Review
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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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Okay, here’s my problem with Sanjay Gadhvi, the man behind the two Dhoom movies. He’s got a nice visual style, a reasonably talented cast and a knack for making women look gorgeous, but he’s forgotten a very basic ingredient. He’s making movies about a cop on the trail of some great thieves. But not once…
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This seems to be a bad time for me to consider watching a Hindi movie. Consider the last few movies I’ve watched: 1. Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna: I was on a bus from Hyderabad to Bangalore and they played it during the journey. I’ve never really considered jumping off a moving bus before, but I…
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Watched Baabul yesterday night. Ravi Chopra seems to have made his choice of genre clear – the family melodramas of the eighties, the type that Visu used to be well-known for. (For a brilliant rant on the subject, check out this piece by dingchak). Now, while this may not be obvious from my earlier posts,…
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I just finished watching Vivah, Sooraj Barjatya’s latest venture into feel-good territory. It’s an interesting experience, sort of like watching The Princess Diaries – you figure there’s an audience for this kind of movie, but you have no idea what that is, or why such an audience would even exist. Vivah is, as the tagline…
