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!

Krrish : Movie Review

Krrish: **

One sole reason why I have stopped watching anything that Sanjay Gupta (Kaante, Khauff, Musafr,Zinda) dishes out is because its all blatantly ripped off Hollywood and makes a pretension for being not so by wrapping it all up with swanky music videos. Rakesh Roshan has now entered the very same frame of film-making where chunks of contemporary Hollywood blockbusters get dumbed down and concocted with absolutely nerve-grating 80s style B-grade over-the-top melodrama. But projecting it as a kiddie fare, he’d again rake in probably triple the amount of moolah he did 3 years back with Koi Mil Gaya. And then make another sequel, that’s a concoction of few more Hollywood films dumbed down. And that’s what essentially Bollywood’s come to. What hurts me even more is that the parts of Krrish that can’t be classified under plagiarism are either braindead, or yawningly predictable or so badly directed and so over-acted that one seriously doubts if Mr Roshan’s completely lost it. Yes, the very same film-maker who gave us well-directed, over-the-top but imminently watchable Khudgarz, Kala Bazaar, and Khoon Bhari Maang takes three years to make this outlandish curry of a film, which ends up tasting of nothing at all.

Case in point the film’s first half. Filled to the brim with generic, implausible Bollywood sequences, not a single one of these catches you by surprise. All the characters mouth typical Bollywood lines, do the usual expressions and you can even predict what background score will play at what time. The same silly manipulation and melodrama that keeps the saas-bahu serials TRPs stable for years–its all here, for us to bear. And by us I mean anyone who’s grown out of it. If you are still of an age running in single digits or still discovering Bollywood or suffer from amnesia or oblivious to the fact that Hollywood exists, you probably would lap this all up and deem it as the next big step in Indian cinema’s new age evolution. An opinion that, I, for my rather unfortunate visits down the local DVD library, can’t hold.

Nor can I rate Krrish higher just to applaud Mr Roshan’s effort to make India’s first superhero. Because our heroes never were anything less than superheroes. Pick up any action flick starring anyone from BigB to Mithun to Sunny Deol–they could bash up, fly, leap, jump and still manage to do cross-city runs after trains in film after film after film. So please stop this empty talk of Krrish taking Bollywood to new levels of film-making. This is old Indian wine in a rusty old barrel pasted with a new label that’s translated word-to-word from a Californian wine bottle.

Any redeeming aspects for me then? Well the SFX isn’t quite as bad or as overdone as I had thought they’d be, the toned-down Minority Report interface (added with some bizarre heart-beat scans as passwords–what the hell was that!) and conflict are palpable and Roshan Jr’s physique and agility does lend a streak of believability to almost every Matrix meets House of Flying Daggers scene. He does perform like there’s no tomorrow but its all quite a waste as all he’s really doing from the first to the last frame is trying to infuse life into horrendously written scenes and dialogues. What pains me more is that he’s one of those rare dynamic actors who are capable of giving immense depth to even the most silent scenes (watch Fiza and Lakshya) but all we get to see him do after 2 years of on-screen sabbatical is a circus routine and loud theatrics. If Johars and Chopras brought about the demise of the performer in Shahrukh, rest assured Hrithik’s creative stab will be from within his home.

The rest of the cast goes about the motions mechanically (yes, Rekha and Naseeruddin Shah are asked to do the weepy granny and evil scientist routine to the last cliche, and both of them oblige) but the one who really deserves a mention in every Krrish review is Priyanka Chopra. The mademoiselle manages to fake her way through every scene she’s in and bore us to death in the process. Granted, its a stinking Bollywood-dame routine with strikingly sudden heart changes, but there’s something called an actor’s instinct. Maybe too much to ask from an erstwhile beauty queen but didn’t anyone see the rushes or what! She really amplifies Krrish’s mediocrity as a film, and her scenes with Hrithik could really give you a frostbite. Move over Celina Jaitley, the new ice maiden is here. The soundtrack’s filled with nice vocals but the tunes are ancient. Maybe to accentuate the pretence of small-town Krrish, the songs are the way they are but for someone who couldn’t take the movie, the ditties are going to bring up all the bad memories of watching them on-screen.

As I said earlier, if masala Bollywood potboilers still set your heart racing, you’ll be in for a treat. I had to gulp down two ibuprofens to get over the headache of this three hour long ordeal.

Call me a weirdo!

Now blogging is the last thing I should be doing at this time of the year, but a tag about unleashing the quirky “me” was too good an oppurtunity to resist. So after some hard thinking, I have zeroed onto the “five” weirdest things that even I can’t completely believe are a part of me. Enjoy!

