Back to more film-watching 2006 (5)

Yes, I am back to what I do on this blog. Reviewing movies. For a change, all three movies below were experimental, fresh in one way or the other and each one of these had a powerhouse performance by a female artiste.

Garden State (2004): ****

I can’t remember the last time I did not cringe when one of the lovers went through a heart change towards the climax and finally did the inevitable kiss as the credits waited to roll. One of those generic things that’s written in stone as a formula for the perfect romcom, in Garden State, it comes across so convincingly that it leaves you all warm and fuzzy. And that’s because the film does what is actually quite a rare sight- capturing every moment of companionship with absolute honesty. No matter how flawed and over-written it remains in places, its the masterful romance at the film’s heart that haunts you long after the film’s over. Chronicling the life of a troubled twentysomething TV actor in LA, who comes home to Garden State for his mother’s funeral, the movie follows him as he meets up with his acquaintances and chances upon the quirky girl-next-door Sam while waiting outside a neurologist’s clinic. Funnily enough, Sam’s a motormouth with a gift to lie for no apparent reason. How slowly their relationship blossoms and their realisation of how right they are for each other is the stuff great romances are made of. Replace great with real-life in the last sentence and you’ll know the inspiration for all my ga-ga over this movie.Garden State wouldn’t be anywhere as good as it is had Natalie Portman, Zach Braff and Peter Sarsgaard didn’t perform the way they have. Portman is an actress to behold. Seldom do you get to see such self-aware characters played so uninhibitedly that they become a real blast to watch. Quoting her one line which really hit home with me bigtime: “OK, so… so… sometimes I lie. I mean, I’m weird, man. About random stuff too, I don’t even know why I do it. It’s like… it’s like a tick, I mean sometimes I hear myself say something and think, Wow, that wasn’t even remotely true”. And the character’s always mouthing such refreshingly real lines, and you just can’t help but fall in love with Sam. When she’s not busy lying or accusing herself of ruining some moment or wondering if Braff’s character is totally freaked out with her, she’s doing this cute and weird stuff like standing all of a sudden in her room and do these funny actions and noises (according to her, she’s creating an “original moment”). And though Sam looks forward to a good cry by laughing more on the life’s ironies, you secretly wish that she doesn’t. I can’t remember the last time (yes, this is the second time I am saying this in a review) I have cared so much for a character.

And then there’s the little master Zach Braff, who trebles here as the actor, writer and director. And for someone who’s accustomed to his over-the-top slapstick in Scrubs, his underplay in Garden State is genuinely surprising. Nonetheless, it is this very subtlity that lends immense poignance and dignity to the film’s energy. Cossetted inside the quitely troubled Andrew Largeman, the protagonist, its a performance standing on meaningful glances and commonplace lines delivered the way only a collected, deeply perceptive actor can manage. The film’s pure magic when he’s sharing the space with Portman’s Sam and their heart-to-hearts are so spontaneous and bereft of cheese, you practically wince in your couch the time when Braff decides to sort his life out and leaves Portman stranded on the airport (and no this isn’t the end).

As a second lead, Peter Sarsgaard, like a true blue thesp at his craft, manages to do his badmouthing, soft-hearted chum routine with a charm and deadpan style that’s sure to make you grin. His part is a tad over-written in the initial reels with scenes like Braff’s meeting with his old buddies stretched for no reason (or so it appears on the first viewing), but still in such a charming film, these are minor glitches you learn to like on subsequent viewings. Likewise Braff’s relationship with his psychologist cum dad doesn’t really strike the right note (that, or because its such a dysfunctional one that the lack of any seeking-out-to-each-other is deliberate).

The word note reminds me of the film’s fantabulous soundtrack that’s choc-a-block with one lilting pop ditty on another. Braff’s cherry picked some of the most moving and lyrically sound contemporary tracks and tunes and used them to splendid effect.

On the whole, even though people like to remember Garden State as a superb chronicle of a twentysomething’s angst, for me its a cheerful little tale of how uplifting true love can be. Sunshine stuff!

Closer (2004): ***

The Graduate’s director makes a comeback with this decidedly pessimistic whine-a-thon on relationships in the new millenium. By the end of it all, two of the four lead people have cheated on their partners, one of them has manipulated his partner back with him and the remaining one is revealed to have gone through the whole drama of being loved and dumped under a pseudonym. Save for two-three minor scenes, the film’s obsessed with amplifying the worst in every character which does make for an occasional uncomfortable (but interesting) viewing.

