"Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" (2005) - Movie Review

Many might miss the clever and complexity involved in the “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” which get goes from the minute it opens on. And quite easily it can also be put in the common basket of slick, style and cool film. Its writing eloquence is top notch with a screenplay that would be a work as if David Mamet wrote a Guy Ritchie film. It has the ping pong type conversation and characters popping in wrong place, wrong time. It narrows a margin of comedy and in that it appears to be serious but it actually is not. It plays like a comedy film but has an edge of a thriller and when action comes down, it is fast and sweet with a stress on sweet. It is a fantasy in the shooting and even in its realistic portrayal, they erase the guilt with instant one liner by one liner. And you have Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer swing dancing their roles with fun and flair.

The film is narrated as some one pitching the story for a studio executive only with a self aware cockiness and admittance. The narrator is the protagonist of the film, Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.), a petty thief who gets into the show biz accidentally. For a part he got pulled in, the producer Dabney (Larry Miller) hires his PI “Gay” Perry (Val Kilmer) and yes he is gay. Harry meets his high school secret sweetheart and best friend Harmony (Michelle Monaghan) at the party and the film follows a topsy turvy trip in to the Los Angeles hotels, lakes, bars and left out houses.

Playing like film noir it mocks itself, stops the frame and reverses with the narrator admitting his inability to tell a story straight. In those where it could have been seen as a film trying too hard to be cool, it brings out laughs. Downey Jr.’s Harry is a man of chance rumbling down with the reality but never gets a hold of it. What can you say, he is a writer and he puts his coins where he wants to. Especially the violence is cartoonish and gives a feel of fantasy. We do not get marketed by it but those are like a plot elements which needs to happen so that we can get a noir film. It is filmed like a half baked screenplay and yet it is so well written and the hastiness of the things which unravels are interesting enough that we laugh about it. The best part it is when in the end the story mocks itself. It could have been fatal but it is about that right to make us giggle.

And what about those two, Downey Jr. and Kilmer. They are literally glee inside when they spit out those dialogues of insult and comic. They should have had fun or atleast they make us feel they had tons of it. In a true judgmental manner, Kilmer’s Perry is an embodiment of the Hollywood persona being a consultant for the films of crime, which is like every other movie. He is neatly dressed and appears clean and trim. He does not pose a macho look but bites the words towards Harry as this small time crook stumbling over mud and laughs sitting in the middle of it.

Monaghan joins this two and sizzles with a love - break tug of war with Harry. It is an investigative story of two murders. One involving Harmony’s little sister and Harry in the liking for Harmony declares himself as detective which makes her believe as both grew up going head over heels for crime novels. Apart from the fact of finding who the killer is, they want to suit as the novel characters and get into the action. Do not we all have that cornered stupid fantasy of growing up to be this detective and become that million dollar smile hero? Harry and Harmony have not grown up from that and they clinch this opportunity at every chance.

Shane Black’s screenplay is a great work. It is not alone written with the cliched smartness but a genuine liking for film noir. At the same time, he does not want to lose the reality of it. Hence he combines both and jokes how the noir gives an happy ending or fiction of good and bad clearly separated but reminding that life is not like that. He builds a screenplay inside this film and gets the good works of the performers.

“Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” is also a sad reminding factor that films which becomes a public appeal loses its charm of critical value. It has descended to the fact that great films rarely are acknowledged by the public or more worse is the genre itself. When I say genre, the idea of comedy does not appear to be a serious contender for great films. I have advocated this attitude many times and it happened in me quite subconsciously watching this film. I never cared to mention the creativeness in the screenplay as I begin to treat it as a blockbuster entertainment of newly found charm of cool films. In couple of moments I realized how much the system has got into me. Throw the system away and not alone enjoy the film but think back the work went on with the writing. It will blow your mind.

"The Day the Earth Stood Still" (2008) - Movie Review

Scott Derickson’s remake of the classic “The Day the Earth Stood Still” behaves as the film’s administrative personnel who does not give a chance for dialogue with Klaatu (Keanu Reeves), Derickson does not provide the same to the script. The theme is fitting for the current times but poorly executed. It never made a deal with what it wanted to say and what would the people expect. Obviously the effects would have been the predominant factor but we as a audience have now in terms with the Hollywood studio production house that anything is possible. And there is no need for a greater proof by amping the X factor in this modern day “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. What missed was how Klaatu who comes as a distant emotional alien in human form come to see the better part of the humans.

Except for the fact that alien space ship arriving with a humanoid Klaatu and his guard Gort, this sparsely goes along with the original. Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) is no more a secretary but an astrobiologist. She is one of the film scientists who get their midnight unexpected, unanticipated and classified calls and always followed with the pawn picking them up with answers “I do not have the privilege to say that” or plainly “I do not know”. She has a stubborn and unresponsive step son Jacob (Jaden Smith) replacing Bobby from the original. He does not like Klaatu right from the start and he does not like Helen as she is not her mother and believes to be stuck with him rather than really loving him.

The fear in the people exists and the attack on the unknown is the motto taken by the military in both the films. I know many see Reeves as a bad actor but here he produces Klaatu in a reasonable form for the film. In the original, Michael Rennie played him more closer to human which fitted it and Reeves distances him from those emotions in this film for the script keeping to see him as an alien till the end. He does not form a bond with any one and even with Benson it is a more cold approach in maintaining her at a territory. The screenplay makes him the judge on the human’s unmerciful treatment of the planet. He has concluded from his fellow alien Wu (James Hong) report who has resided here in Earth for seventy years that humans are incorrigible and destructive but at the same time Wu decides to stay as it is his home now and there is an unexplainable other side to the same humans as well. We are emotional in loving and caring in excruciating circumstances but we truly fail to learn from those as the situation changes.

Kathy Bates as Secretary of Defense is the stupid and adamant typical Hollywood US politician. Why cannot there be a sensible politician in the Hollywood block buster who has reasons to behave as the arrogant slimy diplomacy and still maintain the character. And the military in the film are passionate to blow up things. They want to shoot missiles, fly down the space ship and bomb it till smokes engulfs the world and they fire at will till the bullets run out. They do this after being outplayed and the attacks left indestructible space ship, Gort or Klaatu without a speck of dust. Why one of the military general step back and think for a while instead of wasting bullets. I do not feel this is the correct portrayal if you are thriving for reality.

The film has some strong points when it lets the discussion role. As in when Klaatu meets Professor Barhardt (John Cleese) and the consistent attempt of Helen in convincing Klaatu that we humans have the capability to change. When there is wobble in concept of what needs to be said with what nature, then it is a half baked result. Here it is not an “Independence Day” but tries to for soothing the crows seeking those and it also wants to pay the respect to the original. Nothing wrong in mixing those if the quality is good. Instead it is patches of good work in a script full of mad characters and unconvincing change of mind in others.

We are in the age of technology which appears to have no limits. In films there is nothing that cannot be done if the right backing of studio is there in giving the CGI effects of nearly everything. It has developed into an omnipotent tool accessible to the better and the worst of the creative minds. The original leapt the time where it was made into the realm of effects and possibility. It did something that particular generation could not have imagined but at the same time staying honest to the script. Now a day we are not awed by the graphics unless films like “300” comes out with something more. We go inside this film knowing to see the cities being turned into ash and powers of impossibility in the palm of Klaatu’s hands. Hence it is the story which should take precedence and it avoids in giving Klaatu the time to talk to others. While they show the people panic and media drooling for material covering it, there is never a third eye view on the state of it. When the top personnel choose to bombard with attack rather than reason which goes on till the end and if I was Klaatu, I would have no hope of these people changing. Klaatu looks at the relationship of Benson and Jake which starts as placid and grows with hope in the end. This is the other side his fellow alien was talking about. But what Klaatu does not understand is when the situation goes back to normal and when desperation is not there, will we change? The answer is tough as billion different minds work in billion different ways but definitely not a factor for a mind change to an alien in ceasing the attack on us.

"Maria Full of Grace" (Language - Spanish) (2004) - Movie Review

Choosing to live and beginning to appreciate the life ahead with a hope is a wonderful feeling. The moment where you exactly feel why you do what you do and what is that which runs your life and through which runs the others you love is an enlightening thing. It might happen one day and not other but when it happens, you know it. The stroke of that is the same when you watch a film. A film might go uneventful even in its smoothly moving script but that particular stroke makes it ethereal, the frame you craved for. That is the one which makes “Maria Full of Grace” a magical charm in the end.

