Tuesday 10 September 2013

Top 100 Movies you must Watch... 56- Aliens




  • 1986 Film

  • 8.5/10-imdb.com
    98%-Rotten Tomatoes



  • Description
    Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the only survivor of the space freighter Nostromo, is rescued and revived after drifting for 57 years in stasis. At an interview before a panel of executives from her employer, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, her testimony regarding the Alien is met with extreme skepticism as she has no physical evidence. Ripley loses her space-flight license as a result of her "questionable judgment" and learns that LV-426, the planet where her crew first encountered the Alien eggs, is now home to a terraforming colony.
    Some time later, Ripley, now working as a cargo-loader, is visited by Weyland-Yutani representative Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) and Lieutenant Gorman (William Hope) of the Colonial Marines, who inform her that contact has been lost with the colony on LV-426. The company decides to dispatch Burke and a unit of space marines to investigate, and offers to restore Ripley's flight status and pick up her contract if she will accompany them as a consultant. Traumatized by her previous encounter with the Alien, Ripley initially refuses, but after recurring nightmares about the Alien and a promise from Burke that the team will destroy any Aliens found and not attempt to study them, she accepts. Aboard the warship Sulaco she is introduced to the Colonial Marines, including Sergeant Apone (Al Matthews), Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn), privates Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein) and Hudson (Bill Paxton), and the android Bishop (Lance Henriksen), toward whom Ripley is initially hostile due to her previous experience with the android Ash aboard the Nostromo.
    The expedition descends to the surface of LV-426 via dropship, where they find the colony seemingly abandoned. Two living facehuggers are found in containment tanks in the medical lab. The only colonist found is a traumatized young girl nicknamed Newt (Carrie Henn). The space marines determine that the colonists are clustered in the fusion powered atmosphere processing station, where they find a large Alien nest filled with the cocooned colonists. The Aliens attack after Apone kills a chestburster with a flamethrower, killing most of the unit and capturing Apone and Corporal Dietrich. Ripley is able to rescue Hicks, Vasquez, and Hudson. With Gorman knocked unconscious during the rescue, Hicks assumes command and orders the dropship to recover the survivors, intending to return to the Sulaco and destroy the colony from orbit. A stowaway Alien kills the dropship pilots in flight, causing the vessel to crash into the processing station. The surviving humans barricade themselves inside the colony complex.
    Ripley discovers that it was Burke who ordered the colonists to investigate the derelict spaceship where the Nostromo crew first encountered the Alien eggs, and that he hopes to return Alien specimens to the company laboratories where he can profit from their use as biological weapons. She threatens to expose him, but Bishop soon informs the group of a greater threat: the damaged processing station has become unstable and will soon detonate with the force of a forty megaton thermonuclear weapon. He volunteers to crawl through several hundred meters of piping conduits to reach and use the colony's transmitter to pilot the Sulaco's remaining dropship to the surface by remote control so that the group can escape. Ripley and Newt fall asleep in the medical laboratory, awakening to find themselves locked in the room with two facehuggers, which have been released from their tanks. Ripley then activates a fire detector to alert the marines, who rescue them and kill the creatures. Ripley accuses Burke of attempting to smuggle implanted Alien embryos past Earth's quarantine inside her and Newt, and of planning to kill the rest of the space marines in hypersleep during the return trip so that no one could contradict his version of events. The electricity is suddenly cut off and numerous Aliens attack through the ceiling. Hudson, Burke, Gorman, and Vasquez are killed while Newt is captured by the Aliens.
    Ripley and an injured Hicks reach Bishop and the second dropship, but Ripley refuses to leave Newt behind. She rescues Newt from the hive in the processing station, where the two encounter the Alien queen and her egg chamber. Ripley destroys most of the eggs, enraging the queen, who escapes by tearing free from her ovipositor. Closely pursued by the queen, Ripley and Newt rendezvous with Bishop and Hicks on the dropship and escape moments before the colony is consumed by the nuclear blast. Back on the Sulaco, Ripley and Bishop's relief at their escape is interrupted when the Alien queen, stowed away on the dropship's landing gear, impales Bishop and tears him in half. Ripley battles the queen using an exosuit cargo-loader, before expelling it into space through an airlock. Ripley, Newt, Hicks and the still-functioning Bishop then enter hypersleep for the return to Earth.

