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Reviews
Black Mirror: Joan Is Awful (2023)
A big let down!
I had held off watching season 6 of black mirror, because I had already read reviews that season 6 isn't upto the mark, but eventually gave into the temptation.
To my surprise, the very first episode starts on a very strong note, even making me wonder what the fuss was all about. But its the ending where it all comes falling down.
How often, have you got a feeling that internet knows what you are thinking? As soon as you think of a European Holiday, you start getting ads of flight tickets and cheap hotels and all sorts of links on European holiday. Then you pacify yourself, thinking might be ads might be based on google search you did, or some digital footprint you left. But what if, it wasn't? What if all your actions were being recorded. Add AI to that, and some start power and you got a really strong plot. The first half of the episode, keeps you glued to the screen, because you can't really believe what's happening, and always interested in seeing what's going to happen next.
But somewhere, down the lines the makers either ended up overthinking, or just gave up on the ending. So, we are left with a big let down.
I hope someone does pick up this plot in future, because it is definitely intriguing, somewhat creepy and definitely worth exploring.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)
Hollywood has lost the art of making movies
The tag-line which was one reserved for Bollywood movies, has to be unfortunately used for Hollywood movies.
The CGI in the movie was so bad, that none of the scenes seemed believable and creature who both Godzilla and Kong fight together seems to have been left half baked.
May be, the creators decided to make Godzilla movie with healthy mix of Avatar, Wakanda, Ironman and a lot of other superhero movies. But didn't spent anytime in developing the script, sets or the CGI.
The movie seems to tick all the checkboxes, in terms of DIE. We have a teenage lead, who is mute, and shown to be from some ancient tribe, who is supposed to be chosen to help win this war. Appropriately, called *wisdom girl* in one of the reviews, has only one expression of inquisitiveness throughout the movie, never being able to quite justify why she was the chosen on. To complete the ensemble we have female lead, a pilot who is killed off immediately to show his arrogance and high handedness, a sort of youtuber and a vet. If only, Hollywood concentrated on character building and storylines, then solely focusing on diversity angle while making the movie.
In this movie, we explore the *hollow earth* which is supposed to be a world of its own deep beneath the surface of the earth. While the concept sounds exciting, as some scriptures also mention existence of such world, in the movie, *hollow earth* is another name for pandora, or rather poorly rendered pandora. Despite being deep inside earth surface, the creatures, the habitat, even trees and waterfalls grow the same way as they would on surface of earth exposed to all the sunlight. At one moment, we see some sort of bright disc like sun, without any explaination.
Might be the creators themselves, realized the mess they have created, so they decided to start he trailer with clips of the movie prequel which is never a good sign. To overcompensate, there is a saturation of chest thumping and shaking noises throughout the fight scenes.
May be children might find this movie fascinating, because of colors and concept of hollow earth, but there doesn't seem to be any other redeeming factor in the movie.
Shaitaan (2024)
Only Shaitaan here is the film maker!
"Save water" is the theme in Bangalore. To this, one should add the theme "Save yourself". Save yourself from this disaster of a movie. If you are still interested, and swayed by all the positive reviews of the movie, especially on youtube, then you can just watch the trailer of the movie. The basic premise of the movie, is given in the trailer itself, related to hyponsis of the daughter by the intruder, and what intruder makes the daughter do. All those things, are shown in the trailer itself, and movie fails to add any context, build up or justification to that.
Looks like producers, had a Eureka moment when they discovered concept of hyponsis of family member by an intruder, but couldn't build on it. So, entire movie is just about intruder, making daughter do things under hypnosis, and trying to impress the parents with it.
If you were expecting some big reveal in the end, or some justification, which would boggle your mind in the end, there was none of it.
I hate to use the terms intruder, daughter and parents for the characters in the movie, rather than referring to their screen or real names, but neither the role they were assigned nor their acting, was effective enough, that one would really want to use either.
It makes me think that, film industry has finally managed to cast their spell over youtubers also, as they had over the once acclaimed critics. May be, it took them few years post covid to realise that acclaimed critics don't have sway over the audience, and little know youtubers here and there have much bigger impact.
Those youtubers, would also lose their credibility, if sing praises for such a movie, without paying attention to their loss of trust with the audience.