Joshua Marston directed film follows a young beautiful Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno), a seventeen year old girl working laboriously in a sweat shop in Columbia making flower bouquets. She has a boy friend Juan (Wilson Guerrero) whom she has lost interest and he has lost in her too. She has a busy house with her sister Diana (Johanna Andrea Mora) a single mother and their dedicated diligent mother. Maria and her mother runs the family. Maria though is frustrated by the life of penniless after sweating so much to give for her unemployed sister. She also learns her pregnancy while feels numb to see Juan asking as something of a said exercise to marry her. Disappointed she breaks up and gets the attention of another young man Franklin (Jhon Alex Toro). Looking for a kick start of her life as I observed, a young girl in a search for excitement signs up stupidly to be a mule for drugs.

The assignment though is not simple but the boss Javier (Jaime Osorio Gomez) makes it sound realistic and as the more marketable. In a tightly packed drugs as a pellet, it needs to be swallowed and then needs to be travelled to New York. She meets an experienced carrier Lucy (Guilied Lopez) who has done it twice and long waits to visit her sister out there but feels ashamed to face her with the job which has brought her to New York. In between there is Maria’s friend Blanca (Yenny Paola Vega) who signs up for it too as she idolizes Maria but with a stern way to express it.

I have to accept that the whole procedure though is stomach churning to do was not something I was able to sympathize. The females every one of them are very clear on the task they are taking and in fact considering every single consequences to be met. Yet there is a drive to do it in the form of money but for Maria it is an aspiration on her way to feel more to life. Moreno as a sparkling teenager acts out Maria with some one so confident about her action in the teenage dumbness and in fact head strong about it. She makes up something and lies right through the teeth when the situation demands it. We do not really like Maria and her choices but come to like the way of her realizing what she wants out of the life.

The other similar effect I had is for Blanca. Blanca has the same attitude as that of Maria which is not surprising as she follows her every where. She does not have the guts to take any decision while blames Maria for her stupidity in her actions. Yenny Paola Vega gets on the nerves of Maria and us. But she understands Maria than any one else in the film. She provides the other half of that rejuvenating energy for Maria’s new born zeal for life in that last scene at the airport. In fact we exactly know what the decision is going to be but the difference is the untold waves of that moment in it. That makes the film worth watching all through the end expecting some sort of miracle is going to jolt this screenplay with a twist.

“Maria Full of Grace” begins as a journey into this character of emptiness and ends with a high note of cinematic beauty and convincing life possibilities. It does not aim in soothing us with the beautiful Maria. It aims in the moment I was talking about. Even after some of the worst days in your regular life, there comes a day, a particular freezing image of your life and a smile spreads across our face. It can be after a long phone talk with a family, a friend or watching something truly transpiring off the screen towards you reminiscing those.

"The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951) - Movie Review

I had to see the classic before watching the newly CGI enhanced remake coming this friday to the theatres. Generally the criticism of a film does not fly out of the radar under the posing of excuses in budget deficiency and minimal access to the technology. But the genre of science fiction would seem to have it and that is due to the constant evolution and exponential growth of the technology every minute. Yet that is only an element in the film rather than the whole of it. Hence “The Day the Earth Stood Still” would have its fair share of analysis in every department. I had the film almost make me to put as “Movie Classics” but a little dissatisfaction in the end proved it to be a film of extraordinary significance in the times of film making yet as a film would not deem the status of classics in my list. But please do not take that as a sign of a bad film because it is a must see regardless of its categorization in my dictionary of good, better and best for films.

In a rush of army noticing a large unidentified object flying, the film kicks off with the landing of the UFO directly on to the Washington DC. Supposedly well informed, the UFO of course has to land in the nation’s capital. Two aliens come out, one being a robot Gort played by Lock Martin under those spectacularly designed costumes while the other is an alien humanoid Klaatu (Michael Rennie) who has learned English very well monitoring the radio broadcasts. As the guns are pointed and even after a hopeful message of coming in peace, Klaatu gets shot when he tries to offer a gift. He is transported to the hospital with wounds healing rapidly by some advanced medication he brought along for the journey. He is visited by President’s Secretary Mr. Harley (Frank Conroy) and Klaatu asks for an immediate address to all the nation in the world regarding a warning to the people of Earth.

The first hour is when the film is at its best. With Michael Rennie playing Klaatu in a rare sense of understanding of an alien. He speaks with a superiority and says the things in a tone of confidence and affirmation. He is not arrogant but a nobility and humility an elderly would have. He is perplexed by the stupidity of different nations not coming to meet at one place in the name of cold war and suspicion. He is of course old, aged 78 but looks 38. He informs that the life expectancy is 120 to the doctors treating him. It breaks their heart as they have working throughout their life with next to nothing results in many diseases affecting the lives of the human.

When a situation of imminent danger arrives regardless of what country or classification the people affected will be, suddenly every other thing which concerned them huge a minute before dissolves in the sands of gravity. Klaatu impatient in the politics of international conflicts ventures out on his own by escaping from the hospital. He mingles with a family by renting a room. He befriends a boy Bobby (Billy Gray), son of Helen Benson (Patricia Neal). The sharp quality of being terse and perfect in his speech with neatly dressed and trimmed personality unwarrantedly makes Helen to trust him. Klaatu begins to go around places in DC and wonders who will be right one to talk with the grave situation the Earth has got itself into. Bobby suggests Professor Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe).

In the time of 50s, the film is like “Independence Day” in terms of graphics but not an entertainment blockbuster rather a very serious film on the world after two World Wars. In the attitudes of military, government, nations and people, director Robert Wise with the story by Harry Bates gives each of the cross-section in terms of fear and curiosity. Panic is the mode every one wants to be in. It is unbelievable that even the media at those times wants the same. When Klaatu visits his space ship as a spectator along with Bobby, a TV interviewer asks Klaatu whether he is afraid and Klaatu begins to reason out explaining another point of view and the interviewer cuts short as he knows that is not interesting. Fear is interesting. Panic sells.

The special effects and the costume design of the film made the place where it is in the history of the Hollywood. It has a great shot of UFO landing when people are running. The robot Gort’s metal simulation is an amalgamation of the lifelessness of the machine and the contemporary art not belonging to the era of 50s. And with the famous screechy and disturbing haunting score of Bernard Herrmann, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” would have been a phenomenon when it was released.

The screenplay of Edmund H. North does not reveal nothing much at all about the planet Klaatu comes from. In a very given way it is presumed that aliens are always much more powerful and far more unbelievably advanced than us. I guess some one travelling light years through black holes and asteroids and unknown objects in the space has to be scientifically meteoric in their advancements. When Klaatu being resurrected for unknown time by a device in the space ship after he is been shot Helen asks whether they know to avoid death. Klaatu replies that permanent back to life is only possible by Almighty and that is a cacophony in an almost perfect science fiction film. Apart from the bias I have, it is the out of sync placement in the film. It is bending over backwards to answer that part of that question springing out in the audience and to pacify them of their beliefs. Why not leave it open as they did for the planets and every single details with it? More than philosophical discrepancy it is a cinematic aberrance. Still I would recommend this classic be viewed for the first of its kind and a next to perfect sincerity in its theme.

"God Grew Tired of Us" (Documentary) (2006) - Movie Review

“The Lost Boys” are the group of 27000 boys who fled from the Southern Sudan to escape the killing spree of civil war. They walked for years to cross the border to Ethiopia and when the government toppled there, they walked back to Kakuma, Kenya. In the Kakuma Camp provided by the UN, they have formed a family of their own. The documentary by Christopher Dillon Quinn follows three boys John Dau, Daniel Abul Pach and Panther Bior who in the rescue program are now been placed in United States to have a better life. Ten years they have been with the clan in the most horrible days of their lives. They are setting out for a better tomorrow.

From the 27000, half of them succumbed to the severe environment of the desert and its habitat. And some of them were rampaged further by war. Thanks to the many hard working volunteers that they got the basic education in the camp. They have learned what death is by seeing their family killed and not waking up from the sleep. They have learned hunger from the pain of surviving without food and water for days while laboriously walking for their survival. They have not experienced electricity nor they have encountered any of the today’s regular amenities available to common people in the world. With those they embark to America.

They are sad to leave but they have to leave for doing something good tomorrow. They land in United States and their helper in the US gives a quick tutorial on how to turn on the lights and how the potatoes are ready to eat as chips. From a surrounding of living together with 30-40 people any given time, they are put with four other boys. The boys are placed all over in US. Each are provided an opportunity to work and they work hard. They do three jobs and hope to do their school some day. In their meager living, they send money back to the camp and some to their family they have discovered after seventeen years.

