Life is too short to watch bad movies!!

The weekend went off watching some really good movies. There are so many good movies out there, waiting to be watched, to be loved ,thought about lazily and probably even to get inspired.
It started with The Scent of a woman. Al Pacino won his only best actor Academy Award for this movie and trust me, he deserved every bit of it. He played a blind retired army officer who had issues of his own but was an amazing individual. It was, while looking at this legend of an actor performing , that I understood the meaning of the statement, "A man being an institution in himself". The scene where he leads the lady in an effortless Tango is nothing when compared to the scene where he is being insulted by his nephew during a family dinner only to be surpassed by the last scene where he comes to defend Chris O'Donell. Its a shame that I have not watched The Godfather trilogy as yet. I will reserve it for the coming weekends probably, but The scent of a woman is a must must must movie to be watched.
Another awesome movie, which I had missed for years was "The Rainman". Now honestly I started watching Rain man because I thought it had Pacino in the role of the autistic brother. But as it turned out, it was Dustin Hoffman. Still going ahead with my decision, I was never happier or more engrossed. The beginning was a little irritating with the annoying Spanish female playing Tom Cruise's girl friend, but then there is that one magical scene where the camera starts to pan from the bottom of Cruise's car and you hear. "I am an excellent driver". Something tells you, this is the beginning of an epic role and you are not wrong. People who have not seen Rain-man should see it and like me kick themselves for having ignored it for all these years. When you look at Dustin Hoffman as Raymond, you actually want to go take care of him. You actually want to take him to K Mart and get him his underwear, because he would wear no other and because Tom Cruise wont take him there. You would want to make sure that his bed is by the window, just the way he likes it. You fall in love with Raymond. There is one better than the best scene in the movie, where Hoffman gets scared by hot running water from the tap. This scene reveals what had happened in their childhood. He is so natural that you forget that you are watching a movie. The second is a way adorable scene where Raymond laughs. "He He. Charlie Babbit cracked a joke!" You cannot miss this movie for anything in the world. Incidentally, Dustin Hoffman very deservingly won an Oscar for this role.
Also you will find the source of SRK's dancing in MNIK (and much more) and the forehead meeting "hug" from Burfi (Which has been overdone in Burfi, whereas in Rainman it is just the last scene!!) . In addition to this, you will find out why SRK is below than zero in MNIK when compared to Dustin Hoffman.
So that was Hollywood. Coming back to India, I was so hung up on watching "performance oriented" movies that the next natural choice had to be Paa!! Thank God for Amitabh Bachchan. Thank God for Balki and Thank God for Vidya Balan. Also, Thank God that all of them came together. Amitabh Bachchan is not him in the movie. He is such a natural 12 year old, that you forget its the legend unless of course the credits starts to roll. The dialogues are very easy on you and the best part in the movie is the lack of Hindi movie melodrama. Thank Balki for it. I mean probably for the first time in the history of Indian movies, an unwed daughter announces to her mother that she is pregers and all the mother asks is, "Do you want this baby?" Respect!!!
I then moved ahead to watch Grudge which was a much talked about scary movie, but honestly it was a huge disappointment. Although it was a long pending movie and I have finally crossed it off my list, I did not find it super scary (Ok , I was watching it in broad day light with Rahul by the side doing his own work :D ) but the biggest let down was the story. There was no connect at all!
I want to start a controversial discussion here. You don't really require a masterpiece story to make a good movie. I mean look at the above movies. The scent of a woman was basically not a great story. one blind officer, one student with problems of his own come together for the weekend. What made the movie was the moments, the execution and of course Al Pacino. What was Rainman? One guy, being denied of his Father's wealth discovers that he has an autistic brother who has inherited everything. He "kidnaps" him and finally falls in love with him. Paa is just a 12 year old boy who is suffering from Progeria. So maybe an epic movie does not need a mind boggling story! Maybe, its just how you put together some wonderful moments from the lives of your character on the screen and how the actors make them so believable that the audience becomes a part of their lives. Smiling, crying, and living their lives. Probably, like life, we tend to over complicate our movies also.

See you at the movies!!