1. Kill-Joy

Nicknamed by every imaginable teacher as a “well-behaved, cultured” student, my 16 years at school saw me through 2 big fights (abnormal I know, but that’s me), but both of them are just too unexpectedly gory (than violent). You can decide which one is more horrible–

a) The one in first standard: A normal argument in the lunch hour with a boy sitting next to me turned into a I’ll-throw-your-bag-if-you-touch-mine challenge. Which led onto me touching his bag. And him throwing mine on the floor. And then I threw his bag in a fit of rage. And while he was picking his books, I actually remember kicking them. Which understandably made him furious and he ran to my side of the floor (where my bag’s contents were still spilled), picked one of my books at random and started tearing a few pages. And this is the worst part–I still can’t believe I did this–but I remember pulling his head upright with both my hands locked into his hair. In fact I pulled so hard that not only did I pull a good bunch of hair but a piece of scalp as well. Although the precise details are fuzzy, I remember the sudden shell-shocked look on the uptil-then chattering class mates. The guy whose head I managed to rip was bleeding profusely and I remember getting busy with pleading to the class fellows around me to pretend as if nothing’s happened (yes, even back then covering my tracks was more important than someone’s life LOL). But two girls had already reported it and I was summoned to the head mistress’ office and a reasonable amount of hell ensued at home as well. I still find the incident weird as it happened when I was all of 6. Maybe I was quite unaware of my strength back then. Although I do vaguely remember getting suprised by the result of my pulling, the fact that I resorted to such an insane way to bring down a person was quite bizarre.

b) A sequel of sorts that occurred seven years later when I again got into an argument with a boy sitting next to me. But this time it started with us suddenly defending our respective territory on-desk with outstretched hands. An accidental breach by the partner led me to poke him lightly on the back of his hand with my Reynolds pen. But guess he just wasn’t in a good mood and he poked me back rather violently. I got hurt a little (the pinprick puncture had started to bleed) which angered me so much that right then I opened my geometry box, took a compass out and literally stabbed the guy at the back of his hand. Don’t ask me if it came through the other side or not, but somehow it didn’t bleed that much and we started punching and kicking each other. All the class made a circle around us as us two otherwise-saintly students locked horns. I don’t know how long it went for but what I do remember is going back to my desk, wiping the blood off my compass and desk and sitting through the day as if nothing had happened. That qualifies for weird. Moral of the story– I can tear, puncture and peel flesh off people without batting an eyelid. So getting into medicine wasn’t exactly the decision of my head (wink wink)

2. Run for cover

Previews, back cover blurbs, cover photography, titles–Things that I am sure connoisseurs of cinema and books wouldn’t care a damn about, but are the very things that decide what I am going to watch and read next. In fact over the years, I have noticed that my most cherished films and fiction also sport the covers and titles I absolutely fell for at the first sight. Plus, I have found that I can see through even the most manipulatively crafted previews to make out whether its a movie I’ll enjoy or not. And 9 out of 10 times it works. Which is rather weird.

3. Even or Odd?

Given that guys generally are more autistic, it isn’t any surprise that one of my favourite passtimes while sitting everyday in the loo is counting song lyrics to find out if every line or couplet has the same number of words. Yea, its the most braindead things one can do, and there’s absolutely no sense to it. But I have been enjoying it without fail since as far back as I can remember. There are even weirder things I do on random days to keep myself busy while walking–like estimating how many steps it would take me from station to uni and then counting them as I walk, or calculating the number of seconds its been since an event happened. And there even was a time when I had come to believe that *adult alert* j*cking off odd number of times led on to a crappy day (and vice versa).

4. Eight-o-phobia

Now this is what happens when you read Cheiro’s book of numerology when you are all of 9. The legendary astrologer always dropped not-so-subtle hints about how unlucky dates coming to number 8 can be. Or how doomed and/or unreliable people born on these dates/years really are. Coincidence in the following years meant that bad things tended to happen on these very dates (or probably it was just me expecting/interpreting them) until last year when my life did me one better and believe it or not, some of the most crucial days, exams, results, goodbyes, admission numbers, bank passcodes–all added up to number 8. Has this led me to drop my superstition? No way. I hated Fanaa which released on the 26th of May LOL. As you can see, the damage being done here is far deeper.

5. The (un)usual suspects

Yes, quite like everyone else (more like Suyog who tagged me), I have gorged on chalk, raw coriander; hate to read old, yellowed books written in beady times new roman-esque fonts; and as a child I even have, to my credit, getting a newly built greenhouse down of a neighbour by pelting stones (the reason–mom was emptying a decorative fountain and wanted to get rid of a few of them and I was too lazy to go down one floor in the blazing heat of summer afternoon. So I just flung them in the air and every one of them shattered the neighbour’s decidedly big all-glass conservatory. Yes, I could hear something breaking my side of the wall but that didn’t stop me of throwing. Thankfully, they weren’t home and they even set up a neighbourhood enquiry to find the culprit, but as I had grabbed those stones from the porch of a house just three houses down the lane, the battle ensued between the wrong parties. I confessed on having done that many years later when we moved to London, and no matter how disgusted my parents were, they still didn’t mind laughing it off.)

