# 166 Gandhi (1982)

Gandhi is a biopic based on the life of Mohandas Gandhi. I'll have to be careful here and refrain from expressing my opinion about this historical character. The last thing I wanna do is start a political debate, so I'll focus on the movie as a piece of art. The film covers a significant period of his life from 1893 (when he was 24) to his death in 1948, with an opening statement that "there is no way to give each year its allotted weight".

We see Gandhi's evolution from a young lawyer in a classy business suit to one of the most popular ideological leaders, who wore self-woven clothes and looked like the poorest person in India. This evolution took roughly three hours of running time, and I wish the movie was a little more fast-paced, but I guess it had to meet the demands of the genre, and I can understand that it's hard to depict 55 years of somebody's life, especially when it's full of events that influenced the whole nation.

Ben Kingsley looks so much like Gandhi, and I think he was worthy of receiving the Award as the Best Actor in a Leading Role. However, even more outstanding (and not awarded by the Academy) was the make-up. They had the same actors playing throughout the whole film, so they didn't have one actor playing "young Gandhi", another actor playing "Gandhi", and another one for "old Gandhi". The make-up made the actors look the age of their characters, which raises the question why The Curious Case of Benjamin Button received the Best Achievement Makeup award, and Gandhi didn't.

My favorite part of the movie is when Gandhi is talking to a man who killed a child because the Muslims killed his son. The road to salvation that he suggested really impressed me, I know it's pretty simple, but still, I choose it as my favorite quote for this movie. Overall, I can't say that I really enjoyed watching this film, or that it's the best biopic I've ever seen, nonetheless, it's a good one, and helped me learn stuff I had missed in history class.

Interesting fact: Ben Kingsley (born Krishna Bhanji) looked so much like Mahatma Gandhi, many natives thought him to be Gandhi's ghost. The actor's paternal family was from the Indian state of Gujarat, the same state Mahatma Gandhi was from.

Favorite quote: "I know a way out of Hell. Find a child, a child whose mother and father have been killed and raise him as your own. Only be sure that he is a Muslim and that you raise him as one".

# 165 Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Dog Day Afternoon tells us a story of the bank robbery that happened in New York in 1972. The title refers to the "dog days" which are the hottest, most sultry days of summer. After the robbers realize that they are surrounded by the police, and there will be no simple escape for them, they take bank employees hostage. Later on, we discover that one of the criminals, played by Al Pacino, is gay, and his main goal was to steal his share of the money to pay for his "wife's" sex reassignment surgery.

I knew that Al Pacino's plays a homosexual in this movie before I started watching it, and I was wondering how he was going to pull this off. You know how he always plays though guys, with this yelling voice that has become his signature. But I'm glad that he gave it a try because no matter how good he was in his other movies, I couldn't help thinking that he always plays the same character over and over again, and Dog Day Afternoon proved me wrong. Of course the stylists did their thing, but Pacino's acting was very persuasive as well.

John Cazale deserves a couple of words in this review also. In my personal opinion, in this movie he did a lot better than in The Godfather or The Deer Hunter. The role of a quiet psycho who points his gun at the hostages every time he loses his nerve fits him perfectly. I never actually figured out what was wrong with his character, but I'm pretty sure he had some kind of mental disorder. And the part where he gets upset because on TV the robbers were described as "two homosexuals" is probably one of the funniest parts of the movie.

Talking about funny, IMDb defines the film as a criminal drama, and I'm surprised that it doesn't mention "comedy" as one of its genres because some of the scenes, especially at the beginning of the movie, are indeed very humorous. The fact that one of the robbers used to work in a bank and knows all of the tricks doesn't stop him from making every possible mistake and turning the robbery into a nightmare. But I going to stop here, so I don't ruin it for those of you who haven't seen it yet. All I'm going to say is that I've never seen a bank heist like this before!

Interesting fact: In the 1972 "Life" magazine article that inspired the film, P.F. Kluge and Thomas Moore describe robber John Wojtowicz as "a dark, thin fellow with the broken-faced good looks of an Al Pacino or a Dustin Hoffman". Al Pacino, of course, played the role based on Wojtowicz, and when he nearly quit the film early on, the role was offered to Dustin Hoffman. Pacino changed his mind when he heard that his rival was in the fray.

Favorite quote: Sonny: So what country do you want to go to?

Sal: Wyoming.

Sonny: Sal, Wyoming's not a country.

# 164 Ratatouille (2007)

Ratatouille is a movie about Remy, a rat who has an exceptionally good sense of smell and taste. After seeing a culinary TV show, he realizes that with his abilities he can become a very good cook. The problem is that he is a rat, and people usually associate rodents with disease and dirtiness. Remy meets a garbage boy, and tries to fulfill his dreams of becoming a chef with his help.

This time I'm going to start with the thing I did not like about the film. The only flaw of Ratatouille, in my opinion, is that it's naive. And I'm not speaking about talking animals here, which is common for most animated films. I'm talking about the scenes like the one where the head chef finds out that the reason the garbage boy can cook so well is because a rat manipulates him like a marionette and believes it so easily. Well perhaps a more precise word for this would be simple-hearted. But at the same time those moments made me laugh as if I was an eight-year-old, so I guess it's not a big flaw.