A minor road-accident acts as a starting point for a London-based obituary writer Dan (Jude Law) and an American stripper Alice (Natalie Portman). The dormant writer in Dan finally finds in Alice a muse for his first book. One year on–they are a couple but Dan starts to randomly flirt and then have a serious affair with Anna (Julia Roberts), his photographer. In some weird mindframe, an year later, Dan enters a cybersex chatroom pretending to be this hot babe called Anna, making a doc (Clive Owen) literally wet in his pants (yea, I know you got it) and alluring him into meeting at the London Aquarium. Little realising that he played the perfect cupid for the doc (Larry) and the real Anna. Anna and Larry become a couple, but not without Anna secretly dating Dan. The scene is set for some serious, expletive-filled showdowns. And the spoils are for everyone to live with.

In this cyber age when we are bombarded with people ready for a no-strings-attached physical relationships and one night stands, monogamy does seem a suffocating concept. To add to the fun, there’s always the one-look-and-you-are-wiped-off-your-feet kind of infatuation which, married or otherwise, just has to be answered to. So how the hell does one expect an institution like marriage to work? Its a brave statement to make, but Closer’s gung-ho about forcing this bitter syrup down your throat.

The characters are quite a mixed bag with Natalie Portman’s Alice having to do with the clunkiest of lines and a love-story with Jude Law’s Dan that even at its lightest moments feel rehearsed (which makes it quite a pain to sit through the time when they cry, scream and pout dialogues like “you don’t love me”). To give credit where its due, Portman does make a credible stripper and her interaction with Owen at the strip club is quite a sight. The true stars of the enterprise however are Clive Owen and Julia Roberts. Owen’s totally convincing as the self-confessed hypersexual Larry whose first concern when her wife reveals her extra-marital affair is whether the guy she’s dating is a good f*ck. This very scene where the husband and wife spit venom on each other is one of the best confrontational sequences I have seen in a film. Julia Roberts, as the depressive, confused wife Anna gives the film the only bit of warmth it has.

Its hard to take in anything positive from a film that resolves itself as cynically as Closer does. But in a weird reverse-psychologically-kind-of way watching so much going wrong does bore in two-or three things one ought to do right when in a relationship. Its also not a film that everyone’d easily take to (my friend who watched this with me halfway through pleaded me to see the DVD on my laptop and free up his TV) so watch this at your own risk.

PS: On a sidenote, I had always found the film’s publicity design to be quite something. After watching the movie I realised how misleading all that serenity and whiteness really was. The tagline “if you believe in love at first sight, you never stop looking” still manages to sum up one of the themes succinctly though.
Hard Candy (2006): ***

I have lost count of the number of times I have found myself flipping through the newspaper pages, coming across some headline on the lines of “paedophile filming young girls jailed for 13 1/2 years” and then thinking out loud “these b*stards should all be made to stand in a line and have their balls slashed off”. And here is a film that goes straight after the balls of one such sexually depraved character. Yes, you can’t get more direct and literal than Hard Candy (web-slang term for an underage girl) which tells the story of a14 year old girl out on a daredevil mission to teach a fashion photographer cum web-chatting paedophile the lesson of his life by castrating him with a pack of ice (as local anaesthesia for the genitalia), some sharp instruments, cotton bandage and her untrained hands. The whys and the hows of this girl’s actions never quite filter through convincingly (read this as “are not bothered to explain”) which means that within 30 minutes she descends from an unusually brave girl to a sociopath in your eyes, and there really does come a point when you are forced to think where exactly your loyalties lie. With this horrendously sicko teenager or the now-suffering paedophile. Just for this intelligent and seldom used style of manipulation, Hard Candy deserves a pat.

