"Passengers"

"Passengers", a movie about space travel (with just 2 actors on screen for the most part), takes your imagination wild into the endless realms of space. 

The conceptualization of space travel is the best part of this science fiction.

How do you travel to a planet that is many hundred years away without aging and dying on the way? There lies the main plot.

The gigantic spaceship has been imagined and brought on screen so well. Although there is the usual heroism and romance, you can still admire the movie for the creative story-line of space travel.

Like someone said, "Passengers" is a mix of "Gravity", "Interstellar" and "Cast Away".

BRIDGE OF SPIES

BRIDGE OF SPIES

This movie is yet another jewel in Spielberg's crown; perhaps, even the best. Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg entertain us with a masterpiece that is perfect in all aspects, and keeps you glued to the screen. Every scene is chiseled to perfection.

The movie is based on a true story that happened in the late fifties when the Cold War was at its peak. While USA and USSR are aggressively spying each other for intelligence about nuclear weapons and military secrets - Tom Hanks, an insurance attorney, gets caught in the middle and ends up as a master negotiator in a two-for-one prisoner swap. The character played by Hanks is that of James Donovan, an attorney who played a vital role in prisoner swap negotiations with USSR and in the Bay of Pigs invasion.

This is not a war film like "Saving Private Ryan", but rather an emotional one touching on the human side of things. The movie has some wonderful dialogues, and Spielberg spins humor into every scene from start to end.

In a scene, a CIA agent tells Hanks to ignore the law and asks him to just follow what the agency says. "There is no rule book here", the CIA agent says. Hanks replies, "You are agent Hoffman, a German descendant. And I am Donovan, an Irish descendant. Do you know what makes us both Americans? It is our constitution".

The backdrop of the movie is so rich with details that it takes us to the mood of the Cold War era.

Spielberg makes his point - how everyone, even a Soviet spy, deserves a fair hearing. 

Amazing movie, don't miss it!

Gravity - a movie review

Occasionally, there comes a movie that explores a particular field in a very unique way unlike any of its predecessors. "Jurassic Park" changed the way we saw dinosaurs and triggered our imagination in a whole different direction. "Gravity" does the same thing with respect to space. It unfolds space before us in intriguing and intimidating ways. 

How does it feel to walk in space - engulfed in darkness and silence - where direction and time have no meaning - with the Earth rotating below you as the only reference? The silence is deafening. You are disoriented. Everything up there orbits around the earth - right from the huge International Space Station (ISS) to accidentally dropped nuts and bolts.

The movie's plot is based on Space Debris, a subject that I first read in Michael Crichton's "Andromeda Strain". I was so fascinated by it that I even did a small research and wrote a one-page article for our company's magazine in 2004. Avoiding collision with space debris has been a challenge for space agencies worldwide. This movie leverages on the many dangers of space debris.

What happens when debris traveling at high speeds collide on your space station? What happens when you are thrown out in space and you yourself become one of those objects orbiting earth - with nothing to hold on to? Literally, you become a satellite. And eventually you run out of oxygen and die - and your corpse keeps orbiting. Worse if your space suit is damaged - the high difference in pressure sucks everything out of your body - and the extremely cold temperature freezes you instantly like a rock.

The movie shows how astronauts Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) go through one of the worst nightmarish space debris collisions and struggle hard to survive! Is it even technically possible to survive? I don't want to reveal more!

"Gravity" is a technical marvel in movie-making. Watch it in 3D; it makes you feel as one of the astronauts up there. 

The director, Alfonso Cuaron, has craft-fully overstepped on some scientific facts to spin a fictional story. But, for the common eye they are sure to go unnoticed; everything looks genuinely real. The only thing that made me feel "Oh please!" is that - they put the blame on Russians for the whole incident :-)