In them everything is lost but there is still the sign of innocence and naiveness of seeing the wide world. The surprise in their face to see the modern amenities taking form in the palm of their hand bring the smiles but they are shocked by the detachment created in the community. I have felt it too. When I travel in India, you can always ask people around who would assist in some form or other. In US too there are people assisting but the difference is though that the widespread nature of the location have totally isolated in knowing one street from another. And more than that is the mistrust which has emerged in the current ambience of flooding of information. We are constantly aware of our surroundings. If some one comes and talk to us kindly the immediate opinion is what he or she has to gain from us. And this is perplexing to the kids who grew up living among their brothers to depend and be depended upon.

“God Grew Tired of Us” is a hopeful but also a sad documentary of these kids finding hard to live in the US and always have a guilty complex of being the fortunate ones to get out of the misery. And they push themselves beyond their body and mind to work consistently to do something about their brothers and the situation in Sudan. In one of the cities, the community has complained that they are threatened by them since they always go in groups. But they have always been in group most of their lives and they feel four is less.

The truth is that in the modern world we are distancing far away from each other emotionally in the complacence that technology brings us closer. Seeing in person is the ultimate communication and I miss that. I guess that is the give and take in the comfort I have got but to these kids they are wondering how it has changed for them. “God Grew Tired of Us” apart from making us aware of the atrocities in the Sudan uncovers the loosing bond and trust in the society of today.

"Subramaniapuram" (Language - Tamil) (2008) - Movie Review

In the vicinity of the native I grew up Madurai, it is tough love. Tough love written with the knives and sickles. It does not cross the paths of the middle class family and when it does they are the collateral damage of a wrongly guided life of the poor and the desperate. But it does not start with money, not always. It is fed by the unconditional love shown between men to every one’s astonishment. The word and the acquaintance is gargantuan in some one not alone giving their life but taking one too, just as Azhagar (Jai) and Paraman (A. Sasikumar) do for Kanugu (Samutharakani), a family politically driven.

Azhagar, Paraman and their clan comprising of Kasi (“Ganja” Karuppu), Toppa (actor unknown) and a crippled Dumku (actor unknown) hang out at the rental sound system shop of their friend Sithan (actor unknown). The film begins with a man being stabbed when he gets out of the prison and admitted in the present day while the story goes in the 1980s Madurai. Azhagar and Paraman are thick friends and do nothings wailing time through smokes, liquor and what we Madurai people call “toppu” meaning chatting.

Azhagar has a love interest Tulasi (Swathi), niece of Kanugu. Kanugu whose brothers are an ex-counsellor of the district and an another brother a typical executive of government. They are the one of many breeding circle of political recognition and the zeal for power. A. Sasikumar is also the director of the film who brings the nativity of the area much truthfully as “Paruthiveeran” did. The vicinity of Madurai is now the fodder for the film makers but Sasikumar does so with a first hand encounter of the place Subramaniapuram and if he is not from that place, then his research is terrific.

“Subramaniapuram” is a birth of a clan becoming hire for kill. After their debut kill for Kanugu when they are in the prison, a notable inmate Ravi asks why they did it and they reply “Pazhakkuthuthukku pannom” meaning “for acquaintance”. That is the reality of the place. It still runs in the streets of those places. As mentioned, the extremity of love and hate are scary. They would know you for a second and they will shower their love meaning every single action of it. And at the same time when betrayal happens, the wrath of their anger would never see the chance of redemption. The people there when dissected to their basic character have hard time controlling their animal instincts as the emotions are fondled (I corrected the previous sentence from "They are the people in a raw sense live with animal instincts." as when I read meant something different than I intended - Thanks to Mathi for pointing it out). Their care cannot be matched and so does their anger.

What is good about “Subramaniapuram” also becomes something of an uncomfortable factor. The intentions of Sasikumar is how the uneducated and misguided people in the parts become a victim of the politics which again has been executed very many times despite been done good, poses doubts on whether his target audience will look at it as a chance for seeing themselves on their extremes or glorify. The hard bound truth of the young and the adamant are easily moulded in the places like those. In the end though the tragedy is not lesson but an instigation of never ending vengeance. Whether the target audience in the end of it realize what Sasikumar intends to say is doubtful.

Dismissing the responsibility of the film, it is a true depiction of the slang, props and the society structure existing in that part of the country. Madurai has always been a nexus for the blend of the middle class who run the fulcrum of the educated society while the workers running the culture, tradition and mainly the survival of the humans, the agricultural business. When the festival of Lord Azhagar happens in the city and rests on the river Vaigai, you can see both of those society mingling with a visual rarely a city has. And Sasikumar exactly brings that. Not all the middle class are of the political mid section as the Kanugu family and not all the youngsters are the wrongly driven individuals like Azhagar and Paraman. But the situation crops in different scenarios involving politics, finance and illiteracy churning these young people in to a life of blood and violence.

While I liked the film very much, I completed it with an unfulfilling nature how the story did not resolve itself. From a film which starts out to be systematic about the minds of people being manipulated, it ends as a fictional short story of some kind strangely being real all the time in its characters. With most of the technicians and actors as debutants, it is a mark of a very professional worksmanship. James Vasanthan especially in his music has a good theme music to combine the dark, haunting and a sad piece to the film.

It is a sect of the state which is looked down upon on its violence while also been praised upon for its cultural heritage. But many forget the people in the place who have been brought up with the emotions blurting out in unexplainable acts. That is something a resident will be able to empathize. For every one the place they grew up marks a pride as Patrick Kensie would say in “Gone Baby Gone”. Madurai is a great pride among its residents for the people’s respect, affection and honesty. At the same time the violence and the bloodshed has also been considered as a day to day affair. Many speak about it as a part of life and in that there is no pride. One of the sad fact about “Subramaniapuram” is that and it slightly oversteps in glorifying it.

"Transporter 3" (2008) - Movie Review

It is immaterial to see “Transporter” and “Transporter 2” to see “Transporter 3”. I really feel that films which are like this can be called action porn. I cannot morally justify it but trust me you know what I mean. Hence seeing a film like this, the dialogues and story are insignificant because all which needs to be got right are the actions (pun intended). “Transporter 3” in couple of sensual scenes is not alone a bad action porn but also not qualify for a good porn.

Environmental disaster is the current equivalent of the nuclear bomb threat in the films. Here there are greedy industrialists hiring a dude Johnson (Robert Knepper) who hires couple of other dudes to hire a transporter dude Frank Martin (Jason Statham) who refuses the offer and suggests another dude (David Atrakachi) to be hired. This dude fails the operation and the dude of the dudes who got their butts kicked by Frank forces a bracelet which would blow off when he goes 75 feet away from his car to transport the goods along with a femme Valentina (Natalya Rudakova). In the meanwhile a minister is threatened by Johnson to sign a contract with the industrialists for sanctioning their disposal of garbage into the sea. As I said, story and dialogues are irrelevant.

Valentina is the European accented girl with blue rouge and devil in the eyes. She talks dark and in fact the compadre of Frank, Tarconi (François Berléand) says so too. There are many instances wherein I thought the film is spoofing on itself but no, they talk serious. Bravo to Statham and Rudakova for acting out those stupid lines attaching such a gravity to it. The kinetic energy in the film is not so upbeat too. The action scenes comes with long intervals in between and except for the cycle stunt and car drowning, rest of it is a routine for the routine actions.

Statham works hard in making his Frank work and he succeeds with his muscled body and cleanly worn black suit. He is fit and fine. Rudakova as the female attractive object for the film acting as this dreary and cynical hostage explaining the dishes in a connoisseurastic tone which pushed me to almost faint on the preposterous setting of the film. The villain Johnson do not exactly know what he is doing. He is a bad hire by these company directors. He does not have special skills and he is so boring even as the stupid villain shooting his henchmen for his bad mood.

The fillers of course does not need to make sense as defined in the beginning verses. It should not be a stretch too and “Transporter 3” has many. It fails and fails and makes you impatient. It reminded of another Statham flick horribly made called “Crank” which is going to have its sequel. Mindless entertainment is good when that requires a lot of skill and precision to be made well. This film abuses those privileges and runs off the grounds sinking deeper and deeper beneath the layers of stupidness.

And then Frank romances with Valentina and the film achieves new low in it. With some pills and alcohol, Valentina becomes horny and takes away the keys. Now for a good stunt man like Frank it should not be a big deal to twist her arm and get it. But that would not aid the sensual scenes in between them. I tolerated it and when the end came for the transporter to kiss good bye to his lady love where he would be shelled by the enemies, she cries and asks “They so many men, you one and I worry” and I wanted to dub the voice of Statham with “Do not be foolish crazy sexy European Lady, I got to come by for Transporter 4”.