This, plus the fact that its made with such queasily close shots of characters (more like demons) and some amazingly unpredictable sequences–you’ll wince and twitch to the point of even wondering why you spent your money on the ticket. As a debut work by a music video director, a hell lot of suggestive imagery and sounds are used to mess up with your mind and one look at the performances by the leading two actors and you know this man is talented. The actors playing the two principal characters (Ellen Page and Patrick Wilson) might be lesser known, but deliver gut-wrenchingly real and nuanced performances. The camera loves them to the point of never leaving their visages for a single second and despite that, the experience of watching these two monsters interact for a good two hours is quite overwhelming. More than half of film’s tension and unpredictability is thanks to Page’s ability to do a split-second whirlwind in her voice and expressions. And Wilson’s character graph is so masterfully done up that you’ll be finding yourself changing your opinion more than once every thirty minutes. Kudos to this actor for bringing up every single layer of his character’s vulnerability and deception to the surface. Add to all this the crackling dialogues throughout.

And yet, its not quite the ultimate movie as somewhere down the lane you realise that its actually too much of the same thing after a good one hour. Its different and its shocking yes, but the second half and the climax do a grave disservice to Wilson’s character. His giving in to Page’s threats about exposing him to his girlfriend is a tad quick and quite out-of-sync with his ultra-cautious and hideous nature. The castration scene is one brilliant sequence alright but there’s a twist immediately after that which kind of ruined it a bit for me. And as there really never was any buildup plus the attempt to explain the motivation for such extreme action by Page’s character isn’t convincing enough, after a point of time you detach quite easily from the characters. Which is always a bad thing.

Still, give it a try if you are hunting for something experimental and uncomfortable with some sensational acting.

Until my next batch of reviews, ciao!

X-Men Fest!

Finally, a new year resolution I was able to stick to (yes, if resolutions are about having fun, following them is a cakewalk). Amidst the utter chaos and exams, I managed to shell out some time for one of the most popular science fiction movie franchise–The X-Men. And boy, did I have a blast or what! Have tried to pack in a lot in one post but couldn’t help falling for such excellent characters. Yes, I am carried away and if you are ready for some fanship-level indulgence, then Go on… read my gush-a-thon!

X-Men (2000): ****

As an introduction to the homo superior aka mutants, the film rolls off on a rather sombre note as the camera captures a young Polish boy separated from his mother in a Nazi concentration camp. As the boy shouts and stretches for his mother who’s dragged away on the other side of an barbed gate, the gate starts to twist and bend in the direction of boy’s outstretched hand. Conveying the undercurrent of the whole series–discrimination and its repurcussions-couldn’t have been done more effectively.

Cut to the not to distant future and we are introduced to the principals of two mutant groups. One who believes in amiable discussions with humans for social acceptance (Prof X) and the other, who besides not believing in fitting-in with the inferior homo sapiens has a masterplan–to turn every human into a mutant (mutants being the evolution’s answer for gen-next species)–and he’d rather do it with a lot of noise. That’s Magneto for you. Yes, the very same Polish guy who had been victimised as a child in the Nazi world, is out to rewrite history by getting rid of all the discrimination–turning all humans to mutants. Even as a Senator fights in the White House to pass the bill of getting rid of all the mutants.

As the lines are slowly drawn, we are introduced to some brilliantly imagined characters like Rogue (a girl capable of sucking the life-force of anyone she kisses) who then goes on to meet Wolverine (who possesses an adamantium skeleton with inter-knuckle claws that pop out at the mere hint of rage and is almost immortal with his self-healing power), Storm (capable of changing the serenest of skies into a lightning and thunder-filled mess) and Cyclops (a hunk forced to wear goggles to stop the destructive optic blasts from his eyes)

The terrorist side is a little less populated but far more interesting with an aphrodisiacally sensuous blue-skinned diva called Mystique, a growling Sabretooth and a reptilian Toad.

X-men is one helluva joyride thanks to the fights and interactions between all these characters and the two bosses (one super-telepathic and the other a super-magnet). What makes it memorable is how cleverly its edited to be this crisp and smooth thriller that has shockers at every 10 minutes and sequences that tread a very unconventional path all through. You think you can guess how the scene will end but it just won’t. Characters you like will be stabbed, the old hags don’t just do the know-it-all wisdom act but can be horrifyingly testosterone filled and the breakneck pace it all moves in, despite knowing that Mystique can actually morph into anyone, you get surprised everytime she morphs back into her own sleek blue-body-yellow-eyed creature from nowhere.

