New York I Love You

New York I Love You is a very confusing movie! Honestly, I did not enjoy the movie although it has many well-known actors in it like; Natalie Portman, Bradley Cooper, Orlando Bloom, Blake Lively and many more! It is one of those movies that has many stories in it and keeps jumping around and I think I am not smart enough to understand movies like this. 100% attention needs to be given to watch movies like this.

New York I Love You movie poster

What I understand from the movie is that they are trying to show that New York is the city where many cultures and different types of people can be found. This movie is not like other normal movies, it shows the other side of New York, the reality. I find the whole movie very dodgy, all the places and people in it. It gives me a feeling that there are many lost souls in the movie.  That many people don't know what they are doing with their lives. The movie shows a scene of the story of two people, then jumps to another scene of different story and people, totally separated stories, but in the end everyone is linked together. To me there is no end to any of the stories in the movie and it kind of leaves everything hanging and i don't like it. There is no consistency. However I find the shooting style very artistic.

There are quite a few movies that I have seen that have similar style to this movie. Like "Valentine's Day"

Valentine's Day movie poster

Even the movie poster's design is the same! The heart shape with faces in it.. Valentine's Day is also one of those that have different characters, separate lives but everyone is also inter-connected. But this movie is much brighter, funnier and happier, not as gloomy as New York I Love You. Another similarity is Bradley Cooper is in both the movies! I've watched Valentine's Day but did not want to watch New York I Love You when i saw it screening in the cinemas because it doesn't seem attractive to me as it looks similar to Valentine's day. It's not something new & fresh to me.

THE OVERTURE

Movie Poster of The Overture

This Thai movie was a little bit harder to understand compared to the other movies because it was difficult to read the subtitles as the subtitles sometimes blend with the background and can't be read. The Overture is about this young man Sorn who has a brother that is a very successful musician that plays the ranard-ek, a wooden percussion instrument. He looked up to his brother very much and wanted to follow his brother's footsteps but his parents didn't encourage it. However, his brother died in a fight with rival musicians and after that, Sorn decided to take ranard-ek seriously and to honor his brother. The story of this movie was inspired by the real life story of a Thai musician, Luang Pradit Phairao. 

Ranard-ek (Thai Xylophone)

I find this movie very interesting as it carries history about Thailand when they were trying to push Thailand into a modern era, and how music gives people inspiration at that time. Being able to watch and listen to the instrument was very eye-opening as there won't be so many opportunities for me to come across such traditional instruments easily in my daily life. This movie using traditional is a very good reminder of the existence of all the instruments that we don't know of, or have forgotten because of the busy life everyone in this society have. It could make any audiences start picking up this instrument after seeing and hearing the beauty of it. Listening to the music played using the ranard-ek really gives a warming feeling. This movie really did an excellent job showing the beauty of this traditional Thai instrument. In the movie, there's a scene towards the end where Sorn had to compete at a Thai kingdom's musical performance where he had to face his worse fear, a bearded man that was inferior to him named Kun-In. That scene was awesome as it was so intense and both the contestants had to play it so well to compete with each other. First they played with others as a group, then they had to rematch to see who wins because they were both thought to be equally as good. To see who's better, they both had to have a battle. During the battle both played so well and so fast that it was so amazing. The wrists must be so strong to be able to control such speed and for such a long time!

This is actually the first fully Thai movie i have ever watched. Before this I have watched many Hollywood movies that were shot in Thailand with the Thai people, but never before a fully Thai movie like this one. It was a great experience. I would personally rate the movie 6.5/10. I didn't give it a very high rating because I couldn't understand everything that happened in it, only roughly what happened because of the obvious, but didn't understand the details very well because of the subtitles and the transition of the younger Sorn, and the older Sorn scenes. I couldn't understand that it was the same person at first, until after half of the movie.