Reviews

Tere Bin Laden is part of the new Indian Cinema. It belongs to the category of films like Dev D, Khosla Ka Ghosla and Road, Movie. Movies about real people. Played by good actors. These movies do not rely on huge budgets, exotic locales, over the top acting and item numbers. Instead the focus on plotting, scripting, directing and acting. Things that really make a movie

Tere Bin Laden is different from most Bollywood films that have been made in the last decade. It is well researched and actually says something intelligent. It has a sense of humor and has good jokes. Compared to the shipload of terrible comedies made in Bollywood over the last decade Tere Bin Laden can be heralded as the 2nd coming. I can see this film with a big budget. Akshay Kumar playing the lead in his over the top manner. Katrina Kaif playing the hairdresser and forgetting to act. Paresh Rawal playing Osama and somehow trying to make sense of the mess surrounding him. And somewhere we will have an item number by Malaika Arora thrown in. And thats that. We will have the biggest Bollywood hit.

Tere Bin Laden doesn't do that. It stars a bunch of character actors from Bollywood and stars a Pakistan Rocker as the lead. They all do a good job and all of them make an attempt to act and create. They seem like they are having fun and that goes a long way in making this a good comedy and not another piece of dung like Housefull and the like. Some jokes do fall flat but I think that's because they try to make the film have more of a selling point but that doesn't matter.

The film opens with a disclaimer that a particular word used in song lyrics is a reference to a Bulgarian poet and isn't meant to offensive. The point of having such a disclaimer eludes me. IS that how sensitive the audience has become . I found that the film was sued, banned, condemned. How stupid have viewers become ? Can no one say anything different from the what is the status quo? Have they forgotten what satire is ? How to laugh? Douglas Adams would never be appreciated by South Asians.

But the reference to the poet shows that the director is well read and intelligent. Ali Zafar the lead in the movie has posters of films like Goodfellas and Amercan History X. An Indian director with good taste in books and films? Thats new. It told me all I needed to know. I was in good hands. I would be entertained in an intelligent manner that wouldn't insult my intelligence.

Tere Bin Laden towards the end makes a few intelligent points. The writer seems fairly up to date with current affairs and efficiently lampoons the current scenario. It is not like Karan Johar's fecal piece My Name Is Khan that was so divorced from reality that it wasn't even funny. It was just two and a half hours worth of depressingly bad cinema. Tere Bin Laden is a breath of fresh air in Indian Cinema. It is not quite art but at least it is entertaining.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is one of the finest westerns I have ever seen. It is more than the traditional western. Much more than any traditional kind of film. Directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and James Stewart(one of my favorite actors) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is one of the best Westerns ever made.

It endured a troubled production. Ford was such a stern director that he ridiculed Wayne and Stewart so they would deliver an efficient performance. Wayne would fight with Stroud because of this. But you cannot see this internal turmoil anywhere in the film.

The film starts with a retired senator returning to his old town for a friends funeral and he begins recounting the tale of his adventures to a journalist. From there we are shown his early life and how he set out for a adventure as a idealist law graduate looking for adventure in the west.

Liberty Valance is the archetypal bad guy. He kills ruthlessly and there is no remorse in any thing that he does. He isn't arrested because of the coward marshall.

Unlike most westerns the film isn't about anti - heroes and lone warriors. It is about a town and its colourful characters. It is about their struggles. Their attempts to find beauty in the world and try to make sense of it as best as they can. There is no room for law & order .

The film tries to talk about the need for all these things. You cannot go all guns blazing all the time. Like Batman you have to know where to draw the line between your enemies and yourself.

An underlying feel throughout the film is about roots. How you cannot really leave the place where you are born. I love this quote by Abbas Kiarostami that talks about this. He says that he doesn't leave Iran because he would feel like a tree that has been shifted to a new location and suddenly the fruit wouldn't be good anymore

There are moments of tremendous beauty and poignancy in the film. Like the cactus flowers. And the ending is one of the best I have ever seen. It was visceral. Sergio Leone calls this his favourite John Ford film because he says that Ford had finally learnt a word called pessimism. While I wouldn't call this film pessimistic. I would say this is his most true to life picture. Because it is the most chaotic, yet there is an answer in this chaos. There is beauty in it.

