LA Changing
Clint Eastwood continues his glittering directorial second coming with Changeling. While Angelina Jolie is better known for her more “commercial” performances (with the possible exception of A Mighty Heart), here is a clearly well-deserved Oscar nomination. The movie is about a single mother and her boy that goes missing and her search for that boy. In the course of that search, many wrongs are righted – the LAPD is reformed, laws regarding detention without sufficient evidence are passed, a serial killer is unearthed and executed, a boy returns to his family. And in the middle of all this is the poignant undertone of the search by Christine Collins of her son Walter Collins, alternating between hope and despair and taking the viewer along with both

Rating 16.5/20

Thanks for All the Fuss

Slumdog Millionaire, for all the great cinematography, does not really capture the essence of Mumbai. Plenty of Indian movies capture the true stigma of poverty, or the true horror of the underworld, far better. Let us for a moment give Danny Boyle the artistic license, and run through the vignettes here. The depiction of poverty is a sham. The rioting is unconvincing. The beggary racket is trite and equally unconvincing. The fact that each answer coincidentially relates to each (painful) vignette in the life of the protagonist is a cruel joke? Is this even a movie worth making a fuss about? There is great cinematography, but in the end I feel sorry for the legions of Indian directors, unwept unhonoured and unsung, whose far better portrayals of Mumbai go unnoticed simply because they lack the "brand" of a Danny Boyle. If this movie is worth four Golden Globes, some of our movies of 2008 are worth at least as many Oscars

PS: The BBC's Soutik Biswas seems to echo my thoughts - saw this link on 25th Jan 2009: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7843960.stm

Rated 10.5/20

Rating System

With a vew to "crystallizing" my overall feeling about a movie, which is usually difficult, I will apply a holistic single digit as a "rating" to future writeups. This will follow a 1 - 20 scale. Why 20? Because it is easier to think of movies as being in four distinct quadrants:

1 - 5: The truly avoidable movies

6 - 10: The worse-than-average movies (the "average" being the average movie that I watch)

11 - 15: The better-than-average movies

16-20: The good movies, with the upper end of this quadrant being the must-see movies

A Different Western

Appaloosa is not Ed Harris’ directorial debut (there is the movie Pollock from 2000) but is quite a movie. Unlike the conventional Western (and the last I saw was the copybook 3.10 to Yuma), this dwells on a morally ambiguous woman (Alison - Renee Zellweger) and the cast’s interrelationships with her. There is the very public romance with the marshal (Virgil - Ed Harris), the ambiguous relationship with the deputy (Everett - Viggo Mortensen), and then the obvious promiscuity and Everett’s final solution that is as abrupt as it is surprising. Life does not always take the paths that one desires, and sometimes one takes ingenous solutions to get it around to our choices. What truly is the moral high ground of a mere vigilante prone to violence, or the calumny of a villain (Randall Bragg – Jeremy Irons) who is erudite and convincing and commits little that can be unequivocally labeled as villainy in a difficult time.

Society without Vision

If you have not read the novel by Jose Saramago (and I have not) it is difficult to be prepared for a movie like Blindness. In a regular orderly urban society, a man gets afflicted by a sudden attack of white blindness. So does his wife, and all those who get in touch with him - notably an eye doctor. The doctor's wife is the only one who miraclously escapes getting affected - and gives an increasingly large group leadership through the repression of state confinement and a complete degeneration of law and order within that confinement. The group moves from the hopelessness brought about by individual tyranny, to freedom and the order that voluntary and symbiotic coexistence brings, even in an outside world where all familiar institutions, including things as disparate as electricity and family - have ceased to exist. Perhaps it is because each individual in the milieu is dealing with his or her own personal tragedy, that there is no place for collective uprising or protest outside of a world where the ward defined the physical boundaries of groups of people. Blindness is about forms that society takes when faced with crisis - the disorder that stems from individual hubris and inevitably leads to ruin, and the empathy and coexistence that raises us above mere animals. A remarkable movie, though difficult to watch at times.

Always a Mumbaikar

There is not a single hindi movie reviewed on this site till date. Till this. I want to place on record that in the year of tribulation of Mumbai, in a year where the financial crisis took the life out of Mumbai while the Taj attacks seared its soul, a movie called Mumbai Meri Jaan was released that captures all the poignancy and dichotomous character of Mumbai and Mumbaikars while clearly preceding both these incidents at the time of release/creation. There is the idealist whose notion of public transport and the greater Indian idiom is ripped apart. There is the policeman searching for meaning to his career on the day it concludes. There is the simple Hindu individual who represents all the communal suspicion and stereotyping that has become our norm rather than exception. There is the tea-seller from somewhere in South India, alienated by development and consumerism, who creates his own brand of protest. There is the journalist who becomes a soundbyte in her world of seeking soundbytes - a undifferentiated TRP source. In the end, the milieu will leave you stunned. There is so much this movie has captured through six characters. This is the soul of Mumbai - this pinpoints all the reasons why this potentially great city needs so much healing.

Horrific Reflection

The best horror movies of late have ingenious takes at commonplace objects. Moving into a motel (Vacancy), taking the simplest of photos (Shutter), watching TV (The Ring). Mirrors is about the nether world trapped behind the glass that we look into everyday. The evil that lurks right across turns a man's life into a living hell. Until the end, where, well, the man and his reflection redefine the nature of their relationship. The movies continues the trend of (successfully) distilling our fear and uncertainty surrounding everyday objects.

No Method to This

It is disappointing when the so called school of “method acting” chooses Elizabeth Hurley as their mother goddess. Now Liz Hurley, notwithstanding her (rather obvious, and re-iterated in this movie as well) other attributes, is not a Method actor, and it is difficult for a person who somewhat extends herself in attempting to be merely bitchy, to being a convincing serial killer. The other thing that is lacking in the movie is the near complete absence of star power. The end result – a movie with promise, that would have been well enacted by half a dozen actors (remember, for instance, Salma Hayek in Lonely Hearts?) but it seems that coming up with anything bearing a semblance of the right cast was not high on the list of priorities here. Method acting and b grade do not mix.

Yes Yes Yes

What is this life if full of care, we have no time to stop and stare? Yes Man says yes to stopping and staring at life – be it Korean lessons or the guitar, or the alternative music girlfriend. An endearing movie that is not steeped in the seriousness of say Fun with Dick and Jane, nor is the slapstick school of most of Jim Carrey’s fare. The movie makes a statement about independence of action that is hard to miss.

Something is Missing

The period drama Australia has all the elements to warm the cockles of one’s heart – the widow duly wronged reaches out to the cowboy knight in shining armour and the child with no identity. The child does not quite come across as aborigine, Hugh Jackman is too suave to be the perfect cowboy, and Nicole Kidman – well, the fact is that she looked better as a prim and proper English lady than a cowgirl. The movie is worth a watch but misses making an indelible impression in your mind or anything close to that