In the end, old adage holds good: "Dikhawon pe mat jao! Apni akal lagao!!!". Bollywood has lost art of making movies long back, so one should really do due diligence, before being subjected to such torture.
Upstarts (2019)
A refreshing movie about chasing your dreams
After scrolling through number of options on Netflix and Amazon Prime, we finally settled on this movie whose trailer looked promising. And we weren't disappointed.
This is a movie about a 3 best friends, who are willing to put their life for each other. One of whom, is always looking for idea for an app, even in the most embarrassing situations. Whether while trying to help their friend's girlfriend elope for wedding, or whether when their friend asks for help in finding clothes to wear.
And from one of such situations, they come across an app which could be loosely mapped to something like dunzo. I am not even sure whether dunzo existed when the movie was shot.
The most refreshing aspect about the movie is that it is so understated. The pitches made in the movie for startup ideas, by these friends and others, looked so real.
There was no attempt to glamourize things, or use of melodramatic music, to show meteoric rise of their startup. Everything was shown in an orderly fashion, with situations and facts, making the impact felt.
One could always relate to discussions within the friends, as any of us would have had with our room mates. It also captures the enthusiasm we had fresh out of college, about our world changing ideas.
The struggle to explain the app to the masses, making it user friendly, trying to keep daily active users up, trying to find funding for it was well depicted. Even the struggle of keeping market valuation rising, after finally making it big seems real.
In parallel, to the plot of the rise of the startup, is the plot of simmering differences between the friends, based on ideology and business needs. While, some of the decisions taken by characters in the movie, can be marked immature, I believe we can give that much benefit of doubt to the makers, as they had really short time to develop this theme.
It is really hard to find such a gem of movie in Bollywood, which lately is all style but no substance.
Overall, a must watch for anyone and everyone whether you are related to startup scene/software industry or not. It would be really inspiring enough for you to get you rethinking about the idea, you had once worked out, are reignite your belief in its success.
The Big Bang Theory: The Terminator Decoupling (2009)
One of my favorite episodes of Big Bang Theory!
Somehow, this episode of big bang theory caught my attention while seeing one of the many re-runs of big bang theory, running on different channels. Something, about it being shot out of their home, in a moving train, Sheldon showing off his knowledge about trains, Howard being as desperate as ever, Raj coming into his element with alcohol suddenly becoming charming and event somewhat arrogant with the guest star of the show, really makes one must watch and somewhat under-rated episodes of the show. And also another reason why first few seasons, were really special and got all of us so much attached to the show.
Naach (2004)
If only Razzie Awards were global!
Naach would have won an Razzie for the Worst Film in 2004 (may be overall too) if it were global. When it comes acting badly (aka showing attitude/yawning/over (not) acting) Halle Berry is no match for Antra Malli. While the catwoman had storeline, supposedly hot actress in microscopic costume, and some action sequences, Naach had nothing at all.
One of those movies which makes me wonder why IMDb does allow one to rate a movie as 0/10. Yet again, I think that movie does not even deserve a 0. It has to be something negative or minus infinity.
OK what about the plot outline? It is a funda-giving, arrogant, full of attitude choreographer meet an useless, skill-less, loafer who aspires to be an actor tale. The story is so short that if just another sentence, IMDb might ban me for writing a spoiler. About the story-telling? Its like a bunch (sorry 2 people for the most part) of people moving in super slow motion. Don't try this movie if you have bought new DVD-player. You would end up believing that either DVD is in bad shape or DVD-player is struck. Not its fault at all.
At the end of it all, you end up giving some credits to the director. At least he realized that both Antra Malli and Abhishek Bachan (at least at that time) can't speak dialogues convincingly, so there are not too many dialogues in this movie. So, you can at least sleep your way through the movie, with some annoying noises from those Antra-malli song sequences.
Do watch this movie if you are new to Bollywood Cinema. Once you have tolerated this movie, you would be able to see any Bollywood movie and enjoy it.
There can't be worse 3 hour torture than this!
Chunauti (1987)
A Challenge well fought and won!
The word "Chunauti" literally means Challenge. This serial title refers to the challenge of eliminating drug-abuse, which is shown in a very realistic and appealing manner in this serial.