Phew… turns out I am weirder than I thought. Oh well… thanks a ton Suyo (yes, why I sometimes call you that and not Suyog is again weird!) for tagging me.

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!

Fanaa

A pressing question before you read the review. Do any of you actually see any images in my posts? I insert them through URLs and they show up on some computers and not on others. Please tell me if you can/can't see them to help me decide to a longer, proper method of image posting. Thanks.

Fanaa: * and 1/2

Let's fake one last hug, shall we?

 

This is exactly what happens when an otherwise decent romcom director ventures to handle complex themes of national security, terrorism and physical handicap. The royal mess that he and his braindead script-writer create hurts all the more because Aamir and Kajol are the immediate victims. And its just downright painful for an ardent 90s Bollywood fan like me, watching them lend meaning to utterly spineless characters and B-grade Bollywood sequences.

The real reciever of all the brickbats should be Kunal Kohli, the director. Not a single honest, unseen moment in the whole frig*ing film. Now that's a feat. Neither is there even a remotest sense of plausibility in how the blind girl falls for the first guy she meets in the city (a tour guide who keeps on dropping not-so-subtle hints about having a penchant to bang girls and move on) nor is there any sense of thrill or dread in the army espionage bits. Jumping from one banal filmi sequence to the other, the film reaches a godawfully predictable finale, which is dealt so immaturely and shoddily you really wish you hadn't bothered spending £8 on this crap.

Seems like no critic can gush enough about Kajol's performance, but to be honest, she's woefully miscast. Kunal Kohli is no Prakash Jha or Aditya Chopra who can carve out the quieter nuances of Kads' head-strong wizened persona (remember Dil Kya Kare and DDLJ?) which means she ends up looking very lost mouthing corny dialogues and Urdu shero-shayari. All through the 90s, her contemporaries like Madhuri and Juhi played far more unbelievable characters in the trashiest of movies but with a zing that won us over. Why we loved Kajol back then was for her girl-next-door, urbane, natural charm and wit she lent to all her characters– and that is really where her range as an actor ended (watch K3G or Hamara Dil Aapke Paas Hai for proof). As the still-wet-behind-the-ears town virgin belle, neither has she gone that extra mile to make Zooni Ali Beg stand out from the plethora of characters she's played on-screen already (even Preity-with her cosmopolitan looks-managed to pull off Kashmiri girl characters in Hero and Mission Kashmir far more admirably) nor are there ANY sequences that'd bring out something unseen from her–making her comeback quite forgettable.

She has tried, oh yes she has, but in a film as unbelievable and trashy as this, one needed a far more dynamic actor to transcend the audience's disbelief. Watching her do the typical Bollywood heroine routine in Fanaa is just a bit… boring.

But mark my words, she'd be up there at the Filmfare Best Actress slugging it out with far more accomplished performances and who knows, might even manage to grab some more undeserving trophies.

Aamir's in for an even more lifeless character (something which'd have been lapped up by Anil Kapoor or Sunny Deol 5-6 years back) and it is such an apathetically sketched cut-out that even his Raja Hindustani would anyday be more identifiable. Rishi Kapoor's the only actor with some graph in the character while the rest oblige with their generic Bollywood sidekick/innocuous-hammy child routine. Tabu manages to turn in a below average performance (maybe they gave her the script after she'd signed on the dotted line… its a Yashraj venture after all!)

Granted, the idea wasn't to create something street smart but all the shero-shayari and the self-congratulatory background score after every "sher" that Aamir cracks on the spot makes your nerves grate. Mothers saying goodbyes to their daughters with advice like "tere dil mein meri saanson ko panaah mil jaaye, tere ishq mein meri jaan fanaa ho jaaye" (an answer to what if the blind daughter finds the man she loves) are unintentionally funny.

Unlike what I've read elsewhere, there's no sense of place at all. There isn't a single person except the actors populating the screen for the whole of second half (apparently, to get around this, an excuse of a snow-storm is in place) , its all too isolated and lifeless to transport the viewer to anywhere. Maybe it was a conscious decision to focus on the characters, but who'd give a toss for these done-to-death Bollywood versions of "real" people? I wouldn't and I didn't. The action scenes are probably there for comic relief and sure enough, each of them will have you rolling with laughter. There's also an attempt to comment on the Kashmiris and nuclear missiles which makes even Veer Zaara's in-your-face banter on Hindustan-Pakistan bhai bhai seem intellectual.

If there really is any respite, its for 5 whole minutes of a ditty "Mere Haath Mein". A superb haunting rendition by Sonu-Sunidhi is brought to life by some amazing cinematography and a duskily lit-and-made up Kajol (finally someone manages to shoot her more beautifully than in Suraj Hua Maddham). The song's shot with passion and instinct- two words that sadly can't be used for the rest of the 130 or so running minutes.

Please avoid this de-caffeinated, tasteless concoction of Satya meets Hero meets 80s Bollywood melodrama. Its kitsch of the most inferior variety.
More to come,

Cheers!