Director: Stanley Kubrick (1964, English, 95 mins)
Reviews: RottenTomatoes (100%), IMDB (8.5), Wikipedia, Amazon, Roger Ebert.
Similar movies: comedy.
Summary: A lovely British comedy. What is the point of having missiles sufficient to blow the whole earth many times over?
Director: Francis Veber (2001, French, 84 mins)
Reviews: RottenTomatoes (86%), IMDB (7.1), Wikipedia, Amazon.
Similar movies: comedy.
Summary: A feel-good, light hearted French comedy. Nicely done!
Director: Jonathan Lynn (1992, English, 120 mins)
Reviews: RottenTomatoes (N/A), IMDB (7.5), Wikipedia, Amazon, Roger Ebert.
Similar movies: comedy, crime.
Summary: One of my favorite comedies! Superb acting by Marisa Tomei and Joe Pesci. Great dialogues! Marisa Tomei won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her performance.
My favorite scenes from the movie: Deer Hunter — Biological Clock — Expert Witness — The Defense is Wrong!.
Some other scenes: How do your clients plead? — The Wrong Idea — Two Yutes — Magic Grits — Expert Witness: Thicker Glasses.
Director: Gulzar (1982, Hindi, 135 mins)
Reviews: RottenTomatoes (88%), IMDB (8.3), Wikipedia, Amazon.
Watch online: YouTube.
Similar movies: comedy.
Summary: Yet to write.
Director: Hrishikesh Mukherjee (1975, Hindi, 127 mins)
Reviews: RottenTomatoes (N/A), IMDB (8.4), Wikipedia, Amazon.
Watch online: YouTube, YouTube.
Similar movies: comedy, romance.
Summary: Yet to write.
Director: Hrishikesh Mukherjee (1979, Hindi, 144 mins)
Reviews: RottenTomatoes (N/A), IMDB (8.5), Wikipedia, Amazon.
Watch online: YouTube.
Similar movies: comedy.
Director: Jyoti Swaroop (1968, Hindi, 157 mins)
Reviews: RottenTomatoes (87%), IMDB (8.1), Wikipedia, Amazon.
Watch online: YouTube, YouTube, Amazon Prime.
Similar movies: comedy, romance.
Director: Shoojit Sircar (2012, Hindi, 126 mins)
Reviews: RottenTomatoes (N/A), IMDB (7.9), Wikipedia, Amazon.
Similar movies: comedy, joyful.
Summary: Yet to write.
Director: Abhinay Deo & Akshat Verma (2011, Hindi, 103 mins)
Reviews: RottenTomatoes (91%), IMDB (7.6), Wikipedia, Amazon.
Similar movies: comedy.
Summary: Yet to write.
Director: Ramesh Sippy (1975, Hindi, 162 mins)
Reviews: IMDB (8.3), Wikipedia, Amazon.
Similar movies: comedy.
Summary: Yet to write.
Director: Rajkumar Hirani (2003, Hindi, 156 mins)
Reviews: RottenTomatoes (N/A), IMDB (8.5), Wikipedia, Amazon.
Similar movies: comedy, illness.
Summary: Yet to write.
Director: Charlie Chaplin (1936, English, 87 mins)
Reviews: RottenTomatoes (100%), IMDB (8.6), Wikipedia, Amazon, Roger Ebert.
Similar movies: city life, comedy, silent.
Summary: When I was a little kid, I thoroughly enjoyed Charlie Chaplin movies. His peculiar gait and his comical gestures were so funny! Twenty years later, when I saw Charlie Chaplin movies again, I was wowed. For the first time, the deeper meaning of these movies became clear to me.
Modern Times is a poignant critique of mechanization and modernity. The highlight of the movie is a long Factory Scene (YouTube). Charlie Chaplin shows how factory workers become depersonalized. They start behaving mechanically. Some go insane. The most memorable portion of this scene is Charlie Chaplin sliding through huge mechanical gears: Scene with Gears (YouTube). Another memorable scene is The Feeding Machine (YouTube) in which a contraption feed factory workers efficiently is being tested.
Director: Shyam Benegal (2009, Hindi, 144 mins)
Reviews: IMDB (7.2), Wikipedia, Amazon.
Similar movies: comedy, family, village life.
Summary: Yet to write.
Director: David O Russell (2012, English, 122 mins)
Reviews: RottenTomatoes (92%), IMDB (7.8), Wikipedia, Amazon.
Similar movies: comedy, illness, romance.
Summary: A fast paced, wild, romantic comedy from 2012 with eight Oscar nominations. The theme of the movie is quite serious but it's presented with so much humor! The two key protagonists are suffering from psychological problems caused by loss of their respective partners, one to death, the other to divorce. Fate brings them together and a delicate romance develops between them. Superb dialogues, many of which are insightful.
Director: Mrinal Sen (1969, Hindi, 96 mins)
Reviews: RottenTomatoes (11%), IMDB (7.0), Wikipedia, Amazon.
Watch online: YouTube, YouTube.
Similar movies: comedy, joyful, old age, village life.