I really wanted to like this movie. I love it that Indian film makers have begun treating cinema as an art form. Cinema is now becoming a medium of expression of thoughts and Peepli Live exemplifies this to the core.

It is quite similar to a film that came out last year. It was called Road,Movie and was directed by Dev Benegal. Another of the small indie Indian films that I really wanted to like.

But, unlike Khosla Ka Ghosla both of these movies lacked something that is very important for a movie about characters like these. Movies that are concerned with real people and about real things that happen to them. Both of these movie were too detached from their source material. The films lacked an emotional core.

Peepli Live is an efficient film. The camera is used as something more than a tool. It is used like Scorsese uses it. Lighting is used brilliantly in the film and gives its village setting a more real film. So you cannot fault the film on any technical aspects.

Peepli Live tries to lampoon both sides of the story. The farmers are shown as a bunch of illiterate good for nothings while everyone is a bloodthirsty predator. I understand that is really the case. People are really this terrible but life is not this devoid of beauty.

Mumbai Meri Jaan was a similar movie about the human condition but there the people had hope. They could think about the future. They were trying to find meaning and hope. But in Peepli Live the struggle for any kind of higher goal has been left behind. Every single person has become a terrible person and is justifying it.

Anusha Rizvi was a journalist before directing Peepli Live. Maybe that is the reason for a clinical approach to the story. What she does makes everything very realistic. Her use of the camera evokes the style of the cinema verite movement but somehow it is lacking.

The film is a breakthrough in Indian Cinema but it fails to say anything new. It doesn't add anything new to the existing dialogue. Ir doesn't contribute to public opinion. It scratches at the surface but never reaches down into the deep exterior. We never know what Natha really thinks about or what the wife's thoughts on the whole issue are. Everyone is playing their part. Everyone is more or less one dimensional.

But still Peepli Live is a great achievement for Indian Cinema. If only this movie wasn't tainted by Aamir Khan productions it would be a greater achievement.

Alan Moore made an excellent statement while commenting on comic book to film adaptation or book to film adaptations. He said that while reading a comic book the viewer is in control of the viewing experience so he can interpret the scene in his own particular view but the movie shows it one certain way and that is what makes it dull or dreary.

Now I am a huge fan of the comic book. Watchmen is one of the greatest works of fiction of the last century. It is not just a deconstruction of the superhero genre or a parody. It is so much more. It has the capacity and scope of 1984 and Brave New World but takes it to a whole new level. It is visionary and an extremely readable work of art.

I could spend the entire review just nitpicking on what scenes matched or didn't match to the original comic book but I wont or rather I cannot. The movie has just picked up every panel on every page and just made it live action. The dialogue, scenes and everything is the same. It doesn't add anything to the work bu just makes it very terrible.

Zak Snyder though a good director seems to me to an extremely dumb person. I guess he is another one of those directors that cite Steven Spielberg as an influence. Now, while Spielberg is a great storyteller and picks up interesting stories to tell all his protégé turn out to be some of the worst directors Hollywood has produced. Snyder hasn't understood the graphic novel. He must have loved the visually arresting artwork and that is where his admiration ended. He didn't care for the politics or the characters and their turmoils or any of the other important stuff that really matters. It is evident from his movies that he cares more about visuals that substance, more about style than character development.

Now if you divorce the film from its subject matter and watch it without knowing of Alan Moore and his graphic novel I guess you could call it good film. You could justify the acclaim that it got but that is not the case. It owes everything to the original novel by Moore and Gibbons. It owes everything.

Brian. K. Vaughn , the writer of Y : The Last Man was told to write the screenplay for his own work. And he changed a few things and reworked the plot. The execs at New Line were not happy as they wanted to be faithful to the original book. Vaughn said that you cannot be so religious in your adaptation. Things must change from medium to medium. And that is what Snyder fails to comprehend. Even with his Dawn of the Dead. Even with 300. He is Michael Bay with more story.

The stupidity of Snyder is evident when Rorschach's voice-over begins " Rorschach's journal ....." Now why would he say that over and over again . Voice-over implies thought and the person doesn't refer to himself in his 2nd person. The book did it because the journal entries were separate. They weren't in the story but were separate from the plot but Snyder couldn't have one intelligent idea of his own.