The menace is unforgiving, the conflict viscerally charging and to top it all–the special effects are some of the sleekest work I have seen from any studio. Sequences like Logan’s raw opening cage-fight, the Senator turned a mutant and then finally melting into absolute water on the operating table, the Toad’s squashing spree, Magneto’s seizing of police’s guns just by flicks of hand and Mystique’s sinister shapeshifting–its fiendishly crazy and yet crazily convincing.

The superb screenplay and direction is complemented by an awesome ensemble of actors. Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart such unbridled authority and natural understanding to their characters, you can’t help believing anything they mouth. Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine is the one “with issues” and this repressed state of mind is brought about easily by him, just like Halle Berry’s Storm manages to be powerful, yet warm.

As the fable of blatantly obvious superheroes who are forced to live in hibernation for not being the dominant species (the physical mutation tagged to them for lifelong discrimination), its utterly convincing and totally entertaining. One of the best science fiction movies ever!

X2: X-Men United (2003): ***

Time to get in some knots now. With Magneto as captive, the X-Men stand united against an impending attempt to obliterate them all. Or do they? With a recent assassination attempt on the President, it seems all isn’t what it seems as a military scientist named Stryker, out on a venegeance mode, can go to any extent to wipe out mutants from the face of the planet.

Visually and acoustically, X2 races ahead of the prequel with jaw-droppingly brilliant CGI. Where do I start? Be it the teleporting NightCrawler who smokes his way through everywhere, or Magneto drawing the iron from guard’s blood and turning it into prison smashing balls and then floating plates, Wolverine’s smart and raw claw-and-nail fight with Lady DeathStrike–the eye-candy is just goosebump-inducing. And then there are the ever so reliable Magneto and Mystique–who do the menacing act with such conniving cheekiness (watch Mystique rudely showing others the “finger” as she gains control of Stryker’s base or Magneto, as he stops the falling X-Jet “When will these people learn how to fly?”), its just too hard not to have some fun while this race of homo superiors strut their stuff.

It also tries to deal a new facet–acceptance of mutants in their families (or rather a complete lack of it) but to be frank, for a 130 minute wham-bam popcorner–it turns a tad too self-important and long-drawn towards the climax. The finale itself is supremely predictable but thankfully is rendered watchable by the technical finesse. Overall though, amidst the labyrinth of the plot, precious little emerges as far as any theme is concerned.

Don’t get me wrong. X2 has some of the best acting, the visuals, the sounds, the fights, and even a little bit of hitherto unseen sequences, but somehow its a little too generic and been-there-seen-that sci-fi that wouldn’t persuade you to watch it a second time easily. Tidy but rather unaffecting fare.

X3: X-Men-The Last Stand (2006): ****

Time to rejoice! With this rock-solid final X-men movie, I would be surprised if this series wouldn’t go down the annals of celluloid sci-fi as one of the most splendid pieces of film-making. Finally something to compete with the LOTR hat-trick of good cinema. And it surprises me the most on passing this verdict, but in almost every sense of the word, the third X-Men is just as good as the first one. Maybe this stems from the fact that I am no nit-picking purist who would moan about how disrespectful its been to the real comic-book characters or what a grave injustice has been done to this and this character. I haven’t read the comics and the only yardstick I had for this third instalment was its preceding two movies. So, pardon my decidedly shallow judgement… but I was blown away by the visuals and the sheer emotion the film packed, and I can’t help but admit it.

The opening sequence for starters. After a flashback of Prof X and Magneto trying to persuade two parents to enter their supremely gifted mutant girl-Jean (who grows up to be Dr Jean Grey as we know from the last two movies and who breathed her last in X2), you have the camera set on an agitated boy struggling alone in a bathroom in what appears to be scratching his back. His father, outside the bathroom, realising something fishy after not getting answered on the nth knock is about to break in. The boy’s sweating with all the work as the camera rolls onto his hand and we see a blood-stained knife. And as his dad’s about to break in, he quickly shuffles many more knives and scissors into a tray. All bloodstained. Until the dad actually breaks in and we see the boy’s back. 10 ruthless perforations at the back of each shoulder–the holes from which the boy’s white feathers come out. He is a MUTANT. The boy shrieks on having found out (it ripped my heart apart, don’t know about others) and the credits start rolling.

