Pacific Threats

Gigantic sea creatures called the Kaiju come through the Breach – a portal at the bottom of the Pacific – and start devastating cities along the Pacific Rim. Manking designs the Jaeger (robot) program to take on the Kaiju – and succeeds. Till the Jaeger program finds itself questioned, and competing with the Wall, and failures of the Jaegers to take on the particularly larger and more difficult of the Kaiju. However, when the Wall shows the proverbial cracks, and it is again the Jaegers that hold back the Kaiju in Sydney, it is back to the remnants of the Jaeger Program, led by a marginalized Pentecost (Idris Elba), and a notable robot – Gipsy Danger – driven by Becket (Charlie Hunnam) and Mako (Rinko Kikuchi), to save the day and the world. In the words of Del Toro himself, this is no "super-brooding, super-dark, cynical summer movie", and the focus is purely on "big, beautiful, sophisticated visuals". In that he succeeds, but one cannot help feeling that the execution could have been just a little bit better with a little more development of the human characters, especially given the backdrop of shared adversity

13.5/20

Conan the Second

The Cimmerian is back, in a significantly watered down version that sank – some would say unfairly – with very little trace, at the box office. Such is the punishment for those that take on the Governator and his cult movies, even after close to 30 years! On to the story of Conan the Barbarian. Born in the midst of a war where he loses both parents even as arch-enemy Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang) appropriates the last piece of a mask of power that will help him rule the world, the next few (say 20-odd) years of Conan’s (Jason Momoa) life are a blur. Post this, in a serendipitious encounter, Conan finally picks up the trail of the perpetrators. The rest of the movie is a series of skirmishes and minor battles as Conan and his pirates friends hack and cleave through the enemy in their quest to destroy Khalar Zym and rescue the pure-blood Tamara (Rachel Nichols). A decent watch in its own right, but just an action movie nevertheless – till the aura of the predecessor fades, there is no room for a new Conan

11.5/20

Shoot thy Enemies

Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, Joseph Fiennes and Ed Harris capture both the all-out poignancy of war as well as the fraility of man in the face of personal and extraleous challenge, in Enemy at the Gates. Easily one of the best war movies that I have seen, young Vassili Zaitsev (Jude Law), sharpshooter from the Urals, finds himself the hero of the Battle of Stalingrad on account of his superlative sniper skills. He also finds love in the beautiful Moscow-educated Tania (Rachel Weisz) and the two catch some fleeting intimate moments in the midst of the horror. The fame and love awaken jealousy in no small measure in Commissar Danilov (Joseph Fiennes) who clears his conscience in one last cathartic act. And the showdown between the deer-hunting German nobleman sharpshooter Major Konig (Ed Harris) and Vassili is the piece-de-resistance of the movie. It is a rare combination of the depiction of the large-scale brutality of war coupled with the cat-and-mouse game of the two sharpshooters

16/20

Trolls in NY (yawn)

I cannot and will not bring myself to say anything negative about Guillermo Del Toro. Like Peter Jackson, the man has achieved a lifetime of acclaim with Pan’s Labyrinth and The Orphanage, and may well rest on his laurels for the rest of his living days. Hellboy II – The Golden Army liberally uses animal motifs, but in aggregate ends up missing out on both originality and believability. Perhaps it is the backdrop of New York that makes is so over-the-top. Troll gates below Brooklyn Bridge remind one of Harry Potter, while the Troll city itself appears like something out of Star Wars. More Star Wars – Attack of the Clones when the troll army rises. By the end of the movie, I am not sure what to believe. But again, a great movie!!!