The Old Man And The Sea

Robert Redford's All Is Lost reminds all viewers of Hemingway's The Old Man And The Sea and Ang Lee's Life of Pi. But its originality trumps any other movie out there this year. It's about an experienced sailor facing mortality in a tempest, but it's also a study of humanity as well as a horror movie at sea!

Hollywood seemed to dwell a lot lately on how men and women combat adversities - whether it's Sandra Bullock stranded in space in Gravity or Our Man, Robert Redford, fighting for survival at sea in this film. The entire movie is almost like a silent one featuring a one-man show. There's no other actor, not even any animals, except for Redford who only uttered two lines in the entire movie.

You don't have to be an avid sailor to appreciate this movie, but if you love to sail, you might even like it better. I loved Margin Call, the first feature film by the same director J.C. Chandor, who earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay last year. With All Is Lost, he tried a totally different genre with men's fight against nature. Maybe it's because Margin Call was first shown at Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival that the 39-year-old up-and-coming director teamed up with the 77-year-old Redford in this unusual work.

If you think you'll be bored during this movie because there's no dialogue, then you're totally wrong! In fact, I kept asking myself throughout the film what possibly would be the next move of Our Man, the character played by Redford. He managed to survive adversity after adversity and his hope never faded. The ending is magnificent and is subject to different interpretations. Like Ron Howard's Rush, which is more than a racecar movie, All Is Lost is really a film about our approach to life.

This year's Academy Awards contention will be very competitive - Redford is rumoured to be definitely nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor. Because he's never won an Oscar before, chances of his winning this one at his age are pretty high. I personally think he should definitely be awarded for his efforts - four months of shooting this movie at sea in the Bahamas, California and Mexico without having one dry day. Plus, he refused to use any stunt man even for the most challenging storm scenes. But Redford might have to compete with Forest Whitaker in The Butler, Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips, Chiwetel Ejiofor in 12 Years A Slave and possibly Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club.

In the meantime, I'll be interested in your interpretation of the concluding scene of All Is Lost!

High Tension At Sea

The docudrama Captain Phillips has been earning rave reviews from both critics and audiences alike. I saw it over the Thanksgiving weekend and was not disappointed.

I've never been a fan of Tom Hanks, but his performance in this film would probably earn him another Oscar (let's reserve our final judgement until we see Robert Redford in his upcoming movie All Is Lost)! He's so good as a regular guy that even the real-life Captain Richard Phillips was impressed. He met with Hanks three times in the last two years at his Vermont farmhouse prior to filming.

In real life, Hanks is an extremely funny guy. Not only did he disclose to the world that he's suffering from Type 2 diabetes on the Late Show with David Letterman, but he also talked about his friendship with the four Somali actors who were recruited from Minneapolis - the largest concentration of Somalis in the U.S. He joked about their names without sounding like a racist, and it was extremely funny - who else would have friends called Barkhad, Barkhad, Faysal and Mahat? Even though they were novice actors, Barkhad Abdi, who played Muse in the film, was almost as good as Hanks himself. It was reported that Hanks didn't get a chance to meet his Somali co-actors until the first scene when they appeared on board the ship without any translators at work in order to create the tensest scene possible.

Kudos go to director Paul Greengrass, a Cambridge-educated Brit, who's best known for his two movies within the Bourne franchise - The Bourne Ultimatum and The Bourne Supremacy - and United 93. He was able to make a docudrama so tense and captivating that by the end of the movie, my knees were still shaking. In fact, the second half of the film was so tense that you'd almost want to scream aloud for the hijacked captain. Towards the end of the movie, it's obvious that the captain was suffering from intense post-traumatic stress. In fact, the real-life Phillips told USA Today that for a period of time, he would wake up at 5 a.m. every day crying like a baby and remembering how lucky he was to be alive. Although this aftermath was not included in the movie, Tom Hanks gave us a strong enough performance for us to almost weep with him when we saw him safe.

The real-life captain gave a lot of credit to the Navy SEALs whom he regarded as the real heroes who saved him. There have been a lot of movies about the SEALs' bravery, but their action in this film made you wish that every country could have a team of heroes and protectors like Max Martini and his cool SWAT team.

The real tragedy of this whole true story is really the dire livelihood led by millions in Somalia. The deprived fishermen turned pirates consider these hijackings at sea as ordinary business. So until they can find some decent means of making a living, they will continue to be pirates. As Captain Phillips asked in the film, "There's gotta be a better way to live than hijacking ships and harming people?" "Only in America," Muse responded..."Only in America!" And the irony is that he finally got a chance to see America, but from prison!

Kennedy Assassination From A Different Perspective

On the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the movie Parkland gave an interesting perspective from four different angles - from the doctors and nurses on duty that fatally tragic day in Parkland Hospital, Dallas; from the alleged assassin's family; from the Secret Service and FBI agents' perspective; and from the shop owner who amateurishly filmed the entire assassination from his 8mm camera from a nearby rooftop.

In spite of pretty bad reviews from major film critics, the movie, in my opinion, was kind of refreshing. Many people compared it to Emilio Estevez's Bobby from 2006, but they are really apples and oranges.

It's pure fate that the team of residents and the head nurse from the Parkland Hospital had to have the dying President on their watch. In spite of the traumatic experience and the best rescuing efforts they had given, JFK still passed away in a pool of blood. I've never seen a resident doctor as good looking as Zac Efron, but the entire hospital team gave a credible performance. I've always been a fan of award-winning actor Marcia Gay Harden, who played the role of Parkland's head nurse. I also had the good fortune of recently meeting her in a New York hotel elevator where I've had a two-minute conversation about filming in Toronto with her. She has always been an intense actor, but in this movie, she hardly spoke more than five sentences in the emergency room.

Nobody has ever liked the FBI or Secret Service agents, and in this movie, both teams were portrayed as brutally selfish. The former was concerned only about destroying evidence to cover their asses, and Billy Bob Thornton, who skillfully played the stoic role of the head of Secret Service, Forrest Sorrels, was frustrated only because JFK was the first man he's ever lost on his 30-year watch.

The entire Oswald family was as creepy as the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, himself. James Badge Dale, who was one of the villains in Iron Man 3, played the role of Robert Oswald, Lee Harvey's brother. It's obvious that he was never close to his brother, but blood is thicker than water. Award-winning actor Jacki Weaver (Silver Linings Playbook) played the Oswald brothers' mother Marguerite, who was portrayed almost as insane as his murdered son. It's true that nobody can conclude, for sure, even to this day that Lee Harvey Oswald was either a U.S. agent who got framed or a Russian agent who was hired to assassinate the President.

As usual, the media love Paul Giamatti who was described by the film critics as the only laudable character (Abraham Zapruder) and actor in the entire movie. This is not a difficult role for Giamatti having seen him in more challenging roles such as Barney's Version and Sideways.

Director Peter Landesman is very much a novice as this was his directorial debut. But given the fact that he adapted the story from Vincent Bugliosi's book Four Days In November and his strong editing work between real footage of the assassination and the fake scenes, he has demonstrated enough potential to carry on with his directing pursuit.

No matter what perspective the film took, one fact remains inarguable - the impact of JFK's death was so huge and overwhelming on all Americans that they will remember his tragedy and legacy to this day and for 50 more years to come!