I actually was quite surprised as we were again shown a bereaving Cyclops, not realising that one of the dominant threads of X-Men 3 is Resurrection of the Real Jean. Yes, who would have thought that beneath the calm, moderately telekinetic, underdog of a character is hidden the real Jean–the Phoenix, who might have been tamed by Professor X for years, but is now on the verge of unleashing a destruction that no one has ever witnessed. As if Jean wasn’t enough, a new cure for the mutant gene (instant gene therapy in an inoculation!) has been found by the humans. One prick and the powers of mutants dissolve instantly turning them into a normal human. A normal homo sapien. Clearly getting down from the podium of a homo superior isn’t an idea that catches the fancy of any mutant. Which gives another cause for Magneto to form an army, and by promising her everything Professor X couldn’t, get Jean on his side too. The battle-lines get drawn once again and its Wolverine, still deep in love with Jean, to step up and take one last stand.

What completely bowled me over in X-Men 3 was that it had a heart. And a pretty big one at that. Not for a single moment did I feel that any of the deaths of “good” mutants were rushed. They all are brilliantly conceived, sometimes kept silent to compound the effect, and sometimes so cruelly obvious I wished I could turn my eyes away. Maybe this is what happens when you watch the trilogy back to back in 2 days, but I really found them affecting. And then there was the opening wing-cutting scene of young Angel. Also scenes like Rogue joining the queue to get the cure so that she’s able to touch people and have a relationship or the one where when strapped to the chair for an injection of cure, the way Angel opens his wings and burts out of the glass building into the open sky are classily poignant. In neither of the prequels has the camera captured the pathos of fitting in, hiding their true selves or a mutant’s sense of pride and bliss in just the way he or she is. Magnificiently done.

And then there are the special effects. I am telling you one thing– I can watch this movie at double the ticket price just to watch scenes like Magneto walking down the road and turning everything from cars to lorries to junk by mere flicks and slaps in the air. That one scene… the way Ian McKellen walks with the maroon helmet and the works, the sheer display of power is majestic. Not that the other scenes don’t deserve a billing–every scene where Jean unleashes the beast in her is crackling with energy and the one sequence that everyone’s going to talk about… where Magneto rips a whole bridge off and transports it across to the island is so blatantly made-to-impress that one does really gawk at it. The climax is also a piece de resistance with subtle suggestions of Magneto and Professor X being back to where they were. It does a lot to uplift the mood of heavy-hearted fans like me who didn’t want X-Men to finish so soon.

The dialogues remain as sharp, minimal and intelligent as they have always been. The ensemble cast delivers like a dream come true, and Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen and Halle Berry really are in their element. Kelsey Grammer in the hideous all-blue-and-hair Beast incarnate is a likeable addition. Quite contrary to what I’d read in review after review, the overwhelming number of mutants each with their assorted power really accentuates the entertainment factor, rather than interfering with it.

Overall, I personally feel that the last X-Men has more muscle, more sinew, more tension, more anger, more issue than X2. Its not quite as fiendishly unpredictable as X-Men but its just such an involving and entertaining fare, the only thing I found myself whining about was its rather sharply scissored running time. It isn’t quite as short as to leave you feeling shortchanged, but a 15 or so minutes more would have made me end this without this sentence. Still, 3 Whistles and cheers for Brett Ratner from me!

So, get up, grab some popcorn and catch up with the whole series of X-Men NOW!

Some more film-watching 2006 (4)

Never expected the Match Point review to end up as big as it finally did. Hence this separate post for random films I caught on the big screen in the past month. Hope you enjoy these mini-ops!

When A Stranger Calls (2006): ** and 1/2

Blame it on my impatience. A wait of a mere 30 minutes more and I could have watched the French thriller Hidden (Cache). But my attitude of barging into the cinema and into the screening straightaway meant I ended up with this teenybopper horror-lite. As if the title couldn't be any longer and self-explanatory, its about a high school girl getting harassed by a prank caller (read serial killer) one night when she's baby-sitting at a posh and sprawling riverside mansion.

