My Five is about my personal list of the five greatest feature films in World cinema categories.
1. Cinema Paradiso (Nuovo Cinema Paradiso) (1988)
Cinema Paradiso offers a nostalgic look at films and the effect they have on a young boy who grows up in and around the title village movie theater in this Italian comedy drama that is based on the life and times of screenwriter/director Giuseppe Tornatore. The story begins in the present as a Sicilian mother pines for her estranged son, Salvatore, who left many years ago and has since become a prominent Roman film director who has taken the advice of his mentor too literally. He finally returns to his home village to attend the funeral of the town's former film projectionist, Alfredo, and, in so doing, embarks upon a journey into his boyhood just after WWII when he became the man's official son. In the dark confines of the Cinema Paradiso, the boy and the other townsfolk try to escape from the grim realities of post-war Italy. The town censor is also there to insure nothing untoward appears onscreen, invariably demanding that all kissing scenes be edited out. One day, Salvatore saves Alfredo's life after a fire, and then becomes the new projectionist. A few years later, Salvatore falls in love with a beautiful girl who breaks his heart after he is inducted into the military. Thirty years later, Salvatore has come to say goodbye to his life-long friend, who has left him a little gift in a film can.
The film was remade in Tamil with some nativity touch as "Veyil"
2. THE WAY HOME (2002)
Another Korean movie. But the language doesn't matter to watch this kind of movies. You can realize this when you finish watching. It has very few dialogues and less conversation. It is a story (near real life experience in modern world) between a boy and his grandmother. This boy is from city (urban background) and his grandmother lives in a remote hilly area. Initially he doesn't like that place and his grandmother, who is dumb. Finally how he gets changed (Metamorphosis) is the story. He couldn't bear the separation from his grandmother at the end. I simply loved the wonderful location in this film. There are few incidents in this film which portrays the humanistic nature and unconditional love. How simple and straight forward their life is.
A Must Watch..
3. CHILDREN OF HEAVEN (1997)
The story line is simple. Ali lost his sister's shoes in a market. He could not find them after searching. Since they are poor, they don't want to tell their father about this and starts sharing the brother's shoes (School timings are different for boys and girls). When they come to know the shoe is with another girl, they don't want to ask her after seeing her family's condition. Ali helps his father in doing some gardening work for earning money. At that time he tells his father that new shoes has to be bought for his sister. His father confirms that.Ali participates in a race where the third prize is a pair of shoe. Does he wins the race and the girl gets a new shoe? Beautiful screenplay, acting by the kids.
Watch it..
4. North by North West (1959)
Alfred Hitchcock master piece….While having lunch at the Plaza Hotel in New York, advertising executive Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) has the bad luck to call for a messenger just as a page goes out for a "George Kaplan." From that moment, Thornhill finds that he has stepped into a nightmare -- he is quietly abducted by a pair of armed men out of the hotel's famous Oak Room and transported to a Long Island estate; there, he is interrogated by a mysterious man (James Mason) who, believing that Roger is George Kaplan, demands to know what he knows about his business and how he has come to acquire this knowledge. Roger, who knows nothing about who any of these people are, can do nothing but deny that he is Kaplan or that he knows what they're talking about. Finally, his captors force a bottle of bourbon into Roger and put him behind the wheel of a car on a dangerous downhill stretch. Through sheer luck and the intervention of a police patrol car and its driver (John Beradino), Roger survives the ride and evades his captors, and is booked for drunk driving. He's unable to persuade the court, the county detectives, or even his own mother (Jesse Royce Landis) of the truth of his story, however -- Thornhill returns with them to the mansion where he was held, only to find any incriminating evidence cleaned up and to learn that the owner of the house is a diplomat, Lester Townsend (Philip Ober), assigned to the United Nations. He backtracks to the hotel to find the room of the real George Kaplan, only to discover that no one at the hotel has ever actually seen the man. With his kidnappers once again pursuing him, Thornhill decides to confront Townsend at the United Nations, only to discover that he knows nothing of the events on Long Island, or his house being occupied -- but before he can learn more, Townsend gets a knife in his back in full view of 50 witnesses who believe that Roger did it. Now on the run from a murder charge, complete with a photograph of him holding the weapon plastered on the front page of every newspaper in the country, Thornhill tries to escape via train -- there he meets the cooly beautiful Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), who twice hides him from the police, once spontaneously and a second time in a more calculated rendezvous in her compartment that gets the two of them together romantically, at least for the night. By the next day, he's off following a clue to a remote rural highway, where he is attacked by an armed crop-dusting plane, one of the most famous scenes in Hitchcock's entire film output. Thornhill barely survives, but he does manage to learn that his mysterious tormentor/interrogator is named Phillip Vandamm, and that he goes under the cover of being an art dealer and importer/exporter, and that Eve is in bed with him in every sense of the phrase -- or is she?
5. CAST AWAY (2000)
Tom Hanks does a superb job of carrying "Cast Away" all by himself for about two-thirds of its running time, but isn't much helped by additional characters in the opening and closing sequences. Here is a strong and simple story surrounded by needless complications, and flawed by a last act that first disappoints us and then ends on a note of forced whimsy.
Hanks plays Chuck Noland, a time-obsessed Federal Express executive who troubleshoots all over the world, arranging hurry-up package transfers in Moscow before flying off to solve problems in Asia. Helen Huntplays his fiancee, Kelly Frears, who tries her best to accept a man ruled by a beeper. She comes from clock-watching stock, and for Christmas gives Chuck her grandfather's railroad watch.
Noland hitches a ride on a FedEx flight across the Pacific, which is blown off course before crashing after an onboard explosion. That seems like two catastrophes when one would have done, but director Bob Zemeckis uses the storm for scenes of in-flight fear, wisely following Alfred Hitchcock's observation that from a suspense point of view, an explosion is over before you get your money's worth.
A must watch for movie lovers.. Thanks to Ulaga Cinema part 1,2,3 By Chezian (Vikatan Publications Chennai) for introducing this movies in their articles.
