Destroyer of Worlds

Maybe at some level Oppenheimer was a psychopath. And that is why he was chosen to lead the Manhattan Project. And that is why there is high drama with Strauss, and the differences with Teller. And the split personality that cannot resist the adulation and attribution of having won America the War, but on the other hand has to live with the horrors of the outcome. The sins of Oppenheimer are the failing of mankind itself - in spite of the sheer destructiveness of its creations we tread the very same paths time after time. Nolan departs from the storytelling of Interstellar and Inception, and delivers a drama with sensitivity and a poignant sense of history

15/20

Heights of Endurance

You will not expect this from a cathartic climb of a 2000 ft tower. The heat could kill you if the fall... Or the vultures.. doesnt. Mobile signals will cease, your drone will die on you, your best friend will, well, die fighting, and it is with the last vestiges of your effort that you will eventually live.. maybe. Becky and Shiloh give it all it takes in Fall

15/20

The Impossible Odds of Sports (Sponsorship)

Air Jordans. Created out of a relentlessly persistent talent scout Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), a mom who did right when it came to the crunch and created essentially revenue sharing in sports (Viola Davis), and a founder promoter who came through when it counted - Phil Knight (Ben Affleck). And some great design work. Matt Damon creates the greatest deal in the history of sports, through bagging the greatest athlete in the history of sports. Even in the most feelgood of genres Air is unmissable

17.5/20

Breaking down, Getting it Together

Breaking Surface is about the perils of diving - cousin sisters Ida and Tuva go for a dive in the fjords and Tuva is trapped under a rock post an undersea earthquake - and that takes a death-defying rescue to save Tuva... And some serendipity and innovation too

15.5/20

Time Trap

Hidden gem of a sci fi movie. Teens look for their missing professor, get trapped in a cave where time stands still, get propelled forward in time. The movie gets better with, well, time. Worth watching

15.5/20

Sayen

A Mapuche woman sees off illegal cobalt miners in Southern Chile

Trained as a warrior and one of the forest.. echoes of First Blood as well as Apocalypto. Return the jungle to its own

15/20

More Rings of Power - S1 E5

 Hear this and be transported

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=dmzumEBB1EE

This song singularly catapulted this series from ho hum slow and steady OTT rendition to "Far over the Misty Mountains Cold" class. 

Plus the character development is becoming apparent in its execution - Elrond and his father, Galadriel, Nori, Durin.. forming a quartet of sorts of elves men dwarves and hobbits.. in various measures honour, reserve, courage, tact, the forging of uneasy alliances ... all coming together well. On to Middle Earth and the Southlands

Epic

Its time again for the series that will rule them all. With storylines in infancy, it is a bit early in the season (literally) to review The Rings of Power (TV Series). However a few elements do stand out already:

Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) has begun a delicate balancing act of pivoting from millenia of war and rage to wisdom and the forging of alliances, the feisty Harfoot (Hobbit) Nori (Markella Kavenagh) is truly the black sheep among the hobbits for harboring what must surely be a wizard, and Elrond (Robert Aramayo) goes about his ways and is on the verge of, well, the forging of the rings. It seems at this point that the Orcs are far away and Sauron is but a distant memory. Slow burn and of course unmissable for the legions of fans including yours truly

13.5/20

Battered but Intact

Bruised showcases Halle Berry in the MMA ring as down and out fighter Jackie Justice in a comeback match. Echoing many such movies, including her very own Million Dollar Baby, its worth a watch for the usual heartwarming effect of regaining performance, uniting a family and seeing off the critics. Worth strictly a casual watch

6/10

Intentionally Blank

Purja - Invincible

 Nirmal Purja is unbelievable. A Gurkha endurance athlete that scaled the world's fourteen highest peaks in less than 7 months. And with a generous dose of humanity (read rescues) and HACE along the way too. A man whose endurance beats the world's greatest athletes. A SBS recruit and sniper survivor, and one who says that the unremembered Gurkhas needed to make their point by doing their own great climb, sans ingrate White climbers. Unmissable and beyond inspiring is 14 Peaks (Documentary - Netflix)

