review: BAHUBALI 2

EPIC FANTASY FUN!

(NEEDS TWO INTERVALS!)

3 gigantic stars

Mini Review:

As in all fairy tales, the prince goes out traveling with trusted bodyguard, and falls in love with princess. Prabhas, young Bahubali is to be crowned king, is traveling with Katappa, falling in love with Devsena. Meanwhile the conniving cousin Bhallaladeva gets his own way and becomes king. The all powerful Sivagami devi is an easy prey to the her son’s machinations. How Bahubali wins it all back is this epic tale of gigantic muscles, gigantic palaces, super action, and never-ending romance. And yes, why Katappa kills Bahubali, the secret is revealed.

Main Review:

Our Mahabharata, Their LOTR

Indian cinema often falls for the lure of the epic Mahabharata to tell stories, and although it has twists and turns that are better than Lord Of The Rings, its religious connotation gets in the way of story-telling and it remains confined to television. The garish sets, the tin swords and the cardboard crowns (gold paper covered) have given way to better costumes over the years, but the bad guys (from Duryodhana to Dusshasana to Asuras of various names) still laugh loudly with their arms akimbo and twirl their moustaches and then shout their dialog. If you watched TV and saw Raavan laugh in the several versions of the Ramayana, you'd wonder why his endorphins haven't kicked in with so much laughing...

Bahubali challenged that notion and stepped happily into Fantasy territory and surpassed every expectation. Bahubali 2 does one better. Not only does it keep the story alive, but does it brilliantly.

It has the crown and the jewels and the Amar Chitra Katha style palaces, but thankfully no expense seemed to have been spared in creating those palaces. No longer do the palaces feel like a high school play set, nor do the soldiers seem to carry cardboard swords. The armies look substantial and their armour too. When boulders fall, they don’t look like painted over papier mache. The fabulous special effects make it look real.

Why Do Our Superheroes Need Romance?

That said, let us look at the story. You last watched Bahubali (Prabhas) who grew up among the tribal people, carry the gigantic Shivlinga over his shoulders, rescue his people and his mum from Bhallaladeva and win all hearts. He romances and romances and romances the warrior princess until you want to remind him that he needs to avenge his father the legendary Bahubali who was betrayed by Bhallaladeva.

But even if you missed the original film, this film, Bahubali 2, satisfies your thirst for fantasy, blood and gore and romance. The audience is in for a longish (167 minutes) epic story that spans more than twenty five years.

Prabhas is magnificent as Bahubali, and the director knows how to earn whistles from the audience. Right from the ‘Hero’s Entry’ to earning ‘Glory as Hero’ to using his power wisely as heroes must, the director manages to check each box. Prabhas climbing on the elephant’s back (and you have seen mahouts and his young kids do the same if you have visited Thailand, Sri Lanka or even Kerala) is a sight worthy of claps and whistles of approval. Right then you know that this film is going to be awesome. The camera angles get his stature right as well!

The romance between Devsena and Bahubali does go on for long and you wish they’d get on with it, because you want to see bloody confrontation between cousins. The song on the swan boat is more like 'praise to the mighty, powerful, well muscled, bright and sharp Bahubali for finding the prettiest woman ever, who has eyes like this and body parts like that and who is more beautiful that the planets'... Suddenly 'Ishq Wala Love' sounds easier on the ears. You have already watched helplessly at least 12 wild pigs being brought down during a hunt (we would have been happy with one, trust me!)

Thankfully she gets pregnant rather quickly and hugely pregnant too. We are spared of more soppy 'How gloriously she walks with Mahishmati's brilliant future in her uterus...' type songs...

Why can we not write short bits of romance like Iron Man/Miss Potts, Arwen/Aragorn in LOTR? We overdo everything. So when Bahubli and Devsena kiss, you just hope they run into a storm in the sky...

Thankfully We Have Villains With Big Muscles, Scary War Machines, and Big Muscles...

The gorgeous Rana Daggubati plays the villain so beautifully, you forget his ‘good cop’, ‘hero’ roles. It is because Bhallaladeva is so wicked and powerful, that when Bahubali wages an epic battle do we begin cheering for Bahubali.

Bahubali and Katappa are shown traveling the countryside before Bahubali is crowned, and the funny sequence remains funny. Thankfully it is not Brahmanandan style comedy, and it stays true to the story. Very well done, indeed.

