New Generation Movies with gorgeous cinematography
Interstellar
Farmer and ex-NASA pilot, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), is contacted by the space research organisation to pilot an interstellar mission to look for new planets where life can survive. The movie takes us on a journey through a wormhole to a new galaxy, where Cooper and his team explore new planets, including one that is made entirely out of water. Even though the movie has been shot in real-life locations around the world, you won’t be faulted for believing that you’re actually in outer space with the characters. The stunning visuals do not take away from the emotional core of the story.
Her
Set in Los Angeles, slightly in the future, “her” follows Theodore Twombly, a complex, soulful man who makes his living writing touching, personal letters for other people. Heartbroken after the end of a long relationship, he becomes intrigued with a new, advanced operating system, which promises to be an intuitive entity in its own right, individual to each user. Upon initiating it, he is delighted to meet “Samantha,” a bright, female voice, who is insightful, sensitive and surprisingly funny. As her needs and desires grow, in tandem with his own, their friendship deepens into an eventual love for each other. From the unique perspective of Oscar-nominated filmmaker Spike Jonze comes an original love story that explores the evolving nature—and the risks—of intimacy in the modern world.
Life of Pi
After deciding to sell their zoo in India and move to Canada, Santosh and Gita Patel board a freighter with their sons and a few remaining animals. Tragedy strikes when a terrible storm sinks the ship, leaving the Patels’ teenage son, Pi (Suraj Sharma), as the only human survivor. However, Pi is not alone; a fearsome Bengal tiger has also found refuge aboard the lifeboat. As days turn into weeks and weeks drag into months, Pi and the tiger must learn to trust each other if both are to survive.
The Grand Budapest Hotel
THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL recounts the adventures of Gustave H, a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars, and Zero Moustafa, the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend. The story involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting and the battle for an enormous family fortune — all against the back-drop of a suddenly and dramatically changing Continent.
1917
April 6, 1917. On a battlefield in Northern France, Lance Corporal Tom Blake with the British Army is asked to choose one of his battalion colleagues to join him on an assignment, he choosing his best friend, Lance Corporal Will Schofield. It isn’t until Blake chooses Schofield that they learn of the dangerous nature of the mission: to hand deliver a message to Colonel MacKenzie leading another nearby battalion, they having to cross no man’s land to what they have been told are now the abandoned German trenches to get to MacKenzie just past the nearby town of Écoust. The message, which must reach its destination by dawn tomorrow, is for MacKenzie to abort his troop’s attack then on the supposedly retreating Germans who are in reality lying in wait, the Germans having planned this deception for months. The lives of MacKenzie and his 1,600 men are at risk if the message does not make it through in time, one of those men being Blake’s brother, Lt. Joseph Blake. Blake and Schofield’s stories as it pertains to them as soldiers in the bigger picture of the war, as soldiers trying to stay alive, as friends, and as human beings who have their own motivations are told for as long as they are able to survive on this mission.
SkyFall
In 2012’s Skyfall, we see Bond and a female agent chase an assassin, Patrice, through Istanbul. Patrice has stolen a hard drive containing the identities of all MI6 agents, and agents of British allies. Bond chases him to a train. When they fight atop the train, the other agent takes a risky shot and hits Bond. Patrice escapes.
Back in London, everyone assumes Bond is dead. While Bond is out, MI6 is attacked with a gas explosion, and their computers are hacked. Bond returns to action and chases leads before the hard drive is decrypted. Bond finds Patrice is Shanghai and intervenes just after Patrice assassinates a man. Bond takes a casino chip from Patrice and goes to cash it in. He meets Severine there, who agrees to take Bond to his employer, on the condition that Bond kills him.
Severine takes Bond to an abandoned island. There he meets Severine’s employer, Silva. Silva is a former MI6 agent who has it in for M. Silva has the hard drive and successfully decrypted it, leading to the murder of several agents. Silva shoots Severine just as MI6 arrives to take Silva into custody.
