Tangerine's PoV

I never enjoyed the stories about superheroes with superpowers that supersave superpeople, but this time I wanted to give it a try. All I remember about Batman from my childhood is that a neighbour of mine wore similar clothes and he was always saying that he would save us all. In fact, one day he came and said (I was 11 years old at that moment) “at 3pm the thiefs are coming to Vaslui (my natal town) and they will attack us, but don’t worry I will save you all”. I remember being scared and not telling all this “secret” to my parents (??) and I remember him with the Batman costume shouting “come, thiefs, come, I will show you who is Batmaaan”. As a grown up, this neighbour of mine, is a completely normal person, in case there were doubts.

Anyway, going back to our theme, despite of what I expected from the movie I was very impressed. The movie is an example of how to make a movie based on a comic. It keeps all your senses awake until the end, it does not let you breathe, it always surprises you, and apart from this the photography and special effects are just perfect, they could not picture better Gotham city and the fear that its inhabitants felt, it could not picture better Harvey Dent, and of course, it could not picture better the Joker. After watching it I came to like Batman, he is a superhero, but the kind of superhero that does the things by himself, not the superpowers type of hero.

I assume there will be a second part of the movie, as for some of the characters the ending is not definite and I believe it was this way intentionally.

The movie has a rating of 9/10 on www.imdb.com with more than 300.000 votes until now and that makes it the best movies of 2008 and I think that is a fair rating and recognition for Chrisopher Nolan’s work. A great movie, indeed.

I personally enjoy Michael Moore’s movies and when I found out that he produced Sicko i really wanted to see it. I had no idea what he would talk about in this movie, but I wanted to give it a try.

After the first two minutes I spend the other 1 hour and 58 minutes of the movie with my mouth open, I could not believe my eyes.

The movie is about how healthcare works in the US, not about the 47 millions of Americans that do not benefit of healthcare, but about the 250 millions that do, but that do not receive the treatment that they should. About the doctors that receive bonuses for denying treatments or worse, for letting patients die. It’s not the amount of money you pay for the healthcare, which is, actually, one of the highest in the world, but about paying all this money for nothing: they will find any excuse to deny any surgery, any treatment so that the company does not spend money and they increase profits (there are persons that are paid for doing this).

It’s a shocking movie. I am used to going to the doctor anytime I need without paying anything. I pay it through taxes and I receive a fair healthcare, as all the Spanish or foreigner people that come here.

There is a ranking that Michael Moore talks about in the movie. United States of America is the 37th in the ranking of the world’s health systems realized by the World Health Organization. Even Costa Rica has a better system than the US. Actually, in the movie Michael takes a few persons that helped in the rescue on 11/9 and got sick after that and who did not receive a correct treatment in the US to Cuba where they receive medical attention for free.

In this ranking I looked for Romania and I found it… rank 99. Romania has universal healthcare, but all Romanians know that if you need to see a doctor you will have to pay extra-money to be treated ok, otherwise you might see yourself forgotten in a room during a few days. It’s how it works and all Romanians accept it as something natural. You get medical attention even if you don’t pay, but in most of the cases the doctors wait for you to give them money (and not only the doctors, the nurses also and any other person in the hospital that you need to see).

This world we live in is very sad. I am so disappointed.

The World Health Organization ranking of the world’s health systems

I don’t know if it was because we saw this movie at the right moment or because it is really good, but we loved it. It taught us one more time that a movie is not about the story, is about how you tell that story. And there are many ways to tell a story: through pictures, through music, etc. Once is a musical, and even if the story is not brilliant the music makes the movie brilliant and very entertaining. There’s not much more to say, just take the time to feel this movie, because this is not a movie to be seen, it’s a movie to be felt.

Take this sinking boat,
And point it home
We’ve still got time…

This is by far the best movie I have ever seen. So perfectly done, the actors interpreted perfectly their roles, Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins are incredibly great. I won’t tell anything about the plot, just that when you first hear of it you might say “another movie abour prisons”, but this is not about life in prison, is much more than that, much more. Congratulations to all the persons that worked on this movie: you’ve all made a great work of art.

I never buy movies, I admit, but I will buy this one for sure.

And a brilliant quote:

Heywood: The Count of Monte Crisco…
Floyd: That’s “Cristo” you dumb shit.
Heywood: …by Alexandree Dumb-ass. Dumb-ass.
Andy Dufresne: Dumb-ass? “Dumas”. You know what it’s about? You’ll like it, it’s about a prison break.
Red: We oughta file that under “Educational” too, oughten we?

…and his only one. Martin Scorsese is a great director, this is something I know, you know, he knows, everybody knows. Taxi Driver, New York, New York, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, The Aviator are just some of the titles that impressed the public, the critics, but that didn’t get to be read during the best director section of the great ceremony. Despite that, Martin Scorsese always kept on directing movies and his movies were still very very good movies, movies that didn’t leave us indifferent until one day the title of one of his movies was read during the best director section: The Departed. But still, there is a but. After Titanic I swore I would not see again any movie in which Leonardo di Caprio appeared. It seemed to me a very bad actor. I don’t know why. Maybe because the movie was very bad, maybe because of all the advertising stuff he was involved in after Titanic, the sex symbol he turned into after dying in Titanic. I remember I was 15 when I saw Titanic and I remember that half of the girls in my city were like “Wow” every time they saw him on TV or whatever. Anyway, independently of the reasons, I refused to see any movie in which Di Caprio showed his face since then. I have seen Gangs of New York in the meantime in which Di Caprio appears and it was not bad, not bad at all, but still it did not convince me. So here comes the doubt: The Departed was the movie for which Scorsese finally got the Oscar. If his other movies were brilliant this one should be at least amazingly brilliant to get the Oscar, so I must see it. On the other hand, in The Departed Di Caprio shows his face almost during all the movie, and I’m talking about 2 hours and a half. Should I see the movie? I have asked myself this question in several occasions until we finally decided to give it a chance and see it. It couldn’t be bad. It actually proved to be more than amazingly brilliant in the end.

The Departed is a movie of endless action, a movie with a crazy rhythm that doesn’t let you even breath during the 2 hours and a half that it lasts. A movie that needs your total attention and that gets your total attention without you even noticing it (something we’ve got used to in Scorsese’s movies). A movie that surprises you with changes that no one would expect. A movie with very deep dialogs, with a quite strong vocabulary which is still not exaggerated, a movie with a very good soundtrack, very very appropriate music. Scorsese finally found perfection with this movie, but he did not find it alone. The cast was a very important ingredient of this success and without it the movie would not have been even half as good as it is: Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin, Matt Damon, Leonardo Di Caprio (who really really surprised me with his interpretation in this movie) they were all brilliant actors.

The Departed was the movie that taught me to never judge a movie I have not seen and always give a chance to a movie independently of the actors that appear in it, a lesson I have learned before with other movies but never applied. I promise I will apply it from now on.

Now I recommend you to go to the closest video club, or start a search in Emule or on your usual torrents page and get this movie. But take care: Demonoid is under maintenance. Good luck and enjoy the movie!