Our reviewers select and review the best independent and foreign films on amazon.com, cd universe, and netflix

Title : Taare Zameen Par
Year : 2007
Directed By Aamir Khan
Writer & Creative Director : Amol Gupte
Starring : Aamir Khan, Darsheel Safary, Tisca Chopra and more

Words fell short as I start writing about this impressive emotional movie from the actor-director – Aamir Khan & his team. Unarguably the film deserves a standing ovation for its unusual content and for its near perfect execution as a first of its kind attempt in the Indian Cinema. In fact the impact I felt after viewing it was quite similar to that of watching Classics of great Indian film makers like Bimol Roy and Guru Dutt.

Aamir Khan delivers exactly what was being expected from him, an out of the routine, emotional, memorable and enlightening film which is capable of bringing changes in the lives of many families. The film revolves around a boy who is facing difficulties in studies and his teacher who comes in his life as a morning breeze. The story emphasizes completely on the character of the child, his thoughts and is a journey into the imaginative world of his mind. Especially the visual interpretation of what he is thinking is innovatively shot and is a visual treat to watch.

Aamir Khan is a thinking brain with a heart of gold and that he has proved with this debut directorial venture of his. He has the guts of following his heart and coming out with a completely unconventional film like this. However the Writer and Creative Director of the movie, Amol Gupte equally deserves his share of praises too for the commendable effort. The greatest merit of the film is that it is not at all preachy, but it teaches along with providing the required entertainment to the viewers.

The film talks about a condition of a child who is finding tough to compete with his classmates but he never talks about it as a disease or a mental disorder to cure. Aamir focuses on the fact that we got to give proper attention to all kids in a family as everyone has his own areas of abilities. He also pin points on to the parents who always want their children to score high in their studies and just ignore the other aspects of life relating to the alternate interests of a child in art and culture.

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Title: Where the Sidewalk Ends
Year: 1950
Director: Otto Preminger
Writers: Screenplay by Ben Hecht, “Adaptation by Victor Trivas, Frank P. Rosenberg and Robert E. Kent”, from a novel by William L. Stuart
Stars: Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, Gary Merrill, Bert Freed, Karl Malden

The Story: Andrews already has one brutality-complaint too many against him, so he’s really in a jam when he punches out a war hero with a plate in his head who falls down dead. He tries to pin the body on a sleazy mobster, but instead he accidentally frames the cabbie father of the one woman who understands him.

Why It’s Great: This movie has been unfairly compared to an earlier noir with same leads and director, Laura. That classic is a glossy high-end noir, while this one was a low-budget quickie, so it never could match up. Like Edward Dmytryk or Anthony Mann, Preminger was brilliant at making little movies that didn’t cost much money, but lost a lot of his artistry when it came to the big prestige epics that Hollywood preferred him to make. Watching this hard little 94 minute gem, it’s hard to believe that Preminger would soon be routinely turning in cuts that were twice that length. One of the sub-genres of noir was the police procedural, where we would methodically follow each and every step on the circuitous route to solving a case. This is a little different: it’s the first police brutality procedural, calmly tracing each slippery step of a beating and botched cover-up. At the time, you might get the occasional movie where one bad cop was “on the take”, but how many movies from this era can you name where police brutality wasn’t just some scam made up by crooks trying to score sympathy points? Andrews doesn’t play him as a brute, either, just a smart detective who gave in one time too many to his flashes of prideful anger.

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The Messenger (USA 2009, 112 min, dir: Oren Moverman, cast: Wood Harrelson, Ben Foster, Samantha Morton.

The true historians of war are gravediggers. By the time their battle begins the others have all ended. The smoke has cleared. All that is left is a lot of questions without answers. Shakespeare employed a couple of these shovelers in Hamlet.

Modern times demand a more psychological approach. The Messenger is about Will Montgomery (Ben Foster), just retuned from Iraq and assigned to be an army Casualty Notification Officer. He works in a two-man team with hard ass Capt. Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson). Their job is to drive around notifying dead soldier’s wives and parents that their lovers and sons have bought the big one.

