Anjan Dutt, one of my favourite troubadours, has finally become his own man as a filmmaker, and in glorious fashion. Bow Barracks Forever was good film albeit for a niche audience; Bong Connection and Chalo, Lets Go showed promise, but didn’t really deliver as much. With Madly Bengali he has created a movie that is as much filled with nostalgia as it is with humour. The movie is broken into 4 chapters, with each dedicated, in turns, to one the four members of the eponymous Bengali rock band – Pablo, Benzy, Neon and Baaji, struggling to make music in a world full of noise. Though distinct in character and background, and each with a baggage of his own, they however are united by friendship and their common passion for music. Set against themes ranging from marital problems and religion to juvenile sex and drug abuse, the movie indeed manages to capture the pulse of today’s Kolkata. The songs composed by Neel Dutt, the director’s son, are absolutely terrific - ranging from edgy to elegiac, more so given that music is essentially what the movie is all about. And whenever the beautiful vignettes of the city made me a tad sentimental, the awesome screenplay, replete with dry humour as well as good situational comedy, had me laughing like a maniac. The director himself has played a pivotal role as a drifter who becomes the band’s manager-cum-mentor. Lew Hilt, as a former musician and the owner of a dilapidated garage where the band jams, Chandan Sen, as a foul-mouthed local goon, and Saswata Chatterjee, as an alcoholic father, are really good in the acting department. The movie has its negatives, I agree, but the positives outweigh them handsomely, making this a far more definitive chronicle of the underground rock culture in India vis-à-vis the Hindi flick Rock On.
Director: Anjan Dutt
Genre: Drama/Comedy/Musical/Ensemble Film
Language: Bengali
Country: India
If you ever want to witness an archetypal example of an actor/actress playing against type, watch this erotic thriller by Jane Campion. Meg Ryan, forever typecast as the cute girl next door in such enormously popular romantic comedies like When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail and French Kiss, shed her clean girl image and inhibitions in this dark atmospheric cat-and-mouse tale set in New York, starring as a beautiful English teacher who gets entangled in a relationship with a mysterious homicide detective (Mark Ruffalo) investigating a series of brutal murders in her neighbourhood. The forty-something Meg Ryan didn’t just bare her luscious ageless body in the graphic nude scenes, but also her soul in her bravura turn as a severely lonely, emotionally fragile woman who experiences sexual liberation for the first time in her life during her torrid affair with a younger man, amid the suspicion, squalor and violence in her surroundings. The tone of this moody thriller might appear ambiguous for many, the characterization of Ruffalo’s cop not chiseled very well, and the constant blurring in and out of images a tad irritating, but superb turns by the two leads and the digressive narration of an otherwise straightforward plot managed to make for an interesting viewing.
Director: Jane Campion
Genre: Thriller/Psychological Thriller/Detective Movie/Mystery/Erotic Thriller
Language: English
Country: US
My Blueberry Nights, the latest from acclaimed Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-Wai (i.e. if you don’t take into account the redux version of his Ashes of Time), is his first movie with English as the spoken language. Grammy winner Norah Jones starred as heartbroken young woman who sets off on a cross-country road journey across the US, and in the process befriends a motley of distinctive characters – an introverted café owner (Jude Law) who serves her blueberry pie for free, a lovelorn cop who has taken to alcohol to get over the memories of her ravishing albeit philandering wife (Rachel Weisz), and a cocky but fragile compulsive gambler with demons of her own (played exquisitely by Natalie Portman). The movie has all the hallmarks of the director – dazzling visual beauty, existentialist theme, rambling narrative, an array of lost souls, and a beautiful soundtrack that kept growing on me. However despite all his signature touches and the soothing flow, it somehow lacked that extra spark present in his masterpieces like Chungking Express and 2046. Consequently, I liked the movie, but it failed to stay with me.