Chunauti was aired on Delhi Doorshan (the Indian National Channel) and only channel available at that time in absence of cable television in late 1980s and quickly became the favorite of all. Not because of little choice available with viewers, but because it was about college life, and problems being faced by students at that point of time.
Serials about student life are amongst my favorites because these remind of those carefree days where we had dreams of our own, and nothing to worry about. Chunauti beautifully showed the college life, the boring lecturers, the college canteen, the ragging of the new comers and the hostel life. Togather with that, it focused on a very serious problem which was catching everyones attentions these days. Drug abuse had slowly and steadily spread in the country, and people were starting to realize that. It beautifully captured the circumstances in which youngsters take to drugs, and how it devastates their lives. But, it also showed a light of hope. It showed how with people's support the drug addicts can give up this habit and live a normal life.
All in all, a challenge well fought and won!
Ta Ra Rum Pum (2007)
One of worst Hindi movies ever made!
This movie could be a very serious contender for title of worst Hindi movie ever made. Not only because of awful nature of the film itself, but because of the expectations people had with movie after director's debut with "Salaam Namaste", the music and trailers.
The movie was expected to make you feel. I wonder what makes u feel good in this movie. I guess it has the same feel good factor, which made BJP's titanic sink in 2004 general elections. This movies seems have sandwhiched scenes of "Days of Thunder", "Cinderell Man", "Telladega Nights" (and God know what other movies) in between dozens of song sequences.
Every passing moment, makes u believe that something is going to happen in this movie. But nothing happens. What happens is a bunch of people start singing and dancing for no apparent reason.
And what happens to the reputation of Nascar after this movie. If anyone new to racing were to take this movie seriously, u would have to believe that Nascar is bloodier than boxing, with the car-drivers bent on killing each other to cross the finishing line first.
All in all, a very bad advertisement for Bollywood (and also for 100s of products which were advertised in this movie).
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
A romantic end to Spiderman trio!
In Spiderman-I Peter Parker comes to term with his power and responsibility that comes along with it.
In Spiderman-II Peter Parker realizes that the sacrifices he would have to make to bear the responsibility of being a spiderman.
In Spiderman-III Peter Parker comes to realize how difficult is to propose to the one u love and ...
Yes, this pretty much sums up Spiderman-III. The director tried the tried, tested and abused route of intertwining a love story into action movie aka Titanic, and ended up sinking the ship of Spiderman.
Probably, one more reason for sinking of Spiderman ship has to do with the pace of the movie. One gets the feeling that director was really in rush of getting Spiderman-3 released in the theatres. All the actions sequences were looking like being played in fast-forward, may be just to cover up, the similarlity to the action scenes in the predecessors.
While the director speeds up the action sequences, he does'nt do any editing of the useless repeated melodromatic moments in the movie. Mary Jane keeps on struggling with her emotions throughout the movie, and for no apparent reason Peter Parker is not able to sense that.
If the director really wanted to make an 2:30 hour epic, then he probably would have needed some more songs from Kirsten Dunst, or probably Shakira thrown in for an item number. Hollywood, can keep on critising Bollywood movies for their length, but I would still prefer a Bollywood masala movie with few item numbers throw in, rather than this 2:30 hour drag with Kirsten Dunst Opera !!!
Socha Na Tha (2005)
A light-hearted romantic comedy!
Going by my experiences with the movies which I have seen in a theatre, this movie was not at all what I expected it to be.
I would say, this movie brought a breath of fresh air, to Bollywood, just like QSQT brought in 90s and DCH in 20th century.
This movie is a tale about a boy and girl, who first meet each other in typical arranged marriage meet, but decide not to go ahead. This leads to enemity between the two families, and later fall in love with each other.
Sounds like typical Salman Khan, Govinda, Karishma, Ravinda Tandon kind of masala movie?? Wrong. Even though the plot looks the same, the characters are much more realistic, decent and believable. On top of that, rather than looking like a vulgar drama, looks much closer to you.
In short a must watch! Interestingly, at first I thought I was the only one who found this movie entertaining. Going by the reviews, I feel pleasantly relieved that I am not alone.