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    Top 100 Movies you must Watch... 55- Double Indemnity




  • 1944 Film

  • 8.5/10-IMDb
    96%-Rotten Tomatoes



  • Description
    Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), a successful insurance salesman for Pacific All Risk, returns to his office building in downtown Los Angeles late one night, driving recklessly. He is clearly in pain as he sits down at a desk and begins dictating a memo into a Dictaphone machine for colleague Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), a claims adjuster. The dictation becomes the story of the film, which is told in flashback:
    Neff first meets the alluring Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) during a routine house call to renew an automobile insurance policy for her husband. A flirtation develops, at least until Phyllis asks how she could take out a policy on her husband's life without his knowing it. Neff realizes she is contemplating murder, and he wants no part of it.
    Phyllis pursues Neff to his own home, though, and ups the ante – or at least the voltage – of her flirtation; Neff's gullibility and libido quickly overcome his caution, and he agrees that the two of them, together, will kill her husband. Neff knows all the tricks of his trade, of course, and comes up with a plan in which Phyllis's husband will die an unlikely death, in this case falling from a moving train. The "accidental" nature of his demise will trigger the "double indemnity" clause of the policy, forcing Pacific All Risk to pay the widow twice the normal amount.
    The couple carry out their plan. After Mr. Dietrichson breaks his leg, Phyllis drives him to the train station for his trip to Palo Alto for a college reunion. Neff hides in the car's backseat and kills Dietrichson when Phyllis diverts the car onto a deserted side street. Then, pretending to be Dietrichson and using Dietrichson's crutches, Neff boards the train as Phyllis sees him off. He identifies himself as Dietrichson to a passenger from Oregon whom he meets after the train pulls out of the station. Neff jumps off, safely, at a prearranged spot, and he and Phyllis place Dietrichson's body on the tracks. Phyllis drives Neff home.
    Mr. Norton, the company's chief, believes the death was suicide and is prepared to settle with Phyllis, but the claims adjuster Keyes dissuades him by quoting statistics indicating the improbability of suicide by jumping off a slow-moving train, to Neff's initial delight.
    Keyes does not suspect foul play at first, but the "little man" in his chest keeps nagging that all is not right with this case. He eventually concludes that the Dietrichson woman and some unknown accomplice must be behind the husband's death. He has no reason to be suspicious of Neff, a colleague he has worked with for quite some time and actually views with considerable paternal affection.
    Keyes, however, is not Neff's only worry. The victim's daughter, Lola (Jean Heather), comes to him, convinced that stepmother Phyllis is behind her father's death: it seems Lola's motheralso died under suspicious circumstances – while Phyllis was her nurse. Neff's concern goes beyond his fear that Lola might blow the whistle on the murder; he is not such a heel that he doesn't begin to care about what might happen to the girl, whose parents have both been murdered.
    Keyes brings the Oregon passenger whom Neff had met on the train into the office and shows him Dietrichson's photo. The passenger states that the man he met was a younger man, definitely not Dietrichson. Keyes also suspects that Dietrichson might not have even known about his accident insurance since he didn't file a claim when he broke his leg. Now convinced that Dietrichson was murdered, Keyes is prepared to reject the claim and force Mrs. Dietrichson to sue in order to expose her. Neff warns Phyllis not to sue and admits he has been talking to Lola about her past.
    Then he learns Phyllis is seeing Lola's boyfriend Nino behind her – and his own – back. Phyllis's brazen unfaithfulness helps wake Neff from his romantic haze and he wants to save himself from his dire involvement with her and with murder. He reasons that the only way out is to make the police think Phyllis and Nino did the murder, which is what the tenacious Keyes now believes anyway.

    Neff's Dictaphonic confession book-ends the story, which is told as a flashback
    Neff and Phyllis meet at her house and she tells him she has been seeing Nino only to provoke Nino into killing the suspicious Lola in a jealous rage. Neff is now wholly disgusted and is about to kill Phyllis when she shoots him first. Badly wounded but still standing, he advances on her, taunting her to shoot again. She does not shoot and he takes the gun from her. She says she never loved him "until a minute ago, when I couldn't fire that second shot." Neff coldly says he does not believe her; she tries hugging him tightly but then pulls away and looks pleadingly at him when she feels the gun pressed against her side. Neff says "Goodbye, baby," then shoots twice and kills her.
    Outside, Neff hides in the bushes and intercepts Nino as he approaches, presumably to visit his lover, Phyllis. Neff advises him not to enter the house, but to leave and contact "the woman who truly loves you" – Lola. Nino agrees and heads out, avoiding what would have been damning evidence against him if he'd entered the murder house.
    Neff, gravely injured, drives to his office, seats himself at the Dictaphone, and starts explaining. Keyes arrives in mid-confession and hears enough to understand everything. Neff tells Keyes he is going to Mexico rather than face a death sentence – but sags to the floor before he can reach the elevator. Keyes comforts him and sadly says, "Walter, you're all washed up." Looking up at Keyes, Neff says the reason Keyes couldn't solve the case was because Neff was "too close" as a fellow employee. Keyes tells Neff he was "closer than that." Neff responds, "I love you too," and puts a cigarette in his mouth. Neff is unable to light the match with his thumb, as he has done throughout the film, so Keyes lights it with his.