Director: Wong Kar-Wai
Genre: Drama/Romantic Drama/Existentialist Drama/Road Movie
Language: English
Country: China (Hong Kong)
We saw the latest from Tom “Run Lola Run” Tykwer, The International, at a theatre with poor sound quality. This proved to be doubly unfortunate because, in contrast to what we had presumed, it is a verbose thriller with an exceedingly meandering plot. On first glance, the tale of a super-rich bank playing the role of a vital keg in promoting international terrorism and chaos might seem straight out of a Robert Ludlum thriller, and hence ticket to a perfect summer popcorn-churner. Perhaps precisely for that reason, the director tried raising the movie a couple of notches above the daily diet of slick thrillers by adding complex layers of corruption, deceit and conspiracies – that too on a mega-global scale. Unfortunately much of it failed to make sense, and to top that it failed to thrill as well, apart from the bloody Guggenheim shootout scene that is. Naomi Watts, who is compelling as always in the role of an asst. DA, and the polished vistas of places ranging from Berlin to Milan to New York City to Istanbul, are perhaps among the few positives for the movie. Clive Owen, though an Interpol agent, never really seemed capable of kicking the bad guys’ asses, and the loose script too didn’t help Tykwer’s ambitious causes.
Director: Tom Tykwer
Genre: Thriller/Political Thriller
Language: English
Country: US
Often considered the last great film noir (going by the classical definition of the genre), Touch of Evil is a nightmarish ride through the dark realms of society as well as the human mind. The movie opens with its legendary opening sequence – and source of endless ‘inspirations’ – a long take tracking a car fitted with a timed bomb, from its planting to its explosion. The iconic first three minutes was enough to make this Orson Welles classic a breathtaking and a disturbing movie. What follows, both literally and figuratively, is a game unto death between an honest Mexican cop (Charlton Heston in a largely forgettable role) and the local American police chief (Orson Welles). Janet Leigh, as Heston’s gorgeous wife, in a role that preceded her iconic turn as the infamous “shower scene” lady in Psycho, was at her seductive best. The movie, however, fairly and squarely belonged to Welles. Not only did he present a glimpse into what hell might look like – augmented by the incredibly dark atmosphere, serpentine narrative and oblique camera angles that seemed to penetrate right into the psyche of the characters, but also, as the sleazy, grotesque, corrupt and scheming Captain Hank Quinlan – a screen villain like few others – he gave a performance even more sinister and magnetic than his memorable turn in The Third Man. Though it was callously edited, and massacred in the process, by the studio, fortunately for us cinephiles the noir masterpiece has been restored to the version that Welles perhaps had envisioned while making it.
Director: Orson Welles
Genre: Film Noir/Crime Thriller/Psychological Thriller/Mystery
Language: English
Country: US
American Indie auteur Gus Van Sant and actor par excellence Sean Penn have joined hands to bring to screen the last few years of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person elected to public office in the United States. Though an underdog story at heart, Milk has managed to rise beyond the clichés and pitfalls that most such movies fall prey to. In Van Sant’s expert yet sympathetic hands, it hasn’t just remained the heroic albeit tragic final eight years of Milk’s life – from his relocation from NYC to Frisco to find greater meaning to his mundane life, to his assassination at the hands of a political rival – but also a holistic look at the socio-politics of the gay rights movement as well as the bigotry, hypocrisy and downright prejudices that had always plagued the lives of Milk and his ilk. As one might expect, the movie is an out and out Sean Penn vehicle – his nuanced, heartfelt portrayal of an average middle-aged closet gay who makes a spectacular transitions into a larger than life figure is brilliant. He has received apt support from James Franco, Emile Hirsch and Josh Brolin. Though I would have loved to see a more rounded character development for Milk since no man, however revered, can be devoid of shades of gray, this poignant old-fashioned biopic, nonetheless, has managed to effectively capture the zeitgeist of the turbulent 70’s.
