Review: Cloud Atlas (2012)

Cloud Atlas is long but exhilarating

Here’s what you can do with three hours of your life: Travel from a city or country to another (or a pothole to another, if you live in Mumbai); listen to the entire discography of Greenday – or Daler Mehendi; for that matter, listen to the entire discography of Baba Sehgal three times over; watch the first part of The Lord of the Rings or, umm, the first part of an average 20 hour Ashutosh Gowarikar movie; download and read one of Firstpost.com’s awesome ebooks, or if you are a nice human being, read all the other awesome-ish reviews and interviews by this author (hint!). In fact, you could spend three hours of your life reading better suggestions of what to do than trying to make sense of this article’s feeble attempt at humour and intelligence.

So when you can make your life this much more exciting, why should you choose to spend this time in an overpriced multiplex, with a popcorn-soft drink combo that costs more than the pension you’ll get on retiring per year, watching a three hour epic fantasy-scifi-comedy-thriller-romance-adventure-horror period drama that does not have any people in capes, masks and incorrectly-worn underwear in it?

The answer is… well, actually, there are about six answers to this question, one each in the six stories that the three-hour long Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski and Tom Twkwer-directed movie, Cloud Atlas, skilfully interweaves with each other in a motion picture experience you haven’t had since the… erm… re-release of Titanic and Avatar.

If you haven’t read or heard of the David Mitchell novel on which this movie is based, it’s difficult to reduce the movie to a single comprehensible line (although the IMDB page thinks otherwise). Because in its six stories, the movie flirts with just as many themes as there are characters in the movie – over six hundred, probably. But the core of the movie lies in the belief that everything in the world is interconnected, and your actions, good or bad, will echo throughout history, impacting the bodies your soul inhabits, and those of everyone around you, in each subsequent life.

Too much to take in a trip to the same multiplex that generally plays you close up shots of Sonakshi Sinha’s bosoms and Salman Khan’s CGI bisceps? There’s more: In each of the six mini movies, that are intercut mercilessly in a puzzle the makers assume you are intelligent enough to solve for yourself, the lead actors – Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Hugh Grant and more – appear in different avatars, with no identifiable caste, creed, colour or even gender!

So where Jim Sturgess is an American notary in the 1850s, he’s a Korean revolutionary from the 2100s. Where Halle Berry is a black American journalist in the 1970s, she’s the white lover of a famous composer from the 1930s. And where Hugo Weaving is a green Grinch-esque devil far ahead in the future, he’s a she in the present: an evil nurse with a dominatrix complex. And all these characters are connected not only metaphorically and spiritually, but also literally, through a story the lead character in each movie reads/watches that was recorded by a character from the previous generation. (My favourite one is set in the present and features Jim Broadbent as the lead)

If this sounds too complicated a premise to spend your hard-earned money on, the good news is, this is exactly what makes the movie a must-watch. Because Cloud Atlas does what so few movies can claim to do these days – it dares. It attempts to go beyond conventional techniques of storytelling and screenplay, it takes the risk of juggling six different time periods, genres and universes in the same movie with the same actors on a grand, sprawling canvas unlike anything you’ve seen before. It takes its own time to reveal its cards, assuming that the average moviegoer possesses the intelligence, patience and trust to wait for the payoff.

And what an exhilarating payoff it is, both visually and emotionally, as the movie tries to bring home a point we all know only too well – be good and kind, and the rewards won’t be just yours to reap – but in a manner so beautifully complex and enriching, you will continue being affected by it long after the end credits roll. Because essentially, the message of the movie is one of hope: that in the grand scheme of things of this infinite universe, we don’t just exist, we matter.

So if you have the patience and bravado to sit for three hours without BBMing, texting, Facebooking or letting your mother know loudly on the phone when you will be back for dinner, watch Cloud Atlas because it’s not just a movie, it’s an experience. And do stay back for the end credits, for some surprises!

Note: This interview first appeared on Firstpost.com on October 28, 2012
Link: http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/movie-review-cloud-atlas-is-long-but-exhilarating-505478.html
Picture courtesy: Google. None of the pictures are owned by the author all rights belong to the original owner(s) and photographer(s).
© Copyright belongs to the author, Nikhil Taneja. The article may not be reproduced without permission. A link to the URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Review: Premium Rush (2012)

Premium Rush is the Fast and Furious of bikes

Someone famous once rightly said, “Why let things like story, plot and character development come in the way of a good movie?” Oh wait, I think that was me… ahem *clears throat*. But leaving the famous part apart, that quote is almost always true for genres like thrillers and comedy, where the movie depends not so much on the originality of its plot, but on how well it’s told. David Koepp’s Premium Rush is exactly that kind of a movie.

Essentially about an adrenaline-pumping chase through the streets of New York, most of which takes place in real time, Premium Rush is one of those crackling and ridiculously fun movies that constantly surprise you with how engaging they are. Straddling a fine space between action and thriller, the movie’s genius lies purely in the idea of using bikes (or ‘cycles’, as we call them in India) as the carrier of hip (pun not intended) – a vehicle that has largely been ignored by Hollywood, except, maybe, for the iconic scenes of ET.

