How to Lose Friends & Alienate People................

A British writer struggles to fit in at a high-profile magazine in New York. Based on Toby Young’s memoir “How to Lose Friends & Alienate People”. Sidney Young is a disillusioned intellectual who both adores and despises the world of celebrity, fame and glamour. His alternative magazine, Post Modern Review, pokes fun at the media obsessed stars and bucks trends, and so when Young is offered a job at the diametrically opposed conservative New York based Sharps magazine its something of a shock!

It seems Sharps editor Clayton Harding is amused by Young's disruption of a post-BAFTA party with a pig posing as Babe. Thus begins Sidney's descent into success - his gradual move from derided outsider to confidante of starlet Sophie Maes - and a love affair with colleague Alison Olsen, that will either make him or break him.

M & M_Club Rating: 3.5/5

The Namesake (2006)

"The Namesake" has a deep, alluvial poetry to it, like a mighty river reaching the sea. It's mysterious and ordinary, insightful and banal, rambling and precise, and it is altogether unexpected. First novels generally don't make movies this fine, especially first novels that wander quietly through four decades of average people's lives. 

While traveling by train to visit his grandfather in Jamshedpur, Calcutta born, Bengali-speaking Ashoke Ganguli meets with fellow-traveler, Ghosh, who impresses upon him to travel, while Ashoke is deep into a book authored by Nicholai Gogol. The train meets with an accident, and after recuperating, Ashoke re-locates to America, settles down, returns home in 1977 to get married to aspiring singer, Ashima, and returns home to New York. Shortly thereafter they become parents of a boy, who they initially name Gogol, and a few years later Ganguli family will be destined to travel to India again soon - this time under very different circumstances - and after all have endured life-changing events.

M & M_Club Rating: 5/5

Madagascar (2005)

At New York's Central Park Zoo, a lion, a zebra, a giraffe, and a hippo are best friends and stars of the show. But when one of the animals goes missing from their cage, the other three break free to look for him, only to find themselves reunited ... on a ship en route to Africa. When their vessel is hijacked, however, the friends, who have all been raised in captivity, learn first-hand what life can be like in the wild.

M & M_Club Rating: 5/5

The Passion of the Christ

A depiction of the last twelve hours in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, on the day of his crucifixion in Jerusalem. The story opens in the Garden of Olives where Jesus has gone to pray after the Last Supper. Betrayed by Judas Iscariot, the controversial Jesus--who has performed 'miracles' and has publicly announced that he is 'the Son of God'--is arrested and taken back within the city walls of Jerusalem. There, the leaders of the Pharisees confront him with accusations of blasphemy; subsequently, his trial results with the leaders condemning him to his death. 

M & M_Club Rating: 5/5

Inside Man

Acclaimed actors, Denzel Washington, Clive Owen and Jodie Foster, come together to explore the lure of power, the ugliness of greed and the mystery of a perfect robbery, in a combustible new crime drama from Spike Lee. The hardbitten, but unorthodox, Detective Fraiser (Washington) pits his wits against a high-class bank robber, Dalton Russell (Owen), following the robbery of a Manhattan bank. As the chase unfolds, political corruption and hidden agendas threaten to destabilise an already volatile situation.

M & M_Club Rating: 3/5

The Pink Panther (1963)

A French detective, Inspector Clouseau, is obsessed with the capture of a glamourous jewel thief known only as "The Phantom". A lead takes Clouseau to Switzerland and to Sir Charles, a rich English playboy. During the course of his investigations the most unexpected of persons becomes a strong suspect. 

In the first in a series of detective comedies from director Blake Edwards starring Peter Sellers as bumbling French Inspector Jacques Clouseau, the mishap-prone snoop is actually a supporting player. David Niven stars as Sir Charles Litton, a suave jewel thief known as "The Phantom." Vacationing in a deluxe Alpine resort, Litton's real purpose is to purloin the Pink Panther, a gem of enormous worth owned by a princess (Claudia Cardinale).

