Best movie of this year hands down!

Touches You

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I didn't know what to think when this movie ended. There's certainly no sense of closure for many of the principal characters, with plot threads left dangling and expected reconciliations left to the viewer's own imagination. But then I thought about the title, and how the various stories had an ethereal quality, allowing the viewer to drift in and out of them much in the way smoke will gradually dissipate when exposed to it's surrounding elements. I thought more would come of Auggie's (Harvey Keitel) daily photos on the corner of Third Street and Seventh Avenue, though they did serve as a plot device to get Paul Benjamin to slow down and contemplate each picture as an ongoing narrative in the life of the city. For his part, four thousand straight days of taking those pictures would have amounted to eleven years of doing penance for stealing a blind old woman's camera, a self imposed sentence Auggie eventually found some comfort and solace in. The two main questions I have coming out of the picture would be what Ruby (Stockard Channing) really did with the five grand, and if Rashid/Thomas was able to reconcile with his Dad (Forest Whitaker). I have my own ideas and you probably will to. Which is why a movie experience like this can be somewhat refreshing when the film makers leave things up for you to decide instead of relying on their own perspective. Viewed on a different day in a different frame of mind I might have thoroughly dismissed the picture as a pretentious flight of fancy, but as things stand, I found myself empathizing with the characters and wishing them well.

Although other than to the scientific theory of Repletion and Depletion which Jesus clearly states in the Gospel, I do not subscribe to any of the pseudo scientific theories of conservation which is a myth but even examining that problem in the light and in the realm of those very theories and applying their very same principles, that reasoning though imaginative and inspired lacks rigor.In a collision between moving objects, the net linear momentum of the objects(masses) involved and its rotational counterpart, the net angular momentum(spin) of the objects involved is conserved within their own.But this is true only for this sort of interaction between moving objects.But it is unlikely that mass exhibits or even has the same property and is insular in itself, in any interaction, particularly those that involve transformation of the mass itself which is probably why there is a general law of conservation of energy but there is no specific law of conservation of mass.Suppose initially we started off with a compound of masses which in itself was made up of several say i independent masses say m1,m2,....,mi or the compound mass m = m1 + m2 +.... +mi, which was then burnt and resulted in several say j distinct masses m1',m2', ...,mj' or the compound mass m = m1'+m2'+....mj' and only one of those j different masses is smoke.Now clearly burning involves oxygen, which is an additional mass in itself. Also, burning produces heat and light and usually where there is heat and light, some amount of electricity is invariably involved and though we may assume that the initial compound of masses is totally non-conducting and the resulting compound of masses is also non-conducting, yet unfortunately air is conducting, and does transmit and carry electricity, static or otherwise. In this process of burning, clearly some amount of energy is transformed into heat and light which can only come from the energy of those masses themselves, not to ignore that different masses burn at different rates, consuming different amounts of oxygen and emitting different amounts of heat and light or at different temperatures and with different luminescence. Unless the conditions are always the same the burning may not always be the same and how the compound burns will depend on that and it will clearly depend on how the compound is formed as well.If the masses are actually joined and connected at an atomic level, then the rate or other characteristics of burning of the compound may not be readily related to the same characteristics of burning of its constituent individual elements or masses separately. Now clearly since the energy due to heat and light must come from the original compound of masses alone, the final mass of the compound can only be determined after one has accounted for the actual loss in energy due to heat and light.

It spoiled two evenings, because I couldn't bear to watch it in one go. A real waste of some good actors. Hurt and Keitel do their best with their trite, boring lines, but they have nothing to work with in plot, story and dialog. Most of the other acting is worth a finger down the throat. Especially awful is the little scene with the aunt. She doesn't even qualify to be an understudy in a high school play. The pacing is supposed to be moody, but it's just slow and boring. The story is a lot of sentimental claptrap -- black/white feel-good. I would be considered a liberal, but I could not stomach the smarmy, sickeningly sweet racial aspects. It's clear that all the time wasted "up in smoke" is meant for the movie atmosphere, but it is just obviously juvenile. The writer and director should be staked out on the ground and covered with syrup like this movie and left for the ants. I have usually found some value with movies having a 7 or better, but this one destroys my faith in the IMDb ratings. I suffered to the end because of the 7.6, but next time I'll know better.

To heap praises on Smoke would be a great disservice to its talented directors Wayne Wang,Francophile poet Paul Auster and its eclectic cast of actors of international prominence like Harvey Keitel, Forest Whitaker and William Hurt.This is because it is more than a great film. We know that a great film can neither be defined nor described. A great film like Smoke has to be felt on an individual basis.It cannot be done by those who are near and dear to a viewer.Smoke is a film in which purest of human emotions overflow in every scene. Each gesture made by these great actors is worth millions of pure joys visible only by naked eyes in our daily existence.As a visual document of pristine beauty, Smoke is a beautiful commentary about the greatness of human existence. Its message is loud and clear ; one should smoke joys of human existence as they are undoubtedly more therapeutic then cigarette smoke which is effective only as a good remedy against cold weather.A comment must be made about one of the greatest actors of all times : Harvey Keitel.His portrayal of Augie is likely to bring laughter on your face and tears in your eyes.There are not so many actors who can achieve such a mesmerizing effect.