In a sense, the movie’s an ode to the art of cycling, and a nod to the great and audacious work of Manhattan’s ‘bike messengers’, couriers who risk their all to deliver things from one corner of the city to the other in the shortest possible time, when it’s impossible to do it any other way. It’s also a nod to, well, how hot these messengers are (Dania Ramirez is droolworthy), and how that’s only natural, given that if you put a Nitin Gadkari on a bike, he probably won’t be able to do his job well… and the bike may probably break too.

In Premium Rush, Joseph-Gordon Levitt plays Wilee, a bike messenger who rides like he has a death wish, and is given a package to be delivered in a certain amount of time to a certain place across the city. But things get strange, when an impatient, aggressive man (Michael Shannon) starts following Wilee, asking him to hand over the package. As Wilee goes about out-biking this guy – because once the package is with you, you do not give it to random strangers – he uncovers the truth about the package, leading to more chases, more action, more thrill, and an exciting blast of a finale.

David Koepp’s slick direction, especially his intercuts to graphic mapping of routes that makes the audience feel part of the chase too, combined with the awe-inspiring choreography of bike stunts amidst the busiest and most dangerous of Manhattan streets, makes the movie an urban popcorn classic.

As the sociopath, whose actions are darkly funny, Michael Shannon does the menacing bad guy act as well as he’s always done, but the movie’s shining star is the fantastic Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who’s so insanely good at being a biker that I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw him taking part in – and winning – the next Tour De France. Levitt adds so much heart, energy, drama and cool to Premium Rush that in a way, he is the premium rush in the film.

After some brilliant indies like Brick, Mysterious Skin and one of my favourite movies ever, (500) Days of Summer, Levitt’s career is skyrocketing towards greatness, and deservedly so. He’s already my favourite young actor and you can almost hear him say, “Give me your script, I’ll give you awesome.”

If there were only one reason to watch Premium Rush, it would be Levitt, although the movie’s the Fast and Furious of bikes, so that’s a great hard sell.

Note: This interview first appeared on Firstpost.com on October 22, 2012
Link: http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/movie-review-premium-rush-is-the-fast-and-furious-of-bikes-498428.html
Picture courtesy: Google. None of the pictures are owned by the author all rights belong to the original owner(s) and photographer(s).
© Copyright belongs to the author, Nikhil Taneja. The article may not be reproduced without permission. A link to the URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Review: Argo (2012)

Argo is a stunning achievement

Some stories are so incredible, they can only be true. Argo is one such story.

In the year 1979, the Iranian revolution erupted in an attempt to overthrow the ruling monarch of the Pahlavi dynasty and replace him with religious leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, for a US and UK backed coup that saw him rise to power, and for human rights violations during his years in power. During the revolution, the American embassy in Iran was overthrown by revolutionaries, who then held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days in captivity.

But unknown to them, six American diplomats escaped, and found shelter in the Canadian Ambassador’s house. They were in hiding for 79 days since rescuing them was considered too risky. This was the status quo, until a CIA exfiltration specialist, Tony Mendez, came up with an incredulous plan: He would create a fake Hollywood science fiction movie, pose as its producer on location scout to the exotic Middle East, fly in solo to Tehran and fly out with the six Americans pretending to be his crew. Mendez’s movie, Argo, was fake, but his mission was real. And in the words of Ben Affleck’s new film based on this astonishing true story, “it was the best bad idea” they had.

Affleck’s third feature film as a director, Argo, presents this unbelievable hostage rescue mission on screen as a taut, well-paced suspense thriller with so much palpable tension throughout that along with you and the entire audience, even the seats, the popcorn, the soft drinks and other inanimate objects are on edge. You know the story but the drama of how it unfolds is of aiming-for-an-Oscar-nod quality, with powerful questions about morality, humanity and the wretched politics of it all intermingled with pulp Hollywood elements of ‘Oh My God! What’s going to happen next?’ ‘Kill the evil bas***ds, I say! Kill them all!’ ‘Nooo! Please don’t let the good guys be caught!’ and ‘THIS IS THE BEST MOVIE EVER *Orgasm*’

Yes, the thing that elevates Argo from gritty art cinema that people would watch only after finding out that it’s been nominated for an Oscar is that apart being from a classy period film about one of the “highest-rated” hostage dramas in history, the movie is spectacularly entertaining too. Affleck pulls out all stops to add enough “dramatic elements,” as he referred to them in a press conference, to make the movie that gives you hope, inspiration and the feel-good aftereffect, one that also provides you with the kind of potboiler twists, turns and unexpected laugh-out-loud moments that would make James Cameron proud.

The entire cast is terrific, led by Affleck himself playing Mendez in the movie, but veteran acting legends, John Goodman and Alan Arkin steal the show with their delivery of some of the smartest lines on film this year. “You want to come into Hollywood and act like a big shot without doing anything?” rhetorically asks Goodman’s character John Chambers, who was awarded CIA’s highest civilian honour in real life, to Mendez in the movie. “You’ll fit right in!” he answers with a punchline. Arkin’s character of director Lester Siegel who takes it upon himself to not just make a fake movie, but a “fake hit” gives the movie it’s most quotable phrase, “Argo f**k yourself!”

Unarguably, the full credit of one of the movies of the year goes to director Affleck, who has transformed himself from the guy best-known for being Jennifer Lopez’ ex-boyfriend (aka the Ben-part of ‘Bennifer’), Matt Damon’s Sudama-type best friend and managing to pull off what is known as “one of the worst movies ever made”, Gigli, to possibly, the next Clint Eastwood of direction.