Its more generic and predictable than the words themselves convey but somehow the formula concocted doesn't end up being an absolute disaster. The menace in the atmosphere is well maintained by clever lighting techniques (stepping into every room switches on the room's lights–works bigtime in chase sequences) and the opening sequence where a lonely woman (living next to a local fun fair) gets called and then killed manages to terrify thanks to inventive camera and sound design. But then these plusses are never quite equalled by a screenplay which is ridden with stupid sequences, characters that behave less logically than kindergarten children and a lead actress that pitches in a consistently pale performance. The end product isn't even a patch on Panic Room but thankfully doesn't bore either.

Silent Hill (2006): **

You can count the pigeon-holes into which the contemporary horror films broadly fall into– Grimy Gore fest (Saw, Hostel, Wolf Creek), Supernatural Thriller (Sixth Sense, Others), Costume-n-Mask Horror Dramas (Ghost Ship, Exorcist, Descent, Evil Dead) and lastly fantasy horror (Constantine, Silent Hill). I normally try to avoid the last group like plague, but somehow landed up watching this.

Though the basic premise in this case–a concerned mother takes her daughter to the demonic place that haunts and possesses the latter while sleepwalking-does elicit some reaction, the actual film simply fails. And there are many reasons for this–first, there's absolutely no warming up to the characters. You have barely found your seat and bang! you see the possessed daughter standing at the edge of a cliff while her mom shouts off in the background. Barely 5 minutes after that, both mom and daughter are on the trip to the godforsaken place called Silent Hill. A crash later… mom finds herself amidst a foggy, snowing with ashes, town of yore replete with dilapadated buildings, empty streets. The daughter's gone but can be heard running. Mom (Rose) follows the sound, and suddenly a loud siren starts firing away. Mom continues walking down the stairs of a huge building and suddenly a huge black mass starts to entangle and numerous blackfleshed screaming children mutants start to materialise.

As the film unfolds, one comes to know that the siren represents the falling of "darkness"–a sign of evil that resides in the limbo land of Silent Hill alongwith the godfearing fanatical Catholics. But how clear the line really is, between the good and evil, is the premise for the remaining film as Rose unearths the dark secrets of the Silent Hill. Problem is, there's too much of such gibberish and it takes itself way too seriously.

The film is filled to brim with conflicts and showdowns between cacophonic characters who, because we don't know about, we just don't care about. Making it all just a pile of nonsense and in the process, boring us to death (a cardinal sin for any film). The only highlights being the two-three sequences of "darkness falling" which sees the otherwise unsuspectingly falling-to-pieces walls and floors transform into a network of blood vessels and inaninmate objects turning into yucky creatures like human sized roaches etc. A flashback sequence done in grainy film about witch-hunting towards the climax is a valiant attempt to unlock this puzzle of a film but just succeeding that is a so-bizarre-it-cracks-you-up vengeance episode of the devil which really makes you wince and wonder how you ended up watching this.

I can fill up paras on how tacky the CGI was but just to summarise my experience–I was laughing my humble a*se off everytime the crafted monsters (a plastic-pyramid headed devil or a team of zombie nurses that go on a twitching frenzy..LOL) came on the screen.

Please don't waste your time and money on this tripe unless you still haven't been spoonfed the message of being judged after death.

Ice Age 2: The Meltdown (2006): ** and 1/2

Though never quite as ambitious as Pixar's or Dreamworks' animated ventures, of late Blue Sky Studios have set about a good account for themselves with gorgeous looking but simple feel-good animations like Ice Age and Robots. Surprisingly enough, Ice Age 2 as a sequel doesn't quite entertain on the same level as Shrek 2 did. Simply because its just more of the same old thing. The principal characters still carry on walking and meeting more silly characters en-route, and a love story and a predictable conflict later its all over and they continue walking happily ever after. Don't get me wrong–it really is an enjoyable fare with two things working bigtime in its favour-Scrat (the acorn-obsessed squirrel who'll go down the annals of animation as the best character ever) and the wit in the dialogues, but one only wishes they hadn't rushed the scriptwriter quite so much as to pen such a wafer-thin, predictable plot that ends up boring us of characters we had come to adore in Ice Age.

Still, I know I am repeating myself (but what the heck), just watching Scrat struggling to keep up with the forever slipping and out-of-reach acorn through half-liquid peaks and half-frozen water bodies will have you rolling in an un-abating laughing fit. This is one amazingly conceptualised character and hopefully, Blue Sky would release the next Ice Age sequel with only 90 minutes of Scrat and his acorn. Now that'd be something!

