My Review of The Blind Side

     

   HIGH SENTI-EMOTIONAL DRAMA

          First things first. When I finished watching the movie, I just could not digest the basic plot of the movie. But after hearing that the movie was adopted from the book named “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game” by Michael Lewis, I found the movie a lot more convincing but still couldn’t fathom how this could happen in real life.

        The Blind Side is all about a person called Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron) who defies odds with the help of Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock) and becomes an all-time football superstar in the NFL. Oher (also known as Big Mike) is a homeless teenager who gets an admit into Wingate Christian School on the recommendation from their school’s coach that he possesses excellent athletic abilities. In school, Oher is very reticent and avoids talking with his classmates as he is being vehemently teased for this physique.

       On an extremely chilly evening, when Leigh Anne Tuohy and her family are travelling they find Oher desolate on a road side and so she takes him home to let him stay in her house for that night. Slowly, Leigh Anne Tuohy begins to like Oher’s character and lets him stay in their house and she buys him new clothes, prepares him a new room etc., During the course of time, Sandra Bullock and her husband become the legal guardians of Michael Oher.

      Oher begins to excel in NFL after a while on the advice on Leigh Anne Tuohy and many NFL teams start vying for Oher seeing his potential. But unfortunately Oher does not possess good academic credentials and so Leigh Anne Tuohy arranges a tutor and with the help of the tutor he gets the required credentials which will allow him to qualify to play in the NFL. But a rift arises between Leigh Anne Tuohy and Michael Oher and what happens after that and what team he decides to play forms the rest of the story told in a heart-melting climax.

     The movie completely belongs only to two persons. Quinton Aaron as Michael Oher and Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne Tuohy. Aaron as the restrained Oher does an amazing job portraying varied emotions in the beginning and the ending stages of the movie. Personally, I loved the sequence where he saves Bullock’s son from a car accident. Sandra Bullock as the self opined Leigh Anne Tuohy also does a good job in playing her role to aptness. She does not mind speaking her mind and calling a spade a spade. The other characters such as the tutor of Oher, the coach of Oher and the husband and kids of Leigh Anne Tuohy also give a laudable performance.

    Overall, The Blind Side will work for people who like to watch a clean emotional drama. For people who do not like the plot or who find the plot unfathomable, it might not be the same.

My Review of Match Point

LOVE AND LUST REDEFINED

Having watched only one of Woody Allen’s previous movies (Vicky Christina Barcelona), I must admit that I found his portrayal of human relationships to be bewildering at first. But after a couple of days, as I kept thinking about the movie (or Scarlet Johanssen should I say), I started to like his style of film making and the way he depicts his characters in his movie.  Therefore, when I had a chance to watch Match Point, I obviously expected a varied portrayal of human relationships and my expectations were completely satiated. Incidentally, many movie freaks and film critics regard Match Point as his best work after his 1989 comical drama “Crimes and Misdemeanors”.

Match Point stars Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Chris Wilson, a tennis coach at a prominent English club who befriends one of his clients, Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode).  Hewett invites him for a party and very soon Chris captivates the attention of Tom’s mother Eleanor Hewitt (Penelope Wilton), father Alec Hewitt (Brian Cox) and sister Chloe (Emily Mortimer).  Chloe and Chris’s relationship rapidly turns romantic but Chris’s interest quickly turns towards Tom’s aphrodisiac girlfriend Nola Rice (Scarlet Johanssen). Rice tries her best to avoid having a relationship with Wilton knowing that they both would be brother and sister-in-law in future, but Chris who continues his relationship with Chloe eventually sways Rice to sleep with him.

Rice and Tom, over a period of time sever their relationship after which Rice travels out of London but when she meets Chris by chance after a few years the whole vigor is re-ignited. Chris, on the other side is married to Chloe and lives a very satisfied life. Rice becomes pregnant and starts pestering Chris to reveal their relationship to Chloe which he is very reluctant. Eventually, Chris’s decision to choose between a satisfied life and ardent love leads us to a heart wrenching, high-emotion filled climax.

The casting is apt and well-chosen.  Jonathan Rhys-Meyers plays the role of a loyal husband and sly lover to perfection. You tend to hate him but as the movie progresses you cannot but admire the prowess with which he delivers his emotions. Scarlet Johanssen too is shrewd at first but towards the latter part of the film, she loses her confidence as Jonathan gains an upper hand. Her acting is very believable and you sympathize with her when she is caught in no man’s land.

Woody Allen’s script is tight with very few loopholes. Dialogues are subtle and witty at some places. The story is meticulously drawn out and builds very slowly, but at the same time keeps the viewer guessing all the time. The movie completely justifies its tagline (Passion Temptation Obsession)!!