Affleck’s embarrassing filmography as an actor has given way to an accomplished, assured and formidable filmography as a writer-director, one that only keeps getting better with every film. Watch Affleck’s first two directorial ventures, the intelligent Gone Baby Gone and the gritty The Town to know why Affleck is one of the industry’s brightest upcoming directors, who seems to have only gotten started. And of course, do *not* miss Argo this week because it is a stunning achievement in direction, screenwriting, acting and filmmaking itself.

Some stories are so incredible, they can only be true. Ben Affleck is one such story.

Note: This interview first appeared on Firstpost.com on October 20, 2012
Link: http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/movie-review-argo-is-a-stunning-achievement-497363.html
Picture courtesy: Google. None of the pictures are owned by the author all rights belong to the original owner(s) and photographer(s).
© Copyright belongs to the author, Nikhil Taneja. The article may not be reproduced without permission. A link to the URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Review: Taken 2 (2012)

Taken 2 and the 5 Commandments of Making a Hollywood Sequel

After watching the very badass Liam Neeson’s new movie, Taken 2, which I was desperately looking forward to because the original was all sorts of fantastic, I have been enlightened in strange ways. There was this bright light, and a tunnel, and it was dark and suddenly, my mind was filled with knowledge that helped me figure out the art of making a big-budget hit Hollywood movie sequel. Here are five commandments that can come in handy for you too, whenever you make your hit Hollywood movie and are confused about what to do in the sequel:

1. Thou shalt not have any plot, whatsoever
It’s sort of stupid, isn’t it? Because if the studio had a script with a plot or a story of its own, why on earth would it waste it on a sequel? It would much rather make another movie out of it, which could have its own sequel with no plot! Actually, it’s sort of genius, then!
This, of course, is painfully obvious in Taken 2, where the plot is exactly as elaborate as the movie’s poster tagline: “They want revenge. They chose the wrong guy.” In the original, Taken, the daughter of a retired CIA agent, Bryan Mills (Neeson) is kidnapped by human traffickers and he has to use his “particular set of skills” to save her. In Taken 2, Mills and his wife are kidnapped by the same guys – because they want to kill him for killing their relatives in the first movie. The only thing thinner than this plot is the IQ of the mafia, which brings us to the next point:

2. Thou shalt have stupid bad guys
Of course, this is an obsolete argument, because if the bad guy was intelligent, the good guy would die and more than anything else, there would be no more sequels. So it’s important for villains to do daft things like not kill the good guy after they capture him because they want him to feel pain (*cough*, The Dark Knight Rises, *cough*).
But here’s the level of daftness of the bad guys in Taken 2: In a major turning point of the movie (it’s even in the trailer), Mills’ ex-wife is held on gunpoint and he’s asked to give up his arms and be taken, or his ex-wife dies. Like a good estranged husband, Mills gives up his arms, but after making a minute-long phone call to his daughter in front of the bad guys, systematically explaining to her the situation he is in right now and what she needs to do to not get caught, as the understanding, well-intentioned bad guys wait for him to be done, because they probably have daughters too, you know. And after all, the most he could have been doing on the call was call reinforcements, right? …Wait, what?

3. Thou shalt have foreign villains
It has always made so much more sense to Hollywood to have villains who are not only menacing and evil, but talk in a language, that – HORROR OF HORRORS – they can’t understand! So Hollywood villains are generally outsourced cheap labour from Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East and South America (never India, because Indians probably don’t have the time to be evil since they are so busy in taking over US jobs and driving cabs). Also, it’s just creepier when the good guy has no clue if the bad guys are plotting a nuclear strike or discussing Bigg Boss in front of him.
Taken 2 takes this commandment and as a first, turns it uniquely over its head – in the movie, it’s not just the good guy who can’t understand the frightening foreign villains, apparently the hipster foreign villains can’t understand him either (because learning English is so mainstream, yo). Or else why would the bad guys spend approximately 15 minutes of screen time looking for Mills’ daughter – after he called her in front of them and told her to hide in the closet?

4. Thou shalt have fiery dialogue exchanges… sort of
Every mainstream Hollywood movie depends as much on its big-budget special effects and action as it does on its dialog…. *chokes with laughter*. Sorry, I couldn’t get through with that sentence with a straight face. Here’s an example of the exact dialogue exchange the main bearded baddie has with Mills, after he has caught him and his wife, and is torturing them – with his accent, that is – rather than, you know, killing him:
Bad guy: I will kill you because you killed my sons
Mills: But they kidnapped my daughter first!
Bad guy: I don’t care, they were my sons!
Mills: But they sell young girls to Arabs!!
Bad guy: BUT THEY WERE MY SONS.
Mills: You know what, just kill me. Before your accent or logic do.

Okay, maybe I paraphrased that last bit, just a little bit.

5. Thou shalt substitute intelligence with action

So where do the studios put the money that could have bought them a decent plot, good dialogue writer, and locally-sourced American bad guys that could have helped the unemployment rate too? Answer: In LOTS of unapologetic, in-your-face action and kickass action. Taken 2 has a lot of those, and that’s always, always a good thing.

There’s also a sixth, secret commandment here, which really isn’t that much of a secret, or much of a commandment, for that matter: No matter how badly you do, if the audience liked the first movie, it will watch the sequel and then wait for the threequel to buy the DVD box-set (guilty, as charged). And where Taken 2 is concerned, plot or no plot, watching Liam Neeson kick butt is always going to be worth it!

