Italian Job (old) and Ocean's 11

Continuing the tradition of comparing two movies ...

But before going ahead, what makes a good "con" movie?

- ensemble of great cast
- complex plot (a lot should happen behind the camera)
- minimum dialogs, great oneliners, or even very stupid dialogs

(Of course) Both of these movies pass this test ( I am talking about old "Italian Job" here. If you want to know my thoughts on the new one then skip the blog and go to the end.) ! And I think these movies are the two best con movies made .... ever.

I think first two points are obvious but I want to say something about the "dialogs".

Italian Job has this great scene about "Annette" which is completely unnecessary and stupid, but nevertheless it very important. It has great oneliners like

"everybody in the world is bent"
"gentlemen its long walk back to England and its that way"
"we must arrange a funeral"
"Look happy stupid bastards ... we one, didn't we?"

Ocean's 11 is pretty compact, it does not have scenes like "Annette" but it stays very tight on dialogs. For example ..
After they bug the casino, Livingston Dell almost gets caught. The reaction to that from Clooney and Pitt is "Oh! well?" .... "yes!" .... that's it!
When Cheadle comes to tell them that his plan to blow the grid has failed, Clooney looks at Pitt and says "We can always .." and Pitt says "By tomorrow? no way".
Elliott Gould's "who do have in mind?"
Great stuff ...

It's very difficult to pick the best movie from these two movies.
Ocean's 11 could have been the best but they decided to make a sequel ..... why on earth someone thinks things like that??
On the other hand, Italian Job ends with a possibility of a great sequel but no one has dared to make one .... that is a plus point.

But Italian Job is all about making money.
And Ocean's 11 is also about that but is more about "screwing the guy who is screwing you wife" so it gets a plus point.

So, they stay at the top ... both of them !

There is big list of worse con movies like Heist and Italian Job (new) but why waste time on them?

crash and syriana

Two of the best movies from last year ....

I saw Crash after a string of really really bad movies and I just loved it. After that, I told everyone about it and bored them to death.

The thing that I liked about the movie was that there was no hero. People were people. They did good things and they did bad things just like all of us. However, the central theme of the movie was that "everyone is good at heart", that is, they do bad things because bad things happen to them. ( Although I want to believe in that, I somehow can't. ) It made me aware of my racial biases and I thought that I should do something about it. So, there was a closure of some sort after the discomfort of watching the movie.

It was the best movie of the year .... till Syriana came along. After seeing Syriana, I was sure that Crash had resigned from the top.

Comparing it to Crash, Syriana was about people too. They were people in the movie, no heros and no villains. Sometimes they did good things and sometimes they did bad things.

The difference was that there was no message there and there was no feel-good sense. It portrayed things as they are are and it left the part of "finding a message" to the viewers. It made me aware of how my life is controlled by big industries and a part of my existence was responsible for keeping them profitable. The best part was that there was no closure for this thought .... and this is what made it the best movie for me.