More Later,

Karan!

Match Point

Match Point (2005): ***

The trophy for the singlemost theme about relationships that’s so over-done on the big and the small screen that there’s just no more to say, has to be presented to extra-marital affairs. Sparks at first sight leading to months of secret courting and sex to normal life getting progressively neglected to the doubting spouse at home to the finale. We know the notes, the moments, hell–even the reactions and dialogues for every character. So what does Woody Allen throw into the mixture to make it just a tad more exotic? The element of luck. Getting caught or going scotfree.

Chris (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), the protagonist and a tennis pro bumps into Chloe (Emily Mortimer), sister of his new student Tom (Matthew Goode). On a dinner night, he gets to meet Tom’s fiance Nola (Scarlett Johansson) who’s a struggling American actress and is absolutely enticed by her charm. But of course, he’s gone way too far with Chloe to turn back and Nola is Tom’s fiance anyway–reason enough for him to take the wedding vows with Chloe and start the job at his in-law’s super-successful company. As luck would have it, no sooner is he married that Tom breaks up with Nola fed up with his mother’s not-so-subtle criticism of Nola’s lack of direction in life. Chris, now somewhat bored of his new life and wife and in no mood to suppress his temptation second time around , kickstarts a steamy extra-marital affair with Nola and within no time has sowed his seed. Now that Nola’s reluctant to go through abortion yet again (remember Tom? Well, basically he had also banged and then left her), things start spiralling out of control as Nola pushes Chris everyday to take the leap and leave Chloe once and for all. Which is when Chris decides to take matters in his hands, rather violently. Watch the film to check out the brilliant climax which’ll have you swearing by Chris’s favourite line– “I’d rather be lucky than good”.

If his directing repertoire is to be believed (haven’t seen any of his previous films), Woody Allen is a thespian when it comes to delivering character-centric cinema. And deliver he definitely does with Match Point where he lets the characters drone casually from one cliche to another and another. Until the unsuspecting climax makes you jump up and take notice (surprisingly, even here, in the film’s most impactful 30-minute finale, the camera and sound would carry on to be as unsuspectingly quiet as in the rest of the movie but the whole sequence is such, it jolts you no matter what). Reading what I’ve just written I definitely have used stronger adjectives than I’d planned to but in such a genteel and lush film, the thriller elements towards the end really come across more shockingly than they’d otherwise be worth. A perfect example of genre-mixing that works.

Till the final shocker though, you have to sit through a surprisingly timeworn romp of an upper middle class British family that believes in leading a high life– watching operas, ordering rather immodestly at the best restaurants, practice shooting and tennis, drive around in Beemers and holiday in the Greek Islands. And yes, speak in a language reminiscent of pre-pre-Victorian era. Seriously, the dialogue of Match Point is either written by someone who’s read all his Dickens and Twains and Eliots so many times he’s lost touch with how people speak in the real 21st century London or someone too desperate to “construct” a prim-n-propah British feel. Either way, it stands out like a sore thumb and is unintentionally funny for the first few minutes (after which your brain just ignores it).

A much larger part though in keeping your attention from wavering is played by the drop-dead sexy Scarlett Johansson who gets to show off some real stuff (anatomically and vocally) and boy, does she rock or what. All my doubts about her acting talent (after watching her sleepwalk through Lost in Translation and Island) have really burned to ashes. And then there’s the good ole charming British ensemble headed by a certain Matthew Goode (playing Tom) who could really teach a thing or two to the leading man in question (Jonathan R.Meyers) about improvisation and voice modulation. Mr Meyers turns in a surprisingly self-conscious performance (or is it his calculating character?) with a rather strange accent and hilarious mannerisms but somewhow manages to pull it together in key sequences and doesn’t, thankfully, hamper the film’s energy.

Overall, an old fashioned caper about extra-marital affairs that’ll leave you with a smile (for all the wrong reasons) with its smartly canned finale.

Quoting from the film: “There are moments in a tennis match where the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second, remains in mid-air. With a litte luck, the ball goes over, and you win. Or maybe it doesn’t, and you lose.” Watch it to see if the hero manages to get a match point.
More reviews to follow!

