Secretary

First off, let me say that I have no problem with S&M. I'm not bothered by it and I viewed this film with an open-mind. So the content of the movie was not why I disliked it.

The movie was dull and anti-climactic. It was TEDIOUS for me to watch, because I kept waiting for something to happen...and it didn't. Generally I find that when movies are slow, they are leading up to something big. Unfortunately, this did not. The ending was unsatisfied and too much akin to a "Hollywood ending".

After watching the movie, I felt like I wasted my time because the film was pointless.

Also, if the director was trying to show sadomasochism occurring in a real environment, he did a poor job. The sets, albeit aesthetically pleasing, did not fit the movie. The music was like that of a porno, which degraded the quality of the movie to me.

The atmosphere of the movie was all wrong...it felt cold, one-dimensional, and clinical. I didn't care about the characters at all.

this movie has got some real good reviews all over....I think that because a movie is "different" or "independent" people think that they are deep or intellectual by enjoying it. But I don't think that these had any hallmarks of a good movie. People just feel pressured to like it because it's indie.

I thought it was a waste of time...there are so many better movies than this.

Rating :

* & 1/2

Love Aaj Kal

Boy meets girl. Boy and girl go out for sometime - before they separate (could be for any reason). Then love guru comes in and encourages boy to realise his love. Sometime later, boy suddenly realises he loves girl and rushes back to girl who has been pining away for him all this while. Happy ending !!

If you deconstruct any love story, it looks as daft as this. But most of the memorable romantic movies work because of their fresh approach to the same old story or some really good performances from the leads – you just have to look at director Imtiaz Ali’s first work Socha Na Tha to see how it works so wonderfully well. In Love Aaj Kal, there is a yet new approach – of two parallel love stories 40 years apart – where Saif Ali Khan plays both the male leads (after all, its his own movie – he can act in triplicate if he so pleases !!). However all the good of the script is lost because of some poor casting and trying-too-hard-to-be-cool dialogues !!

Both Saif and Deepika especially, are misfits for the roles they have been cast in. Saif looks too old in most of the scenes of modern-day Jai and Deepika just cant act much. In most of the crucial scenes in the movie – the first breakup, the second breakup and then the scene after the wedding, Deepika hardly says anything !! All that her face conveys is a bemused expression !! While Saif atleast does the Veer Singh role admirably, Deepika has hardly anything going for her except her dazzling smile and extremely long legs !

However there is some fine acting on display too - from Rishi Kapoor, Veer Singh senior and aforementioned love guru as well as Giselle Monteiro, the very pretty Harleen Kaur (you have to admire the twists of fate – a Brazilian model playing the demure Punjabi kudi from Old Delhi !!). Infact, it’s the 40 year old love story of Veer Singh and Harleen which actually rescues the movie. A delightfully old fashioned and cute love story, conducted entirely in glances and silence – wins everybody’s hearts.

Apart from the bad casting, the modern track between Jai and Meera just doesn’t have any chemistry between them. They meet, become friends, then start going out – but never appear convincing as a couple. I mean commitment phobia doesn’t need to be passionless ! Add to it the ‘cool’ dialogues – Saif tries off the Hum Tum-esque cool casual approach but his dialogues felt like he was trying too hard - he doesn’t deliver one single dialogue linearly !! And both Jai and especially Meera do not succeed in making us understand what they are truly feeling – so a lot of scenes in the second half of the movie sort of feel like a bolt from the blue.

However, even with the imperfect casting, its not as if the lead actors are without any virtues. Even if they do not come across as the perfect couple, Jai and Meera’s initial scenes have a nice joie de vivre. There is one particularly engaging scene immediately after the breakup where they tell each other what they didn’t particularly like in each other. And the interactions between Saif and Rishi Kapoor are also very likeable.

The songs, while likeable, are not placed perfectly and the Twist song particularly feels out of place.

The older love story will surely have you smiling, especially at their last scene together (where we see the older Harleen). It will definitely bring a smile on your face.

Overall, a better Hindi film in recent times.

Rating :

* * *

The Lives Of Others

The Lives Of Others (Das Leben des Anderen) is actually a German Movie with English subtitles. I had heard lot of good things about the movie (apparently our very own Shahrukh Khan wanted to produce a movie similar to this one ) and it actually holds 8.5 rating at IMDB. It also won the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Movie.

And Does the Movie deliver, It does.

