And the Oscar goes to...

Finally caught up on 3 of the Best Picture nominees at the Oscars...

The Departed
"A mole in the police force; an undercover cop in the mafia organization; the two try to uncover each other while keeping their own identity a secret... what a fantastic story!" - thats what I said to myself when I learned about the story of The Departed before the movie was released. Now I can say that the movie presents the story perfectly. The deliciously complicated story is presented in a tightly-woven screenplay that keeps us guessing right till the end. As the two protagonists try to block each other's moves while feeding their own organizations with news, the movie begins to resemble a high-stakes chess game with the players plotting their own moves while anticipating the other's moves and working to checkmate them. And like a good chess game, it requires total attention to the goings-on from the viewer but the results are well worth it. Some of the sequences, like the way the cellphones are used in the warehouse, are truly exhilarating. The story takes some genuinely surprising turns towards the end and it definitely didn't finish the way I expected it to. Leo is terrific, Damon is effective and Jack is Jack! A must-watch.

Babel
The movie belongs to the genre where apparently independent incidents are eventually shown to be connected. It is not as powerful or surprising as Crash and 21 Grams, 2 of my favorite movies in this genre but it does have its moments. There are 4 main segments - a Middle-Eastern boy's rifle practice and its consequences, an American couple struggling to find medical assistance for the wife in Turkey, a Mexican nanny who takes the 2 kids she takes care of to a wedding in Mexico and a deaf-mute Japanese girl in Tokyo. As the movie name indicates, the common thread running through these segments is the trouble people have, communicating in today's world.

The segment with the Mexican Nanny is the pick of the lot and is really intense. She and the kids gain our sympathy as they are caught in dangerous circumstances beyond their control. The actress playing the nanny is awesome and should've nabbed the Supporting Actress award. The segment with the Japanese girl is the weakest. Her loneliness is well brought-out(especially in 1 sequence where she visits a night club) but she is so brazen that her character doesn't make earn our sympathy. And the link her segment has with the others seems a bit forced.

Little Miss Sunshine
I think this one would qualify as a dark comedy. It is neither as dark nor as funny as Fargo, the gold standard by which I rate other dark comedies, but it is rather unique in that it is a feel-good dark comedy. The film revolves around a dysfunctional family(a husband, wife, son, daughter and the husband's dad) that makes a road trip to LA so that the little girl can take part in a beauty pageant. Almost everything that happens on the trip qualifies as sad - the husband loses a key deal in his job, the son realizes he has a handicap that will prevent him from realizing his dream, there is a death, etc. But the film succeeds in making us smile inspite of these small troubles since the big picture is that, putting aside their troubles, they come together as a family to make their little girl happy. That and the fact some of their antics(like the way they start the van) are hilarious! The actual pageant, with the little girls resembling Barbies, is more than a little scary but the riotous, unexpected climax ensures that we finish the film with a smile on our lips.