Note: This interview first appeared on Firstpost.com on October 14, 2012
Link: http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/movie-review-taken-2-and-the-5-rules-of-making-a-hollywood-sequel-489902.html
Picture courtesy: Google. None of the pictures are owned by the author all rights belong to the original owner(s) and photographer(s).
© Copyright belongs to the author, Nikhil Taneja. The article may not be reproduced without permission. A link to the URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Review: Looper (2012)

Looper’s review from the future

It’s the year 2044. No, I mean, literally it’s the year 2044 right now. While writing his review of Looper, my naïve but good-intentioned past self secretly hoped that his future self (which is my current self, at the moment) would write this review from the future. Time travel wasn’t invented back in 2012, but after aliens took over Earth in 2034 because the humans tried filming the 30th edition of Roadies on Mars, they introduced all these cool things like time travel, cloning, artificial intelligence, and err… weekly anal probes. (Don’t worry, the aliens aren’t all that bad – they look more or less like Lady Gaga, and they proved to us humans that they mean well by banishing Arnab Goswami to Venus). So, here I am!

Everything’s going great in 2044, Hollywood wise – after Leonardo Di Caprio shifted base to Mars because there were no more great directors left to work with, Joseph Gordon-Levitt firmly took over as Hollywood’s biggest star. In fact, after Looper became a worldwide hit, Rian Johnson became really famous too – and his recent gritty reboot of Robin Also Rises was both critically acclaimed and an inter-galactic hit. Of course, his success was helped when Christopher Nolan decided to give up the conventional way of making movies to start a live show where he’d inception movies into people’s minds directly.

As for Bruce Willis, he recently starred with his son and grandson (none of them being Ashton Kutcher) in Dying Hard Over and Over Again, aka Die Hard 31.0. So yes, that’s a yippie-ki-yay for you, fanboys: no one’s been able to dethrone Willis yet! Liam Neeson did come close in the 10s, but Taken 7, where he kidnaps himself, proved to be his undoing.

But enough on the state of affairs – let’s talk about Looper. The movie recently celebrated its 30th anniversary and saw a re-re-re-re-re-release in 14D (in which basically Bruce Willis’ hologram comes out of the screen and punches you in the face every now and then) and even all these years later, it remains one of the most genuinely futuristic, intelligent, unique and original movies of this century!

All of you must obviously be familiar with the story, since I distinctly remember that the word-of-mouth publicity (helped, ahem, by the superlatives lavished by my earlier, original version of the review) made Looper a sleeper hit in India at that time. But in case that hasn’t happened yet, here’s the lowdown: Looper is set in 2044, where mafia hitmen called Loopers assassinate people sent to them from 2074. Sometimes, they are also sent their own future selves 30 years into the future, and it’s necessary to kill them to “close your loop”, or else, because of the complexity of the space-time continuum, things could get really strange and the world could blow up in your face… or something to that effect.

Joe (Joseph-Gordonn Levitt) makes exactly the same mistake – when his future self (Bruce Willis) is sent to him to be disposed of, he lets him escape. And in the thrilling and unpredictable plot twists that follow, the world almost blows up in his face… or something to that effect.

One of the biggest reasons that Looper worked so convincingly was that it presented a complex but refreshingly original idea in the simplest manner, but not in one that insulted the viewer’s intelligence in any way (even though human intelligence in your time was like a quarter of what we have now, fyi).

The story did not deal so much with what would happen to the present if future Joe (Willis) stayed alive in the present, but the fact that it was really important for present Joe (Levitt) to kill him because future Joe had travelled back in time to do something horrible (I’m going to let you find out what that was). And more than the traditional science-fiction riddle, it was the moral implication of what future Joe wanted to accomplish that made the plot so gripping and terribly entertaining, which is quite a major achievement for a sci-fi film.

To use a cliché (because cliché’s have still not gone out of fashion), the film’s true hero was the script and after his mind-numbingly awesome but largely unknown debut with 2005’s indie college noir flick, Brick, Looper was the movie that rightfully catapulted writer-director Rian Johnson to superstardom. But keeping in tradition with the Academy’s disdain for the mainstream, the movie and Johnson missed out on the Oscars, although that would have been so very well-deserved, despite the fact that the movie dragged in a few places.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis did some of their best work in Looper, especially keeping in mind the tremendous effort the actors took to look, talk, act and behave exactly like each other’s past and future selves, respectively. But yes, as much as I fanboy-worship Levitt, I have to admit that he still couldn’t kick butt like Willis. And as history (aka your future) proves, no one can!

So there – I’ve laid out all past, present and (your) future evidence to convince you to watch the movie. You don’t need to be a sci-fi buff to love Looper, you just need to be a fan of great storytelling, although the sci-fi, action, comedy, suspense and horror can only help! Watch the movie right away, if possible, to get bragging rights to your friends that you saw it first – because this is all that people will be talking about for quite some time into the future.

And just in the interest of social service, here are some tips to help you have a good future: Keep the towels handy, and learn Mandarin. And oh, if you live in Mumbai, buy a few auto-rickshaws.