Director: Gus Van Sant
Genre: Drama/Political Drama/Biopic/Epic
Language: English
Country: US
First feature of Na Hong-Jin, The Chaser is a compelling thriller that nearly any debutant director would happily have in his resume, more so if he’s a Korean given the gut-wrenching plot and onscreen violence. The director must have taken a leaf out of Park Chan-Wook’s masterful Vengeance Trilogy while making this psychological cat-and-mouse struggle between a former cop turned pimp and a dangerous psychopath who’s proving to be a thorn in the former business (murdering prostitutes belonging to his stable, i.e.). Interestingly, the ex-cop doesn’t just have to run against time to catch the elusive serial killer, he also has to fight nearly insurmountable obstacles in the form of ludicrous bureaucratic hassles as well as the strained relationship with his former colleagues. True to its name, the movie has some tremendous chase sequences through various dimly lit narrow by-lanes of Seoul. Unabashedly violent and extremely addictive, the movie is sure to have one glued to the screen till its bloody climax. Taut screenplay, impressive acting and glossy production values have made this a dark, frantic, gripping and an utterly watchable flick.
Director: Na Hong-Jin
Genre: Thriller/Psychological Thriller/Serial Killer Movie/Cop Movie/Mystery
Language: Korean
Country: South Korea
Given the grand production design, intoxicating visual beauty and the amount of trouble that besieged its making, Ashes of Time might very well be the movie that Hong Kong maestro Wong Kar-Wai might want to be remembered by. Though perhaps not his best work, vis-à-vis Chungking Express, Happy Together and In the Mood for Love, this epic martial arts movie is a visual feast and a brooding meditation on heartbreak, loneliness and the inescapable and treacherous nature of memory. It is as far removed from other HK movies typically belonging to this genre as perhaps Emir Kusturica’s Underground was from other war movies. In fact, the movie may be considered as a companion piece to the auteur’s 2046, structurally as well as thematically. Employing multiple voiceovers and a Byzantine narrative that has done away with the chronology of time, this is an expressionistic, surreal and deeply melancholic exploration of existentialism and unrequited love – arguably two of Wong Kar-Wai’s favourite motifs. Christopher Doyle’s mesmerizing cinematography (digitally rendered even more gorgeous in the Redux version) and the haunting soundtrack have added to the incredible beauty of this moody, lyrical and sensuous tale of lost souls. The movie comprises of the 'who’s who' of the Hong Kong film industry, including Leslie Cheung, both the Tony Leung’s, Maggie Cheung, Brigitte Lin and Carina Lau, among others.
Director: Wong Kar-Wai
Genre: Drama/Romance/Adventure/Existentialist Drama/Martial Arts Movie/Epic
Language: Cantonese
Country: China (Hong Kong)
Cross Connection is a movie that would easily appeal to Generation Y (the term ‘Gen X’ is both an overused and an anachronistic term where today’s ‘youth’ is concerned). This is a fun love quadrangle about the interconnected romantic follies and foibles of 4 young people – an outspoken danseuse who’s confused about matters relating to the heart (Rimjhim Mitra), a Bohemian guy who dabbles in poetry (Ritwik Chakraborty), an ambitious young man fast rising the corporate ladder (Abit Chatterjee) and an alluring PYT who any guy would easily fall for (Payel Sarkar - she's really cute). Though the movie drags in the last 20 minutes and some of the plot developments are a tad juvenile, it is an enjoyable watch nonetheless that’ll keep you laughing for most of its length with its situational comedy and sexcapades. Saswata Chatterjee, as a cynical and wisecracking man, has perhaps the most interesting role in the movie. Vignettes of Kolkata in the first half of the movie have been well captured. The music by Neel Dutt, too, is quite good with the two nostalgic Anjan Dutt numbers easily the worth the price of the ticket. Cross Connection is in a way an Indian outlook to Sex and the City.
