Lesser Known Movies you must watch - 24

My Left Foot

Cast: Daniel Day Lewis (his first Oscar), Fiona Shaw, Ryan McAnally, Brenda Fricker

This movie is a biography of a person named Christy Brown, who was born with Cerebral Palsy (Permanent Movement Disorder) and can control only his left foot. It takes us to a beautiful journey of how we should keep thanking God for what we have is more than sufficient and if we use it to our best of potential, we can bring wonders. This story is also one of the great stories which showcases human courage and determination. We personally feel that this would be amongst the top or most inspiring movies of all time.

Also, I don’t think anyone other than the great Daniel Day Lewis would have done the justice to the role of Christy brown, his mannerism , intelligence, sense of humor and courage. Mr. Lewis will lead to fall in love with this person.

The movie begin in some 1932 , taking us through the journey of Christy who was born in a big family and was discovered to have movement disorder. Being neglected by most of his family members except his mother, one day when his mother falls of the stairs, he was able to alert the neighbors by using his left foot to write the word “mother” with a piece of chalk which also made his father believe in him and his so called upcoming potential.

Christy started seeking hobby of painting with the only limb that works. He becomes popular in his neighborhood and is included in the activities. He paints lot of amazing pictures, is funny and full of life. His mother is able to save some money and get him a wheelchair. He meets a girl who helps in setting up an art exhibition for all his amazing work whom later he fell in love and comes to know that she is engaged and to be married soon. This pace of movie is not too fast , not too slow but just the right amount to keep audience engaged for 100 odd minutes. Do watch this movie and you will know why Mr. Lewis is the greatest living actor of all time and his three Best Actor Oscars have not come as a fluke. This movie will show that anyone can be gifted and inspiring and all we need is to discover and nurture that gift and inspire others.

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Lesser Known Movies you must watch -23

EYE IN THE SKY

Cast: Alan Rickman, Helen Mirren, Monica Dolan, Ian Glen, Phoebe Fox, Barkhad Abdi

We are back with some more unknown movies that you may have not seen and if not , you are surely going to appreciate them post seeing them via the review’s we would give. Today movie actually is really good due to multiple reasons, one of those reason is that it’s Alan’s Rickman (Severus Snape-Harry Potter Movies) last movie before his untimely death and he has again shown why his dialogue delivery , screen acting is still one of the most power-filled , awe-inspiring things that our generation has seen. The other reason to watch this movie is to see the ethics involved i.e. even if you are at war with someone , you will leave no stones unturned to ensure that its played according to the rules both legally and politically. The movie is full of power packed performances from Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad), Ian Glen (Game of Thrones- Sir Jorah), Monica Dolan, Phoebe Fox and most importantly the queen herself – Helen Mirren.

The entire movie plot/flow is happening on the same day and the interactions between the characters is at a whole different level. The movie will also showcase the technology that is available with developed nations using which they can take any necessary action without you realizing the same. The storyline is to catch top most terrorist in East Africa (Nairobi, Kenya)  using Surveillance via drones and help of local undercover agents. The Defence team sitting across different location is following the order of lieutenant General Frank (Rickman) of British Intelligence who is sitting with Government Ministers and controlling the proceedings legally and ethically. The entire mission goes wayward when they realize that instead of two top terrorist there are more terrorist hiding in the same location and are planning for a suicide attack in different places. This is where Frank and his deputy Colonel Katherine Powell (Mirren) has to convince the ministry to change their decision of capturing the terrorist to killing them. But the problem is that there is a civilian population particularly, a young girl selling bread, who will also die if the missile attack is launched to eliminate those terrorists. The rest of the movie is about whether they should save 1 life and risk the 80-100 other’s who will get killed in that suicide attack or the other way around. “Never tell a soldier that he doesn’t now the cost of war” is the message of the movie which is both thunderous and inspiring. So ,there you go. That’s the movie we suggest for you to watch this week. Do let us know in comments if you liked the movie.

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Lesser Known Movies you must watch - 22

Margin Call

Cast: Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany, Stanley Tucci, Zachary Quinto, Simon Baker, Demi Moore (big star cast with mere 3.5 Million budget)

When we talk about movies made on 2008 Recession of sub-prime (financial) crisis , we think about The Big Short or Wall Street or Inside Job but there is one movie which shows the impact of recession from the other side i.e. on the investment banks specifically just one bank who realizes that it will be a victim of financial collapse and takes a decision to sell off its assets within 24 hours before market realizing the risk.

The reason for such a big star cast was mainly to show the emotions and ensuring that the financial talks between the actors are compelling. The movie has done justice and scored full marks practically in all the areas specially considering the fact that it’s a directorial debut for J.C.Chandor who was accoladed by an academy nomination for Best Original Screenplay for this movie. The best part about the movie is that the financial bank is never named throughout even though you would find similarities with falling of Goldman Sachs and Lehman brothers during financial crisis.