Note: This interview first appeared on Firstpost.com on October 13, 2012
Link: http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/movie-review-loopers-true-hero-is-its-awesome-script-489557.html
Picture courtesy: Google. None of the pictures are owned by the author all rights belong to the original owner(s) and photographer(s).
© Copyright belongs to the author, Nikhil Taneja. The article may not be reproduced without permission. A link to the URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Review: Killing Them Softly (2012)

Killing Them Softly has too much commentary

Australian writer-director Andrew Dominik is perhaps best known for his slow, contemplative and slow 2007 work of art, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford – a film whose length lived up to its long winded title (and did I mention it was slow?). But the assured, masterful direction by Dominik compelled me to download seek out his debut film, Chopper. The 2000 release was one of the very first Australian films I’ve seen – I’m discounting Finding Nemo here – and it immediately turned me into an Andrew Dominik believer. The movie is also largely the reason I’ve forgiven Australia for its cricket team, and Eric Bana for Hulk.

Because where The Assassination of… was a carefully constructed, atmospheric, epic western, Chopper was a wickedly funny, dark, twisted and stylish crime film, that never took itself as art but had all the makings of it. And it was not long. Or slow. It is the movie Dominik should and deserves to be known for, just as much as he is for The Assassination of…

In Killing Them Softly, Dominik returns to his Chopper roots, but mixes it up, every now and then, with the considered deliberation of The Assasination of… and some blatant social commentary, to give us his most accomplished film to date, though one that falls short of being the masterpiece it is being hyped to be. (It’s truly about time the Academy rolls out awards for the most hyped movies to the American media fraternity that determines it’s Oscar-favourites on the basis of “buzz” that it creates itself!)

The film follows the aftermath of a mob heist by three amateur crooks, who are admittedly “not the smartest guys”, when the mob calls in a trusted enforcer, Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt), to investigate. Billed as a crime thriller, the movie’s plot is about as predictable as Brad Pitt’s elf-like, immortal good looks (he’s never going to be good for your ego), but it’s what Dominik manages to conjure on the path to the movie’s inevitable climax that constantly surprises you and is worth your ticket’s price.

Set in sparse New Orleans, the movie builds one of the most dramatic and tense heist scenes on camera, relying not on suggestive music but instead on silence as the operative prop, offset only by the nervous energy of Scoot McNairy. Then there’s the reinterpretation of the mob shakedown scene where the audience is subjected to just as much of the raw, gritty and stomach-churning treatment that Ray Liotta’s character is. There are also Tarantino-esque conversations between goons, black comedy like only the Coen Brothers can manage, and a warped nod to David Chase’s Sopranos through James Gandolfini’s pitiful Mickey, whose conversations with Pitt’s Cogan separate Dominic’s take on contemporary mafia than the recycled versions we’ve seen too many times.

And then there’s style – slow motion shattering of glass during a hit, use of Johnny’s Cash’s ‘The man comes around’ to introduce Cogan, and a surreal take on a hilarious stoner conversation, all establish Dominik as a uniquely gifted director. He is of course helped by the fantastic cast he has lined up in the movie – from Animal Kingdom’s Ben Mendelsohn, who brings about the biggest laughs as a zoned-out goon, to the dependable Richard Jenkins, who is the lawyer face of the recession-hit mafia, and everyone in between.

All these elements should guarantee a classic, but the movie’s in-your-face social commentary seem like Dominic’s trying a little too hard. The movie takes place during 2008’s recession and Obama’s ‘Yes we can’ pre-election hope campaign, and draws parallels between corporate America and the mob. And if anyone missed the 40,000 instances where the campaign videos are playing in the background, Pitt’s Cogan spells it out in the end too, so we get a quotable line for our Facebook status messages and believe that the movie is far more layered than we have discerned.

The pace of the movie is also uneven and at times, it veers so far off the point that the point then seems like a hair follicle on Anil Kapoor’s chest. There’s also something to be said about Brad Pitt, whose charisma lights up every scene he is in. The biggest hurdle Brad Pitt has faced in his movies is that he is Brad Pitt. Because no matter how good an actor Pitt is, watching his movies is like taking part in a ‘Spot the Brad Pitt competition’: he may don a character’s mask better than any contemporary movie star, but there are always those moments where the movie star breaks out of the mask and the audience goes, ‘That was so Brad Pitt!’

If the sum of the movie’s remarkable scenes make for a great film, then Killing Them Softly deserves all its laurels, but if seen as a whole, the movie’s like those exotic restaurants where delicious comes in such finite quantity that you need to go home and chomp on a box of Pringles to satiate your stomach. If you do the same, seek out Chopper, while at it.

Note: This interview first appeared on Firstpost.com on October 6, 2012
Link: http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/movie-review-too-much-commentary-brings-killing-them-softly-to-a-pitt-stop-481745.html
Picture courtesy: Google. None of the pictures are owned by the author all rights belong to the original owner(s) and photographer(s).
© Copyright belongs to the author, Nikhil Taneja. The article may not be reproduced without permission. A link to the URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Review: Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)

Resident Evil: Retribution is not a video game adaptation, it *is* a video game

The genre of movie video-game adaptations has single-handedly done more to ruin the name of cinema for future generations than even the full force of Sajid Khans, Anees Bazmees, Madhur Bhandarkars and their “inspired” Bollywood cahoots combined can ever claim of doing so. Not even big-ticket names like Mark Wahlberg, Angelina Jolie or Jake Gyllenhaal have been able to redeem the genre that has contributed to some of the lowest-rated films in movie history.