Owen Moverman directs from his own script; and the film has a writerly feel. It’s not so much the drama of war’s nihilism, like Hurt Locker, as it is a mindful reflection. If you ever want a downer evening try double billing The Messenger with Gardens of Stone. The latter is Francis Coppola’s 1987 film about men assigned to the ceremonial burial details at Arlington Nation Cemetery (during the Viet Nam War).

The first movie notifies the next of kin, the second movie blows the trumpet and folds the flag as the coffins slide into the ground. Both are very good films. Together they offer a requiem for America’s recent war adventures.

We can hope The Messenger is not damage Moverman’s career the way Gardens of Stone was for Coppola’s. In Coppola’s case it was not the movie, it was the making of the movie. During the filming, Francis’s son Gio (Gian Carlo) was killed in a gruesome accident. The speeding motorboat in which he was a passenger passed under a towline and he was beheaded. Coppola retreated into his Silverfish video command trailer and never came out. He directed the rest of the picture in seclusion. Each day word came from the unseen director for set ups and shots of military burials.

An experience like that is ample reason to lose your love of making films. Gardens of Stone was (in my opinion) the last great chancy subject for Coppola. Afterward he settled into another Godfather sequel and a lot of executive producer credits. The few films he has actually directed since are minor works that smell of easy money.

Owen Moverman is luckier. Or is he? There was no personal tragedy we know of while making his death trip film. But the writer-director’s worldview is a tad mawkish. His Casualty Notification Officers must offer emotional justification as they act out the futility of war. To make them emotionally interesting, Will has to have a love affair with a soldier’s widow, Jena (Samantha Morton). Coppola was felled by a bizarre personal tragedy. Moverman seems to hunt bizarre emotional situations on screen.

Look at his past writing credits like Jesus’ Son, Face, Married Life, and The Big Blow you feel he’s a kinky dude. Where he goes next is going to be interesting. Where he has been with The Messenger is certainly worth experiencing as long as you’re not feeling suicidal.

Title : Road To Sangam
Year : 2009
Directed By Amit Rai
Starring : Paresh Rawal, Om Puri, Pawan Malhotra, Javed Sheikh and more.

It is really very unfortunate when brilliant movies such as “Road To Sangam” come and go unnoticed without making any kind of buzz mainly due to lack of publicity and no Bollywood’s big over-famous heroes on its posters. But if this means loss for its producers then it is also means an even bigger loss for the viewers too, who remain deprived of such small budget gems due to the above mentioned reasons.

Anyway, if you haven’t heard of this title earlier then let me introduce you to a film which not only has some great actors showing their skills on the screen, but which is also based on a splendid real life inspired story idea which is both exciting as well as enlightening at the same time.

What if I tell you that even after more than 5 decades of GANDHI’s death, a part of his ashes are still lying there in a vault waiting for getting immersed in the holy waters? And now a big national procession has to be planned to take those ashes for their final rituals along with thousands of people who love & respect the Mahatama. That’s the basic idea of “Road To Sangam” which is surprisingly based on a true incident of the late nineties when a part of Mahatama’s ashes were actually discovered lying in a bank’s locker.

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Children of Heaven (Iran 1997, 89 min. dir: Majid Majidi, cast: Amir-Farrokh Hashemian, Bahare Seddiqui, Amir Naji.

Ali wins the race but cries because he didn’t make third place. If only he’d run a little slower he might have won the concession prize of a pair of sneakers and been able to replace his sister’s shoes that he lost.

There are a lot of reminders of The Bicycle Thief (Vittorio DeSica 1948) in Children of Heaven. The bicycle film is about a man and his son searching vainly for a stolen bike they desperately need for work in post-war Italy. In Children of Heaven, Ali (Amir-Farrokh Hashemian) and his father (Amir Naji) ride a bicycle through the wealthy suburbs of Tehran desperately sneaking work as gardeners so they can make enough money for the family to survive; and buy a new pair of shoes to replace younger sister Zahra’s (Bahare Seddiqui) pair that he lost.