The tech side in Ratatouille, as well as in all of Pixar movies, is perfect. I've heard that it's very hard for animators to create textures like fur or skin to look natural, and not like plastic. The creators of this film went even further, they managed to make animated food look delicious. Seriously, this cartoon made me find a recipe of ratatouille, and, with the help of my little chef (which is my dog), spend the whole Saturday night cooking it. By the way, it turned out good.

Talking about the main idea of the movie, I think a lot of people like it because it's about what it means to be an artist and stuff like that. I understand it, but I can't say I really relate to it. What I really like about this film though, is the idea of of breaking stereotypes and going against what everybody is expecting you to do. Besides, the ending is probably not what most people expected it to be, and it teaches us that things don't always go the way you planned them, but whatever happens, happens for the best.

Interesting fact: Remy has 1.15 million hairs rendered, whereas Colette has 115,000 hairs rendered. An average person has about 110,000 hairs.

Favorite quote: "Food is fuel. You get picky about what you put in the tank, your engine is gonna die. Now shut up and eat your garbage".

# 163 The Thing (1982)

The Thing is a movie about American scientists working in Antarctica. They come across a parasitic alien organism capable of imitating its victims whether it's dogs or human beings. It's a story of paranoia and not being able to trust your teammates because you don't know which one of them may be infected. But in the end, none of it matters because they have nowhere to go to escape from this thing.

This is the first time I'm reviewing a horror movie (The Sixth Sense doesn't count as IMDb doesn't label it as "horror"), and I can say that it really impressed me because along with Alien and Aliens, the special effects don't look tacky, even though all of these sci-fi movies were made in the eighties. I watched the director's commentary where John Carpenter said that their goal was to shoot a black-and-white movie in color. They did an excellent job, and it really helped create the atmosphere and make all rubber alien things look natural. The scene where one of the characters had his arms bitten off is probably one of the scariest movie moments I've seen in my life. It's also amazing what they did with the reverse motion photography and how many special effects they created using this technology.

The pacing in this movie is good, you have enough time to understand what's happening, but at the same time there is something going on in every scene, you receive little pieces of information every minute, and you also get to see how different characters react to this situation. Psychology is very important in this movie because it really makes you feel like you can't trust anybody, and slowly you start to realize that there is no way out. This feeling intensifies and reaches its peak towards the end. The whole part with the blood test was awesome, it explains a lot about the nature of the thing, and it's also very thrilling, probably the best part of the film.

I liked the acting in this film. Only when I started writing this review I realized that Childs was played by young Keith David. In my opinion the best actor in this movie was the dog. This half wolf/half husky was an excellent animal actor, never looking at the camera, as if he understand what he's supposed to do, this dog performed perfectly. The Thing is a classic and definitely deserves a spot on the list.

Interesting fact: The Norwegian camp scenes were actually the charred remains of the American site from the end of the film. Rather than go to the expense of building and burning down another camp, John Carpenter re-used the destroyed American camp.

Favorite quote: "Maybe we're at war with Norway?"

# 162 Amores perros (2000)

Besides being really busy at work, I also haven't written in a very long time because I took my time to think about the movie that I'm about to review. Amores perros tells three stories connected by a fatal car accident. It represents the devision between classes in any society, and in a very strange way all three stories have something to do with people's love for dogs. This movie impressed the hell out of me.

As soon as I finished watching it, I thought it was pretty good, but I kept thinking about it more and more, and the more I think about it, the more I like it. It's not really helping me write this review because I feel so emotional about it that it's hard for me to put all my thoughts together into some sort of relevant order. I don't normally enjoy overtly graphic movies, and this one contains quite a few disturbing dog fighting scenes, but in Amores Perros they seemed just right. I've read some reviews that say that the movie is about the cruelty of humans towards animals and towards each other. I can't agree with it because the way I see it, the movie is about love.

We see people's romantic love, weather it's the beginning, or the end of a relationship, and we see people's love for dogs. Octavio loved his dog, even though he made him participate in dog fights, but we all saw that it wasn't "just business" to him. Valeria loved her dog too, although it did seem weird to me that she didn't try to get him up from under the floorboards. And I guess El Chivo's love was the most pure because he was able to forgive Negro, Octavio's fightdog that killed the rest of his dogs. So to me the bottom line is that love is imperfect, it's cruel, and it brings a lot of pain to the ones we love.

Of course, there's a lot more to this movie. Gael García Bernal's performance was amazing. I think Alejandro González Iñárritu had directed only four feature length films, three of them are his so-called "trilogy of death", and the fourth (Biutiful) came out this year. I watched Babel is 2006, and thought it was fantastic, 21 Grams is good too, but Amores perros is a masterpiece.

Interesting fact: Unlike most films, a disclaimer stating that no animals were harmed in the making of the movie comes at the beginning instead of being buried in the credits.

Favorite quote: "If you want to make God laugh... tell Him your plans".