Already said Bahubali earns Devasena’s love and you begin to wish there were a break, preferably Game Of Throne style. The break does come and we are glad to see the epic battle between the Pindari bandits and the locals of Kuntal, of course Bahubali comes to the rescue and how! The choreography of the battle makes you want to go, ‘Hmmm!’

Thankfully the romance ends and the machinations for the throne begin. You want to set Nasty Nasser’s moustache on fire. He performs so well. The conniving father and son duo manage to get Bahubali out of the palace and favor from the mighty Sivagami.

You do gag at how much of a goody two shoes this Bahubali is, and long for something awful to happen that would trigger a revenge. Then baby Orcs show up as if they had lost their way from Lord Of The Rings! (The same ugly dudes were in the first film, I believe). When Bahubali is fighting them in his own inimitable ways, more bad things happen and even worse things happen and then Bahubali shows up to fight the final epic battle which the good must win, of course.

I shan’t tell you any more, but suffice it to say that there are helpful coconut trees, slow motion hits on Bahubali’s biceps that will make you wince in pain, there is a sexy whiteness to Bhallaladeva’s beard. Katappa’s beard also turns from black to white, details are taken care of -  like the number of earrings in Katappa’s ears, although there is one female extra (a villager) who does not age at all with the story.

The slow motion capture of scenes is exactly what you will see in great graphic novels. You will gasp and sigh and clap (even when you are watching the movie in an uptown multiplex). Watch it on the biggest screen near you. The joy of watching an epic fantasy film will be complete.

Maibaap! GAANA BAND KARO!

This film like all films that tell of a 'hero' has Kailash Kher or Daler Mehendi or their clone caterwauling away about the feats of Bahubali. I did like the refrain, 'Kaisa? Rudra sa!' but all other bits were as generic as Arijit Singh's love songs. The promise of more action from AA Rajamouli is great, but one wishes the next fantasy fiction will not have the 'inspiring' songs. I'll take cracking bones and the sound of clanging swords any day!

 

Review: NOOR

Noor is So Superficial, It Gives Veneer An Inferiority Complex

1.5 stars

Mini Review:

A young journalist is stuck doing fluff interviews and she wants to meaningful work. But she has much to learn, and when she stumbles on a great story, she shares it with a boyfriend who uses the story without any corroboration. The consequences aren’t great, but then she learns a valuable lesson. Alas, the movie is so poorly researched and journalists will have a great laugh.

Main Review:

Noor, played by Sonakshi Sinha with all the earnestness she can muster, but the script is so badly researched, so superficial, it gives journalists a bad name. Certainly no journalist, even when a trainee would behave the way Noor does at a job.

She is judgemental about everything and looks at things in an extremely negative way. It reflects in her work and as audience you wish someone would shake her up or slap her, at least. But the film takes its own sweet time to teach a wannabe serious journalist a hard lesson. We see her flitting from a pub to a discotheque to an art gallery with her two best friends Zara (Shibani Dandekar) and Saad (Kanan Gill).

She even falls in love with an ex CNN photographer Ayan Banerjee (Purab Kohli) and Noor’s little complaints about her job are forgotten when she meets him at coffee shops and pubs and then at his hotel room. Of course she shares the story she is working on with the lad, and he predictably turns out to be a cad, and steals the story and broadcasts it to the world.

The story turns out to be sensational, but without any corroboration, without proof it dies a natural death. Noor is unhappy that her editor (played, again, in all earnestness by Manish Choudhary) made her wait for ‘her story’ and ruined an opportunity to be the one who ‘broke news’

But the script fails to explain to Noor that you cannot just publish any story, you need to find more proof, more evidence that the ‘scam’ is widespread. Did the scriptwriter not watch the Oscar winning film about investigative journalism called ‘Spotlight’?

Noor’s best friend Saad whisks her off to London because she’s heartbroken over Ayan’s betrayal, and then she comes back and in one viral video breaks the net. Her editor is happy, she is happy, offers her carte blanche and fabulous real estate to start a new newspaper and her best friend proposes to her like it were some storybook romance. Why? Because no girl is complete without a man in her life. Independence and being great at her work are not enough to offer happiness.

The film is like a fancy Vanilla Latte you ordered that was brought to you with only foam and no coffee…

(this review appears on nowrunning dot com)

      

Review: MAATR

Keval Bakwaas. Bechari Raveena.