The movie begin with the usual mass layoffs happening in the bank where the head of risk management  Dave (Stanley Tucci) is also requested to go. When he leaves, he is handed over a USB drive by one of the risk Analysts Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) to investigate. Sullivan while working on Dave’s project discovers that company’s current volatility of market securities has exceeded its levels and due to the company’s excess leverage if the firm assets are decreased by 25% , the loss for the firm is greater than its total value i.e. firm will go bankrupt.

In starts the round of meetings between Floor head Sam (Kevin Spacey) , Divison heads Jared (Simon Baker) , Chief Risk Management Officer Sarah (Demi Moore), and CEO John tudd (Jeremy Irons) hindsight how it had happened and why was it not reported. The discussion is to sell the firm toxic assets to save their grace which would mean creating lot of enemies in the financial market or finding other alternatives to stop the crisis or minimize its impact. The dialogues between Spacey and Irons are breath-taking  specially seeing Spacey on the other side who is opposing the sale of assets. This movie also shows that gains and losses are part of economic cycle along with the layoff’s and there are just few people who would gain from such catastrophe. Do watch our 22^nd Recommended movie for yourself to see if they succeeded in selling the assets and to which limit they went to sell-off the same.

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Lesser Known Movies you must watch - 21

Eddie The Eagle

Cast: Taron Egerton , Hugh Jackman, Christopher Walken, Jim Broadbent

This week movie mention (21st) is a biographical sports comedy-drama about a loser who with his determination and positive spirit became a public hero. This movie is about a Britain first competitor (Eddie Edwards) in Olympic Ski Jumping since 1928 (after 6 decades) who even against all the odds went on to participate in the winter Olympics and was able to record his jump successfully.

We are going to begin with a dialogue from the movie between the winner of 1988 Ski Jumping event and Eddie Edwards, where the winner before the 90m jump tells Eddie that “You and I are like one o'clock and eleven o'clock. You see, we are closer to each other than to others. Winning, losing, all that stuff is for the little people. Men like us, we jump to free our souls. We are the only two jumpers with a chance to make history today. If we do less than our best with the whole world watching, it will kill us inside. For all time.”

The movie begins, with 10-year-old Eddie dreams of Olympics and tries his luck in various sports but fails miserably in all of them. He gets support from his mother, but his father discourages him calling it a waste of time. As an adolescent he decides to participate in Winter games instead of summer games in the Skiing event. Although he is decent at sport, he is rejected by the officials due to lack of manners and irrational behavior. He Stills doesn’t give up his dream and instead goes to Germany to self train himself in the training facility with other seasoned jumpers.

In the camp he meets an alcoholic snow jumper Bronson Peary who himself was former American champion but left the sports due to conflicts with his coach. He reluctantly agrees to train him by using the most unorthodox techniques that one can think of (you will literally laugh at some of the scenes). Eddie is able to 40 m hill but to qualify for the Olympics he would have to successfully complete one jump from 70-meter hill. He does complete that but the officials due to his behavior and being afraid that he might spoil the games decides to change the rules to a jump of 61 meters at-least to qualify for the Olympics.

This is where we would leave you to see the movie for yourself to know how was he able to qualify with a 61 meter jump when he was merely reaching 40 meters during training sessions. Once again, you will feel a sense of happiness and energetic with the climax scene and the ending. Hugh Jackman like always has been brilliant in his role (this man can do hardly anything wrong)  and Taron Egerton is amazing as Eddie. See this movie , and you will get the feeling that giving your 100% will give you more satisfaction than winning.

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Lesser Known Movies you must watch - 20

Nightcrawler

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Bill Paxton, Riz Ahmed

Nightcrawler was a directorial debut for Dan Gilroy (brother of Tony Gilroy- Michael Clayton) and is one of the low budget movies like Man from Earth where most of the movie was shot at midnight before sunrise. The main tone of the movie is not to let its visuals take over but to show it as close to reality as they could which is why you would see a wide-angle lens camera is being used.

Jake Gyllenhaal is a gem of an actor who has showed his versatile acting skills from Brokeback Mountain to Donny Darko to Source Code to Nocturnal animals but I think Nightcrawler was the one where he was truly snubbed by Academy for not nominating him. He was acclaimed by every critic for his acting skills shown in this movie specially the scenes with Rene Russo.

The movie starts with a thief lou (Jake) who is caught stealing from a security guard in Los Angeles. While looking for a job and getting rejected from the places Lou on one night sees a car crash where photojournalist (Freelance) are trying to record the entire proceedings. On conversing with one of them, Lou finds out that they are selling this footage to local news stations and earning money.

Lou gets into the same profession by stealing a bicycle and exchanges it for a camcorder and police radio scanner. After few unsuccessful attempts Lou gets his hands on the footage of carjacking and sells the same to a news channel (KWLA6). The news director Nina (Rene Russo) tells him that she is interested in such violent news accidents. This is where story gets interesting where Lou to gain popularity starts tampering the accident scenes for creating a good footage. With all the money, he buys better equipment and car to cover more areas.

