Review
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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My wife recently got a stack of Mills & Boon novels from a friend and basically devoured them over a couple of sessions. Seeing them reminded me of the problem I’d always had with M&B — neither is it good writing in service of a love story, nor is it sufficiently raunchy to fit in…
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Just in case anyone ever accuses me of not having enough variety in my diet. Now, on with the reviews: Julie & Julia Imagine you’re a guy, and a vegetarian to boot. And someone told you that there’s this movie, about two hours long, featuring two women (and a couple of men by way of…
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Wake Up Sid starts off more or less asleep for the first hour, stratches and groans a bit for the rest of its running time and manages barely a few moments of absolute clarity in between. And yet, you don’t come away disappointed. If it does wake you up to anything at all, it is…
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On the way back from watching Inglourious Basterds yesterday, I had a conversation with my wife that made me realize something. There’s no way you can actually convert someone to the Church of Tarantino. His style of filmmaking doesn’t lend itself to persuasive argument. Consider the opening scene of Basterds, for instance. Set somewhere in…
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I went on a spree recently and ended up watching three movies in more or less quick succession. Hey, people gorge on chocolate, I watch two movies back to back at a multiplex. So sue me. None of them really deserves a longish review (actually they do, but I’m a lazy bum), so here’s a…
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There was a short-lived show on TV called Love Monkey starring Tom Cavanagh as an A&R rep for a record label. In the pilot episode, he starts off by saying that he’s a crime fighter, and his job is to ensure that criminally bad music doesn’t hit the music stores. If I were to be…
