Everyone Has A First Love Story To Tell-Movies Reviews 1

Seems familiar? No? This is the tagline for the late Yasmin Ahmad's ( May she rest in peace...) best-selling " Mukhsin"

Shot in just 12 days, it won one award and one special mention at the 57th Berlin International Film Festival (2007) under the children's film category: International Jury of Generation Kplus - Grand Prix of the Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk for Best Feature Film and the Generation Kplus Children’s Jury Awards - Special Mention. Within the first 4 days of its release in Malaysia, it earned RM700,000 in box-office takings. It went on to have a final gross of RM2 million ( from wikipedia )

I love watching movies. Especially touching ones. But the best movies are those that are true-to the-heart. Who cares about what Oscars sweepers or whatnot " Axxxxx" ( which was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director,^[and won three, for Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, and Best Art Direction.... no offence to the movie, but i really don't have ANY interest in it...)

Recently there seems to be more and more " amazing" and "fantastic" movies coming up...

" A Promising Top Charter!" ..

" Two thumbs up!"...

Blah Blah Blah~

One day, i'll become like my Mom*( She slept through " Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"...and since then we are really afraid to bring her to the big screen..)

To all directors and directors-to-be and wanna-be....Please please please don't continue to stain my concepts of what movies should be....Even Alice in Wonderland ( which i was looking forward to) was quite a disappointment...

Movies, to me, are suppose to be like these:

TALENTIME

Probably the first movie I cried in the cinema.

Previously?....Well, maybe I did in the ending of LOTR, when Frodo and Gandalf departs for Grey Havens. And perhaps in the ending of The Phantom of the Opera.

But that was THE END. No surprise for tears.

In Talentime, I cried when Jeyanthi ( Mahesh Mom) hits her son and when Mahesh ask forgiveness from her...hence again, my favourite line:

" If you want me to forget her, I will, But you must teach my heart how not to love her, because it doesn't know how..."

" ...Because it doesn't know how..."

( I bought the DVD and rewatch that part...the subs are a little different from the one I saw in the big screen so i did a little rearranging...)

And the SECOND time I cried was when the song " O Re Piya " (O My Beloved) came and Hafiz found out his mother died, and he cuddle beside her....then he went to the talentime contest in white and did a tears-provoking duet with Kar Hoe.

Even if we had just experience lost,

We could always find peace

In harmony.

Though I cried too while watching Mukhsin and Gubra ( surprisingly, no tears came for Sepet), but I'll always remember the first time when I was so deeply touched.

DEPARTURES

I don't think I need to say much about this movie.

Departures (おくりびと Okuribito^?) is a 2008 Japanese film by Yōjirō Takita. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2009 Oscars and has earned $61,010,217 in Japan as of April 12, 2009 ( taken from wikipedia)

I do think Masahiro Motoki (as Daigo Kobayashi) is a really good actor. He even reminds me a little of Tony Leong....

I love this movie.There's a quiet, peaceful feel about it.

This is what dead should be.

Tears came when Daigo was performing the ritual for Tsuyako Yamashita san ( the kind old lady running the bath house) . The way he gently caress the old woman's face, as if he was remembering her, feeling her joys and pains though touch, and the respectful yet never overwhelming way the ritual was perform, was what we had always wanted to give to our loves ones when they are past and gone:

To had lived, the beauty of life.

Perhaps not a life of sunshines,

Yet neither is a life of rainstorms .

But a life where every breath was like a dew in the drought.

And every sights and scenes are with the clarity of a dream;

I had live, and so now certainly, I must go .

In the same gentle way I had come.

In quietness.

In peace.

So lay me down to sleep now,

Good night.

I can never forget what the man working in the crematorium ( Takashi Sasano, man on the right in the bath beside Daigo) said before he clicked on the switch for the furnace for the cremation of his beloved friend Tsuyako san:

" Goodbye. We'll certainly meet again."

Indeed. We'll certainly meet again.

Don't we?