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    Top 100 Movies you must Watch... 54- The Dark Knight Rises


    2012 Film

  • 8.6/10-imdb.com
    88%-rottentomatoes.com


  • Description
    Eight years after Harvey Dent's death, the Dent Act grants the Gotham City Police Department powers which nearly eradicate organized crime. Feeling guilty for covering up Dent's crimes, Police Commissioner James Gordon writes a resignation speech confessing the truth, but decides not to use it. Batman has disappeared; Bruce Wayne has become a recluse. Cat burglarSelina Kyle obtains Bruce's fingerprints from his home, seduces a congressman, then disappears. Selina hands Bruce's fingerprints to Phillip Stryver, an assistant to Bruce's business rival John Daggett, in hope of having her criminal record erased. Stryver double-crosses Selina, but she uses the congressman's stolen phone to alert the police to their location. Gordon and the police arrive to find the congressman, then pursue Stryver's men into the sewers while Selina flees. A masked man called Bane captures Gordon. Gordon escapes and is found by John Blake, a once-orphaned patrol officer who has deduced Batman's true identity from their similar backgrounds. Gordon promotes Blake to detective, with Blake reporting directly to him.
    Wayne Enterprises is unprofitable after Bruce discontinued his fusion reactor project when he learned that the core could be weaponized. Later, Bane attacks the Gotham Stock Exchange, using Bruce's fingerprints in a transaction that bankrupts Wayne. Alfred Pennyworth, concerned that Bruce has not moved on from being Batman, reveals to him that Rachel Dawes had intended to marry Dent before she died; Alfred then resigns in an attempt to dissuade Bruce. Fearing that Daggett, Bane's employer, would gain access to the reactor, Bruce asks Wayne Enterprises board member Miranda Tate to take over his company. After being promised the software to erase her criminal record, Selina agrees to take Batman to Bane, but instead leads him into a trap. Bane reveals that he intends to fulfill Ra's al Ghul's mission to destroy Gotham with the League of Shadows remnant. He delivers a crippling blow to Batman's back, then takes him to a foreign, well-like prison where escape is virtually impossible. The inmates tell Bruce the story of Ra's al Ghul's child, born in the prison and cared for by a fellow prisoner before escaping—the only prisoner to have ever done so. Bruce assumes the child to be Bane.
    Meanwhile, Bane lures Gotham police underground and collapses the exits. He kills Mayor Anthony Garcia and forces an abducted physicist, Dr. Leonid Pavel, to convert the reactor core into a nuclear bomb. Bane uses the bomb to hold the city hostage and isolate Gotham from the world. Using Gordon's stolen speech, Bane reveals the cover-up of Dent's crimes and releases the prisoners of Blackgate Penitentiary, initiating a revolution. The wealthy and powerful have their property expropriated, are dragged from their homes, and given show trialspresided over by Dr. Jonathan Crane, where any sentence means likely death with exile forcing the defendants to walk across the frozen bay.
    After months of recovery and re-training, Bruce escapes from the prison and enlists Selina, Blake, Tate, Gordon, and Lucius Fox to help stop the bomb's detonation. While the police and Bane's forces clash, Batman defeats Bane, but Tate intervenes and stabs Batman, revealing herself to be Talia al Ghul, Ra's al Ghul's child. Talia escaped the prison aided by her fellow prisoner and protector, Bane. She plans to complete her father's work by detonating the bomb and destroying Gotham, but Gordon blocks her signal, preventing remote detonation. Talia leaves to find the bomb while Bane prepares to kill Batman, but Selina kills Bane using the Batpod. Batman pursues Talia with the Bat, an aircraft developed by Fox, hoping to bring the bomb back to the reactor where it can be stabilized. Talia's truck crashes, but she remotely destroys the reactor before dying. With no way to stop the detonation, Batman uses The Bat to haul the bomb over the bay, where it detonates.
    In the aftermath, Batman is presumed dead and is honored as a hero. With Bruce also presumed dead, Wayne Manor is left to the city to become an orphanage, and Wayne's remaining estate is left to Alfred. Fox discovers that Bruce had fixed The Bat's autopilot, and Gordon finds the Bat-Signal refurbished. While visiting Florence, Alfred witnesses Bruce and Selina together. Blake resigns from the police force and inherits the Batcave.