"Happy-Go-Lucky" (2008) - Movie Review

Can you be really happy for all your life time? Will you work relentlessly in achieving it? It would be no and yes. Poppy (Sally Hawkins) sincerely works on the latter question not with a seriousness but with a ray of unobstructed sunshine and it should be noted that the intensity of it is consistent. Does not weigh a bit less or more in promoting that energy to the people surrounding her. Merry, cheering and not a single thing could sway her from the shine of happiness. She can be the most happiest person alive.

Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky” is not a version of happiness that is painted in bright red and flowery caricatures of Hollywood film emotions. It in the character of Poppy is the single most convincing and most realistic happiness seen in the films in recent times. Poppy is thirty, single and lives with a best/flat mate Zoe (Alexis Zegerman). Both work hard during the week as primary school teachers while party hard in the weekends. Poppy has two younger sisters, Suzy (Kate O’Flynn) hanging out young and free with Poppy and a pregnant typical well settled house wife Helen (Caroline Martin) we see later in the film. As Leigh does in his films when the sisters meet, all it takes is a couple of minutes to understand each other and their relationships in a jiffy.

Poppy’s unstoppable optimism annoys people. Helen would the one to start with. When a stranger laughs for something else during our bad day, we think they laugh at us. But we actually are annoyed at them on the unfairness the life has put us, at that moment. How can when I am in the downtrodden roads of misery can another simple human have a cheery day. Or in the case of Poppy, it is a perennial exercise of bubbling moments. One such is her driving instructor Scott (Eddie Marsan), an angry man who takes driving as a soldier would take his military code. “En-ra-ha” he says repeatedly for remembering the mirrors in a car and I learnt now that it is named after fallen angels and it is his technique to get his “pupil” to remember. He complains, cribs and takes the job very very seriously while Poppy is like a bumble bee trying to get out of a glassed door only that she does to induce laugh out of this poor guy.

Scott in his rule of driving sputters some philosophical view of his on the educational system, multiculturalism in the current world and his other pupils not respecting him or the sanctity of driving. Eddie Marsan plays Scott with an unflinching ability to downplay the positive charisma of Poppy. He spits with an anger subdued, explosive, irritating and in many fashion with a compliment by Poppy deflecting and returning it with the same fervour of laugh, smirks, smiles and guffaws. I remember how my brother taught me to release the clutch in the very first lesson to ride a bike. I sucked from my part but made it worse by the shout from the big man. Unlike my brother who calmed down to teach me properly, Scott is angered consistently and as him we realize he is drawn into Poppy.

But who will not be drawn into her? Sure it would be an overplayed happiness of formality and being nice but we see her in time due that she means every word of it. She indeed loves life and she indeed loves the toughness it poses. She flourishes with love to every one. She finds jokes in every move as she does in the Flamenco dancing class when the teacher (Karina Fernandez) outbursts before a splendid tutorial of the elegance and style of the dance.

There is a scene in the film with a homeless man (Stanely Townsend). Poppy goes on a walk in the middle of the night to find this man who is no way related or of any knowing to her. She begins to talk with him. He blabbers with scrambled speech making no sense but Poppy acknowledges that she understands. She does which we see in her eyes and the comforting voice of her and the homeless man acknowledges through his face too. That scene would be a step away from the normal flow of the film. It is and the moment in between them is genuine. It in isolating away from the film still remains so much true to the character of Poppy. After couple of minutes the man goes away as though afraid to be addicted the infectious smile of Poppy even in her submerged fear in talking with him.

Sally Hawkins is wonderful. She is simply and purely wonderful. In her tiny physique, her Poppy dresses with full of colours, wears a boot which she loves and always carries two to three bags with her fluttering as a flag in her pole like body. In the infinite supply of aura, we wonder what would tick her off. How would a conflict affect her and Leigh gives that apart from the encounter with Scott. She sees a kid violent on his fellow students. What is she going to do? She does what the system of teacher and school does and it paves way to her love interest, Tim (Samuel Roukin) a social worker and also unfold a most tense moments with Scott in the film.

All the Leigh’s films I have seen so far have been on the down right despair or a subtle reference of hidden emotions of secrets, pasts and life. In “Happy-Go-Lucky” he gives the other end of the spectrum without the glossiness and with the authenticity of his touch. He gives characters taking life as it is and address their insecurities, behaviour and expectations as we do in the life of ours. This along with “Milk” would make my best films of 2008.

"Taxi to the Dark Side" (2007) - Movie Review

Alex Gibney’s “Taxi to the Darkside” is a brilliant documentary which as a medium conveying its points across works as effectively as “No End in Sight” the movie I mentioned in the best films of the 2007. It in a depth of detail documentaries sometimes fails to grab in the zeal of its agenda is methodical and most importantly clear as crystal. By the end of the film there arises a conscience in the way one conducts any one by their side. It is truly phenomenal film which winning its Oscar has got a deserved wide spread attention.

Yes it focuses on the torture techniques employed so easily and in a swift fashion riding on legal fence from the President of the United States and the commandeers of his team. Yes it blasts the insignificance and brutal insensitivity showed by the administration on putting its stamp to not alone tip over the top but dance around with the term of interrogation using the vicious minds in the worst possible situation. Yet it never takes a stand of arrogance into its face of argument. It gets the information as first hand we could get from the soldiers, to the army defense personnel and to the major political movers in DC and to the memo architects of these unfathomable writs.

In a step by step method the origin of these atrocities and the navigation from a generation is an awareness very much required for this generation. The amusement of being the hero, the good person stopping at the end of the road with upright stands has become a symbol of righteous existence. And US has strongly taken the stage because of its action in the holocaust. That has translated into the citizens and from them the coming up of soldiers. It is important to be on the good side, to be the people of good values who cannot be obliterated by the face of evil doers is been a global tag line for representing their country. The founding fathers have made sure of it and the principles of their laws are sometimes so astoundingly honest. But what has become of it in the reigning years of war after 9/11? “Taxi to the Dark Side” is a mirror on what the war has made it to be and more so about us with a devil inside.

There is a shocking piece of scene from the series “24” in the film showing the hero Jack Bauer played sincerely by Kiefer Sutherland on torturing a terrorist to get an information on a ticking time bomb. It gets compared to the attitude of the people and the advocacy of such a mentality to the soldiers on the front to get information. I have never felt so bad about myself after that. Before dismissing the fact that it is only a series for entertainment let me remind the seriousness the show takes itself. But it could not be blamed rather we should look at ourself on what the demand has been put in a show. The film constructively criticizes on the morality been tilted in the most fanatical adherence to make believe the doing the right thing that it has manifested the despiteful and hateful product of this whole process.

By this time we have witnessed so many films on this war and heard enough about the Bush administration. I felt a little bit bored when “Standard Operating Procedure” extended a very tiny bit than expected. With “Taxi to the Dark Side” it was enlightening through its analysis of the sad state this war has put on it and the irresponsible leadership acting with nothing but hate and result by any means necessary. Very much so the film “Lions for Lambs” delivered, this film shows in its technique in reality.

The film begins with an Afghan driver named Dilawar taking his passengers and never returning home. He was arrested as suspected terrorist and was taken to Bagram Air Base where he was tortured and killed. Till date despite the trials punishing the soldiers on various other charges has never found a trial for the killing of that driver. He turned out to be a very simple family man trying to ride cabs and feed his family. The film ends on that not forgetting as the army did on how his trip to the Bagram Air Base really triggered the much more wide approved torture taking its full face in Abu Ghraib.

After 9/11 being tough has basically has shifted towards getting ugly. The fundamental laws in US have amazed me in certain aspects on how much it tries to protect the innocent despite being used badly in many cases and still innocents being crucified. Despite the working of it, through the “Law and Order” series I have come to respect the constitution framers on the principles they wrote it upon. And how much it got erased by these actions of extracting intelligence? As the Enron executives, the administration fed the actions on the air with unknown guidance or rules for the soldiers who barely aware of the land they are in and the language the people spoke. They had no idea other than to follow orders and exist among their comrades to live. They dismissed their own morality having their trust on their superiors and believing their stand for being good. “Taxi to the Dark Side” more than this war echoes its title so truthful and so scary of ourself and what can be made of us unless we stand for the conscience we bore.

"Midnight Express" (1978) - Movie Review

In the booklet came along with the DVD is the detailed jotting down of information of how “Midnight Express” came into the hands of Oliver Stone’s spectacular screenplay by director Alan Parker. It gives details of great honesty on the journey towards the completion of this film. In that Parker talks about the truthfulness of the real events to the film and that should be the disclaimer message for the films made out from the actual events. Truth as it stands has drifted so far away and the remaining piece of the ordeal are the emotions, the desperation and the smell of freedom. That cannot be drifted and that has no nationality.