Donnie Darko

Donnie Darko: **

Given that Butterfly Effect, 21 Grams, Minority Report, Eternal Sunshine… and their ilk are the stuff I can't get enough of, the supposedly daddy of this surrealistic sci-fi-philosophy genre called Donnie Darko had surprisingly eluded my DVD player. Not anymore. Fresh from the viewing of the director's cut this weekend, I have to say that it left me sorely disappointed and nonplussed with an absolutely incoherent and cryptic-to-the-point-of-suicide screenplay.

A disturbed adolescent sleepwalking one night in the winter of 1988 meets a 6-feet-tall demonic bunny and is told that the world is going to end within 28 days. The next morning, he goes back home to find a jet-engine crashed into his bedroom, followed by him sleepwalking again the next night, then a school flood the very next morning, then a fire at the local inspirational speaker-cum-paedophile's home some days later, all of which are committed by Donnie either while he's sleepwalking or in daytime– with the sole "plan" to finally lead his mother and sister to board the very same jet whose engine had ripped at the start of the movie (through a wormhole or time-storm). Yes, you can either shrug it off as the bizzarest thing you would have seen uptil the end where *spoilers ensue* the same engine crashes into Donnie's bedroom with Donnie IN the room, killing him in the process. So what was all that you saw uptil now? In director's and script-writer's words it was a piece of the Tangent Universe and just so that this Tangent Universe doesn't play more havoc in the Primary Universe, Donnie has to go about doing the things he does to bring order back to the Primary Universe. To understand all of this and more, you have to sit through a director's commentary and/or a google search for a fictional pseudo-scientophilosophy book called The Philosophy of Time Travel–luxuries best reserved for the weekend. And yes, after much reading and listening, pieces of jigsaw puzzle do come together, but for me they were never quite enough to solve some of the inherent paradoxes (read plot holes) that are just left unexplained.

The time-split or the Tangent Universe corruption that actually causes the jet engine to barge from the future still does crash after 28 days of Donnie's hard-work to save the world into entering a black hole. All that work, just to save one or two individuals?!? Or does he know he's going to die at all? And was that some twisted form of telekinesis where Donnie creates a wormhole? For me, it just doesn't pay off. And plus there's a whole barrage of self-contradicting set of theories in the fictional book which the screenplay obeys page after page after page. So after all the head-spinning detail, ultimately the space-time corruption that the film tries valiantly to give a slice of, becomes more convoluted for its own good. Quite a pity when films like Being John Malkovich (more of person travel than time) and Butterfly Effect achieved all that Donnie Darko attempts to with far more identifiable and memorable characters, crackling dialogues, coherent structures–and they delivered it all with such a sure, confident and profound hand that DD can only dream of.

Still I'd like to thank the movie-makers for helping me read more on the concept of time (I have, indeed spent so much time and effort on the content that characters and actors are a distant fuzz) and yes, for changing my belief about Jake Gyllenhall being an absolutely uni-directional actor. Inspite of the convolutions and the distractions of the plot, his Donnie Darko has his moments–particularly when he's at his brainiest and practical best and gives a sermon to the phony motivational speaker or when he doesn't see the point of sympathising with a rabbit's demise in Watership Down in his English lesson or even when he has a conversation with his physics teacher on whether free-will and choice really do exist–Gyllenhall really brings forth the angst, the confusion and a wisened edge of his otherwise "classified as schizo" character laudably.

However, the point I really want to make is that Donnie Darko just isn't the sort of film I'll sit through again. Simply because I don't see how meritorious the director/screenplay-writer's talents are if his viewers have to sit through hours of commentary and read a fictional work before trying to make sense of it all. I have seen much more profound and thought-provoking ideas being brought across the screen in a way that never compelled me to go through the director's commentaries and look for supporting material etc. I guess its a trap that every science fiction film or series that takes itself too seriously, fall into. In a genre where there's no end to creating layers and layers of theories within stories, Donnie Darko is just too overwhelmingly ambitious in what it wants to say. Nothing wrong with that–just that because it  skims through the multitude of complex ideas in 2 hours, it ends up being quite hollow as neither the characters get any space to breathe (stifled by the plot) nor any solid message filters through. If this is of any consolation for any reader who swears by DD, its only a patch on the fiasco that Matrix ended up being.

Worth a watch to form an opinion on, now that its a contemporary cult classic.