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    Top 100 Movies you must Watch... 53- Django Unchained



    2012 Film

  • 8.5/10-IMDb
    88%-rottentomatoes.com
    • Release date: December 25, 2012 (USA)
    Running time: 180 minutes
    Featured songs: Freedom, I Got a Name, Django (Main Theme), Ancora Qui, Who Did That To You?, 100 Black Coffins
    Awards: Academy Award for Actor in a Supporting Role, Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay - Motion Picture, MTV Movie Award for Best WTF Moment,Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Film, BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay, BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, David di Donatello for Best Foreign Film, National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor, BFCA Critics' Choice Award for Best Original Screenplay




  • Description
    Somewhere in Texas in the year 1858, several male slaves are being driven by the Speck Brothers, Ace and Dicky. Among the shackled slaves is Django, sold off and separated from his wife, Broomhilda. The Speck Brothers are stopped by Dr. King Schultz, a German dentist and bounty hunter. Schultz asks to buy one of the slaves, but while questioning Django about his knowledge of the Brittle Brothers, for whom Schultz is carrying a warrant, he irritates Ace who aims his shotgun at Schultz. Schultz quickly kills Ace and leaves Dicky at the mercy of the other newly-freed slaves. Since Django can identify the Brittle Brothers, Schultz offers Django his freedom in exchange for his help in tracking them down. After executing the Brittles, Django partners with Schultz through the winter and becomes his apprentice. Schultz explains that, being the first person he has ever given freedom to, he feels responsible for Django and is driven to help him in his quest to rescue Broomhilda. Upon first learning of her name, Schultz tells Django the tale of the mythical German valkyrie, Brünnhilde.
    Django, now fully trained, collects his first bounty, keeping the handbill as a good luck charm. In Mississippi, Schultz uncovers the identity of Broomhilda's owner, Calvin Candie, the charming but brutal owner of Candyland, a plantation where slaves are forced to fight to the death in boxing matches called "Mandingo fights." Schultz, expecting Candie will not entertain offers for Broomhilda if they are forthright, devises a ruse to purchase one of Candie's prized fighters, purchase Broomhilda on the side, then disappear before the deal is finalized. Schultz and Django meet Candie at a club in Greenville and submit their offer. His greed tickled, Candie invites them to Candyland. After he secretly debriefs Broomhilda on the plan, Schultz moves to the next step, claiming to be charmed by the German-speaking Broomhilda.
    During dinner, Candie's staunchly loyal senior house slave and overseer, Stephen, becomes suspicious. He deduces that Django and Broomhilda know each other and that the sale of the Mandingo fighter is just a misdirection. Stephen alerts Candie, who subsequently extorts the bounty hunters with Broomhilda's life for the complete bid amount. Schultz yields and, after the money is paid and the paperwork signed, Candie demands a formal handshake from Schultz to finalize the deal. Schultz, disgusted, shoots him through the heart with a concealed derringer. Schultz then apologizes to Django before he himself is fatally shot by one of Candie's henchman before either Broomhilda or Django can react. In the ensuing gun battle, Django kills many of the remaining henchmen but surrenders once Broomhilda is taken hostage at gunpoint.
    The next morning, Django is informed by Stephen that he will be sold to a mine and worked to death. En route to the mine, Django proves to his escorts that he is a bounty hunter by showing them the handbill from his first kill. He then convinces them of a very large bounty for a man back at Candyland, of which they would receive the majority, should Django be released. Once Django is uncuffed and given a pistol, he swiftly kills his captors, takes their dynamite and rides back, alone, to Candyland.
    Returning to the plantation, Django discovers Schultz's body in a stable, takes Broomhilda's freedom papers and says goodbye in German to his fallen mentor. Django releases Broomhilda from her improvised cell. When Candie's mourners return from his funeral, Django guns down Candie's remaining henchmen and Candie's sister. Django then releases the two house slaves and shoots Stephen in the knees, crippling him. As Stephen angrily curses Django, Django ignites the dynamite he has planted throughout the mansion and leaves Stephen to be killed. He and Broomhilda watch from a distance as the mansion explodes before riding off into the night.
    In a post-credits scene, a group of slaves who appeared earlier in the film contemplate about who Django was.

