Dil Chahta Hai - a scary thought

Almost eight years on, watching this film it seems that most of my fears have come true. I do not like it anymore. These are the people I was worried will take over the world. Don't get me wrong. I had watched it 5 times when it was released. So in a way I have contributed to this conspiracy. While...

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Bonded

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Madhur Bhandarkar's Fashion

The basic formula for any Madhur Bhandarkar film is as straight as it gets and his latest Fashion continues the tradition. Even though the film is laced with stupidity, Fashion manages to work on a lot of levels.(Click here to read a review of Fashion)The underdog usually comes from some godforsaken small town to the biggest baddest city in the world called Mumbai. Here the protagonist, usually a...

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(No) Thank You for the Music

First a question. Where the hell was the bass guitarist? No seriously, where was he hiding? Or was the band Magic modeled after The Doors? Definitely the music did not sound that good.Rock On pretends to be a journey of four members of a band that used to play together in college and then split up due...

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The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight is everything you'd expect from a summer blockbuster and then some. In addition the film is unlike a 'regular' superhero film. In any case one look at films like Iron Man and The Dark Knight and you know that superhero films aren’t' what they used to be.The Dark Knight continues the...

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Mission Istanbul

I’m tired of believing in things and then being taken for a royal ride. The promos and poster of Apoorva Lakhia’s debut feature Mumbai Se Aaya Mera Dost managed to rouse my curiosity. After watching the film I vowed never to see a Lakhia film. God save us for such a world where there is an Apoorva Lakhi...

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One More Kiss

I remember watching Kiss of the Spider Woman in college almost 20 years ago. Even then I was mesmerized by the images although I never understood many of the sub plots or contexts for the film. The funny thing was that unlike other films this one was never available on DVD, so I could not revisit...

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Samira's Garden

At the core of it Samira's Garden is a very basic idea and thankfully the execution is minimalist as well. Samira is coerced into marrying a middle aged widower. Her mother convinces her that perhaps some times in life one just has to do what has been planned out for them. This couldn't be truer for...

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Two Paul Schraders

Paul Schrader's two lectures at Cinefan Film Festival were clubbed with the screening of two of most well known works- Mishima and Taxi Driver. After attending the two lectures I realized that they were perhaps given by two different people.The lecture that followed Mishima was about the New Media and...

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A personal history of a Revolution

How does one judge a film that one has read as a book? We know the story of the little girl and her family in Iran during the 70's and the 80's. But what the two directors are able to bring to the movie is a certain sense of community and the several layers of life which I felt the book lacked.The...

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What Just Happened!??!

There he goes again! M. Night Shyamalan has done it again. Just saw The Happening and couldn't help but feel confused by the end of it. Usually when I end up watching a bad film, especially in a movie hall, I am besieged with a horrendous headache and am irritable. This is a sure shot way of finding...

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The Sound of 80's

What is the one big difference between the films of 1980’s and any other time?The music.Barring a handful of films most stand out films made in the 1980’s have really bad music. Noting could substantiate my claim better than William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in LA (1985). Most of us don’t think of...

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Ishtyle Bhai

What do you do when the film you labored over for months turns out to be an unmitigated disaster at the box office? Some times people blame shift and accuse the audiences’ incapacity to crack it. Sanjay Leela Bhansali is an old hand at this. Thanks to a film called Khamoshi-The Musical and its dismal performance, Mr. Bhansali is ready to fight it out with everyone and then some. Mr. Bhansali went...

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Iron Man

Iron Man might be the latest comic book infused with life but it's unlike any superhero film. That's largely because it doesn't treat the protagonist as a superhero with the weight of the world on his shoulders. The film is as straight as an arrow. I never read Iron Man comic and in a way I'm glad that...

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Meenaxi- Making Sense Now

Some times you watch a film and just don’t get it. Is it that difficult to understand a film? Is it really necessary to ‘get’ it? Not understanding a film can mean so many different things. I didn't understand Meenaxi- A Tale of 3 Cities and while we are at it, I didn’t decipher Anurag Kashyap’s No Smoking, Saawariya and Tashan but it's not the same thing!I’m not of the opinion that Meenaxi is the...

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The Evil That Stays Within Us

Apt Pupil(1998) was the follow up by Bryan Singer after the highly acclaimed The Usual Suspects. He later went on to do such commercial stuff like the X-Men series and Superman Returns, but none of them have the touch of the earlier films.When a student (Brad Renfro) discovers that an old man staying...

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Tashan

The thing with Tashan is that no one spent time on the script. The film could have been made interestingly only if the screenplay existed. Filled with loopholes bigger than the one in ozone layer, Tashan is really a let down considering that it’s been directed by a writer and produced by someone who...

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My Blueberry Nights

There was a great deal of enthusiasm surrounding My Blueberry Nights. This was Wong Kar Wai's first American film. Some years ago this move would have meant that he has 'sold' out but that argument doesn't hold water anymore. Wong's reputation of being a master filmmaker precedes him. His demigod stature...

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Juno or the Art of the giving away your child

The first thing that strikes you about Juno is that there is hardly any background score. I mean there are songs and the lead character is part of a band in school. But when Juno announces to her parents that she is pregnant, you are treated to normal sounds of her pacing around the room. Another place where she breaks down in the car and you are hearing traffic sounds. A well written script that...

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Human Error- 2001: A Space Odyssey

Arthur C Clarke once famously claimed, 'if you understood 2001 completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered." When Stanley Kubrick decided to make a science fiction he picked up a short story, The Sentinel, by Clarke to serve as the skeletal outline for 2001: A Space...

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Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

There was one question that I kept asking myself while watching Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. Is talent timeless?The superb crime thriller proves that the Sidney Lumet, 84, still delivers. Taking its title from an Irish toast, May you be 40 years in heaven before the devil knows...

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