He gets into a sexual relationship with the director who when not getting a good footage reprimands him for getting more footage. Lou to keep his reputation he sabotages another freelancer Rick’s (Riz Ahmed) van by getting into a tussle with him and records the accident. The movie gets further interesting when Lou gets the chance to record a footage of gunman leaving in SUV and of victims in the house (Case of home invasion) and Nina plans to show the footage even though the staff is anxious over the ethics of the footage. The story gets further interesting when but Lou and Rick plans to catch hold of gunmen who killed the family in the home invasion.  We will leave it for you to see what becomes of Lou on the dark path he has taken. The story is all about betrayal, struggle and survival in the city of fallen angels. Riz Ahmed and Rene Russo have portrayed their character’s to perfection and Gyllenhaal has been compared with Robert D Niro of Taxi driver by some critics for his portrayal as Lou in this movie.

Let us know your views on our 20th recommended movie.

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Lesser Known Movies you must watch - 19

Escape from Alcatraz

Cast: Clint Eastwood (no other name is required)

When we ask the viewers can they name any prison movie that they have seen, the only name that comes up is Shawshank Redemption, probably because it is the greatest movie ever been made in its own time. But, there have been few other lesser known movies that were Prison thrillers and must also be appreciated because they were made well ahead of their time. Escape from Alcatraz is one of those movies based on a novel with the same name directed by famous Don Siegal who casted Clint Eastwood (5^th Collaboration between both) for this master thriller.

1962 prison escape from the famous Alcatraz prison, Clint Eastwood in his late 40’s (living legends) and the cool cinematic elegance is what you would see in this movie. The movie starts when Frank Morris (Clint Eastwood) who is prisoned in Alcatraz and had been informed by the warden that no prisoner had ever escaped.

In the prison, Morris make acquaintance with 3 other prisoners and enemies with one of the prisoner (Wolf) who is on trial for raping someone who harasses him and even attacks him with knife. Things unfold in prison where Morris sees how the prison is controlled by warden and without him no proceedings can happen (not going into details as we want you to watch them). When Morris notices that the cell walls are weak and can be chipped away , he plans for an escape with his friends by digging through the weak walls with spoons, make Paper dummies to act as their imitations and construct rafts out of raincoats.

On the night of June 11,1962 Morris and the other inmates decides to bring the plan into action (Prison Break and Shawshank Redemption coming all together in the same movie). Wolf also intercepts their plan and prepares to stab Morris with a knife. The other inmates also plan to meet Morris at the rendezvous point where one of them had a cold feet. With all the excitement in the final 30 mins of escape – we leave for you to watch if the escape was successful or if Morris was attacked by Wolf even before meeting the other inmates. If they were able to escape the cells, how did they manage to escape the search lights running around the prison at night to keep a watch on the prisoners and if they somehow managed that, how were they able to cross the barbwire and use their raincoats as rafts. With so much of excitement we would want you to watch this movie and just see it for yourself why Clint Eastwood is called the masterpiece and legend of all times not only because of his direction but also of his acting skills. This will be our nineteenth recommended movie.

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Lesser Known Movies you must watch - 18

Snowpiercer

Cast: Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton, Ed Harris, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, John Hurt

A famous South Korean Director, French graphic novel that brings Captain America/Ancient One/Men in Black together on the same screen is our 18th recommended movie. Snowpiercer is one of those underrated movies which hasn’t received all the credits and acknowledgement from the viewers even though it was critically acclaimed for its vision, direction and performances. The production house decisions who planned it for limited release initially can be one of the main reasons of this movie having lack of viewership.

This is a pure Science Action Film based on a dystopian future which is setup somewhere in 2031. This movie looks so real because of the future created by the attempt to prevent global warming through climatic engineering which backfires and thus creates an ice age kind of situation in 2014 which leads to global extinction of most forms of life including animals (only those survived who can live below sub-zero temperatures), plants and most of human race. By 2031 only survivors are the one who live on a train Snowpiercer which is travelling on a created by an inventor named Wilford to enable the train running in a circular track. The Train cars are divided into two parts where the front cars are extravagant, and inhabitants are called elites and the rear end cars inhabitants are called Scums who lives under brutal conditions and are only being fed upon protein bars to survive.

With such an intriguing concept the movie is about the “Scum” lead by Gilliam (John Hurt), Curtis (Chris Evans) along with Edgar (Jamie Bell) plans to lead the passenger to take control of the engine. Mason (Tilda Swinton) who is one of the accomplice of Wilford comes to take over two children and easily able to defeat the passengers and amputating the arm of the father of those children by pushing it out of the train in brutal weather, Curtis decides to initiate their plan. Curtis and other passengers can overrun the guards realizing their guns are empty and are able to take over Security and prison cars.

Now starts the real fight where one by one Curtis and his team plans to take over water supply car so that they can negotiate with Wilford, gets some of their friends killed in multiple battles (intense battle scenes which you cannot miss), goes through other luxurious cars uptill the gate of the engine. This is where we leave you to see the movie where a breath-taking conversations happens between Curtis and Wilford where he reveals his real intentions of such an order and chaos in the train. We will surely uncover other questions on whether the life outside is inhospitable or if it’s just another strategy by rich to rule the poor in state of anarchy. Do watch and let us know your thoughts!

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