1 star

Miini Review:

Delhi is a rape capital and this time it is a mother-daughter duo who get raped and the daughter dies. Of course the culprit is the Chief Minister’s son and his pals, and the police frame some innocents to close the case. Raveena Tandon in her comeback film plays the feisty mother who avenges the crime by finding out and killing each of the seven perpetrators. The subject is handled so ham-handedly, you cringe at the mistakes and wish they’d stop making rape an easy subject.

Main Review:

Raveena Tandon is earnest as a mother who turns into an avenging angel. She looks great for someone who has stayed away from the silver screen for years. That said, the role she has to play in this movie is so melodramatic, it borders on ridiculousness.

While NH10 made you feel for the characters because they inadvertently witness a crime and are hounded by the villain, ad the violence, though graphic, made you feel vindicated.

In this movie, everything is reduced to a caricature, and that’s why you begin to wonder when the revenge saga would end.

Seven men follow a schoolteacher and her daughter in their car, crash it deliberately and then abduct and rape both the mother and daughter, then leave them for dead on the side of the road. The mother just happens to be alive. When she implicates the Chief Minister’s son, the police back off. What follows is a predictable revenge story that completely ignores trauma and social stigma that is usually attached to rape victims regardless of their social class. And it tries to justify acting lawlessly because the law will not give her justice.

Raveena Tandon’s fans will be happy to see that she is still gorgeous, but the Kisi Disco Mein Jaayein girl, wanting to suddenly be Liam Neeson from Taken is not going to be easy with a weak script. And how weak? They haven’t even done research on police procedures: no policewoman is shown at all - not when the policeman takes a statement from a battered Raveena at the hospital, not even at the women’s cell at police station. And which policeman informs the victim that her daughter is dead? And the news channels and newspapers who are, by law expected to not reveal the identity of sexual attacks brazenly inform the public at large who she is in headlines!

The husband too is shown to be so pathetic, and that’s fine. But he keeps repeating, ‘You took a wrong turn’ again and again until you wonder if the scriptwriter was paid per line.

Then comes the effort Raveena puts in at the gym to get well. She begins teaching at the school once again, and again we realise no one raises half an eyebrow at her coming back. There is no residential trauma, nothing.

Divya Jagdale, her artist friend vanishes from the scene when Raveena cases the movement of one of the bad lads by chance. Divya is fiery and accompanies Raveena to the police station, offers her a home when the husband turns her out (there again, how does someone who has revenge on her mind let the husband behave badly?), but does not know Raveena has murders on her mind?

The revenge drama is so awfully predictable you begin to wonder how Raveena acquired so many skills. She has no training, nothing. She suddenly and simply just stumbles upon these baddies one by one and kills them. It is so tackily done, you don’t even want to know from where she acquired the gun, and if she picked it up from the baddie who tries to kill her, then how and where did she buy the silencer? Thankfully she kills four of them in two encounters, which saves us from watching the horrendous revenge thing.

Slumdog Millionaire child actor Madhur Mittal plays the bad guy who is shown to be forever smoking and drugged and fornicating. Had the scriptwriter been whipped for cliches, he’s be dead trying to defend this badly written villain. What is worse, is Raveena getting past seriously big police ‘bandobast’ by simply wearing sunglasses. We feel what the policeman says in the end, adding a silent thanks to the gods,’I think it is finally over.’

And the horrible crooning of ‘Maa’ - a song about ‘Aisi hoti hai maa’ helps you run out of the theatre...

(this review appears on nowrunning dot com)

Review: THE ZOOKEEPER’S WIFE

Stuns You With Its Humanity

2.5 Stars

Mini Review:

It’s a true story of how the Zookeeper couple Jan Zabinski and Antonina save the lives of 300 Jews during the occupation of Warsaw by Nazis. It’s humanity touches you deeply, but what is amazing is how Jessica Chastain gets into the role, caring for animals who seem to be comfortable being close to her.

Main Review:

She rides her bicycle through the zoo, talking to animals, asking the baby camel to run along her, she feeds elephants and hippos and even lets lion cubs sleep with her son. She’s Antonina, the zookeeper’s wife, Jessica Chastain in the title role.

