Tale of two movies

I recently saw two movies. Two movies that made me wonder where the $%$% is the movie industry going to?

The two movies in question, Buried and 127 hours. Both the movies, IMHO, had a lot in common but most commonest of them being, they both depressing and bored me to “death”. I felt totally and utterly cheated. I felt cheated of the time I invested to watch them.

Mind you, not every one seem to feel that way. Both the movies are very highly rated, Buried@7.4 & 127 hours@8.2 on IMDB, though as you may have guessed by now, I strongly disagree.

I wont be giving too much details about the movies (just incase you still want to go ahead and watch the movie despite my warning)

Buried is a movie revolves around Iraq-based American truck driver Paul Conroy (Reynolds), who, after being attacked, finds himself buried alive in a wooden coffin, with only a lighter, flask, flashlight, knife, glowsticks and a mobile phone to help him escape before the oxygen in the coffin runs out.

Now, why would any one bury anyone alive and pose as though they kidnapped him? there are easier ways to kidnap than to go through so much trouble.

This movie definitely is not for claustrophobics. The first few minutes into the movie, I couldn’t even bear seeing it, I even felt heaviness in breath (something that I feel when I am in confined spaces).

And most importantly, this movie has nothing positive inside it, including the ending. Infact the ending is depressing.

127 hours, a movie I looked forward to watch, more because of the hype that the music was composed by A.R Rahman and was nominated for Oscars.

127 Hours is the true story of mountain climber Aron Ralston’s remarkable adventure to save himself after a fallen boulder crushes his arm and traps him in an isolated canyon in Canyonlands National Park of Utah. Over the next five days Ralston examines his life (while torturing us) and survives the elements to finally discover he has the courage and the wherewithal to extricate himself by any means necessary, abseil a 65 foot wall and hike over eight miles before he is finally rescued. Throughout his journey, Ralston recalls friends, lovers (Clemence Poesy), family, and the two female hikers (played by Amber Tamblyn and Kate Mara, just for glamour element in  the otherwise bland movie) he met before his accident.

Now then again, this movie is completely summed up in the above lines, the entire 94 minutes of it. That’s all it has, a man trapped under a boulder, and trying to free himself. One way of looking at it, the director is a genuius to fill all that 1.5 hrs with just this stuff and still call it a movie.

Anyway, I still endured all that suffering, in order to see a happy ending. But that was not to be. The man finally frees himself by cutting his hand to free himself from the boulder. The gory scenes so realistically shown that some sites mention that some people fainted seeing them.

Movies, as I know them, are meant to be entertainment/fun/have a moral.

I ask myself, “Where the #$#$ is the entertainment element in these movies? Is this where modern cinema is leading to? Is this what the definition of creativity changed to? Am I already out of date ? How can any one love these gory movies with such depressing endings?”

I will wait for time to answer these questions…while I search my old movie database to satisfy my thirst to see “good” cinema.