M & M_Club Rating: 5/5

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Blondie (The Good) is a professional gunslinger who is out trying to earn a few dollars. Angel Eyes (The Bad) is a hit man who always commits to a task and sees it through, as long as he is payed to do so. And Tuco (The Ugly) is a wanted outlaw trying to take care of his own hide. Tuco and Blondie share a partnership together making money off Tuco's bounty, but when Blondie unties the partnership, Tuco tries to hunt down Blondie. When Blondie and Tuco comes across a horse carriage loaded with dead bodies, they soon learn from the only survivor (Bill Carson) that he and a few other men have buried a stash of gold in a cemetery. Unfortunately Carson dies and Tuco only finds out the name of the cemetery, while Blondie finds out the name on the grave.

Now the two must keep each other alive in order to find the gold. Angel Eyes (who had been looking for Bill Carson) discovers that Tuco and Blondie meet with Carson and knows they know the location of the gold. All he needs is for the two to lead him to it. Now The Good, The Bad and The Ugly must all battle it out to get their hands on $200,000 worth of gold.

M & M_Club Raing: 5/5

The Guns of Navarone

Two powerful German guns control the seas past the Greek island of Navarone making the evacuation of endangered British troops on a neighboring island impossible. Air attack is useless so a team of six Allied and Greek soldiers is put ashore to meet up with partisans to try and dynamite the guns. 

With the battle of Stalingrad turning the war against them, the Germans are attempting to bully neutral Turkey into joining the Axis; to this end they have trapped 2,000 British soldiers on Kiros, an island in the Aegean, with only one sea route for evacuation, a sea route commanded by two gigantic German antiship batteries deployed in a massive cliffside bunker on the island of Navarone. Immune to air attack and too much for Allied battleships to suppress, the British muster Keith Mallory, a commando officer who has been working on occupied Crete for nearly two years and who is an expert mountaineer, to ferry a team of British commandos to the only area of Navarone that is not monitored by the Germans, a 400-foot cliff. Greek resistance is to meet the team inland and guide them around German patrols to the area of the German guns. 

M & M_Club Raing: 5/5

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

"Perfume" is a terrifying story of murder and obsession set in 18th-century France. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille has a unique talent for discerning the scents and smells that swirl around him, which he uses to create the world's finest perfumes. Strangely lacking any scent of his own, he becomes obsessed with capturing the irresistible but elusive aroma of young womanhood.

As Grenouille's obsession turns deadly, 12 young girls are found murdered. Panic breaks out as people rush to protect their daughters, while an unrepentant and unrelenting Grenouille still lacks the final ingredient to complete his quest. His work, however, takes a dark turn as he tries to preserve scents in the search for the ultimate perfume.

M & M_Club Raing: 3/5

The Pianist

A brilliant pianist, a Polish Jew, witnesses the restrictions Nazis place on Jews in the Polish capital, from restricted access to the building of the Warsaw ghetto. As his family is rounded up to be shipped off to the Nazi labor camps, he escapes deportation and eludes capture by living in the ruins of Warsaw. Written by Anonymous 

The true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman who, in the 1930s, was known as the most accomplished piano player in all of Poland, if not Europe. At the outbreak of the Second World War, however, Szpilman becomes subject to the anti-Jewish laws imposed by the conquering Germans. By the start of the 1940s, Szpilman has seen his world go from piano concert halls to the Jewish Ghetto of Warsaw and then must suffer the tragedy of his family deported to a German concentration camps, while Szpilman is conscripted into a forced German Labor Compound.

M & M_Club Raing: 5/5

Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire: 

Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire (Warner Bros.) is a stylish, ingeniously constructed bit of hokum, a sparkling trinket of a movie that's as implausible as it is irresistible. As a matter of fact, this film's implausibility is exactly what makes it irresistible. In this post-globalization update of a Horatio Alger tale, all a boy needs to rise to the pinnacle of success is true love, a pure heart, and a run of luck so extreme it can only be karma.The story of how impoverished Indian teen Jamal Malik became a contestant on the Hindi version of "Who Wants to be A Millionaire?" -- an endeavor made without prize money in mind, rather, an effort to prove his love for his friend Latika, who is an ardent fan of the show.

M & M_Club Raing: 4/5