You marvel at the casual comfort between her and the animals, but you know what they say, ‘animals sense fear in people’, and when you see the rabbits as well as lion cubs and a raccoon snuggle in her arms, you can but admire her courage, not to mention the bison scene.

No, I’m not giving the plot. Am admiring the zookeeper’s wife and her awesome lipstick. Book your tickets now.

Yes, it’s a true story and no matter how desensitised you and I have become to the suffering of others, this story of how they smuggle people out of the ghettos touches you somewhere deep inside. The cruelty of the Nazis and the innocence lost during war makes you aghast, makes you wonder if we are doing the same to the refugees escaping Syria every day.

You admire the courage of the people who risked everything to save others, people who refused to believe that neighbors had suddenly become less than human…

Yes, again, book you tickets now, watch the film just so we don’t forget what horrors we are capable of as human beings.

Watch the film if you love animals. Watch the film to see how brilliant the entire cast is: the little girl who is traumatised, the friend who hides in the attic, the man who takes care of the animals. And promise to never forgive people who kill birds for sport and say, ‘Have it stuffed and mounted.’

The film does manage to take your heart and squeeze it, but it loses points in the beginning when it comes across as rather stilted. You want to invest in the other characters but there isn’t enough time… But it is indeed a good film. So watch!

Review: SONATA

Sexless In The City

2 stars

Mini Review:

Mahesh Elkunchvar’s Marathi play Sonata has been shot by a movie camera. But the inherent problem remains: it portrays single women in the city as unhappy because they don’t have a man in their lives, and if they are in a relationship, it is abusive. In one fell swoop it insults all single women and such a shame that three wonderful actors fell to this pretentious excuse of ‘a play that speaks in the female voice’.

Main Review:

Just Plain Awful Conversation

‘I’m exuberantly happy, ecstatically so!’

‘I sway through life with abandonment.’

‘I don’t like perfume, I want to smell of my man.’

(Ewww! She doesn’t bathe?!)

‘We all live in boxes, you, me and that woman in the window.’

‘Only in their briefs! I wonder who gets to bed them’ (Looking at an ad about men’s underwear on TV)

WHO SPEAKS LIKE THAT? The film introduces three lifelong friends, two single, one in a ‘relationship’ with such awkward sentences.  

Looks like these women have been living in a cocoon instead of the real world. Ogling at men’s underwear ads? Never heard of Internet, miss? They speak of pornography and giggle. They’re still in rental VHS world.

Even when they say, ‘We earn, we spend. We don’t do charity. And we’re not even Feminists,’

you know it’s for effect.  

And if you have any LGBTQ friends or are simply better aware of the world, then you realise that if these friends have indeed helped Sameer transform into Sameera, then they would never say, ‘Is my touch dirty?’ or ‘Do you think I’m like that?’

Then to add to inadvertent fun, they claim to have sold ‘Grandmother’s family jewels’ to help Sameer, which makes you wonder if poor grandpa were in pain…

No Mr. Big. No High Heels. Just Desperation.

Aparna Sen who directs the film should have known better. She lapses into her Bengali accent so much that you wonder why she could not be Bengali professor of ancient languages. Why Arundhati Chaudhari from UP? She could have been saying ‘Hain’ like Amitabh Bachchan or be chewing on a Benarsi paan and she would not have come across as a North Indian.

Shabana Azmi is Dolon, the chirpy friend who is supposed to be an H.O.D in a Bank. Whaaa? At a bank? Head of the Department are seen in colleges… A banker is a banker, no?

Even though her chirpiness seems fake, ‘Put MTV on, I’m changing!’, she sings Rabindra Sangeet like a dream! When she emerges in a saree and proceeds to sing, she deserves a star and half for just that. She actually saves the film despite the awful confession scene which keeps the ancient male myth alive: women fight over men.

Lillete Dubey shows up with gifts from London (comes across more of an air stewardess than a journalist). Do article-writing journalists get paid enough to travel to London, and then get fired because their article was edited? Didn’t collate. She is made to dance awkwardly on Babuji Dheere Chalna and you feel pity for the woman rather than think of her as ‘cool’.

She’s in an abusive relationship with a chap who owns a garage (really?), and throws things down at him (He’s raving and ranting under the window).

The women talk so much you want to step into their kholi (ten by ten they keep saying, and it looks like a well-appointed apartment) and duct tape their mouths. It’s supposed to be banter, but it’s mostly unmitigated balderdash, pretentious mouthfuls of words like, ‘He’s a celebrated, internationally renowned artist. He still has fire in his eyes, but it’s mixed with pain now.’

