiculous laws will continue to exist.

Children of Men, based on the PD James novel of the same name, finds mankind at a precarious precipice – children are no longer born and the youngest person in the world is nearly 18 years old. Economies have crumbled, war has ravaged major cities and most countries have closed off their borders (a UK newspaper headline reads ‘All Foreigners Are Now Illegal’). What makes this different from other post-apocalyptic fare (Mad Max, The Postman, The Road) is that the film acknowledges a severely broken but functioning system of government that is in place. Public transportation still exists, people still go to work, cosmetics are still advertised and you can still buy a cup of coffee. Personally, I find this more plausible than a scenario in which humans become feral rodent-eating hunters.

Today, when immigration is such a contentious and volatile issue and there seems to be a real food and water crisis, Children of Men can be a little uneasy to watch because face it, the future is bleak and depressing. Tragedies (as the past ten years have shown us) seldom bring people together. Children of Men, however, ends on a very uplifting note.

The film has several contemporary (refugees are rounded up in cages and there’s a scene reminiscent of pictures from Abu Gharib), pop cultural (Banksy, The Libertines’ ‘Arbeit Mach Frei’ etc.) and biblical allusions. Kee reveals her pregnancy to a stunned Theo in a barn and later, jokingly tells Theo that she’s a virgin. If you pay enough attention, there’s a lot to take away from the film. Action scenes are coherent unlike lazily cut scenes prevalent today. There are at least three outstanding long takes that seem nearly impossible to film and the soundtrack is near-perfect.

Children of Men is easily one of the most beautifully shot and visceral films ever made. If I had to recommend one film from the last decade to someone who has never watched a film his/her entire life, this would be it.

The last time I read anything by Arundhati Roy was The Algebra of Infinite Justice back in college. If it’s any consolation, my Communist tendencies have taken a beating since then. However, after having read her new collection of essays,  Broken Republic, I’m starting to think that she’s either misunderstood or  intentionally misinterpreted by her detractors. There’s no question that she’s a Maoist sympathizer but certainly not the traitor she’s made out to be.

She’s also quite aware of the inherent ridiculousness of party ideologies.

Each faction believes itself to be the only genuinely revolutionary Marxist party or political formation. Each believes the other has misinterpreted Communist theory and misunderstood history. Anyone who isn’t a card-carrying member of one or the other group will be able to see that none of them is entirely wrong or entirely right about what they say. But bitter splits, not unlike those in religious sects, are the natural corollary of the rigid conformity to the party line demanded by all Communist parties. So they dip into a pool of insults that dates back to the Russian and Chinese revolutions, to the great debates between Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, to Chairman Mao’s red book, and hurl them at each other. They accuse each other of the ‘incorrect application’ of ‘Marxist-Leninist-Mao Zedong Thought’, almost as though it’s an ointment that’s being rubbed in the wrong place.

While I had problems with her rather accommodationist views on Naxal extremism, Broken Republic was quite an interesting and enlightening read.

Super 8 is a film about filmmaking, childhood crushes, friendship, coming of age, fathers and sons, secrets, grief and loss. It’s also about a huge alien monster.

I’ve tried to stay away from big movies this year after constantly feeling like being ripped off every time I watched something at the theatre. I can’t recall anything recent that offered a genuine spectacle or invoked a sense of wonder like the movies I grew up watching.

Super 8 is a throwback to the kind of stories Spielberg and Joe Dante did in the 80s about children who stumbled on elaborate conspiracies and managed to maintain a sense of objectivity that most, if not all adults seemed to sorely lack. The movie works because J. J. Abrams employs a narrative structure that, if you think about it, is essentially just the three-act structure done really well. He teases you with bits and pieces of information and does the full reveal only once he thinks you’re ready (I admit, it’s impossible to not feel a little cheated once you get to the end but the trip’s worth it). That’s the kind of filmmaking I miss; most movies try so hard to keep your attention and essentially just bombard you with bloated visuals and those annoying quick cuts. What happened to the foreplay?

Sadly, a lot of people I know don’t seem to want to know what Super 8 is about and that’s just sad. But if you do decide to go and watch this big little film, don’t read anything about it. Go in cold and it’ll be worth it because Super 8 has both spectacle and heart.

While flipping through a tattered copy of Benjamin Kunkel’s Indecision this morning, I found out I’d scribbled ‘shit’ next to these lines 5 years ago.

…and wondering whether in similar irony, that Abulinix would force me to decide that my entire personality boiled down to neurochemistry, and I only flattered myself in believing that I possessed a free will in need of regular exercise. Then why would I do anything at all? Once you decide you’re only an animal, how do you keep from becoming a vegetable?

Once we admit that the extremes of absolute misery and absolute flourishing—whatever these states amount to for each particular being in the end—are different and dependent on facts about the universe, then we have admitted that there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality.

As much as I enjoy reading anything by Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape was a little bit of a letdown. Harris, who has a doctorate in neuroscience, asserts that morality is simply another question that can be fully understood and answered using the scientific method, which is sort of the problem in itself – assuming morality to be an empirical property of the physical universe (see Sean Carroll‘s nicely argued rebuttal). The problem arises when he tries to define ‘well-being’ and goes on to state that questions of morality “relate to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures”; though it isn’t quite clear as to why he thinks of well-being as a quantifiable property.

That said, he does not shy away from subjects such as psychopathy and the nature of consciousness; which when you think about it, does pose a threat to his theory.

Highly enjoyable and most certainly, just the beginning of an extremely interesting and important debate.

I’m more of a first person/third person slasher/shooter fan myself but Limbo is unlike any other game I’ve played. Most of the indie platform titles I’ve come across (on a Mac) have been unimaginative and forgettable. Limbo, on the other hand, is dark, ambiguous, atmospheric and surprisingly moving.

A boy wakes up at the ‘edge of hell’ and encounters bear traps, giant spiders and a girl. The player gets to control the boy’s movements and perform some basic actions like jumping, climbing and interacting with objects. As the (very short) game progresses, things get darker and creepier;  you die many times before you figure out what to do. And the deaths are gruesome – plenty of decapitating and impaling. The puzzles get progressively harder and the deaths, more horrifying.

The developers were spot-on in recreating the noir look and feel reminiscent of Fritz Lang’s M, Metropolis and other German Expressionist films. The story is weird and uncomfortable and the ending is open to interpretation (or perhaps, no interpretation at all). Sadly the game clocks in at less than 5 hours and costs 1200 points if you’re on XBox Live.

For me, this is the closest a video game gets to being a work of art.

Shots from the incredible live show by U2.