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    Monday 9 September 2013

    Top 100 Movies you must Watch... 52- Vertigo





    1958 Film

  • 8.5/10-IMDb
    98%-Rotten Tomatoes




  • Description
    After a rooftop chase in which his latent acrophobia results in the death of a police officer, San Francisco detective John "Scottie" Ferguson (James Stewart) retires, spending much of his time with his ex-fiancée Midge Wood (Barbara Bel Geddes). Scottie tries to gradually conquer his fear but Midge suggests another severe emotional shock may be the only cure.
    An acquaintance, Gavin Elster, asks Scottie to tail his wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak), claiming she has been possessed; Scottie reluctantly agrees. The next day Scottie follows Madeleine to a florist where she secures a bouquet of flowers; next, she visits the grave of Carlotta Valdes; then she visits an art museum where she sits watching Portrait of Carlotta, a painting of a woman resembling her. Lastly, she enters the McKittrick Hotel, but when Scottie investigates, she is missing and the clerk insists she has not been there.
    Midge takes Scottie to a local history expert, who informs them Carlotta Valdes tragically committed suicide. Another visit with Gavin reveals Carlotta is Madeleine's great-grandmother, who Gavin fears is possessing Madeleine. Gavin also says Madeleine has no knowledge of Carlotta. Scottie tails Madeleine to Fort Point (just beneath the Golden Gate Bridge), where she suddenly leaps into San Francisco Bay. Scottie rescues Madeleine and takes her to his home. The meeting is tense and leads to a strange intimacy between them, but Madeleine quickly slips out when Scottie receives a phone call.
    The next day Scottie follows Madeleine to his own house, where she is hand-delivering a thank-you note to him for rescuing her, and they decide to spend the day together because Scottie fears Madeleine might attempt suicide again. The two travel to Muir Woods and then Cypress Point along 17-Mile Drive near Pebble Beach, where Madeleine, embarrassed from confessing that her dreams sound mad, runs to the ocean. Scottie chases after her and they embrace and kiss. Upon hearing the details of her nightmare, Scottie identifies the setting as Mission San Juan Bautista and takes Madeleine there, where they proclaim their love for each other. Madeleine suddenly runs into the church and up the bell tower. Scottie, halted on the steps by vertigoand paralyzing fear, watches as Madeleine plunges to her death.
    An inquest declares Madeleine's death a suicide, but Scottie feels ashamed that his weakness rendered him incapable of preventing someone's death. Gavin does not fault Scottie, but in the following weeks Scottie becomes depressed. While undergoing treatment in a sanatorium, he becomes mute, haunted by vivid nightmares. Although Midge visits, his condition remains unchanged. After release, Scottie haunts the places that Madeleine visited, often imagining that he sees her. One day, he spots a woman who reminds him of Madeleine, despite the woman's less elegant dress and heavier makeup. Scottie follows the woman to her hotel room, where she identifies herself as Judy Barton from Salina, Kansas. Though initially suspicious and defensive, Judy eventually agrees to join Scottie for dinner.
    After Scottie leaves, Judy has a flashback revealing that she was, in fact, the woman known as "Madeleine", but she is not Gavin's wife. Judy prepares to leave and writes a confession letter to Scottie explaining that she was an accomplice to the real Madeleine Elster's murder by Gavin, and how Gavin had taken advantage of Scottie's acrophobia. She rips up the letter and decides to continue the charade because of her love for Scottie.
    Scottie remains obsessed by his memory of "Madeleine" and their similarities. He transforms an initially unwilling Judy until she once more resembles Madeleine. Judy agrees to change on the chance that they may finally find happiness together. But Scottie realizes the truth when Judy wears a unique necklace that he remembered from the portrait of Carlotta Valdes. Instead of dinner, Scottie insists on taking Judy to the Mission San Juan Bautista.
    There, he reveals that he wants to re-enact the event that led to his madness, admitting that he now knows Madeleine and Judy are the same. Scottie forces her up the bell tower and angrily presses Judy to admit her deceit. Scottie reaches the top, conquering his acrophobia at last. Judy confesses that Gavin had hired her to pose as a possessed Madeleine; Gavin faked the suicide by tossing the body of his already-murdered wife from the bell tower.
    Judy begs Scottie to forgive her because she loves him. The two embrace when a nun, in shadow, emerges from the trapdoor; startled, Judy steps backward and falls to her death. Scottie stands on the narrow ledge while the nun rings the mission bell.

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