Overall Snyder's Watchmen is hardly the best movie of 2009. It is hardly a good movie. Snyder further establishes himself as a director who hasn't a single original thing to say.

I have recently become a fan of really bad b – movies. Like Plan 9 and a couple of others. The Room has been called the Citizen Kane of bad movies and even if Citizen Kane might not be the greatest movie ever The Room is most certainly the worst movie ever made.

The Room is filled with so many funny details that it is almost impossible to list them. Each viewing will make it funnier because you get to know the characters and know when things will be funny so you can focus on other new terribly funny parts. I haven't laughed this much while watching Some Like it Hot , Sienfeld and others.

The Room is essentialy a very poorly made drama in all aspects. The actors deliver dialogues in a terribly dead pan manner. It can be the worst of news or the best of news the expressions will remain the same and the delivery be flat. The dialogues are hilarious. The situations are even funnier. Situations are introduced but then put away in an instant as if they were never happening. Fights begin and end within seconds and things go back to normal. The movie is filled with numerous sex scenes that go endlessly and mostly have the same kind of shots. The lead actor played by the actor – director Tommy Wisseau keeps laughing in his weird manner which alone gives the money the cult quality.

During advertising Wisseau compared the film to a good Tenesse Williams drama. Later, he went on to say that he intentionally made a comedy. I don't what is true and even though it is more likely that he made a terrible movie I am glad he did. This generation's Ed Wood has arrived on the scene. Time for all midnight movie fans to rejoice.

Gunda is a 90's film made by Kanti Shah, a director called the Ed Wood of India. Gunda is one of his more famous movies as it stars the 90's B Movie superstar Mithun.

If you attempt to watch a movie as a piece of art or as a film itself you will be disgusted and terribly disappointed. If Gunda is a seriously made movie it is a very terrible movie. The worst movie made in whole line of shitty 90's Bollywood movies. But if Kanti Shah made it seriously then you can call it his exercise in camp. Like Sam Raimi's Evil Dead series and the recent Drag Me to Hell.

The plot is basic and like most movies in the 90's it has over the top action scenes, terrible acting an revenge and the like. What differentiates it from the rest is the dialogue. The director decides to have all his dialogues in rhymes like the dialogues of the 70's and he makes up such random sentences just so they rhyme that they end up making no sense. Many characters stat the obvious like " Yeh to mar gaya" when looking at bloodied and battered boy or the background in a scene from one scene to the next and back again. Continuity goes completely out the window.

These movies are good for two reasons. One they are very good to watch with friends so you can pass comments, laugh and have a great time or as an aspiring film maker you can watch these movies and see how many ways there are that you can go wrong and then try to correct yourself and avoid these mistakes. Movies like this should be shown in film school courses and people should be made to find mistakes. The ones who find the most mistakes will top the class.

Wha furthered my interest in Kanti Shah was his mention in Udaan. The scene from his movie that were shown were cheap erotica but the dialogue was quite poetic in a cheesy sort of way but the writer seemed intelligent. Moreover a couple of articles were published about Gunda's rising fame. So I checked out the movie and boy was I not disappointed. This movie was more funny that any comedy that has been released in the last couple of years. Maybe cinema is really dying in India . Comedy was the first to go. It is a sad state when you have to see conemas worst movies so you can have a good time watching Hindi films.

The Third Man made in 1949 is one of the most perfect movies ever made. It had great acting,directing,music,lighting and every single thing is done to perfection. The score is so beautiful and fantastic that it acquires a life of its own and becomes a character in the movie. The acting is outstanding and every one of the interaction seem very real as if they are really taking place.

What I love most about the movie is its attention detail in terms of acting. There is a scene where the Romanian looks back at the waiter and chides him for no ice as he shakes his head in pooh – poohing manner. Another at the end where the priest puts down the spoon in a huff. These scenes make everything more natural.

The lighting like in most Film Noirs is brilliant. However it is a little bright or too well light by film noir standards. The scene on the wheel where Harry is in shadows while being sinister while he steps out when saying something good is brilliantly done. The first shot of Harry grinning and then at the end when shots of his wretched face are shown are really great.