The conversation does show how fragile the three women are, but it is so tiring to watch, you wish you had a hip flask with something stronger than the color changing wine the three drink. You don’t want to know why the straight-laced Arundhati suddenly chooses to drink after twenty something years of being a teetotaler. But you just wish Sameera and Peter would show up and end this fake drunkenness.

Update The Film. It’s Not A One-Act Play  

 

I do wish they had updated the Marathi play, talked to single women about their concerns today, and their lives instead of trusting a playwright who thinks women who live alone in apartments lead miserable and sad lives. (The woman in the window is called ‘Tuk Tuk’ in the play and ‘Typo’ in the film.)

If only the filmmaker had read Marathi stage reviews, she would have realised that people found the premise that independent women come to grief, not satisfactory at all way back in the year 2000 when Gargi Phule, Rajshree Wadh-Sawant and Ashwini Giri reprised the roles.

Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple worked marvelously on film, and Polanski’s Carnage did too. But somehow, the stereotypes in Sonata, despite the huge potential, remains just that. Shame that after writing Wada Chirebandi and Haravlele Pratibimb the playwright chose to stumble in the dark with this subject.

Yes, if one and a half star is earned by Shabana Azmi’s singing, what about the other half star? It is earned by the scene where they flop on the sofa doubled in laughter and that one deft touch of direction when Lilette Dubey is throwing things down at her boyfriend and Shabana Azmi persuades her to leave the vase and throw the empty wine bottle instead.

P.S. Whatever happened to the rice washed and kept aside for dinner?

Review: FAST AND FURIOUS 8

Family, Family, Family! Has Sooraj Barjatya Gone Rogue?

2.5 stars

Mini Review:

A beautiful but villainous Cipher blackmails Dom with a secret (obviously from his past) and he turns his back to his new wife (they’re on their honeymoon) his team and begins to steal for the villain who is flying around the world in an airplane that cannot be spotted by any radar. The team is blackmailed by unknown police agency into delivering Dom. Many vehicles blow up, there are many wisecracks and fans come away having consumed lots of popcorn with cheese.

Main Review:

  

We know their faces, fans know their names. We have seen umpteen re-runs on TV and we know they drive fast cars and steal fast cars and cops chase them but can never catch them. Fans know who drives which car and know who has a girl and who doesn’t and why they are the way they are. Each film adds a ‘cool’ character as either an opponent or as a team member and everyone hears Dom give thanks for the family.

But Sooraj Barjatya’s family obsession was never more evident than in this film. I will do anything for my family, including betray them. But we know Dom can never turn on his family, but the family has to believe that he has betrayed them…

So the story makes you wish this was a great heist movie or a movie with some bad guy selling cars or something that justifies explosive action and car chase sequences the fans love. ‘The dying for my family’ bit is too much to swallow. But it relieves Vin Diesel any responsibility of acting. He just has to be stern faced to hide his emotions.

Action, alas does not come fast and furious. Now the war is between good guys typing at breakneck speeds on keyboards and Cipher and her guys typing even more furiously on their keyboards.

The film has been shot beautifully and you feel as if you were the part of the action. The car race in Cuba is a standard beginning of the franchise and you love the fact that Dom is going to give you gyaan at the end of the race. You look forward to the action bits and those parts do not disappoint. Jason Statham and Dwayne Johnson make for great love-hate partners. Helen Mirren is a great addition to the team, and you wish you know more about her. Charlize Theron again is a great baddie. Would have been fun to see her drive, though...

Only when the action movies to New York where they steal ‘Nukiller’ codes, do you begin to sit up and take notice.

(WHAT IS WRONG WITH AMERICANS?! WHY DO THEY INSIST ON PRONOUNCING NUCLEAR AS ‘NUKILLER’ ?)

The action bits are awesome and the last forty five minutes are fabulous and full paisa vasool. The witty dialog adds to the fun too. The audience enjoys the popcorn because it come with so much cheese. But isn’t that what such action movie is all about?

