Life of Pi review: One of this year's best films

Let me cut straight to the chase: Life of Pi is one of the best films this year.

The Ang Lee directed adaptation of the 2001 Man Booker Award-winning novel by Yann Martel lives up to the lofty standards set up by its literary counterpart.

Life of Pi tells the story of 16 year old Piscine Patel (more commonly known as Pi), who is shipwrecked at sea with the company of a Bengal tiger called Richard Parker.

I read the book a couple of months ago and was pleased to see that the film does not deviate much from the novel. But since film is a visual medium, Ang Lee cleverly maximises the visual imagery of the novel that transforms the simple tale of a boy lost at sea into a spectacular cinematic journey.

10 Movies That I Want to Watch Before 2012 Ends

The Dark Knight Rises. The Avengers. Looper. 2012’s been a pretty good year for movies. But if you think there are no more good movies coming out then think again! Here are ten movies that I hope to watch before the end of the year.

Argo

Starring: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), Alan Arkin (Little Miss Sunshine), John Goodman (Monster's Inc)

Director: Ben Affleck (Gone Baby Gone, The Town)

Release Date: OUT NOW

Say what you will about Ben Affleck’s acting skills, there’s no denying that he’s a talented director. I really enjoyed Gone Baby Gone and The Town but I think Argo tops both of them. 

Argo is based on a real-life story set during the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis. It was a tumultuous period in US-Iranian relations with Iranian militants storming the US embassy and kidnapping most of the American staff. However, a small group of six US diplomats managed to escape and secretly hid away in the home of the Canadian ambassador. In comes Ben Affleck as CIA agent Tony Mendez to extract the diplomats from Iran. He concocts a crazy scheme: to create a cover story that the six diplomats are Canadian filmmakers scouting in Iran for exotic locations to shoot the science fiction film Argo.