It is a beautiful film about the power and frailty of life and love. Set in East Germany about 5 or 6 years before the fall of the Berlin wall, it is the setting for a story that is at once both a chilling reminder of the depths to which unchecked governmental power can sink and at the same time a beacon of hope that humanity cannot be totally crushed even in the most repressive regimes.

Ulrich Mühe plays Hauptmann, a cold ruthlessly efficient Stasi (the East German secret police, an Orwellian organization if ever there was one) agent assigned to monitor Georg Dreyman, a prominent playwright who is suspected of harbouring anti-government sentiments. Hauptmann sets about prying into every aspect of Dreyman's life looking for dirt, but initially there isn't really very much to find. However, as he continues to devote his life to watching Dreyman's he begins to be drawn in by the life and love of Dreyman and his wife (Martina Gedeck), a well-known actress who is the one actually hiding some secrets.

Mühe plays his role of a man gradually earning his redemption brilliantly, allowing his human compassion to show itself little by little, odd and disturbing at times and genuinely moving at others. Primarily its a story one man's inner struggle with himself and his duty to his country...but as the decisions he has to make become progressively complex throughout the movie, the more of the inner struggle takes over him until he is forced to make some hard decisions that will end the lives of others. Ultimately, although Muhe is the hunter and Dreyman the prey, you begin to realize in a sense that both are victims of a brutal, inhumane system. Overall, This is a phenomenal piece of film-making. A rare gem and a must see for anyone has interest in serious dramas. One of the best films you will ever see.. it truly leaves an impact. The music, the story, the acting will keep you glued every minute till the final resolution. Highly recommended.

Rating :

* * * *

Capote

I finally managed to see Capote which had been lieing in my library for long now...

And well, I was disappointed.

It's not that Capote is a bad movie by any stretch. The filmmakers clearly know how to make a movie, and the acting and writing is topnotch. It's just that...the movie is boring. It drags out for what seems like hours, but are only painful minutes. It harps on some plot points, but misses others or just pokes at them.

It seems like they were going for a real arty feel, and just ended up forgetting to add any added element to it. While being topnotch in many categories, it just doesn't have the uplifting, or movement needed to make a film be enjoyable on all counts. I wanted to fall asleep for much of the movie, it just was too boring for my liking.

The story itself is tremendously interesting, but the movie just lacks the life force and power to make the entire thing work. If they chopped a bit out, and added some more interesting elements to it, then it would have been a whole lot better.

Of course, Phillip Seymour Hoffman is fabulous as Capote himself. The mannerisms he inhibits are excellent, and you can really almost see the real man he's portraying.. He chews up every scene he's in, and completely blows all the other actors in the film into the wind.
The movie may be lacking, but he is not. He deserves the academy award hands down. It's a boring film with a astonishing Oscar worthy performance. If you have to see it, see it for Hoffman, and nothing else.

Before watching this movie.. i was not aware of the Famous writer Truman Capote and that he had written a very famous Novel In Cold Blood. So famous that the novel itself was made into a movie and there was another movie on relationship of Capote and the murderer named “Infamous”.

Infact, Phillip Seymour Hoffman has again played the character of Capote in “Infamous” too. Sounds intresting, aint it..

So will watch infamous soon in future and will review it here.

Rating :

* * & 1/2

Artificial Intelligence : A.I.

While seeing Steven Spielberg’s brilliant A.I, I was struck with wonder and haunted in ways only the best movies can do.

the movie is about a couple who receives a robot child to replace their child who has cancer and is cryogenically frozen, until a cure can be found.

The beginning parts with the family and Haley Jo Osmet as the Robot child David are fantastic. From the scence where he creepily follows her around the apartment to him watching them eat dinner as he mocks their movements with a fork and a bowl.

The problem with this type of robot is it is programmed to love unconditioally and the love is programmed so strongly that if the parent has to give the child back the best thing to do is to take it to the factory for its destruction.

Trouble begins when the real son is cured and comes home and breeds nothing but contempt for David, to the son David is a little toy to messed with. After a horrible accident by his mother in the woods with only a robotic Teddy Bear as his guide.

In the forest David meets Gigolo Joe a pleasure model designed for sexual gratification, and this begins the dark second half of this film. While the first half is light but creepy Spielberg, the second half is dark gloomy Kubrik. With such things as a flesh fair, (don't ask) and other haunting scenes. This half works as well if not better then the first half, and then it all goes to hell. The last half hour of this movie is atrocious, it was a waste of time and I so steamed they felt it needed to be in the film. I won't give away anything but the movie could have ended with a much tougher and more haunting ending then it did, because after the Kubrik half is over we get a final Spielbergian half hour.

