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Tombstone is a good Val Kilmer movie stuck inside a bad movie featuring the rest of the cast. Whenever Val Kilmer appears, you find something to watch. The rest of the time, you might as well go do the dishes or something. The film tells the story of how Wyatt Earp and his band of…
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If you were to compare rom-coms to bonds, The Holiday would be a treasury bill. Extremely low risk, proportionately low return. It stars Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet as Amanda and Iris, two beautiful single women on two different continents who decide to swap homes for the Christmas holidays. They’re both looking for a change…
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I remember being completely surprised by Clerks. Kevin Smith took a camera, put it in one place, got a couple of deadbeats and had them talk all movie long. They spoke of everything: Star Wars, sex, other movies as compared to Star Wars, sex… Okay, mostly just those two things, and some idle philosophizing in…
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Warning: If you haven’t seen the movie, you might want to reconsider reading this post. Here be spoilers. There’s a scene at the end of the first half in Chak De India when the team has finally begun to act as one. It comes soon after they’ve mutinied against their coach and refused to play…
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There’s a scene in Serendipity, an otherwise forgettable rom-com, where the John Cusack character holds forth on The Godfather series. He speaks of how Part 2 is a great movie, maybe even better than Part 1, but it works so well only because you’ve seen Part 1. This might serve to explain why I chose…
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I wasn’t very pleased when Roberto Benigni won Best Actor at the Academy Awards, danced on chairs and expressed a fervent desire to make love to everyone in the auditorium. I felt Tom Hanks deserved the statuette that year, for his portrayal of Capt. John Miller in Saving Private Ryan. Having said that, I did…
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My review of Chak De India seems to have started off a discussion on the use of a standard formula in most sports movies. Giri, Rajendran and Ratnakar are right: you watch them for the adrenaline rush. It matters not if they’re formulaic. There’s an amazing passage in The God of Small Things where Arundhati…
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I’ve spoken of formulaic movies in the past, and how I get antsy if they don’t try anything original within the framework they operate under. If you’re going to ride the shoulders of giants, the least you can do is jump. Otherwise, what good are you? Chak De India is a formulaic sports movie from…
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If you’re wondering why I’m on an SRK trip today, it’s because I’m planning to go see Chak De India this evening. Ram Jaane is, on the face of it, an overdone, melodramatic mess of a movie with more ham than you can find in all of Virginia. I have a sneaking affection for it,…
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