In the light of that information, I treated the film as a work of fiction shaping a character who may or may not be the real Billy Hayes and the ambience may or may not be the country of any origin which in this case happens to be Turkey. Right from the opening scene when Billy Hayes (Brad Davis) packs his body with bars of Hashish and the inevitable capture in the airport, Parker holds us on our nerves. The feeling returns back at the end to not believe in this possibility. Every where we know the conclusion but doubt whether we are right and it aggravates the tension in monumental amounts.

Hayes eventually getting caught receives three and half years prison time in the worst possible conditions of a prison. Prisons need not be shown any more cruel than it already is. It is not a fact oblivious for any one that it robs the most basic thing we walk freely upon, the freedom. Hayes pays for his stupidity and there is a moving scene with his father (Mike Kellins) on his departure leaving his dear son to the hell hole. Hayes makes friends and may be a little more than friends. In prison to simulate the proximity of being held on and to not lose the sense of touch, sexual orientation little does matter when it is needed. Here he is tempted to the invitations of his jail mate Erich (Norbert Weisser).

Parker in 1978 denies the audience the rights of understanding the Turkish guards and prisoners conversing as Hayes would have went through. Hence we mimic his capability to make head and tail of the language with nothing positive other than to know the level of extremity the despair and pain is going to be. The jail warden (Paul Smith) provide the muscle torture with no mercy while the creepy diabolical smile of Rifki (Pauolo Bonacelli) the rat of the prison supply the terror factors for Hayes. Hayes forms friend ship with two characters at the brink of insanity in their degree of physicality. They is an Englishman Max (John Hurt) deep into the drug effects of codine for his gastro problems and Jimmy (Randy Quaid) a rage monger having had enough of this prison.

Hayes counts his days of punishment for three and half years only to be denied before 53 days of his supposed release by the high court to convert his possession into smuggling resulting in a life sentence. The enrage at his sentencing is one of many scenes Brad Davis stuns with his acting. His physical and mental pain in making the film seem to be equivalent of the ordeal Hayes went through in real life. He is half naked to full naked most of the times and humiliation becomes a irremovable cloth. He has given up on anything and when he meets his girl friend Susan (Irene Miracle) on the other side of the glass, it is unbearable to watch him. The visceral nature of that in those times would have been deeply haunting and disturbing for the audience.

The cinematography of Michael Seresin merges in the shadows of the dirty walls and immerses in the tunnels of doom. It captures the reeking environment of these prisoners and adds a shine to a scene. It is classy in the shambles of this chilling place. The music of Giorgio Moroder fiddles the cinematography and the actors on the screen. It is neither enthralling nor secretively meshed. It carries the complex emotion of happiness and the failure of this man living in a situation of hopelessness.

Alan Parker’s “Midnight Express” is a carefully constructed epic scripted by Oliver Stone. It does not have any message nor a stand on the justice. It does not state a country’s corrupt system. The mess Hayes got himself into could have been in any country with an inhabitable state of affair in a prison located any region. While it is sad that Istanbul got a bad reputation, it does not intend that way. The film does not even try to take sides with Hayes. It follows him and never gives hope at any instance. We in the dismal shows of various attempts of Hayes and his crew going in air of debacle threatens to hope good as it would be broken badly. It in the work of fiction has become the test of human endurance and the morphing of the saneness in a locality completely detached of humanity. It is a clinical study of a person pushed on to his extremes by one stupid mistake.

"All or Nothing" (2002) - Movie Review

Where does the love and the spontaneity wither away when the long stretch of marriage seem to extend forever? Is there an hour glass of sand dripping its molecules of affection into the bottomless end of its other half oblivious of that fact? The great length of time which diminishes the stains of the pain also has the power to deposit the dusts in unforeseen corners in the houses of crooked walls and moulded doors. This is the vacuum of suffocation the middle aged couple Phil (Timothy Spall) and Penny (Lesley Manville) have in Mike Leigh’s “All or Nothing”.

In the silence of a household lies the inability to address the problem. Phil works as a taxi driver while Penny works in Safeway. They have an obese, rude and bum as a son named Rory (James Corden) doing nothing but also have a sweet big girl Rachel (Alison Garland) working in a nursing home. Penny has an aura of dislike towards her husband. She is cold and distant when he comes by and acknowledges with minute spells of frown which is not a yell nor a nicety. It is a speck of bitterness sprayed along with innuendoes that she could have done better than Phil.

Her unhappiness does not have to been inflicted by the inability of Phil to make her satisfied. Rather it is the responsibility of the monetary balance and maturity boding as a character of seriousness which has made her into this dim lit mother of this house. This does not spare Phil as he mumbles his despair of being lonely in a family to his customers giving us a taste of the characters he meets in a day.

In the meantime we see a cheery and optimistic colleague of Penny, Maureen (Ruth Sheen) with rebellious daughter Donna (Helen Coker). As Rory, Donna rains swear and despise towards her mother to leave her alone and let her be. Unlike Penny Maureen converts every one of those into a joke of her own. Donna has a ruffian boyfriend Jason (Daniel Mays) who freaks out when he learns Donna is pregnant. Maureen does not need much of an explanation after seeing a bruised Donna and figures out the rest. She protects her daughter with a swiftness and empathy only a mother could do.

There is another family Leigh focuses on which is Phil's fellow mate Ron (Paul Jesson) and his perennially inebriated wife Carol (Marion Bailey). They have a daughter Samantha (Sally Hawkins) again the do-nothing in the family. She teases Jason and a stalker Craig (Ben Crompton) as if to feel alive. She is constantly in hurt from her parents and her way out is to play the teasing of love and affection to the opposite sex.

Leigh mixes these three families with a bit more analyze on Phil and Penny. As with most of his films Leigh has a beat for the middle class of London. And every time he finds an apartment with a flavour of its own. In its closed space and too many people evolves a stress with no effort. People constantly escaping other's faces to look away while they live under the same roof.

The running of family in the reality of money and responsibility whitens in a mellow fashion the love which has united them. Paying the school fees, finding the right dresses and the constant fear of the future has cuffed the members of moderately financed family. The hard work develops a pride and expectation from every one around them to contribute above and beyond as they keep forgetting the bond which keeps them together. In "All or Nothing" it is that building up of pressure bursting into tears for Phil and Penny.

Timothy Spall is splendid as this soft spoken and sympathizing dad. He goes to his son and in a nice calm way asks to roll over the couch to look for the smashed up pound. Then he knocks on his daughter's door and asks her some money and look at him while he gets it. His inside little shame comes out in his body language. He then goes to Penny and how cheaply she looks down and treats him in giving the money. The money is for the rent to his boss. Phil has lost his interest and became a matter of indifference forgetting everything around him. He feels his family especially his wife is riding as a customer in his taxi waiting for her destination while he loves her to the deepest.

Leigh's film is a great skill of ambidexterity in handling reality of life and artistry of film making. He gives us the feel for the job these people do. He did the behavioral work of the customers coming for portrait in "Secrets and Lies" while we see the flurry characters of customers in "All or Nothing" coming to the backside seat of Phil's taxi. Each we identify, empathize and also resemble a lot like us in frustrations, murmur and silence. The love of Leigh's film is reaching the peak of mine as it goes for Paul Thomas Anderson and Sam Mendes. The strange thing is that Leigh has been directing great films from 1971 starting with his "Bleak Moments" while Mendes and Anderson are the product of the 90s. For me it is a little late but if I could do a bit in exposing this great director to the readers I would feel atoned for not knowing Leigh all this time.

"The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" (2008) - Movie Review

“The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” adapted from the novel by John Boyne is a story of a childhood beginning to question the shades of reasoning by the adults. The indoctrination on definition of right and wrong, friends and enemies looms from what the parents ask them to be. When the exposure happens does it make the child go confused on who his or her father is and what really does the education he have been receiving mean begins to haunt the tender heart. In the Nazi regime of atrocities which by now have been taken in films which I am losing counts and many in the spirit of goodness has educated it beyond any reasonable doubt. Why would I then recommend this film once again about time in holocaust and why it should be any different? Beyond the cruelty of the killings is the generation born to these Nazi generals who were carrying out the orders and how did it affect them.

Eight year old Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is sad because his father (David Thewlis) informed that the family is moving to a different place. His sister Gretel (Amber Beattie) though is excited. Bruno has to find new friends to play with. His mother (Vera Farmiga) assures him that the place has garden to play which impresses little for Bruno. Bruno’s father is a Nazi soldier and the new place is a mile away from the camp. Bruno is curious when he sees a group of people from his window to be dressed similar with stripes. He tells this to his mother and she immediately bolts the window.