Nevertheless A.I. is also visually stunning with excellent performances from the actors, especially Haley Joel Osment (who was so brilliant in the Sixth Sense) but also Jude Law are very good. It is a movie for adults and it contains disturbing scenes. (I.e. the scenes were humans are making a show out of destroying humanoid robots ).

Overall a good movie but you have to patient throughout.

Rating :

* * * & 1/2

Luck

First thing first, i had no intention of watching this movie in theatre. And i had number of reasons for that..

I hated the previous movie by the same directore “Kaal”.

I Didnt Like the promos at all.

The Music was boring.

And i particularly did not want to see some actors like Danny, Mithun Chakraborty and highly irritating ravi kissan (or kishan, whatever) on screen doing some rumbling mumbling.

Its only when we couldn’t find the show timings right for Transformers we had to settle for this one.

And half n hour into the movie i was dieng to get out of theatre. Completely inspired by host of reality shows around us these days, this movie takes the same concept to a different level playing a game based on luck (sic).

Sanjay Dutt stars as Musa, a gambling kingpin who's made a fortune in human betting. His faithful henchman Tamang (played by Danny Denzongpa) is entrusted the job of travelling the world and recruiting the luckiest people he can find to participate in a Fear Factor-style series of dangerous challenges, while loaded gamblers place bets on them.

Lured by the promise of a fat cash prize to the one who survives all challenges, a motley bunch of misfits – including Imran Khan, Mithun Chakraborty, Ravi Kissen, Shruti Haasan, Chitrashi Rawat, and a handful of your staple foreign extras from Colaba Causeway – volunteer to jump off helicopters and enter shark-infested waters.

Borrowing the premise and key scenes quite liberally from a handful of films in particular a Hollywood B-movie The Condemned, writer-director Soham Shah delivers a mangled mess of a picture that fails to engage because the characters are all stereotypes and you really couldn't care less if they lost their lives in those dangerous stunts.

To be honest, I can think of many reasons why Luck is a dumb film, and chief among them is the fact that there's more bak-bak than dishoom-dishoom, even though it pretends to be an action-adventure. What's worse, every single character in Lucks peaks alike, rattling off metaphors, using the third-person and generally dishing out the kind of filmi punchlines that went out in the eighties. The dialogues are corny, there is no script and people are forced to gamble with their lives. At times, you feel even the actors are not convinced about what they are doing on screen.

Not recommend at all.

Rating :

* *

The Hangover

I have been trying to analyze why The Hangover is such a uproariously funny movie – and I cant seem to be able to pinpoint any one single reason (or two or three or four for that matter). I mean the plot is not at all new - 4 guys have a wild bachelor party in Las Vegas two days before the marriage. The group itself is predictable – one hen pecked guy, one dashing ladies guy, one fat moron and one normal chap. Not a single big name star either – comic or otherwise.

Yet it is definitely the funniest movie of the year. Instead of any one reason or sequence, the entire movie just works !! From start to finish ! And the movie succeeds in being a laugh riot without the vulgarity that inevitably accompanies every guys-only movie. The humour comes in form of smart one-liners, bizarre incidents and some really random images with the end credits !!

The movie is basically about the groom’s three best friends Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Alan (Zach Galifianakis) who wake up after a wild bachelor party in Vegas to face some really unexplainable things – and a missing groom ! And worst of all, they don’t remember a thing about the night !! As the poor guys struggle to reconstruct the previous night, the night starts to become more and more bizarre …

Interestingly, the movie hardly ever goes into a flashback mode, so we dont actually see what happens – its left for us to imagine & recreate from the conversations of the movie. Which probably adds to the enjoyment of the movie. The three guys themselves share a great chemistry – which makes you, the viewer, get interested in what actually happens to them. Or rather what happened to them the night before. Mike Tyson also makes a guest appearance in the movie … though that’s all I would say.

Alan is the most lovable of the guys – he carries off the weird-guy-act with such conviction that you would think he is like that in real life !! The others are equally good in their roles - Phil as the dashing alpha male who is always looking to take the lead, but turns out to be as clueless as everyone else and Stu as the hen-pecked and bullied boyfriend.

The ending of the movie is slightly sweet – it does seem a bit out of place, but then we are soon presented with the end credits and there are some real howlers there !!

A great fun ride, The Hangover introduces a whole new bunch of talent to Hollywood, specially Zach, the nerd. Don't miss it.

Rating :

* * * *