The stories of both films play on the same theme: poor people whose existence is tied to essentials but who are happy in spite of the limits life has placed on them. The last scene of the movie, where Ali has finally accomplished his modest goals, shows him taking off his shoes, examining his blistered feet (from the race) and cooling them in the courtyard fishpond. The goldfish swimming around his swollen feet provide a feeling of peace and harmony with the world.

The fish give his feet a busa hamoni, a “bath kiss” in Farsi: what every mother gives her children in the bath. It is a peaceful end to a film that is about children and children’s concerns (lost shoes) and at the same time about larger issues like rich versus poor. It is also about how Iran’s well-regulated education system tends to obscure the lack of upward mobility even for kids who receive good education.

Rich versus poor is resonant theme from Bicycle Thieves (the original title, for some reason it became one thief, The Bicycle Thief, in the American title). De Sica’s film was dismissed in his native Italy because bicycles got stolen all the time. It was a hit in American hit: one of the Neo-Realism school of films honestly depicting the aftermath in war shattered Europe. The images showed poor people trying to put their lives together at a time when American style post-war capitalism, new to Europe, was rewarding the politically well connected.

These images were disquieting to an America during the post-war boom. Americans saw the US as a benevolent victor. If this was true, then how could these Italians be so distraught about losing a bicycle? Similarly, Children of Heaven shows Ali’s father, with Ali hanging on behind, pumping his bicycle through the dense traffic of modern Tehran and stopping at gated house after gated house begging for work as gardeners. If the Iranian revolution leveled the playing field then who are these super rich people?

The name “Children of Heaven” really asks the questions “what heaven?” and “whose heaven?” Life looks pretty good if you are among the elite. But when your father makes his living breaking up sugar with a hammer and tears roll down your cheeks because you lost your sister’s only pair of worn out shoes; is this really the egalitarian country its leaders claim?

Children of Heaven won the Academy Award for best foreign film. What were those overfed SUV driers of Beverly Hills thinking about? Did they see this as a sweet movie about two adorable kids? They are adorable, but you need to look behind the headscarves to see a society that is deeply troubled; and where a new revolution was beginning to find a voice.

When the film was released in 1997 it seemed sweet as the sugar Ali’s father hammered into bits. In fact, it was so sweet it was remade in an Indian version, Bumm Bumm Bole. Viewing it in the years since adds more history to the story of Zahra’s tattered shoes.

Title: Fort Apache
Year: 1948
Director: John Ford
Writers: Frank S. Nugent, suggested by the story “Massacre” by James Warner Bellah
Stars: John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Shirley Temple, Pedro Arendariz, John Agar, Ward Bond, Victor McLaglen

The Story: A strict martinet, with his daughter in tow, takes over a remote Arizona army base where there’s much camaraderie but lax discipline. He refuses to listen to his more experienced men, who are attempting to maintain an uneasy truce with the Apache, and instead he uses their peacemaking efforts to lure the tribe into a trap, with disastrous consequences for all.

Why It’s Great: The great Arnold Weinstein has a theory about how his fellow American literary critics tend to only apply the term “serious literature” to works in which family and community are destroyed or abandoned, but dismiss any work where such things are strengthened as un-serious fluff. I think that this helps explains why some Ford movies are not as valued as others. Ford loved to use his rough Western settings to discuss his favorite topics: community-building and, yes, the value of domestication. But beyond that, I suspect that this movie is a victim, ironically, or being so far ahead of its time in its racial politics. Modern critics love to make excuses for movies like The Searchers, and their brutal depiction of the Indians, by finding nuance in them and explaining them away as products of their time, but that narrative falls apart when you see a movie like this, which gives a far more modern portrayal of the relentless victimization of the Apache, who kept trying to keep up their side of an endless parade of faithless deals. It’s embarrassing to see a movie this honest, even today. It can’t imagine how much courage it took to make it back then. A word about the casting: I love role-reversal movies, where two actors oddly play against type. Here we have Fonda as the swaggering macho-man vs. Wayne as the gentle peacemaker, and they give two of their best performances. Fonda usually played roles that matched his political views: progressive and kind. But here he plays a role that, alas, matched the unpleasant personality he seems to have displayed at home: an uncomfortable, unreasonable autocrat. He does beautiful work and breaks your heart.