Bruno ventures on exploration behind his house which has been warned against by his mother. He finds a fence (which he learns later that is electrified) and a little boy of his same age is sitting dressed in striped uniform on the other side of it. The boy is Shmuel (Jack Scanlon) and he is in the camp. Bruno asks whether the uniform with the number is a game and Shmuel says it is not. Like this Bruno learns that he is a Jew and Bruno remembers that then Shmuel is supposed to be his enemy as his tutor Herr Liszt (Jim Norton) told him and his sister. He is confused than to blindly abide that. His sister unlike begins to fall for it which is more for her crush, a young Lieutenant Kotler (Rupert Friend).

As for many kids, for Bruno and Gretel their father is their hero. Bruno exposed to the camp and finding that Shmuel a Jewish kid is the same as he is desperately wants to believe that his dad is not mistreating the people in the camp. He sneaks in a façade film presentation of the camp watched by his dad and his superiors where the place is nice and well treated. He hugs his dad immediately for not letting him down. In the meanwhile Bruno’s mother smells the horrid odour as Bruno does and learns that people are burned in the camp. While she was aware of the camp, her “See No Evil” conveniently discarded the possibility of atrocities and as the kids she believes in her husband’s sanity in humanity. She is disappointed and soon she begins to dissolve in the guilt, madness and frustration of her being the silent witness to this evil.

The film never directly shows the inhumane conditions and lets the kids discuss their perspective of each side. Being untouched by the clutches of the hatred, Bruno without any education to tell him knows that what is happening is fishy. How clean is a kid’s mind that sometimes ignorance is in fact the bliss she/he needs to be in. The knowledge they are going to get growing is the knowledge to manufacture killing machines for bigot, hatred and inhumanity. The story of the film reminds what is fed into the kids now a day. What is that they grow and taught in the circle of society? Are they in the rational learning clinically absorb the concept of goodness as a study and discard it in the cynicism they witness and made believe? What is to believe of the government, country and worse their parents on recognizing the good and evil? The generation in the wake of technology and terror are both well informed and badly nurtured at the same time with the absorption for hatred in smears of sporadic emotions.

“The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” is not the story of the camp but a reminder what the kids are aware and taught of. It is a story how we are as an adult proclaim the wrongdoing as pragmatism for survival to the weak heart. And the minds gulp it in a sweet swallow in fear of being denied of the love from their parents. Gretel as Bruno knows the wrong doing but denies it over the credibility she has over the adults. But who decides the credibility and are we capable of advocating the right and wrong as clearly as possible? Is knowledge be a doctrine of wrong facts or a teaser for greater questions to be looked upon openly and with multitudes of possibility in this continuously growing diverse and wide world? When you come out of the film with soaked hearts think what you will be telling the kids about your frustration and complains against a community, a country, a religion or any one at all.

"Milk" (2008) - Movie Review

Sean Penn can flex in a jiffy from film to film with a cathartic change in each character. He portrays Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person to be city supervisor in San Francisco. Milk was assassinated and the film unfolds Sean Penn as Milk taping his statement in the event of his sudden demise of what he did and what it meant to him and others. A film coming up in the wake of Prop 8 being passed, it resonates how much we have come forward and yet how blaringly we are still behind in the acceptance of people for their individuality.

The movie begins Milk in his born spontaneity asking randomly a man he crosses over in a subway, Scott (James Franco) for an immediate date citing his birthday in few hours. After the flirtatious convincing argument over his age being a factor for Scott they end up in bed discussing his 40th year birthday that he jokingly laments of how much of nothing he did in this life. Scott becomes a change in his lifestyle and he goes more open and moves in to the Castro Street and opens a camera shop. Thus begins the day to day accumulation of the discrimination and irritation urging out in his shop and becomes the epicenter for his campaign to get in the office.

Milk more than the biopic is about the attitude of gays being looked down upon in the period of 70s which definitely is not a novel way in pictures like this. But it is about an impulsive man who thought that sitting in the closet does not help in getting what you want but doing something about it and that is this film is about. Standing for it and the interesting thing about the film is that we exactly do not know his values which are buried in the fights. In that Gus Van Sant have a minute surprises and which is the organism of politics getting the man. Apart from his fight for gay rights, he played the game well to get his points across. In a very small scene with Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber), the Mayor tells him who he sounds like now, a politician. Moscone jokes though in that submerged truth but Milk knows the transformation and he is elated to do more things with the power.

When gays are portrayed focusing a little more than usual on their promiscuity, it seem to have been of prominence. They want it to be open so that the people get used to it. In India physical intimacy in public is frowned upon or even worse teased and humiliated and in the 1970 San Francisco that would have been the situation for them. The difference is gay people said this is what who we are and we are not embarrassed about it. If some one has a problem, keep it with them was the statement. In another daring scene, Milk asks his friends and campaign supporters to disclose their sexuality to their family against their privacy. When voices need to be heard, privacy needs to take the door out.

The man who killed Milk, Dan White (Josh Brolin) and his relationship with Milk is a small but significant portion of the film. The manner Milk says to his friends that he sees White as some one caught up behind the Irish Catholic upbringing and in fact suspects him to be gay. Both men have this tension and White is both bound by the charisma and the dauntless behaviour of Milk. It is as if he cannot bare the sight of this man humiliating his presence of weakness. Brolin is mainly effective in this role as this complex person tightening inside and how he dances around with whispering yelling to Milk.

“Milk” has potential devoted casts as James Franco, Diego Luna and Emile Hirsch. Milk was so much into the activism that his personal life was in shambles. He was not able to attend his partner’s needs both Scott and the Jack Lira (Diego Luna). In former it ends in a break up while in latter tragedy strikes. He fights for the right to have normal social life in the society but it affects to have a personal livelihood with his lovers. This Catch-22 is another side of this man we see.

Harvey Milk was a brave man proclaiming his sexuality which three quarters of the population dislike. But that is exactly was his point that differences is bound to be existent and to discriminate to have a better equal status in society was the issue. I am sure while most of the people heard about Milk would not have seen him up close or for that matter his speech. And Sean Penn brings him to life in which we do not see a character in a film but a fighting man went down in history. Penn is remarkable in giving that.

"Slumdog Millionaire" (2008) - Movie Review

When Amitabh Bachhan took the hosting seat of “Kaun Banega Crorepathi”, the Indian version of “Who wants to be millionaire?” it had the initial suspicion of how a quiz show distributed among the regular people would even try to get some one to win the competition. Yet, many won a substantial amount of money no one expected to win and finally one contestant did win the one crore rupees named Harshvardhan Navathe.

The show worked for two reasons in my opinion and the first will be the hosting of Bachhan himself. He is the larger than life image who sat there talked with the contestant who grew up watching him kick bad guys on screen just like Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) did and the comfort level he was with them. Unlike the movie’s host Prem Kumar (Anil Kapoor), he embraced them getting down in his husky masculine voice and the delivery of those conversations came out with the feeling that he really wanted them to win. Second will be the “common” person going out and have a chance to turn around the financial part of their life. That part of the fantasy was the adrenaline and the energy of some one winning gave a hope for the viewers that there is a possibility. That show was the beginning of the game show in Indian Television and ended immediately as the theme popped up dime a dozen.

“Slumdog Millionaire” works through the formula and the definite ending of a high note because as the show itself, we want Jamal to win. In a style of “The Usual Suspects”, Jamal is being interrogated with an initial torture in a police station by Inspector (Irrfan Khan) and a typical terrorizing constable Srinivas (Saurab Shukla). They question on his credibility in being successful so far in the completion. They believe that Jamal an uneducated can never win the contest and he is one shot way from the two crore rupees. The film runs through in three lines, one with Jamal’s interrogation, his flash back and the game itself. How come he was able to answer the questions when his childhood had enough time for a constant running from the law and the street slave runners? Danny Boyle gives a film in blend of Indian and his style of film making.

In the slums of Mumbai, I have seen and stayed for a week in the nearby vicinity of the places the film shows some ten years back. And Boyle with his co-director Loveleen Tandan gives those inhumane conditions to have a child hood with an unbelievable air of positivity. We flinch when the small kid Jamal (Ayush Mahesh Khedekar) jumps in to pool of fecal matter to escape from the bath room lock his kid brother Salim (Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail) put when the celebrity Bacchan lands in the middle of the slum and yet when Jamal holds the picture of the star high up in the air to run soaked and smelling in the excrete amongst the crowd, it simply marks the energy of him. That bumbling attitude of him makes this formula work charmingly.