16/20

Tadap (Hindi)

A one sided romance and act of pure deception. A movie that limps along and then suddenly finds its legs in a good read of human emotion. Ishaan (Ahan Shetty) and Ruksana (Tara Sutaria) are literally no match for each other

13.5/20

Dune - Resurrected

 In a huge improvement from David Lynch's version, Denis Villeneuve brings the realpolitik of Dune back to the big screen. Uncluttered and far more nuanced than the likes of Star Wars, with none of the pedantic Star Trek genre nor the incessant intrigue of Game of Thrones, Dune is faithful to the storyline. Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) flee from the aftermath of a Harkonnen plus Federation attack, to regroup and reclaim what is owed to him, through an alliance with the Fremen. After a long time, a movie thats definitely a must watch

16/20

WW84 and back to the neighbourhood theatrer

Black Mirror - Brief Review

https://g.co/kgs/cz1emj

Black Mirror (NFLX) is so reminiscent of The Twilight Zone on cable many moons ago.. heard of it often, finally saw 2 episodes today.. this is true cyberpunk inasmuch this is no urban dystopias but the confluence of technology and the darkness of our minds. Highly recommend a sampling. Thought provoking, discrete episodes, not for good cheer

16/20

Heartwarming, Heartrending, Real

Having watched various animal world related programs since early childhood, I am yet to see anything like My Octopus Teacher - where Craig Foster - the protagonist - spent from two decades of corporate life - finds his world blending into the life of a wild common octopus while free diving in a kelp forest off the coast of South Africa - its empathy and play, its extreme and unexpected level of intelligence, its brushes with deadly pyjama sharks and regeneration, and finally its procreation and fulfillment of purpose. There is probably no instance of a human coming so close to the animal world and capturing it so well. This Netflix original documentary completely draws in the viewer, and the latter never loses his empathy. One of the very best - very real and very sad

17.5/20

Perfect QC Imperfect People

Devs is virtually a one woman show - distraught by the inexplicable apparent self immolation of her boyfriend, Lily Chan (Sonoya Mizuno) reaches Devs - the top secret Quantum Computing (QC)-driven past/ future visualiser.. the brainchild of reclusive billionaire Forest (Nick Offerman) and his tool to resurrect Amaya.. His lost daughter and the name of his company. Lily does not know it yet but only she has the ability to alter the course of the future itself

15/20

Robot Times

Love Death and Robots is an unusual collection of 18 largely high quality stories that involve robots or deep tech in some manner. Some of the storiew are quite outstanding.- Zima Blue (E14) is quite a watch.. Therr are others that involve uploading consciousness to giant fighting robots, lost in space into a simulation, a Gravity-esque return to base while losing a limb, and many more. The quality of stories is high, several are thought provoking, and at a sharp 15 mins each this is undeniably a watch

16.5/20

Electric

The Current War - we watched this in the relative intimacy and detail of one of the smaller (Insignia) screens in Imax Inorbit Malad. The small screen brought the brute rivalry of the genius Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and the equally determined Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) to focus... None gives the other a quarter in looking at lighting up America and eventually the world. It is AC vs DC, pitches and patronage of investors - the eponymous JP Morgan (Matthew Macfayden) - a narrative that resonates to this day more than most, the alliance with the genius Tesla (Nicholas Hoult). The movie begins with the memorable line "It is 1880 and the world is still lit by fire" - highlighting the sheer extent of the change brought about by the rivals. Perhaps it is great competition that brings out both the worst and the best in our nature

16/20

Knife's Edge

Knives Out has celebrity detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) solves (sort of) a whodunit at a remote suburb where a family - largely underserving in spades - looks forward to an inheritance from patriarch Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) - with a cast that includes a wastrel grandson in Ransom Drysdale (Chris Evans) and a near invisible domestic help in Marta (Ana de Armas) with ponderables of her own, it is an interesting if not extraordinary feat of deductive reasoning with a touch of the copybook thriller. Worth a watch, but Andhadhun (Hindi) or Badla (Hindi) frankly do a better job...

















13/20