Review: BEGUM JAAN

Jaan Nikaal Dee Is Bakwaas Ne

2 stars

Mini Review:

Set during the partition of India, this film chronicles the life inside a whorehouse set smack in the middle of the India-Pakistan border. The mistress of the house, Begum Jaan rules the home with love and an iron hand. Unfortunately Vidya Balan who plays the lead role cannot save the hopelessly predictable goings on inside the house, until the Border officials decide to force them to leave with the help of a crook. Such a terrible, bloated and tastelessly overdone copy of the Shabana Azmi starrer Mandi (1983).

One star for the earnest Vidya Balan 's appearing and disappearing unibrow and the other for Chunky Pandey's neck crackle.

Main Review:

Thesaurus dekho for words for prostitute!

Just because Begum Jaan runs a whorehouse, the women are made to behave how you’d expect women in the oldest profession be: they scream at each other, call each other crass names, wear clothes created by an over-enthusiastic art director, and pose as if were an audition to a high school play about a whorehouse.

Vogue! Vogue! Vogue!

In fact, the whole movie seems to be over staged. The idea they started with is interesting. The whorehouse falls right in the middle of the new India Pakistan border. The women have to evacuate, and Begum Jaan won’t leave her home. After all, she has the support of the local king. Her refusal to move gets both the representatives of India and Pakistan to survey the border markings really pissed off. The finally get a super bad mercenary Kabira to evict her.

Unfortunately for Begum Jaan, played earnestly by Vidya Balan, is just not enough. And after a while even she starts sounding ridiculous: I rescued each one of you from a fate worse than death and made you into prostitutes, so show some gratitude!

Since we see the women either yawn while they are with the clients or run out of the rooms when the clients behave like beasts, we understand why there is no gratitude from the girls.

Mandi Film Ki Gareeb Cousin

If this were a tribute to the 1983 cult classic Mandi, then they have done a shoddy job indeed. Mandi was clearly well thought out, well written and had fabulous performances. Even the traumatised runaway girl (Phoolmani played by Sreela Majumdar) could speak volumes with her eyes without saying a word. In this film everyone simply poses as if it were a fashion magazine spread where models go slumming. This is a poor country cousin pretending to be the real thing because they gave Vidya Balan a unibrow and light colored contact lenses.

Shakespeare Bhaiyya Kahin, 'Inner Weather Reflects Outer Weather', But This Film Ruins It

Let’s not even get into the weather! It’s Holi when everyone wants to look like a magazine spread, and it rains because the director does not know whether to show one of the prostitutes (Gauhar Khan) make love with the servant of the House (Pitobash) after they admit that they care for each other and the body is the body. Please don’t miss the moralising, the speechification: ‘Chaati kya hai? Maans hai’ (What are breasts, but meat) and so on by Gauhar Khan is unbearable rather than ‘acting’ with a chance of an award. Back to the weather, when the duo return to the House, the wind brings in dry leaves and twigs you see during Autumn.

I Went To Film School Syndrome

The two men responsible for drawing the border: one Hindu (Ashish Vidyarthi) and another Muslim (Rajit Kapoor) have been shot so oddly you wonder why the frame contains only half their face and the rest is a blur. Maybe because what they’re saying is trite and needless.

Kancha Cheena Ki Jai

You have barely recovered from seeing Naseeruddin Shah in a shiny brocade sherwani clearly made for Gabbar Singh or Dwayne Johnson when you suddenly find yourself apologising to all the casting directors of mythological TV shows. They don't get their casting wrong!

Imagine the relief when the salve comes in the form of a super bad mercenary Chunky Pandey who does his best to channelise his inner Kancha Cheena (Sanjay Dutt from the new Agnipath) and does a great job. But even he has not much to do but crack his skull as musclemen are wont to do while spouting dialog like, ‘Mere aadmi phir kuch bhi kar sakte hain.’

Partition Sankshipt Mein

They keep having to go back to from the whorehouse to their original idea, and everything the filmmaker does turns out to be howlarious. We see characters who are such pointless cardboard cutouts you can only shake your head in despair: three people discussing how the partition is going to affect them . One is a token Muslim, one Sikh, and you hope the third one does not turn out to be Anthony or Peter or John. You see the resulting divide between Hindus and Muslims treated so flimsily, you want to throw things at the screen. You see Hindu kids on one side crossing another bunch of kids (skull caps and all), each group staring at each other looking scared. Seriously?! To top it all, they take a classic song ‘Woh subah kabhi toh aayegi’ and remix it in what can be only called as a pseudo-caring version.