In no measure the film surpasses the greatness but I could not stop admiring how it found the place. The rags to riches story could have been made as sports film routine and sap it out till it was dry. But Boyle with his screenwriter Simon Beaufoy weaves an element of thriller, a twist and this journey of the kid along with a brother small stepping to be this gangster and finally running constantly for his love Latika (Freida Pinto). Growing up amongst the dramatic elements of Indian cinema, certain elements obviously would be a run on the mill and yet I liked it. I liked the way how each of the characters identified instantly by looking and hearing their voice which any one who would have watched those films would know about.

With a sufficient amount of film in Hindi, I had a complaint why did they drop it during when Jamal in his early teens (Tanay Hemant Chheda) begin to converse in a very good English. But the rate at which the kids are exposed away from the school to the language is immense that it amidst the nudge convinces us. It has a very regular acting from the leads and supporting roles. They have to be as the motion of the film is the story. It is the editing which runs the show.

“Slumdog Millionaire” is the talk of the festivals and a strong contender for many awards. I did not find it extremely appealing in that sense of appreciation. It is what “The Bourne Ultimatum” is for thriller as that for the category of “pleasers”. It is a film for the people who go to films for “entertainment” and for the avid film seekers. It in its non-linear narration provides an interesting story and soothes every part of the genre in the books. It encapsulates the appeal in a much wider audiences and that is a great thing. Rarely films with substance propagate deep and wide as this does.

I mentioned the positivity in the darkest of times in the life of these kids and the locations were shot on those. Never have I seen the colours in despair appeal so much. Similarly the angles of camera by Anthony Dod Mantle placing us in the hot seat and from the corner of the ears of the host and Jamal tickle the enormity of the game show inspiringly. A.R. Rahman gives a peppy back ground score and I sincerely have to thank him for not using the traditional Indian Sitar music. Why does it is a thematic immediacy to use those instruments to give the feel of India? Rahman and Boyle understand that and they provide a racy beat and do see the dance number when the credits run.

For a person who has seen the Bollywood films, “Slumdog Millionaire” is a great film. It gives the city of Mumbai in its vibrancy of destitute with a charisma to it. It always keeps us informed and the shots of flash backs and the game does not stretch a bit. It sinks in as the immaculate completion of a jig saw puzzle. But some one seeing on the planes of wide range of cinema, the film is not great but good. I explained myself in differentiating views for this film as it gives in both styles. “Slumdog Millionaire” does appeal to all the critics in US for that reason for seeing an Indian film to perfection. It delivers that for sure but the routine I have seen growing up is hard to forget being repeated. I liked those repetitions for the nostalgia in subtlety but did not get mesmerized by it.

"Raising Arizona" (1987) - Movie Review

Oh what can I say about me and the unsettling inharmonic wavelength with the Coen brothers. They are the master of a particular kind of film making which I would certainly be able to separate upon from the mix of thousands of films but their artistry is limited in few of those which have appealed to me. “Raising Arizona” is a comedy in Coen brother’s style with an unfamiliar Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter kidnapping a baby from the quintuplets of an Arizona furniture store owner. But it is not plot driven isn’t it?

HI (Nicolas Cage) is a recidivist (word of the day for me) and how often some one uses that in a film or may be even in coming books now a day. His regular visitation to the prison ward acquaints him not only to the prisoners but the cop out there Ed (Holly Hunter). Soon they marry and the couple settles for a peaceful regular life and in comes the need for a baby and Ed is not capable of having one. Sadness spreads and sudden news of the quintuplets triggers the craziness of the stable mind Ed has. They decide to take one from the many the Arizona’s (Trey Wilson and Lynn Dumin Kitei) have. In a flow of narrated series of scene in five minutes into the film we are made aware of the details I mentioned above. Then we see the chain of connected ridiculous events and the characters that align it with goofiness only Coen brothers could make it look like a work of perfection.

Where do these brothers get their inspiration for these quirky personalities? They speak in disjointed words with a vocabulary of a seasoned novelist and come out with a spooky statement which on surface gives a polished suaveness but in a deeper thinking make it the worst frame of sentence ever. Their existence is made possible in a look for a certain dimension of presentation by these two men. The comedy is as dry as the deserts of the state coming in the film. The throat is barren and longs for a droplet of a water and we laugh with that in the idiocy of the people in it. It reminded the matured nicety “Burn After Reading” carries.

A shabbily dressed man in the bushes of hair dried on wetted sand and what not and looking like to have jumped from the grind house screens of Mad Max is Smalls, Leonard Smalls (Randall “Tex” Cobb). Out he is developed from the nightmares of HI and for no reason offers to hunt down the baby. Then are the prisoners and Brothers Glenn (John Goodman) and Evell (William Forsythe) digging their way out of what looks like a dampened septic tank outside of the prison. In a swing of bent reality of madness and idiosyncrasy procreates this film with panned unique camera shots and a range of artistic audibility to the fans of these one of a kind duos.

The cinematography of Barry Sonnenfield hurries behind the criminals, dogs, super market carts, front of the bike, rear of the car, inside the claustrophobic trailers and out of the infinite lands of heat. There is a field of magnetism in this kind of film making. Their humour depends on a sweet sense of idiocy and a thought of uniqueness specifically addressed to a taste which provides the essence of a comic empathy for the viewers which never can quite be explained.

Every time I watch their films I end up in guffaws and a pinch to wake me up from the weirdness of characters and sequences. Rarely have I been satisfied without a speck of complaint. Despite individuality in a kind of inventiveness few people in the current film making could dare to present upon, they end sufficiently deficit in the scale of the taste I maintain. It is a complex association with their films for me. I could clearly see their talent but also honestly say that the talent they bore is not my cup of tea. Or may be I develop this unyielding expectation which takes a lot to fill up? I loved “The Big Lebowski” and “Burn After Reading” but the placid liking I had for “No Country for Old Men”, “Fargo” and “Miller’s Crossing” carries in for “Raising Arizona”. That would not mean I would give up that scale of appreciation for these perfectionists rather it increases it as I would never know the time when the peace between my expectation and their talent is absolutely made.

"Secrets & Lies" (1996) - Movie Review

Watching Mike Leigh’s film is something every one viewing would have seen it in their family. It would be their mother, their uncle, their cousins talking back, going emotional in a flip of a second and embrace being the sun of this big wide solar system of family. Of me being unaware of the plethora of variety Timothy Spall has done in his career, this was a surprise. I have only seen him as the sleazy English man wandering as a virus and side kick for the villains in many films. Along with every other panache performances, Spall simply breaks us down in the party of people blurting truth and secrets as a hang over person throwing up. It is ugly but to be got over with to clean the system.

Leigh’s cameraman Dick Pope’s visual equipment clings on to the corners and doors of a crooked apartment. The dining table pushed in against the wall to have two members sitting opposite and not see eye to eye, the couch which seem to have helped consummate many of the sexual appetite and the doors that have been opened for surprises. It is in small, medium and large depending on the financial freedom of a person and in Leigh’s it is mostly on the middle class. Here it would be Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn) working in a factory with the earning paying her rent and smokes.

She has a daughter Roxanne (Claire Rushbrook) who hates her mother with a knife on her throat slicing with words, frowns and snubbing in that small apartment. She will be twenty one in couple of months as we see her Uncle Maurice (Timothy Spall) and Aunt Monica (Phyllis Logan) in their big house looking at the child portrait of Roxanne mentioning it wistfully. They have loved her as a child from their sighs and Monica has mothered her from her resentment towards Cynthia on certain things.

This is the family Hortense (Marianne Jean-Bapiste) is going to get in. After her mother’s demise, in the act of curiosity she begins to search for her biological mother. Cynthia is that and meeting her makes the people swivel in the ending drama. Every time a scene starts we are as if entering couple of people in middle of their conversations. Not that it sounds but it feels like that. People mentioning events in a push and stress on words and glances and we have no clue on the topic. As if we are in the dark of the truth, the thing bringing the enmity and love is not known. The histories are not explained because so it has been by each other.

And this despise between Cynthia and Monica not in the “never to see each other” relation but in the friendlier conversations sliding those remarks as easy and soft but painful to the extent not on the words rather on the secrecy of their loose leaving of sentences. The doubt and presumptions takes care of the rest. When Cynthia and Monica finally meet and Monica proudly presents her home of six bedrooms and interior decorations, Cynthia fuels up in that high pitched voice of her. What is that in between these two? It will be revealed and not the made up drama suspense but one we could see it coming. But what it is really is the love being shared off. Maurice the connecting factor of these two never really gets understood by each other. Roxanne becomes another end of the knot to deal with. Everything is out on the table in the end and Spall is astounding in it.