Directors: Abhijit Guha & Sudeshna Roy
Genre: Comedy/Situational Comedy/Romantic Comedy/Sex Comedy
Language: Bengali
Country: India
American Indie director Tamara Jenkin’s first movie in 7 years, The Savages is based on a deceptively simple and a seemingly drab premise – a pair of siblings coming together to take care of their aged father suffering from dementia. But with two of America’s most respected actors playing the emotionally fragile siblings – Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney, things can never really go wrong. Hoffman’s intellectual ‘brother’ and Linney’s ‘sister’ who aspires to reach the same pedestal, have brought to screen a ravaging relationship, seethed in jealousy, insecurity and a bagful of personal issues trying to burst through manicured seams. And when they finally let their guards down and start speaking their minds, you know the proverbial shit has truly hit the walls, err fan (watch the movie, and you’ll get the pun). The script, which is compassionate and disturbing in equal measures, lent an extra spark to the compelling performances. Even though the first half of the movie is filled with some eye-candy montages (the saturated colours and locales deliberately made to look like movie sets are reminiscent of similar sequences in The Notorious Bettie Page), the tale of human mortality, broken relationships and fractured dreams is anything but a date movie.
Director: Tamara Jenkins
Genre: Drama/Family Drama
Language: English
Country: US
For his first feature film in colour, Bengali auteur Satyajit Ray chose the quaint and idyllic town of Darjeeling as the backdrop for the story. Members of a wealthy and educated Bengali family are on vacation at the beautiful Himalayan hill station. However, in contrast to the picturesque locales (exquisitely shot by Subrata Mitra), unspoken ideological schisms between the rich family patriarch (commandingly played by Chabi Biswas) and members of the younger generation, latent familial problems otherwise hidden from the eyes of the society, and the age-old struggle between ‘marriage of convenience’ and ‘marriage of choice’, play out against the changing faces of nature over the course of one day. Languorously paced, the movie might appear slow to some. However, it might have been deliberately so paced by Ray to gradually reveal the conflicts between the various characters, and juxtapose that with the decidedly ironic interplay between sunshine and mist that, in many ways, manage to define the mood of the story. The movie ends with a glorious view of Kanchenjungha, and the various problems too seem to have been resolved for the moment, but it is anybody’s guess as to what awaits them when they return to the daily of humdrums of Calcutta.
Director: Satyajit Ray
Genre: Drama/Family Drama/Ensemble Film
Language: Bengali
Country: India
Frost/Nixon could easily be the most distinctive movie that Ron Howard has made in his career thus far. It is far removed from his earlier movies like A Beautiful Mind and Apollo 13, or perhaps not. A movie based on ‘actual events’ can be tricky. Thankfully, this fictionalized retelling of the electrifying 1977 interview of deposed American President Richard Nixon by British television guy David Frost, has managed to rise above the clichés and constraints that docu-fictions are more often than not seem to be governed by. The best aspect of this movie, like Queen (which, too, had Michael Sheen playing a ‘real’ character – Tony Blair there, as compared to Frost here), is that the director didn’t place history lessons over delving deep into the minds of the protagonists. And interestingly, on either occasion, the respective directors chose to have the more dramatic historical events as backdrops – the infamous Watergate Scandal and the tragic death of Princess Diana, respectively – masterstrokes, one might even say. A verbose and intense movie like this relies heavily on the actors, and the impressive cast, led by a towering, nuanced and a thoroughly brilliant turn by Frank Langella, certainly made the director’s job a lot easier than one might have imagined.
Director: Ron Howard
Genre: Drama/Political Drama/Psychological Drama/Docu-Fiction
Language: English
Country: US
La Femme Nikita might be the movie Luc Besson is most widely remembered by, and also one of the key features of the Cinema du look movement, its in-your-face stylizations, bizarre plot developments and over the top action sequences made this glossy French flick a no-brainer for me. The movie is about Nikita, a gauche and violent junkie, who is transformed into a sexy, lethal assassin. The movie is pumped with a heavy dose of adrenaline with testosterone-fuelled scenes that were supposed to be visually exuberant, but turned out to be no more than cringe inducing. Had the director kept it simple, it might have been two hours of fun; unfortunately, he introduced a lot of psycho-babble and pseudo-character developments that weren't commensurate with the ludicrously hyper-violent tone of the movie. What Besson perhaps didn’t realize in the first place was that, given the kind of disgusting character he chalked out for Nikita in the first third of the movie, viewers would never view her pangs of conscience and complex moral dilemma in the remaining two-thirds with empathy or understanding. Perhaps the only saving grace of the movie, apart from its slick look, was Jean Reno’s memorable cameo as a laconic ‘cleaner’ – his mere presence added a layer of dark humour in this otherwise callous and inane post-noir.