The genre’s top achievement, unarguably, remains the birth and rise of a beast called Uwe Boll, a director, who once famously held a series of boxing matches – real ones – against five of his harshest critics in a bizarre publicity stunt dubbed as “Raging Boll.” Boll, who is the only filmmaker in the world with two films in IMDB’s top 10 bottom-rated films, not only beat the journalists – he actually beat the c**p out of them – but also went on to claim that he is the “only f**king genius in the entire movie business” and that other directors like Michael Bay and Eli Roth are “re**rds.”

If seen in context of this glorious history of unabashed talent and magical cinema to live upto, the Resident Evil movie series is like art. And not the kind of terrible art your five-year-old nephew makes and you call it ‘art’ to avoid being punched in the face by his parents, but Van Gogh kind of art: art that spawns lots of sequels, and art that makes millions of dollars. And that makes director Paul WS Anderson the Van Gogh of the video-game adaptation world.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in the least insinuating here that the Resident Evil movies are good by *any* standard, I’m merely saying that in a genre with such colossal expectations of complete and unadulterated c**p to live upto, Resident Evil has surprisingly managed to retain audiences for five movies and garnered over $700 million dollars (including the massive international opening the latest installment has had).

Let’s see what works in favour of the movies, first. Wherein other video-game movie adaptations are generally glorified B-movies with small budgets and tacky production values, Resident Evil is an uncompromising B-movie, which utilizes in the best possible way special effects, and recently, 3D, with fantastic production values and awesome action sequences. Prince of Persia and Max Payne failed here because they didn’t consider themselves as (and probably didn’t *know*) that they were B-movies too.

Then of course, there’s lead actress Milla Jovovich, who plays the protagonist Alice, a security operative, who turned against the company that she worked for, because it unwittingly started a zombie apocalypse. Jovovich, who was earlier best-known for Bruce Willis-starrer The Fifth Element, plays the B-movie action hero(ine) role with such delight and conviction – and can really kick-butt in action scenes – that there are times when you actually may mistake the film for a good one. And it only helps that she looks scorching hot in latex.

Finally, there’s director Paul WS Anderson, whose greatest claims to fame include being the name-doppelganger (if there is such a thing) of one of the best directors of this generation, Paul Thomas Anderson, and well, marrying Milla Jovovich. Anderson kicked off the series and returned to helm the fourth and fifth installments, which are the better ones in the series, though that’s not saying much. Like Jovovich, Anderson, who has his way with 3D and special effects, give subtle glimpses, every now and then, that he may not really be a bad director, but his problem remains that he suffers from acute Himesh Reshammiyatis: he can’t just be a director, he needs to be the writer too.

As for the bad, the movies are plot-less, emotion-less and leave-your-brains at home sort-of experiences, and are worth watching mostly when there’s no other film playing at the theaters. Resident Evil: Retribution is exactly like that too – with a plot that brings back many dead characters from earlier movies including the badass Michelle Rodrigues, and unites Alice with former villain Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) to take on the evil Red Queen, who seems determined to wipe out whatever’s left of humanity.

So should you watch the film or not? Well, if you are getting to watch it for free, it’s not entirely bad entertainment, albeit brainless, but if you’ve seen any of the previous installments and prefer movies with some semblance of a plot, you’d do well to skip this for the exact reason that any video-game fanatic would want to watch this movie: The Resident Evil movies are not so much video-game adaptations, they *are* video games.

Note: This interview first appeared on Firstpost.com on September 29, 2012
Link: http://www.firstpost.com/blogs/movie-review-the-good-the-bad-and-the-resident-evil-retribution-473162.html
Picture courtesy: Google. None of the pictures are owned by the author all rights belong to the original owner(s) and photographer(s).
© Copyright belongs to the author, Nikhil Taneja. The article may not be reproduced without permission. A link to the URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Review: Dredd 3D (2012)

Dredd is just dreddful

The year is 2011. In a tower block in Jakarta’s slums, drug lord Tama Riyada is carefully sheltered amongst the top floors of the seemingly-endless building, filled with his armed, drug-addicted henchmen, ready to lay their lives at his word. One fine morning, a 20-man SWAT team led by Sergeant Jaka and Lieutenant Wahyu enters the premises of the building, with the aim of taking Riyada down. They are accompanied by rookie officer Rama, who is oblivious to what is in store for him.

The team infiltrates the building, but Tama finds out soon enough, and tells his henchmen to kill them all or die trying. Trapped in the building with no escape route in sight, for the next one hour or so, Jaka, Rama and the SWAT team take on Tama Riyada and his men in one of the bloodiest, most action-filled and mind-numbingly awesome battle the movies have seen.

That movie is Raid: Redemption and if you are an action fan and haven’t seen it, it’s almost as ridiculous as being a Bollywood fan and not having seen Gunda.

Why am I reviewing Raid: Redemption when the title reads “Movie Review: Dredd (3D)”? Because here’s the synopsis of Dredd (3D):
The year is 2011 2080 (or something). In a tower block in Jakarta’s futuristic metropolis Mega-City One’s slums, drug lord Tama Riyada Madeline Madrigal (aka Ma-Ma) is carefully sheltered amongst the top floors of the seemingly-endless building, filled with his her armed, drug-addicted henchmen, ready to lay their lives at his her word. One fine morning, a 20- 2-man SWAT Judge team led by Sergeant Jaka and Lieutenant Wahyu Judge Dredd enters the premises of the building, with the aim of taking Riyada someone down (because they are trying to investigate who exactly that is). They are Dredd is accompanied by rookie officer Rama Anderson, who is oblivious about what is in store for him her.