I do not know whether Brenda Blethyn changed her voice for this but I can only compare that voice to a tiny rat in an unnoticed corner of a room making sounds and movements. Not largely annoying but grows on as it grows too. She falls out flat in tears the moment she is slightly overwhelmed. She is the aunt we stay away from because she is up all our faces. The aunts who think a hug is the best thing to comfort regardless of the timing and the person’s inclination to it. She puts so many “darlin’, sweet hearts” that it soon becomes a rattling expression we would not want to hear at all. But she is the one who makes the favourite sweet with a sick cold after the cooking for ten people. She is the one who in those expressions means every bit of it. It is just that she picks the most awful worst time in the perfect right manner to ruin everything and follows it up with the abundance of unwanted love for the situation.

Leigh binds these elements together in a room and puts two poor people who have nothing to do with the family apart from being a boy friend of Roxanne (Lee Ross) and a secretary (Elizabeth Berrington) for Maurice. If I was in their shoes, I would move far away from this family. But the truth is it exists behind the apartments and a big house in us isn’t it? We want to run away because we do not need one another family to deal with. Leigh made his debut “Bleak Moments” with the title resonating in the screenplay and “Secrets & Lies” could have been named “Uncomfortable Moments”. But we have to face it and we have to sustain it because that is what the family is, “Secrets & Lies” and when it breaks out it is either mayhem or a chance to reconcile.

"Twilight" (2008) - Movie Review

And so they said, not the vampires in Peoria but the fans of it that the release of this film “Twilight” is going to come and that is the next greatest thing in the world after Obama making the historic win. I got to be under the skins of Michelle from “American Pie” and here it goes, “This one time, when I was tricked by the fallacy of the hype and everything and then I paid like seven dollars to get into this film called Twilight and it went on and on and on…and it was not fun”. The defcon level of disaster increases as I learn that the director is Catharine Hardwicke who gave the wonderful “Thirteen”. What a shame.

I was talking with a colleague of mine who is just out of school and the topic of which film I will be watching this weekend came up. I was saying about the hype of this film and he was asking whether I am aware of what kind it is. I had a slight clue but he put it like this, “teenage vampire romantic love story” and that encompasses everything that makes the film to be judged in a second. So I entered the movie theatre as the regular out of the usual single Indian guy. There have been lots of out of usual when I go to a theatre. The one when I was the only one sitting for an 11:00 clock morning show of “Lions for Lambs”, the one when I was the only person below the age of 50 in the audience and then it is “Twilight”. The single Indian male sitting alone with a majority audience of males been dragged by their girl friends, wives and the mom accompanying their teenage girls. I was talking about the target audience in the previous review for today, “Bolt”. Here they are and the show began.

I would not dare doubt the quality of visuals in the film. The dreary Washington state with rains nullifying the greens while among that dull climate moves Bella (Kristen Stewart) to the town of Forks with her dad Charlie (Billy Burke), the silent chief of police. She is more than welcomed in the high school out there with the kids giving summarization of each group and there comes the Cullen’s family. Everybody is pale as corpse and happiness are wiped clean and immaculate by a cleenex tissue fresh every moment. There is Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and if some one have not figured out that he is the vampire, then they would love this film.

Cullen almost pukes seeing Bella or does he covering his sudden growth of extra teeth to suck the blood of Bella? Oh, I did not know and giggles all over the place. I never understood the giggles as an acknowledgment of the people’s awareness of reading the novel by Stephenie Meyer which gave birth to this film. I remember the reverberating pains of sound waves when I went for the first Harry Potter film. I went away from the thought; anyways some thing propels Bella to go madly in love with this boy who has nothing but shades of doubts and creepiness. Even after coming to be aware of the fact that he and his whole family are controlling their urges to hunt humans for food and he very well is more than a century older than her, she trusts him. Teenage times are for tough in terms of generating unconditional love without anything at all. The same director gave it with a slice of flesh in the reality in “Thirteen”. Here I have to see the credits to believe she directed this.

I had major complaints on two things, screenplay and acting. Screenplay seems to rely on the cool factor of being a vampire and use condescending lines of obviousness coming out as a parade of facades. The baseball scene would be the perfect example. The acting while I would purely judge upon the characters the people were given upon. Kristen Stewart is numb and I would have had her to be the zombie on any day. If at all for her being attractive, she would have not have sold the quarter of the character of Bella. I feel that Robert Pattinson was forced to act in such a way of having an expression of being constantly constipated when he undergoes the pain and agony of oscillation in approaching and avoiding Bella. When he is out of it, he is good and makes Edward work. Rest of the time, he is a pale freaky guy with lipstick and dry hair gel badly in need of a good digestion.

I know that I am coming hard on this film. In fact I am pretty much aware that many teenage fans would mark their memories based on this film. The anticipation and the enthusiasm can be much empathized. Because as some one who got sucked in to the science fiction genre of reading books, I had the same reaction for a film which was called “Sphere”. Michael Crichton who recently died marks a great memory for his impressive books over me and my brother. While we thoroughly enjoyed many of his books, “Sphere” hit on the spot and aspired to develop a fake liking for being a geek. The film came by with a cast of Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone and Samuel L. Jackson and it disappointed in ways I could not imagine. We were in denial for a while but soon swallowed the fact the film just sucked. I made a memory, a bad one and I guess the teenage fans will have one too of “Twilight”.

"Bolt" (2008) - Movie Review

“Bolt” is a fun ride. I can finish it over there and be done with the review. What is the substance I am going to discuss on an animated feature with a dog Bolt (voice of John Travolta) who thinks it’s a super power dog since it believes the TV series is the real world and an alley cat named Mittens (voice of Susie Essman) having deals with Pigeons on fetching its food and an equally mesmerized Hamster Rhino (voice of Mark Walton) idolizing Bolt? It is possible.

Disney Animation Studios renders its animation on following a dog so serious in its life of guarding its owner, Penny (voice of Miley Cyrus). The opening scene of the TV series is a wet dream for any comedy director. Directors Chris Williams and Byron Howard take the insane spoof of the action films and splash their imagination over it to give a “Hot Fuzz” in total animation. In the middle of the city launches fighter helicopters and lands its bike soldiers and they fire everything they have got while Penny escapes with her omnipotent dog Bolt in her scooter. That is blockbuster entertainment spoofed well.

When the lights go out Bolt goes back to his trailer and thinks Penny is in constant attack and threat from the TV villain and his side kicks. We are informed of its naivety through couple of other animals used in the series casually and in fact taking time to tease Bolt. Obviously to humans the talk between the animals are their barks or meows, do not we all know that by now? Anyways in the fright of losing the ratings and the series the director (voice of James Lipton) puts a twist on the happy predictability into a capture of Penny. Bolt as usual believes it and events occur for him to land in New York. Now he got to find back his Penny who is in Los Angeles and save her and this is the first time he is seeing the outer world.

He assimilates couple of sidekicks and off they go on a road trip. There is a weakness in the viewers for animated films. Because this is where the target audiences play a major roll to mould the content and for them it is an easy fair to be entertained. The kids would be more than happy to be staring and been absorbed by the characters from the screen and more due to the range of fast movements, the chases, funny falls and the cutesy talks. But I should have got bored by now in viewing many films of those. That is when it stuck that the enormity in the content of the project never can be dismissed in any kind of film.

If a film addressed to a particular audience wants to take a serious considerations in its script and invites the viewers to go along with it, the expectations dynamically is altered and depending on the execution the film succeeds or fails. “Ratatouille” and “Wall-E” invited in to a new way of film making or may be reinventing the silent films in the latter while the character drama in the former. It worked and worked best because of the screenplay and the animation accentuated it hitting the right places.

“Bolt” in the voices of Travolta, Essman and Walton is an energizer bunny ride. The agility of this little dog helps a lot in that kinetic choreograph of running amongst people and heavy vehicles with knack and nimbleness. The slow mo in jumping and the expected disaster of the little creature at the end of it floats us and brings a laugh along with the kids besides us. And for the adults comes the funny Italian accented pigeons. This is what amazes me in the creativity of these animations. They take the film’s stereotypes and the cities diverse mix and the dealing in the society into these unexpected animals coming off as the funniest settings every time in all these films.

“Bolt” as most of the animated films I have seen do it better and good. “Igor” amidst my appreciation has a touch of ordinary in it. “Bolt” is a step above it and suffices the conditions for being a successful children’s film. Yet under the criteria of the review, it is a good and better film in the regular flow of movies. “Bolt” is entertaining, funny, and cute and the whole nine yards of the animation films.