Director: Luc Besson
Genre: Thriller/Action/Spy Movie
Language: French
Country: France
Thelma and Louise, in the great tradition of revisionist genre movies, did exactly what Ridley Scott perhaps intended – by having two working-class women as its protagonists instead of rugged, disillusioned men, it forever demythologized the very masculine concept of “hitting the road”. In that sense, it may be put on par with Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood’s classic revisionist Western that erased the elements of romanticism from the much loved all-American genre. Geena Davis, as an overtly naïve housewife who is treated like a piece of furniture by her supercilious husband, and Susan Sarandon, as a free-spirited lady with a loving if commitment-phobic fiancé (played with casual élan by Michael Madsen), form the eponymous all-girl couple who hit the road on a beaut of a beast – a Thunderbird convertible – to get away from ’em all. However, what was supposed to be a few days of fun and freedom turns ugly, and the two find themselves on the run from the law. Spectacular panoramic photography, snazzy soundtracks, smart screenplay that ensures smooth yet memorable development of the two principal characters, a scintillating car chase sequence, and an unforgettable climax (the final freeze frame is one for the ages), completely masked the somewhat B-grade look of the film and the not so inspired turns by the two ladies. Watch out for Harvey Keitel as a sympathetic cop and a young Brad Pitt as a glibly opportunistic small-time crook.
Director: Ridley Scott
Genre: Drama/Crime Drama/Road Movie/Buddy Film
Language: English
Country: US
Anjan Dutt’s latest directorial venture Chowrasta revolves around a place that is very close to his heart – a place that featured regularly in his songs when he was a troubadour. Darjeeling may have been the source of inspiration for Dutt, however this nostalgic take on the queen of Indian hill stations ends up concentrating more on her squalor than her beauty, perhaps because Dutt failed to find the Darjeeling that is forever captured in his memory. Consequently, the movie has ended up being a very hazy and ambiguous portrayal of the place and her people. The characters are thus either embittered and lost souls, or like the narrator (a reflection of the director himself, and played with a lot of passion by Victor Bannerjee), incarcerated in a time freeze. The post-production seemed unpolished, and some of the subplots have been weakly done. And though Dutt’s previous movies like Bow Barracks Forever, Bong Connection and Chalo, Lets Go, all boasted of excellent soundtracks, this one disappoints on that count too. Perhaps the only contribution of the movie lay in making me want to visit Darjeeling once again, and feel the poetry on lost love and lost times (told through voiceovers) while enraptured by the majestic Kanchenjungha through early morning mist.
Director: Anjan Dutt
Genre: Drama/Ensemble Film/Romance
Language: Bengali
Country: India
Gulaal is an angry film filled with angry characters; however, even though there’s no denying the movie’s latent (though not completely tapped) force, it somehow failed to make me share its anger. The movie starts off explosively, with Kay Kay Menon in the process of giving a seditious speech to radicalized men to enforce his vision of having a separate state for the Rajputs – a clan revered for its battlefield bravery. Yet, the same passion didn’t get carried over till the end, thus diluting the strong political and nihilistic themes of the movie. The acting in general was very good, with the strongest performance being that of Abhimanyu Singh whose powerful portrayal of a guy steeped in vitality and deep contempt for the world around him, and who lives in a psychedelic neon-lit bar, was utterly memorable. And like Dev D, the background score and cinematography, too, are extremely impressive. The downturns, however, are the somewhat scrappy editing that made me loose track of the plot more than once, lack of development of a couple of characters which had great potentials otherwise, and a weak turn by the chief protagonist of the story (which becomes all the more glaring thanks to the terrific support cast). Gulaal had greatness written all over it; unfortunately all it ends up being is no more than just a satisfying watch.