The movie has some great quotes that are mostly delivered by the girl character and of course there is the cuckoo clock quote which Welles himself has written. I would like to add that the cuckoo clock however didn't come from Switzerland.

The Third Man is an entertaining film. It is quite light and never does it become overtly dark or sinister. Like most other genre movies in those days it doesn't restrict itself to being just a Film Noir but it transcends that and becomes something more.

It talks about making choices. Whether betraying a friend who is evil is wrong or right. Who is the good person the one who betrays or the one who protects such a friend.

The Third Man was made in 1949. I saw it 61 years later but it hasn't aged a day . It is a timeless masterpiece.

I found this movie is some random movie list about the 5 best movies about loneliness. Taxi Driver was at the top of that list and his one was at the bottom.

Quite often I have observed that a director's most famous or critically acclaimed film is seldom is best. 8 and 1/2, the seventh seal and Bicycle Thieves are the movies that come the most to mind when I think of this.

Umberto D for me is De Sica's masterpiece. 1952 was the year I guess in which old age and loneliness came to the fore. 1952 was also the year that Kurosawa's Ikiru was released. And an underlying theme in both of them is how unkind people can be. How inconsiderate but they do it all very unknowingly.

The only person in the movie who wasn't trained was the dog. All the others were non professional actors which De Sica had handpicked because they suited the vision that he had in mind while writing the screenplay.

Umberto D unlike Ikiru is about an old man's struggle to survive when he no family to look after him. As usual there is the helpful young person who is a maid in his apartment played by Maria Pia Casilio. It could have fallen into the clichés but it subverts them. Because De Sica tries to keep the movie as real as he can. I love the scene where Umberto has to buy the glass so he can get change. I have been in a similar situation many times. I didn't know shopkeepers refused to give change even in the 1950's. I always though it was a recent trend.

While Umberto D is an ode to loneliness it is not a movie that will depress you or leave you down in the dumps. It is one of the most humane movies I have seen about the human condition. It is about the courage of the human spirit and the will to live through the toughest of times simply because...

On the movie's wikipedia page it is given that this is a transition film for Woody Allen from his more Marx Brothers influenced early period to his later period. Transition from Sleeper to Annie Hall.

And you can see that transition brilliantly in the film. You can draw a line between the film and see a perfect balance of philosophy and comedy. The movie is mix of Marx Brothers style sight gags and one liners, Woody Allen's comic dialogue and overtly philosophical musings.

The movie is set in Russia and we are introduced to the setting by a voice-over by Woody Allen just about to be hanged and from then on we are taken down on a hilarious trip through Russia at the time of Napoleon seen through the eyes of 'the Woody Allen character'

Most of the philosophical debate is related to Death as seen in most of Allen's movies and interviews but there is also some good points made about murder. Although most of the dialogue even the most serious is done in a very humorous way Allen does make some valid points about death,war, murder and the like.

This is one of Allen's best movies. More so than Annie Hall and Manhattan. It is right up there with Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Like Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorsese Woody Allen is another director who loves the moves. He loves talking about them and he always has references to a wide range of movies in his movies.

Casablanca has often been called one of the greatest scripts to be written and filmed. And it has the fairytale quality that so many films of that time did have. So what better a subject for the Allen in transition between Sleeper and Annie Hall to tackle then retell Casablanca in his own style.

In this movie the Woody Allen character is brought out to the full level of his neurosis. He is constantly nervous and fidgety and Allen gives a great performance. There are some really genuine laugh out loud moments.

The movie explores many of the themes that would later be explored in Annie Hall and be furthered in Husbands and Wives. It is as all of Allen's films are about relationships. A man who doesn't know what to after his divorce. A couple who are very comfortable with each other and they feel no need for the so called intimate moments in life.

Allan tries to become like Bogart. Bogart is actually a character in the film and he constantly tries to advise Allan and the exchanges between them are pure gold. One thing I didn't like was that the guy who played Bogart didn't do a good job and that made it lose the charm. Plus they showed his face and he didn't look like Bogart. Hoever, that might have been intentional to show the character's neurosis.