The team infiltrates the building, but Tama Ma-Ma finds out soon enough, and announces to his her henchmen on the speaker system to kill them all both or die trying. Trapped in the building with no escape route in sight, for the next one hour or so, Jaka, Rama and the SWAT team Dredd and Anderson take on Tama Riyada Ma-Ma and his her men in one of the bloodiest sort of bloody, most kind-of action-filled and mind-numbingly far from awesome battle the movies have seen.

The only difference between Raid: Redemption and Dredd (3D) is that Dredd is about 45-times more expensive (I mean, *exactly* 45-times more expensive), and about a 100-times less interesting. For a movie billed as an R-Rated action film, there’s exactly one sequence involving a bunch of mega machine guns let loose that may just make you just wake you up (because of all that noise). Even Lena Headey’s hotness cannot make you sit through the rest of the movie without thinking to yourself: “Sigh, I should have waited for the Firstpost review.”

But while we are on Lena Headey – and it’s always a good time to speak about her – after playing the soon-to-be-legendary role of Cersei Lannister on HBO’s Game Of Thrones, she is the best thing about the movie, nailing the pure evil Ma-Ma with uninhibited delight. Olivia Thirlby deserves a lot better in life than The Darkest Hour and Dredd, after starring in one of the best indie films of this generation, The Wackness. And Karl Urban… well, let’s just say that if he had been chosen for the part of Dredd for his acting skills, they wouldn’t have kept his face behind a mask through the entire length of the film.

Admittedly, this movie may just be a tad bit enjoyable if you haven’t seen Raid: Redemption, and swear not to touch its DVDs on finding out (just like I did, much to my misfortune) that they’ve been dubbed by Indian actors speaking English the way firangs speak Hindi in Abbas-Mastan films. Watch it if you are a die-hard action fan and have lots of money. Or just give that ticket money to those needy Nigerian princes, and put on the DVD of the best action film inside a building, ever: (read this in Chandler, Joey and Ross’ voices) DIEEEEEE HAAAAAAARDDDDD!!

Note: This interview first appeared on Firstpost.com on September 24, 2012
Link: http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/movie-review-dredd3d-is-just-dreddful-465835.html
Picture courtesy: Google. None of the pictures are owned by the author all rights belong to the original owner(s) and photographer(s).
© Copyright belongs to the author, Nikhil Taneja. The article may not be reproduced without permission. A link to the URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Review: Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Moonrise Kingdom makes even Bruce Willis seem adorable

There are roughly 171,476 words in current use and 47,156 obsolete words in your average dictionary these days, but there’s only one word that can eloquently express the full genius of Wes Andersons’ style of filmmaking: Weird. Yes, generally the polite way of putting it is by using the euphemism ‘quirky’ or even ‘idiosyncratic’ (if you are writing for expensive magazines), but all his odd little films have pointed us in one direction: Wes Anderson seems a bit of a kooky chap, doesn’t he?

In his five live-action films before Moonrise Kingdom, Anderson has, each time, managed to create an unreal and unhinged world of fractured people who’d spend the whole movie in trying to come to terms with that one thing that characters in most other films wear on their sleeves – feelings.

You may not agree with the unnatural behaviour of characters in his films… *ahem*… ‘I’ may not agree with the unnatural behaviour of characters in his films (barring to an extent, Rushmore, which I love), but it’s probably true that Anderson gets laid a lot. Because although it’s hard to point out exactly, there’s that quality about Anderson’s films that would make women dig him – there’s something inherently innocent, sweet and otherworldly about them, almost as if Anderson refused to grow up while everyone around him suddenly starting being adults. There’s a certain mystery and romanticism about Anderson too, that, when combined with his distinctive shot-taking, manifest into movies that you may or may not love, but definitely can’t ignore.

Anderson’s new movie, Moonrise Kingdom, is the pinnacle of that manifestation – it is that movie that all of Anderson’s movies were naturally leading up to, and which Anderson probably took so much time in making because, somewhere, even he was pretending to be an adult. But in his simplest film to date, Anderson has gleefully let go (no, that doesn’t mean he dances), and let his heart take over his head.

Unlike most Anderson’s films, and to borrow Bollywood jargon, there is a definite ‘hero’ and a definite ‘heroine’ in Moonrise Kingdom. Except that the two are 12-year-olds, who fall in love and run away together, in the summer of 1965. The idyllic setting, as is in all Anderson films, lends to the charm – the movie is set on a Khaki Scout camp on New Penzance, an island somewhere in New England. The setting is a hint that an adventure is waiting to happen – and Anderson does not disappoint, as the star-crossed lovers camp and hitchhike through ‘Mile 3.25 Tidal Inlet’ trying to get through to the other side, where they intend to marry and live together forever.

Add to this fairy-tale love story, a sprinkling of those damaged adults trying to rain on their parade (including a very evil Tilda Swinton), and a destructive storm doing so quite literally, and you have that rare enchanting romantic comedy, that is both romantic and a comedy. The two leads (Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward) are – and there is no more sophisticated way of putting this – supremely cute, and the rest of the cast is terrific too.