This is a sham of a film making a pretense to art. Buy or rent the DVD of Mandi instead.

Review: COLOSSAL

Women As Monsters!

(And Hollywood Didn’t Think Of This Before?)

2.5 stars

Mini Review:

An out-of-work blogger tries to drink her sorrows away and in the process loses her boyfriend. She returns to her hometown where not much has changed. She bumps into a childhood friend who helps her get a job, at his bar. She discovers that each time she is drunk a gigantic monster appears on the other side of the world in Seoul. But when she tells her newfound friends this trouble ensues and she needs to rescue Seoul…Touted as a ‘sci-fi comedy’ this film is a great idea, but the comedy does not last and the sci-fi part doesn’t hold water.

Main Review:

Anne Hathaway as Gloria, has gone back to that horrendous ‘before’ hair from Princess Diaries in this film. And her being drunk through most of the film does not help us in liking her, the protagonist, very much. You do know people who take to the bottle when they’re out of a job but she just gives off the ‘spoilt irresponsible girl’ vibes. So you watch her fall into a drunken, tired stupor on the floor. She bumps into her childhood friend Oscar (played wonderfully by Jason Sudeikis) who runs his dad’s bar. He offers her a job and helps her get a television and sofa and things for her home.

Gloria makes friends with Oscar’s friends and they have many a drunken nights at the bar. Each time Gloria stumbles back home and falls asleep on the park bench, she realises that a monster appears at the opposite end of the world every time she stomps drunkenly in the park. She confesses to Oscar and the other friends and it seems like a comical thing that the monster would imitate her actions.

But her interest in the other friend, literally awakens the monster in Oscar too and a giant Robot appears in Seoul.

The idea that there’s a monster inside every one of us is great, but it stops being comical after you watch the monster scratch his head and dance. We want a better story than lightning striking her in the middle of her head. Really? Why didn’t she get blinded or otherwise affected. The science becomes mumbo jumbo.

Jason Sudeikis has a great personality twist and you sort of like this part of the film very much. He stops being the quiet man with a crush on the heroine. The personality change is so much more fun. It elevates the predictability of the monster and the girl story and turns it to something scarier.

Still you wish Julie Andrews would show up and fix Gloria's hair just as she did in The Princess Diaries. You also wonder how someone who has been out of work for over a year can afford to buy a long distance flight ticket. You wish there had been a little more science than the movie has and a little more comedy than the monster scratching its head...   

Review: GHOST IN THE SHELL

Fabulous Special Effects, Attempts to Capture Original Anime Magic, But…

2.5 stars

Mini Review:

Masamune Shirow has fans across the world, and there are people like me who have seen the 1995 British-Japanese film of the same name were really excited to watch Major Motoko Kusanagi eliminate baddies faster than you can say Scarlett Johannson. But are the baddies really so bad? Why does Major begin to question orders? The trouble with this film is that though the setting of the film is fabulous, the story, too laden with meanings and motives falls short in explanations. The philosophy just fails. The 1995 film is still a benchmark.

Main Review:

The trouble with attempting a cinematic take on classic cult anime film is that the fans will never like it, and the newbies find most ideas outlandish. Niihama Prefecture in this movie is just as you imagined it in anime but cooler… But it takes too long to establish the team members and their loyalties to Chief Aramaki. However, you are glad that Dr Ouelet is played by Juliette Binoche and Major Motoko Kusanagi is Scarlett Johannson…

The idea that some day, corporations can hack into your mind and take undue advantage does not come through clearly. You see how technology has saved the Major’s brain by inserting it in a super-enhanced body trained for combat. You see the moral dilemma faced by the Major when  glitches intrude her thought patterns.

And you are familiar with the concept of glitches because you have seen The Matrix and Keanu Reeves discovers a whole new world when he explores the glitches, the anomalies in the Matrix.

You sigh in a small disappointment that there is not enough hidden. Kuzo the shadowy leader of the new network spills the beans on his reasons for killing the scientists at Section 9 (where Major works) rather quickly. Major’s fighting skills are not really showcased although her fight in the nightclub was super cool.

The world will always be divided between, ‘This is a rubbish movie, there were too many weird things happening’ and ‘The anime film was better!’. I happen to fall between the two categories because I am huge fan of the series and even though the film has many shortcomings in the telling of the tale, it does not stray too far from the original source.