Sunday, 13 April 2014

Four Movies You Should Watch: Jiro, Dinner Rush, About Time and Saving Mr. Banks

I  stayed home and watched four movies this weekend.  Yes, I have no life.  Pity me, please. Just kidding ;-)

Truth is I stayed in to relax because this  coming week I will be off on a trip to Scandinavia.  I wanted to stay in and just chill, do some reading, watch movies and hopefully write something intelligible. And yeah, I  needed to fix the flat because after my trip,  a friend is set  stay over  for a few days.  It was time to wash  the towels and freshen up the sofa bed.  Yes, boring stuff.  But sometimes boring chores is what we need, no?

But enough of my yip yaps.  I watched four movies these weekend and they totally rocked my outlook in life.  It does feel  serendipitous as these four  all have something in them that I found  nourishing.  It felt like I was having a Chicken Soup for The Soul weekend,  the movie version.   These are  movies that make you think about your own life.  Mind you, these four movies are very different: 

One is a documentary film about the life of the 85 year old sushi chef  of what is considered as the best sushi restaurant in the world.  Set in Japan,  watching Jiro  makes you want to aspire to  be like him.  No, not to be a sushi chef but to have his focused determination to dedicate your life to your one passion.

                                          JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI

    JIRO´S ADVICE


DINNER RUSH plays out  in a single night, during the dinner rush at a trendy restaurant in New York.  As expected, it portrays the intensity of  a professional kitchen, with delicious food images and snippets of crazy conversations and pretensions one gets to endure when dining at a trendy restaurant.  



A food lover would love the sensational food porn,  but ultimately, it is the family-centric story and the delightful and explosive ending that ties this movie dish together.



Now it does seem that after  The Time Traveller´s Wife and Benjamin Button, time travel  has become a convenient plot in films, so I was skeptical about the film ABOUT TIME.   It was billed as a romantic comedy, so I expected kitsch and a ludicrous plot.  But in this film,  the time travel aspect is used  beautifully, serving only as a backdrop to the central themes of familial love and death.  And don´t we all have to deal with these issues at least once in our lives?



     And there is also the amazing photography of Cornwall.  So pretty and beautiful without being prissy.  After watching this movie,  I wanted to book a flight to Cornwall immediately.  Sad, how druing my stay in UK I did not travel much.  Cornwall looks positively  picturesque.



Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!  If as a child this was your favorite expression, then you are like me.  I loved Mary Poppins.   Before  I discovered The  Sound of Music, there was Mary Poppins.  But even if you have no idea who Mary Poppins is,  please,  watch Saving Mr. Banks.  It is a (somewhat) true narration of how Walt Disney  finally obtained the rights to film Mary Poppins from the writer PL Travers after twenty years of trying.  It is not about Walt Disney, but about the life of Mary Poppin´s creator.  It is heartwarming, a little sad, but ultimately uplifting.


 More than anything else,  Saving Mr. Banks is about how life´s dissapointments change us and how we can move through  these changes and become better.  Because we all have issues, it is always heartening to know that nothing have stopped other people from becoming  successful.  And that should also apply to us.

Watch these movies.  I hope you´d love them like I do.  And if you´ve seen them, let me know what you think. :)


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