Time For The Movies

Mari, the dearest friend I have in cyberspace, (naks!) tagged me for this meme. It is about the last movie that I had thoroughly enjoyed.

Here are the rules for this tag:

1. Link back the person who tagged you and write what was the last movie he/she or his/her family enjoyed watching recently.

2. Now your turn to tell about the movie you or your family just watched.

3. Tell something about the movie and spoilers are accepted. (hehehee)

4. Write anything that has something to do with movies: Trivia, your top choice or favorites and why, your family's story about your favorite motion pictures, the first film you watched with your spouse/partner/special someone, any traditional film the family's been keeping, etc... etc...

5. Copy and paste the rules of this meme on your blog and pass the tag on to as many friends, bloggers, and movie lovers you want. Don't forget to tell them they're tagged and to leave a comment on your blog once they're done with the task.

I am going to write about the last movie I enjoyed watching, not necessarily the last one I watched. The movie is called Letters from Iwo Jima which was directed by Clint Eastwood. I saw the movie a year ago. The movie was in Japanese with English sub-titles and had starred Ken Watanabe as General Kuribayashi (the man who actually led the Japanese forces on the island) and Kazunari Ninomiya as the fictional lead character Saigo.

I love war movies but let me emphasize I love those war movies that do not glorify war. I also love war movies that are historically accurate or that at least try to be as historically accurate as possible.

This particular movie portrayed how Japanese soldiers bravely defended an island even with the knowledge that certain defeat and death awaited them. In the case of Saigo and a few other soldiers, the movie also showed how they were torn between love of family and loyalty to their country. Though Japanese military tradition highly valued suicide as a matter of honor, Saigo longed to come home alive to a wife who was pregnant with their child. The film lamented the heavy loss of life suffered by both sides. And in the case of the Japanese, it showed the lives lost through futile banzai charges.

American marines eventually overran the Japanese defenses on the island. Out of the 22,000 Japanese defenders, only a few hundred emerged from the underground caves to surrender.

Aside from war movies, I am a big fan of Alfred Hitchcock's movies. My favorite movies of his were Rear Window, Psycho, North By Northwest, and Vertigo. He was a master of suspense. In my humble opinion, each film was a technical masterpiece. The clever use of the camera and camera angles to convey a story or a character's emotion helped enhance a story line. Through them, he also played mind games with his audience. In the movie Rear Window for example, the camera served as the voyeur in us for through it, he made us observe the various goings-on in an apartment complex; this we, his audience, willingly did until we all found that a murder had indeed taken place.

Among the current crop of American directors, M. Night Shyamalan, ("The Sixth Sense), is an avid student of Mr. Hitchcock's cinematographic techniques. It remains to be seen though if Mr. Shyamalan would end up to be as successful and iconic as Mr. Hitchcock.

Now, I pass this tag on to Fence and Abby.