Lesser Known Movies you must watch - 26

The Experiment

Cast: Adrian Broody (The Pianist), Forest Whitaker (The last king of Scotland), Maggie Grace, Fisher Stevens

(90 Mins running time , easily available on you-tube as well)

There is an advantage if you have done regular MBA, the case studies that you read or go through to understand the perspective in different fields of Management i.e. Marketing, Human Resource, Organizational Behavior etc. I came across a concept one of my OB class which led to me watching this movie. The concept is based upon an experiment that was conducted by Professor Zimbardo in Standford Prison with a research group of Standford university in 1971. This was conducted to understand the psychological effect of perceived power if given to anyone.

The movie is loosely based on the same experiment (hence the name) and is actually a remake of German film (Das Experiment). Movie begins with a group of volunteers arriving for a Phycological study that will be conducted on them where these groups will be divided into two subgroups of prison guards and criminals i.e. inmates. Travis (Brody) who is an anti-war protestor becomes one of the inmates and Michael Barris (Whittaker) who still lives with his mother who is dominating becomes one of the guards. Basic rules of the prison are aligned for them where they will get 3 meals a day, 30 minutes of recreation and other rules like staying within your cell or using designated areas. The experiment is being told to go on for 15 days and if they are able to manage to the same they will be given 14000 USD.

Now what do you think should happen? Task is pretty simple right, just act as per your roles and responsibilities and make the easy money. But things are never simple as they seems. Also, when you are given some power , even if you don’t want to use it , you will use it as its yours whereas on the other-hand when you are powerless , even if you are the strongest person you will find yourself unable to offer any help when needed. Just watch the movie and realize if human beings really are the higher in the chain of evolution than monkeys. Do share and leave your comments

SM Movie Geeks

Lesser Known Movies you must watch - 25

FREEWAY

Cast: Reese Witherspoon (Very young and beautiful Reese I should say), Kiefer Sutherland, Brooke Shields

This week movie is one of my personal favorite because of the actor in it i.e. Reese. This was 5^th Movie of Reese but the first critical acclaimed movie where she actually not only played a lead role but dominated the entire 100 minutes with her acting. This movie showed a star in the making which was proven later at so many other iconic roles, most recent being Madeline Mackenzie in Big Little lies. Alongside Reese, we have a very short but powerful role of Mr. Sutherland who most of you know from 24 (that’s right- Jack Bauer). Now this movie is a dark comedy and is about exploitation of rich and how the underlying crime takes place.

Movie is about a 16 year old girl  named Vanessa Lutz (Reese) who is illiterate and live in a shady environment with her Mother (who is a prostitute) and Stepfather (Who is a child abuser). When they both get arrested , she decides to run away and live with her Grandmother in the West USA who is not even aware of her existence. But destiny had other plans for her , as her car breaks down and she is picked by Bob (Kiefer) who is a psychology teacher who decides to help her to drop to LA. Now comes, 20 mins of dialogue delivery which you would fascinate you and keep you at the edge of your seats. But believe me , movie doesn’t end here as Vanessa get’s arrested for attacking/attempting to kill Bob who reveals himself to be a child abuser’s / molester /serial killer to her. Although this doesn’t’ get proven in court which results in Vanessa going to jail and be tried in Adult court for the horrendous attack she made on Bob. Well, I will leave you here to go and watch the movie to see the fate of Vanessa and if Bob actually get’s caught or not in this entire facade.

One thing , I can guarantee is you will not get bored and you will see how amazing Reese was playing this character who was foul mouthed , short tempered but still lovable and kind, also not to forgot that her timing in the entire movie was spot on. Full marks to the supporting character’s as well in them movie. Do watch and share!!!

SM MOVIE GEEKS

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.

SM MOVIE GEEKS

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.

SM Movie Geeks

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.

SM Movie Geeks

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.

SM Movie Geeks

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.

SM Movie Geeks