Summary: A cute movie with a simple story. Utpal Dutt is cast in a semi-comical role. He is a grumpy, 50-year old widower and a strict disciplinarian. He takes a break from his city life to spend some time in a village. He is hosted by a family of two: a father and his recently married daughter. The innocence and joyfulness of the daughter ("Gauri", played by Suhasini Mulay) transforms him. The movie is worth watching for her playfulness and her big smiles :) The soundtrack has good classical music.
Director: Jae-young Kwak (2001, Korean, 123 mins)
Reviews: RottenTomatoes (N/A), IMDB (8.2), Wikipedia, Amazon.
Watch online: Amazon Prime.
Similar movies: comedy, romance.
Summary: One of the top romantic movies from South Korea. I liked the movie, especially the last half hour. Based on a series of real blog posts by a Korean guy. Storyline: 25-year old Gyun-woo meets a terribly drunk girl in a train. He feels awkward to help her but when he does, a deep sense of responsibility develops inside him. He decides to heal her pain. As their friendship progresses, she mistreats him time and again: slapping him, pushing him into a pool, forcing him to wear her high heels, and so on. Even though Gyun-woo finds himself in a masochistic relationship, does he ever lose his cool? No. What happens in the end? See the movie.
To be honest, I got bored by the 60-minute mark, wondering why this movie is so popular. Maybe it was the picture quality on YouTube. But I persisted and I found the last thirty minutes to be quite rewarding, where the movie explains the reasons behind the girl's strange behavior.
Why do I like 'My Sassy Girl'? Gyun-woo, the guy in the movie, exemplifies a mantra that a mentor once gave me, "When you love somebody, give them a lot of room." He reminds me of Lateef in the movie Baran (Persian, 2001). Both guys go to great lengths to ease the pain of their sweethearts. While Lateef is a passionate and impulsive doer, Gyun-woo is Zen-like: calm and relaxed, no matter what happens.
An English remake of the movie in 2008 was not so great. Instead, watch the original Korean movie from 2001. I later realized that the movie is also available on Amazon Prime.
Director: James Ivory & Ismail Merchant (1985, English, 117 mins)
Reviews: RottenTomatoes (100%), IMDB (7.5), Wikipedia, Amazon, Roger Ebert.
Similar movies: comedy, romance.
Summary: A Room With A View is a love story with a positive ending, based on a novel by E M Forster. It won some Oscars too.
The main characters of the movie are super rich people who dress up in fancy clothes every day. The time period is Victorian England, when physical or public display of affection was against the norms. Tracing Social Values in E M Forster's 'A Room With A View' analyzes how the story showcases a shift in social values from Victorian to Edwardian at the dawn of the twentieth century in England.
The story revolves around a girl named Lucy. On a vacation, she meets a passionate adonis named George, who instinctively smooches her when he senses that there is mutual attraction between the two. They meet only a few times, but always surrounded by others. A few months later, Lucy decides to marry Cecil, a socially suitable suitor whom she is not really attracted to. It's a case of choosing between what the heart says and what social norms dictate. What happens in the end?
A Room With a View is the most popular movie by Ismail Merchant and James Ivory who worked together for over 40 years. The movie is slowwww but builds up as it progresses. Initially, it felt like a play and the degree of formalism was funny but nauseating. But then I got used to it, even enjoying it. The only person who seemed 'normal' was Lucy's brother, a carefree soul. On the whole, 'A Room With A View' is a watchable movie, a light hearted romantic story with a positive ending.
Director: Ben Steinbauer (2009, English, 85 mins)
Reviews: RottenTomatoes (90%), IMDB (7.2), Wikipedia, Amazon.
Similar movies: comedy, old age, true story.
Summary: Winnebago Man is an entertaining, heartwarming documentary about the "angriest man in the world".
Director: Michael Showalter (2016, English, 95 mins)
Reviews: RottenTomatoes (N/A), IMDB (6.7), Wikipedia, Amazon, Roger Ebert.
Similar movies: comedy, loneliness, romance.
Summary: My Name is Doris is a comic, half-serious movie about old age, loneliness, romance, letting go and moving on. The movie revolves around a 69-year old woman named Doris whose mom just passed away. She lived with her mom almost all of her life, taking care of her. Doris has a habit of hoarding, just like her mom. After her mom's death, she has to come to terms with her loneliness and establish a new life. Most of the movie revolves around her attempts to woo a much younger colleague that she has a crush on.
The movie is relatively fast paced and engaging. The story keeps ticking, scene after scene. Acting by Doris (played by Sally Field) is awesome! On the whole, an enjoyable movie.
Director: Rajat Kapoor (2013, Hindi, 107 mins)
Reviews: RottenTomatoes (N/A), IMDB (8.1), Wikipedia, Amazon.
Watch online: YouTube.
Similar movies: comedy, old age.
Summary: Ankhon Dekhi an engaging movie that made me smile and laugh many times. It follows the journey of a man who decides to believe only his own personal experience, not something that he has heard of second hand. The movie won the 2014 Filmfare Best Movie Award (Critics). Those who liked The Lunchbox are likely to like Ankhon Dekhi.
The movie features Kaise Sukh Soyein (2:42), a beautiful Hindustani classical piece sung by Ronkini Gupta.
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