With Silva in custody at MI6, Q tries to decrypt Silva’s laptop, only to allow a virus into the MI6 network. Silva escapes and heads off to kill M at a hearing before a committee of parliament. Bond pursues and manages to thwart the assassination attempt.
Bond decides they need to get out of town to get an advantage against Silva. They head to his family’s estate, Skyfall. With the help of Kincade, the old gamekeeper, they wait for Silva and ambush him. Bond destroys the house to defeat the attack. Silva catches up to M at the chapel on the property and begs M to kill he and her together when Bond shows up and puts a knife in his back. M, however, was shot in the attack and bleeds out in the chapel.
Back at headquarters, the agent who shot Bond on the train takes Bond’s advice to eschew field work and takes a seat at the desk outside M’s office, introducing herself as Eve Moneypenny.
The Revenant
Inspired by true events, THE REVENANT is an immersive and visceral cinematic experience capturing one man’s epic adventure of survival and the extraordinary power of the human spirit. In an expedition of the uncharted American wilderness, legendary explorer Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is brutally attacked by a bear and left for dead by members of his own hunting team. In a quest to survive, Glass endures unimaginable grief as well as the betrayal of his confidant John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy). Guided by sheer will and the love of his family, Glass must navigate a vicious winter in a relentless pursuit to live and find redemption.
The Assassination of Jesse James
Jesse James is a notorious outlaw who, with his brother Frank, makes up the core of the James Gang. Other members of the gang vary depending on the job and who is available, but usually include an array of cousins and friends. As Frank and Jesse make plans to rob a train on September 7, 1881, they are joined by Charley Ford, a man who is sometimes included in the illegal activities. It’s here that they first meet Robert “Bob” Ford. Frank isn’t impressed with Bob but Jesse seems to like the young man. Bob is a huge fan of Jesse and knows everything about him from reading books and newspaper accounts of Jesse’s activities. Bob spends some time with Jesse but lives most of the time with his widowed sister, Martha Bolton. Meanwhile, Jesse’s reputation with the people is somewhat favorable but the government and law enforcement are berated for allowing the tyranny of Jesse James go on for so long. When the governor offers a large reward for the capture or death of Jesse, several members of the gang are interested in the possibility of collecting. Ed Miller confides in Bob Ford that he’s been talking to others about the possibility of capturing Jesse James.
Meanwhile, other members of the gang are going about their daily lives. Woodson Hite, known as Wood, is Jesse’s cousin. He and another gang member, Dick Liddil, go to visit Wood’s father and stepmother. Dick has an affair with Wood’s stepmother and the two men clash over it. Wood kills a servant who knows about the affair and when Dick and Wood meet up later at Martha’s house, a gunfight erupts. Bob steps in and kills Wood but Dick is injured. Those at the house know they can’t tell Jesse that they’ve killed his cousin and so they hide the body. Jesse suspects Dick and puts a reward on his head, both for Wood’s death and for the possibility that he’s planning to turn Jesse in for the reward money. Bob and his brother, Charley, meet with the governor and agree to turn in members of the gang, including Jesse and Dick Liddil. Dick is taken into custody immediately.
As Jesse plans another bank robbery, he’s joined by Bob and Bob’s brother, Charley. The two men are in Jesse’s house on a Monday morning when Jesse leaves his guns on the bed, moving some distance away. Bob sees his chance and shoots Jesse, who is unarmed and apparently unaware, killing him instantly. Bob and Charley turn themselves in, confident that the governor will pardon them, which he does.
Bob expects accolades and wealth as the result for being the man to kill Jesse James but the governor’s reward turns out to be only two hundred, fifty dollars each for Bob and Charley. They are pardoned for their past crimes but the brothers are broke and at odds. Charley eventually commits suicide but Bob goes on to start several successful businesses, including a gambling house in Creede, Colorado, following a silver strike there. It’s there that he meets up with a man named Soapy Smith who kills Bob in cold blood, apparently looking for the same glory Bob had sought when he set out to kill Jesse James.
