Some movies

Some great films I watched recently and liked:

Crimes and Misdemeanors by Woody Allen

This is the second WA film I am watching after Annie Hall. To me, both films are about similar themes, about practicalities in life and relations. Allen plays similar roles in both films, angry about the world and feeling smug about that, hating the rich, successful, "silly" kind, yet always in search of - women and sex :D And the women he loves fall for the rich, successful, "silly" guy! In this film, there is a guy who goes a la Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, killing a woman and then going feeling bad about it, but unlike Raskolnikov, he slowly forgets his crime, and falls back to normalcy within a few months. When he describes this story as a fictional one to WA, WA says he should have gone the Raskolnikov way (he doesnt mention Raskolnikov or C&P, but just says, should have asked for forgiveness etc), and this man replies, that happens only in fiction! Also there is this grand professor, all great theories about life (the beauty of), love and the world, which WA (and a woman he is wooing) loves, but suddenly commits suicide, leaving only a rather silly message! And the woman says: "However beautiful and grand a philosophical world view you make up, you still fall short of something". I think films like this are a big lesson to me in some ways. I sometimes feel that I have in myself some part of the character WA is playing. Or is it true for every man?


À bout de souffle or Breathless by Godard

I was afraid to watch one of the most famous classics of French cinema. I was afraid that it will be too arty and boring. But when I watched it I found it so fast and hard hitting. And surprisingly it didnt leave (to me) any message, it was just a film with a lot of attitude!


Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb by Kubrick

Again, I was a little late to watch this one, with the classic tag making me afraid. But when I eventually got around to watch it, it was so simple, funny, and made great points! I loved the mad general's obsession with fluids (when you look for a grand, intellectual reason for the ultimate finale to the Cold War, you actually find such a silly, mad reason!), the hawkish general in the pentagon meeting (Arent many army men like that?), the way the american president calls the russian one "Dimitry"... :) I enjoyed the film.