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Cloud 9 (Germany 2008, 98 min. dir: Andreas Dresen, cast: Ursula Werner, Horst Rehberg, Horst Westphal, Steffi Kuhnert).

Cloud 9 explores all the feelings, all the love, all the passion, all the nudity we think of as the province of young love. Only these lovers are in their late sixties and seventies.

Urula Werner plays Inge, the woman who leaves. She’s been a film actress since 1960 but it takes more than courage to take off all our clothes and do nude love scenes at the age of (approx)64.

She lives a quiet life with her husband, Werner (Horst Rehberg). She sings in the church choir, entertains her grand children, and takes in sewing. The sewing is her undoing. Taking a pair of altered trousers to Karl’s (Horst Westphal’s) apartment for a fitting, she finds her self in a passionate kiss. In a minute she’s slipped of her own panties and is heaving away in bed with him.

The scene is one we’ve seen in countless young love movies. Two lovers impetuously drawn to each other by animal magnetism who toss away all caution with their clothes. But watching it with sixty and seventy year olds is, at first, shocking. They have lust on their faces but their bodies don’ give that satisfying voyeurism we’ve come to expect of young skin.

The ringmaster of this tender, personal film is Andreas Dresen. His interest in character stories and intimate relationship is his brand. Grill Point (2002) is another good example. Dresen is an Ossi, or “Easterner.” This is the derogatory German term for people who came from Eastern Germany before unification. In the eyes of a Wessi they are a less polished, less sophisticated.

So it is with Dresen’s wonderful characters. In Grill Point they were married couples having affairs with each other’s spouses. The action was set in a small East German town where nightlife centers around the snack bar set up in the town park. Cloud 9 seems to be set in a Berlin suburb. We can see the red and yellow cars of the S-Bahn commuter trains whirr past Inge’s back yard; we catch a glimpse or two of a vertical city in the distance. But the Berlin of Cloud 9 is a small town of railway backyards, tree-lined streets of apartments, church socials and family picnics.

Cloud 9 doesn’t have a silver lining. The consequences of elder love are different from those of young love. There is no time lift for heart mending. When Inge moves out, Werner is left with no future. Her happiness with Karl is short-lived. Or is it? The movie takes us only as far as her new life and new pain. Dresen should do a follow up with Cloud 10.

Tokyo Sonata (Japan 2008, 120 min. dir: Kiyoshi Kurosawa, cast: Teruyuki Kagawa, Kyoko Koizumi, Yu Koyanagi, Kai Inowaki.

The world plunged into financial crises in 2008 but Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata was already a testament to what was about to happen. Released in 2008, the film follows one struggling Tokyo family from job loss to slow family disintegration.

Ryuhei (Teruyuki Kagawa) loses his white-collar job but cannot face his wife, Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi) with the news. Each day he dresses in a suit and tie for work and leaves home with his briefcase. She learns the truth when she sees him standing in a food line for free lunch at a local park along with other unemployed salary men.

Her eldest son, Takashi (Yu Koyanagi), finds his exit from the household by joining the American army under a new recruitment offer for Japanese. He’s promptly sent to the Middle East battlefields. The youngest son, Kenji (Kai Inowaki), observes all this while trying to sneak away and take piano lessons that the family cannot afford.

In the end, at his brilliant recital, there is at least hope for something; even though the family can not pay for the schooling he will need to realize his musical potential.

Though set in middle class Japan, there is a resonance to Where God Left His Shoes (MovieWithMe.com) because both films sketch the desperation that comes when there is no way out. The events of 2008 are still rolling over, receding slowly and revealing the debris like a retreating tsunami. Both films seem to ask, where do you go when there is nowhere left to go?