Review
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In some ways, this was a movie just waiting to be made. Shankar is a director with a proven ability to create box office magic with movies involving middle-class supermen fighting corruption. Rajni is a star who has made a career out of playing such roles. The only question that remains is: do we get
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When I was driving back home after watching Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, I asked myself how I would describe the experience to my friends. My top three candidates were: 3. A lengthy rant involving the occasional throwing of cosmic questions into the void, such as “What were they smoking when they wrote this?” or “What moron
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Does he plan it all out, or just make it up as he goes along? So wonders an admiring British officer after yet another of those insane Jack Sparrow escapades that leave him, improbably, out of harm’s way (for the moment) and at an advantage over his rivals. With Sparrow, one really couldn’t be sure.
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I think the first thing that strikes you when you see this movie is the level of emotion on display. The earlier movies had a certain cool reserve that masked whatever emotion the main characters were feeling. This one dared to be sentimental. Not that I think this is a bad thing, mind you. However,
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Prakash Raj’s Duet Films has been making some fairly interesting films. There was Azhagiya Theeye, which I regard as one of the best romantic comedies ever made in Tamil. Then there was Kanda Naal Mudhal which was nearly as good. And now Mozhi, a movie about a man’s love for a woman who is deaf
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Today seems to have been Monstrous Dictator Day for me. I watched a couple of movies – Den Untergang (aka Downfall) and The Last King of Scotland. The former tells the story of the last days of Adolf Hitler, seen through the eyes of his secretary. The latter tells the story of the reign of
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Nishabd is, as the title indicates, a movie constructed almost entirely out of silences. As anyone who has seen the trailers or caught a bit of the endless coverage of Jiah Khan on television will know, it is about the relationship between a married 60 year old man Vijay (AB) and an 18 year old
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Rocky Balboa is a curious movie. As the latest movie in a series that went steadily downhill after the first installment, the expectations were as low as they could ever get. But, like Rocky himself, it is a surprising triumph. Not a universal one, though – it is about an old boxer coming back to
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The problem with Pokkiri, the new Vijay starrer, is simply this: it does too much. There’s the story of how a young, ruthless killer named Thamizh rises up the ranks of the Chennai underworld. There’s the love story between him and Asin, which gets interrupted, both literally and metaphorically, by bouts of violence. Then there’s
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Roger Ebert’s essay on Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru – it’s so well written, so passionate in its description of the movie, that it ranks among my favourite pieces of writing in general. A lot of what Ebert has written about the movies is brilliant, but his essay on Ikiru is, I think, his best work to
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