Bill Murray is exactly the right amount of brilliant that’s needed to make every Anderson film superior and Harvey Keitel, Frances McDormand and Jason Schwartzman add more value to the proceedings. But two unlikely actors steal the show – Edward Norton, of American History X and The Incredible Hulk fame – is endearing (yes, you read me right) and the very bada** Bruce Willis, whose casting first sounded as ridiculous as it would have sounded if Wes Anderson was to direct Die Hard 5, is, *ahem*, adorable in a role that requires him to play the anti-John McLane.

Moonrise Kingdom is a must-watch and a worthy addition to delightful first-love comedies like Little Manhattan, Flipped and the brilliant Son of Rambow, because it is about that time of our lives when love is at its purest – when love *is* love – much before we grow up and grow old and become one of those idiosyncratic, fractured characters in quirky Wes Anderson movies (whose unnatural behaviour I may not agree with).

On a side note, the film is about has as much adult content as a bar of Johnson and Johnson’s baby soap, so maybe someday the people responsible should try not being stoned before giving movies censor certificates.

Note: This interview first appeared on Firstpost.com on September 22, 2012
Link: http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/movie-review-moonrise-kingdoms-spell-makes-even-bruce-willis-adorable-464596.html
Picture courtesy: Google. None of the pictures are owned by the author all rights belong to the original owner(s) and photographer(s).
© Copyright belongs to the author, Nikhil Taneja. The article may not be reproduced without permission. A link to the URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Review: Arbitrage (2012)

Arbitrage 2 is possibly Gere’s most important public work since his 2007 kiss to Shilpa Shetty

It was at precisely the moment when Richard Gere was revealed to be Cassius, of “the killing machine” fame, in 2011’s action thriller, The Double, that I thought aloud to myself, “Wait. What?” This was followed by a barrage of thoughts, all of which I continued thinking aloud to myself: “Oh My God! Did Richard Gere just kill Stephen Moyer with his bare hands? Didn’t his back hurt? Why is there no Julia Roberts in this film? Why is this film not a romantic comedy? Is that what Topher Grace’s face actually looks like when he tries to act? What was Richard Gere thinking??”

Let’s be straight: Richard Gere is no Robert De Niro, much less Liam Neeson. He has never come close to winning an Oscar, and for good reason. He is 60, but when he does one of those roles where he’s required to be effortlessly charming or sweet (like in his last few, The Hoax, The Hunting Party and Hachi), he is terrific *and* looks 40 – maybe even 35, if the make up’s good. In The Double, he was terrible (and the film already had a Topher Grace). In Brooklyn’s Finest, he was overshadowed by every other actor by a long mile. So before I saw his new thriller, Arbitrage, there was only one question on my mind: Why is Gere trying to fix what’s not broken?

Two hours later, Richard Gere had managed to pull a Cassius on my skepticism.

In Arbitrage, Gere plays Robert Miller, the smart, hard-working, multi-million hedge fund CEO, who is trying to close a merger that will benefit his employees, and the wonderful, loving family man, who is planning a retirement adventure with his wife (Susan Sarandon).

But once the covers start coming off, Gere is also Robert Miller, the fraudulent, dishonest head of a failing company, who is fighting a losing battle to leave a legacy, and the lying, philandering husband and father, who is lavishing his time and remaining money on an exotic 20-something (Laetitia Casta). And as is usually the case with the fates, it all comes crashing down one fine day.

While you expected the inevitable twist in the tale, debutant writer-director Nicholas Jarecki’s carefully plotted screenplay and admirable direction makes every subsequent twist and turn seem sharper than the last one. There’s nothing here that you haven’t already seen, and the movie reaffirms Hollywood’s age-old belief that the Wall Street guys are evil (if they are the lead) and stupid (if they are the support cast). But the tension in the atmosphere, well aided by the original music from Cliff Martinez, and the fine acting from all quarters makes this film a far superior one than it may have seemed on paper.

Every actor makes a contribution: Tim Roth, as the cocky detective, Brit Marling (of Another Earth fame) as the conflicted daughter, and most of all, Nate Parker (Red Tails), who is fantastic as the likely fall guy. Parker’s performance in the film will be a big boost to the young black actor community, which has, of late, run woefully short of talent, with the notable exception of Anthony Mackie (The Adjustment Bureau).

But in this taut film, it is Richard ‘Cassius’ Gere, who proves beyond doubt – the man’s still got it (and he’d probably kill me with his bare hands for making back pain jokes). Gere steals each scene he is in, and makes you both love him and hate him, makes you both despise him and pity him, makes you want to see him both punished and saved. That’s because Gere’s Robert Miller knows he is a bad guy but believes he’s a good one, and it’s when Miller grapples with his inner demons to figure which side he really belongs to, that the audience is in for a Gere special.

‘Oscar buzz’ is going a bit too far, but Arbitrage deserves a watch for being a well-concocted thriller, and possibly Gere’s most important public work since his 2007 kiss to Shilpa Shetty. I kid, Mr. Gere.

Note: This interview first appeared on Firstpost.com on September 18, 2012
Link: http://www.firstpost.com/blogs/arbitrage-richard-geres-best-work-since-kissing-shilpa-shetty-459908.html
Picture courtesy: Google. None of the pictures are owned by the author all rights belong to the original owner(s) and photographer(s).
© Copyright belongs to the author, Nikhil Taneja. The article may not be reproduced without permission. A link to the URL, instead, would be appreciated.