There are constant references to Casablanca and the plot in essence is a retelling of Casablanca and retains much of the plot elements but in distinctly Allen style. He doesn't direct the movie for some reason. Herbert Ross directs and I think Allen would have done a better job. What I have noticed about Allen's films is that he shows love stories without the love scenes and kissing that are not really central to the plot. Herbert Ross feels it necessary and there are a couple of kissing scenes in the movie that seem out of place.

Play it Again, Sam stands out as a comedy in its own right. Though it may seem a parody it is not one at all. It brings out Allen's love for Casablanca and showcases his talents as an actor. We see the chemistry that Allen and Keaton share here which would later also be used in Annie Hall. It could have wrong in so many ways but Allen in the 70's could do no wrong. This is another great addition to his filmography.

The first part in the trilogy was a pretty decent movie. Since it had a low budget and everyone was doing it for the first time I guess it was a little uneven in parts and that could have been better with tighter editing and more efficient directing.

I saw the dubbed version and I do not recommend it. The voices all seem very cheesy and spoil what the movie is trying to say. I don't know why Americans have to dub English movies all over again.

Having said that Mad Max is a good film in its own right. It is unafraid in what it is doing. Geroge Miller doesn't use a lot of dialogue but instead depicts a very terrible view of a post apocalyptic future. Law and order has failed in this world and humanity has regressed to its very basic form. There are a lot of very exciting car chases and some great shots of the Australian outback.

Mel Gibson stars as the eponymous hero who comes back with a vengeance. He does a decent enough job but there is not much chance to showcase any acting talent.

The focus of the movie is not as much as on the action but more on its characters and their problems. The fact that it was made in 1979 makes it a movie a very unafraid movie for the subject matter that it was trying to tackle. There is no safe ending and no safe scene in the movie. The family is not reunited in the end. No catharsis. The seventies were the time for such kind of movies that did not have politically correct endings . In that sense Mad Max is like Chinatown.

Quentin Tarantino through the lead character in True Romance called it a real movie. He said that movies should be like this. Yes movies should definitely be like this. They should challenge you as a viewer and as a human being. And Mad Max does that. It also spawned numerous rip offs and look alikes. Mad Max gave birth to the 80's action movie.

I don't know how to write a review for this film. It challenges the conventional methods of storytelling. There is no way to tell what it is trying to say. We don't even know where it begins or where it ends. We don't know if it is reality,fiction,fantasy,science fiction, dream or what else. All we know is that it is Lynch film and with Lynch that is all you can be sure of.

Terry Pratchett says how good stories start at different points in the universe but collide at one point and that is where they get interesting. Lynch seems to follow this but at the point they collide something tremendous happens and suddenly everything is upside down.

Mullholland Dr. opens with a surreal dance sequence and then the camera pans to a car accident. We see only one survivor who is now an amnesiac with a bag of money. At this point it can be any normal detective story. It could have been a great film noir. But suddenly all these other things begin to happen.

The movie has its own atmosphere. It is central to the telling of the story. There is brilliant use of lighting and colour. In some scenes you could literally frame them and it would look like a great little surreal painting. The acting is outstanding. Both the leads have very good chemistry and play their roles really well especially Naomi Watts. Also the score makes the movie more surreal, more fascinating, it involves you completely in the plot.

Mullholland Dr. is an extremely fascinating trip into the lives of two women. One an aspiring actress and the other an amnesiac. There is romantic tension and it slowly builds into a very poignant sex scene where Naomi's character keeps repeating that she loves Rita. And after that point things begin to fall apart.

There could be number of interpretations to what happens after wards but that is the beauty of the movie. You can watch it again and again. It is so densely layered and rich in detail that you never get bored. It is tremendously engrossing and a very rich and rewarding movie watching experience.]

For me you could say it is about the fragility of life. Anything can suddenly crack or break and your whole life turns upside down. Like the key and the box are such trivial things but they were opened and something terrible happened.

Or I sometimes think that the box was an outlet to a parallel universe and when it opened everything turned upside down since we descend into it with the camera. Maybe it was like Pandora's box.

Lynch has created one of the best movies of recent times with Mullholland Dr.