Review
-
Hollywood: Mere pass Hot Shots hai, Scary Movie hai, Naked Gun hai! Tumhaare pass kya hai? Thamizh cinema: Mere pass Thamizh Padam hai. As spoofs go, this one is about as good as it gets. From the gender switch on Karuththamma right at the beginning to an acknowledgement of A R Rahman’s Golden Globe win…
-
Perhaps one ought to recognize a genre that can be described as “Shut Up and Watch” movies. While this applies to the audience in most cases, in this case I refer to instructions for the filmmakers. Or to be more specific, movies where the instruction was followed. A very small group of films qualify. Of…
-
I spent a good bit of time trying to figure out how to write a coherent review Paa before I realized something. The entire publicity machine for Paa focuses on the fact that Amitabh Bachchan plays a twelve year-old with Progeria (a genetic disorder that makes him look like he’s pushing seventy) and Abhishek Bachchan…
-
The Blind Side tells the story of a homeless African-American teenager who is taken in by an affluent white family and goes on to become a big football player. Much of the marketing emphasizes the “big” portion of that phrase — indeed, Michael Oher pretty much doubles the combined volume of the Tuohy family when…
-
Beware: Here be spoilers! There is a crucial moment in Up in the Air when Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) finds himself having to talk someone out out of a course of action. It doesn’t help that the other man’s beliefs echo what he has been preaching all these years. Bingham even moonlights as a self-help…
-
Vishal Bharadwaj brought The Bard into this milieu. And now, here’s his protege Abhishek Chaubey with some film noir. The ingredients are all there — criminals, a femme fatale, a dog-eat-dog world, betrayals, a tenuous code of honour… Except, it isn’t quite film noir. At a crucial point in the story, one character is revealed…
-
Aayirathil Oruvan starts off by depicting an archeological expedition to find the remains of a lost Chola settlement somewhere off the coast of Vietnam. As it happens, our explorers find not ruins, but a living Chola civilization, completely cut off from society for many centuries. It is here that Selvaraghavan makes an inspired choice. Instead…
-
Apropos the controversy about Chetan Bhagat’s name in the credits, I don’t remember enough of the book or what got shown in the opening or closing credits to comment. I will say, however, that I noticed at least a few jokes circulating on the Internet making their way into the movie. The one about submitting…
-
Pixar has by now gotten to the point where, if they wanted to go The Producers route and make a really bad movie, they’d have to outsource it. By those standards, this isn’t in the same league as some of their best work. However, it has an emotional resonance that took me by surprise. Much…
-
I watched Kurbaan on Friday evening and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it ever since. It is not that it is an extraordinary movie — the more I think about it, the more flaws spring to mind. But somehow, I am unable to bring myself to dislike it. I think my irrational fondness…
24 frames per second 