The Hateful Eight
Some time after the Civil War, a stagecoach hurtles through the wintry Wyoming landscape. Bounty hunter John Ruth and his fugitive captive Daisy Domergue race towards the town of Red Rock, where Ruth will bring Daisy to justice. Along the road, they encounter Major Marquis Warren (an infamous bounty hunter) and Chris Mannix (a man who claims to be Red Rock’s new sheriff). Lost in a blizzard, the bunch seeks refuge at Minnie’s Haberdashery. When they arrive they are greeted by unfamiliar faces: Bob, who claims to be taking care of the place while Minnie is gone; Oswaldo Mobray, the hangman of Red Rock; Joe Gage, a cow puncher; and confederate general Sanford Smithers. As the storm overtakes the mountainside, the eight travelers come to learn that they might not make it to Red Rock after all…
Moonlight
Three time periods – young adolescence, mid-teen and young adult – in the life of black-American Chiron is presented. When a child, Chiron lives with his single, crack addict mother Paula in a crime ridden neighborhood in Miami. Chiron is a shy, withdrawn child largely due to his small size and being neglected by his mother, who is more concerned about getting her fixes and satisfying her carnal needs than taking care of him. Because of these issues, Chiron is bullied, the slurs hurled at him which he doesn’t understand beyond knowing that they are meant to be hurtful. Besides his same aged Cuban-American friend Kevin, Chiron is given what little guidance he has in life from a neighborhood drug dealer named Juan, who can see that he is neglected, and Juan’s caring girlfriend Teresa, whose home acts as a sanctuary away from the bullies and away from Paula’s abuse. With this childhood as a foundation, Chiron may have a predetermined path in life, one that will only be magnified in terms of its problems when he reaches his difficult teen years when peer pressure affects what he and many of his peers do, unless he follows Juan’s advice of truly making his own decisions for himself.
La La Land
n Hollywood, Mia and Sebastian are struggling to make it in their respective respective careers, about which each has extreme passion. Mia is an actress who dropped out of college and moved from small-town Nevada five years ago to pursue her dream. She is enamored with old-tome Hollywood – the movies she grew up on – but hates the cattle-herding feeling of going on auditions and her belief that she needs to schmooze at social events to get ahead in the business. Sebastian is a jazz pianist, his style of jazz in the vein of traditionalists
Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk. He wants to do his part to preserve that tradition, especially as he knows that that style of music is dying. He has trouble emotionally playing music he doesn’t like just to get a paying gig. He dreams of opening his own jazz club, most specifically in what used to be a famous jazz club that has since been converted to a tapas-bar-cum-salsa-dance-club. Partly because of their individual struggles and partly because of the situations, their first few chance meetings are antagonistic. But they eventually become attracted to each other largely because of the passion for their dreams that they see in each other. But there are many obstacles to a happily-ever-after. They may be able to endure the struggling-artist life for so long before those struggles take their toll. The pursuit of their individual dreams may take all their energies with nothing left for their relationship. And any compromise each may make in getting ahead may change the person with whom each has fallen in love.
Mad Max: Fury Road
An apocalyptic story set in the furthest reaches of our planet, in a stark desert landscape where humanity is broken, and almost everyone is crazed fighting for the necessities of life. Within this world exist two rebels on the run who just might be able to restore order. There’s Max, a man of action and a man of few words, who seeks peace of mind following the loss of his wife and child in the aftermath of the chaos. And Furiosa, a woman of action and a woman who believes her path to survival may be achieved if she can make it across the desert back to her childhood homeland.
Blade Runner 2049
Officer K , a new blade runner for the Los Angeles Police Department, unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what’s left of society into chaos. His discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former blade runner who’s been missing for 30 years.
Cinema Aesthetics 