Director: Anurag Kashyap
Genre: Drama/Political Drama/Existential Drama/Gangster Movie
Language: Hindi
Country: India
This is my first foray into Pedro Almodóvar’s work, and I feel I couldn’t have chosen for a better introduction to the celebrated Spanish auteur’s world. In parts a film noir, in parts a poetic tale of broken friendships and fractured love, and in parts an irreverent, complex and cerebral observation of the darker forces of human nature, Bad Education is a work that befits the filmmaker’s stature. The film has the highly talented Mexican actor Gael García Bernal as a struggling actor who, one fine day, meets his childhood friend, a famous director, and presents a semi-autobiographical story that he’s written; he also expresses his keen interest in playing the part of the central protagonist – a cross-dressing guy. This simple beginning, however, starts growing graver and more disconcerting with every passing frame as the director delves into themes ranging from loss of innocence and faith to identity crisis and dangerous love. Though, to put it mildly, homosexuality isn’t my favourite subject, Almodovar’s powerful narrative skills, combined with his ability to up the ante with brushstrokes from a colourful palette and yet reinforce the moody atmosphere with apt soundtracks, made watching the movie a captivating experience for me. The acting and characterizations, too, are superb and do complete justice to the twisting plot.
p.s. This happens to be my 200th film review here. Let me raise a small toast to that... Cheers!
Director: Pedro AlmodóvarGenre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Neo-Noir/Mystery
Language: Spanish
Country: Spain
70’s were a decade marked by protests and political unrest throughout the world. But very few cities witnessed the kind of spontaneous and violent uprisings that happened on the streets of Calcutta and West Berlin. Like the Naxalite movement in Calcutta, the one in Berlin, too, had the intoxicating Leftist doctrines of Mao and Che Guevara as its basis, started principally as a student movement against ‘American Imperialism’, rapidly took the form of urban guerrilla warfare, and was met with an iron fist (with police action, at times, being hard to distinguish from those of the 'terrorists'). Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, based on the spectacular rise and fall of the notorious Red Army Faction (RAF), is a detailed and energetic chronicling of this dark time in German history. Though the runtime could have been reduced, especially in the last third of the movie, it hardly matters much thanks to the kinetic screenplay, thumping soundtrack, and for being a colourful and engrossing representation of the zeitgeist of the turbulent times. The volatile Moritz Bleibtreu and the beautiful Martina Gedeck, two of German cinema’s most recognized faces, have given terrific performances as two of the key players of the radical group. The director’s assured depiction of the array of events, without ever taking sides, has made for engaging viewing and a fine historical account, at the same time. And the moral ambiguity in its fatalistic ending has ensured a long after life for the movie.
Director: Uli Edel
Genre: Thriller/Political Thriller/Docu-fiction/Epic
Language: German
Country: Germany
If you were led to think that Bob Rafelson, who made the remarkable anti-establishmentarian movie Five Easy Pieces with Jack Nicholson, created magic with the legendary thespian twenty-five years later with Blood and Wine, you would be left disappointed… I was. A thriller as straightforward as it can get, the movie is about a jewel theft gone awry and, with each trying to get a slice of everyone else, how that ends up nearly destroying everyone around. With hardly any likeable characters, and a climax that doesn’t appear very smart despite, presumably, the director’s best efforts, the movie might keep you glued with its intense and taut buildup, but will cease to be on your mind once the end credits have rolled. Perhaps one of the few reasons that might be there to watch the movie lies in the volcanic presence of, you guessed it, Jack Nicholson – he is in his elements as an embittered, cynical, violent and near-broke wine merchant. The best scenes in the movie, in fact, are the ones involving his volatile and fragile friendship-of-convenience with a near-psychotic and dying hustler, played with élan by Michael Caine.
Director: Bob Rafelson
Genre: Thriller/Crime Thriller/Psychological Thriller/Heist Movie
Language: English
Country: US
