24 – A Tamil Sci-Fi Time Travel Movie with a Great Triple Role

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Sci-fi films are not that common in Indian Cinema at all.  (I still haven’t seen Rajnikanth’s Robot which is sitting in my DVD pile.)  24 was a really interesting film, because it used some of the conventions of sci-fi films I’m used to from the West, but added in the family and mythic elements of Indian cinema.  The film stars Suriya in a triple role.  This is my first Suriya film.  Looking him up later, he is famous for originating the role of the cop in Singam (which Ajay Devgn remade into the Hindi Singham).

In the picture above Suriya plays the inventor dad who makes an almost steam punkesque time machine watch.  It can only go backwards a maximum of 24 hours, thus the movie title.  The middle character is the evil brother of the inventor — very Indian!

Then the left is the 26 year old son of the inventor, present day 2016 Mani.  Nithya Menon of OK Kanmani has a brief role as Priya, wife of inventor, mother of Mani.  Samantha Prabhu played the love interest for Mani and was just okay.

Suriya was impressive.  He is a talented actor because he really, really pulled off three separate characters with the three roles.  And there are scenes of him being one character and pretending to be another which is hard to do, and he totally nailed it.

There’s a whole plot with baby Mani being entrusted to a young girl who raises him on her own as a single mother.  I’m thinking there’s a whole Mahabharata story I’m missing that it ties to that would be obvious to the Tamil audience.   (Asked a friend and the foster mother is supposed to be Yashoda who raised Krishna.)  There’s also elements of karma and fate as the time travel machine watch and a key find their way to Mani.

What was great about the film is that when Mani gets the time travel machine watch to work (he’s a watch repair man, fortuitously!), he first uses it to romance the girl.  He’s almost like a young superhero geeking out over his new found super powers.  Those scenes were really fun.  He can also freeze time, and uses that to take a selfie with Dhoni in the middle of a cricket match.  Watching him explore the powers of the time travel machine, explains what it can do, and how the time travel is going to work (and its limits) to the audience in a clever way.

I really love time travel movies, especially when they are used in romantic films.  Outlander is hot right now, but who can forget Christopher Reeve in Somewhere In Time?  He had no time machine, just hypnosis and the power of his love!

There have been several adaptations of H. G. Wells novel The Time Machine, notably the 2002 The Time Machine directed by Simon Wells, great-grandson of the author and starring Guy Pearce.

In The Time Machine, Wells or his avatar finds love with a primitive girl as civilization has collapsed in the distant future.  Yeah, there’s none of that kind of nonsense in 24, thankfully.  It’s a story of personal revenge in one family.  But while Suriya was great as the villain, hell bent to get the time machine watch to try to cure himself — it was never explained why he hated his inventor twin so much.  I wish a little less time had been spent on the romance plot towards the end, and some time had been given to the back story of the twin brothers.  Of course, the filmmakers have left it open to a prequel or a sequel.

I thought the CGi and special effects were good, and the music was by A.R. Rahman.  Not his best score ever, and I’m not running out to download the songs, but good.  I would hesitate to bring very young children to the film as one character gets his hand cut off.  Overall, an enjoyable action film, especially for the performance of Suriya in the three roles.  Four stars out of five.

24 is out in Tamil, and a dubbed Telugu version.  My theater had both.

Love & Friendship -A Jane Austen Adaption With Bite and Wit

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Love & Friendship is based on the early novella Lady Susan by Jane Austen.  She never submitted the epistolary novel for publication, and the movie is actually titled after another early work of Austen’s.  Whit Stillman’s adaptation stars Kate Beckinsale as the scandalous widow, Lady Susan, and Chloe Sevigny as her American best friend

There are some verbal zingers in this film that are just delicious, especially when Beckinsale and Sevigny share the screen.  The scene stealer, though, is Tom Bennett as the hilariously stupid but incredibly wealthy suitor Sir James Martin.  In a twist, Beckinsale’s Lady Susan is pursuing a younger man (Xavier Samuel), and urging her daughter to marry Sir James Martin.  Stephen Fry has a delightful cameo as Chloe Sevigny’s husband.

I saw the premiere at Sundance, and I think it will play extremely well on your TV like a great PBS series.  But if you’re tiring of superhero fare and are looking for something adult to see in the theater, check out Love & Friendship.  Three and a half stars out of five.

 

 

 

Vettai – The Madhavan/Arya Brother Cop Movie I Didn’t Even Know I Wanted

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My neighbor brought me back a stack of Tamil DVD’s from her trip to Chennai and I’m slowly making my way through them.  I was looking for a lighter movie and took a chance on Vettai (The Hunt), a 2012  Tamil action comedy.  Arya AND Maddie in a movie together?  I’m in!  This movie just made me smile for so many reasons.

Vettai establishes the dynamic between the brothers with a scene from their childhood.  The older brother is actually timid and scared of everything.  When a bully hits him, the two years younger brother comes to the rescue.  Their father is a policeman, who then beats the younger son for getting in a fight.  He stoically takes the blows silently while the older brother weeps and wails even though not a single blow touches him.

That dynamic continues to the present day.  Madhavan who is physically large and imposing plays a very timid adult.  He’s scared of violence and confrontation.  His younger brother (Arya) is a rowdie, and quick to fight and intimidate anyone who threatens Maddie.  Their policeman father suddenly dies, and by family tradition, Madhavan as the oldest son should take his father’s place.  Arya convinces Madhavan that he should take their father’s job, the same one that their grandfather held.  Maddie tries to get Arya to do it instead, but he has 4 charges against him.

At first Madhavan enjoys the stature his uniform gives him, but he doesn’t know what to do when a young girl is kidnapped by the local goons.  He calls his brother Arya, who comes to the rescue.

  

Never underestimate the powers of disguise in a hoodie or a rain coat!

Madhavan gets the hero accolades, while Arya acts as his secret enforcer behind the scenes.

Interspersed with the action scenes, we have the romantic storyline.  Arya meets a very assertive young woman (Sameera Reddy) when he accidentally knocks over her motor scooter.  She turns out to be the young woman that their uncle wants to arrange a marriage with for Maddie.  It was a nice fake out.  Arya then is attracted to the younger shy sister (Amala Paul).  The romantic scenes give a lot of comedy and sweetness to the movie, and some nice music numbers.  I loved when Sameera’s character forces Arya to change his view of his brother, “Are you the older brother?  You don’t even have a job.  Don’t you think you should address him with respect?”

Things come to a head when Madhavan is badly beaten by the goon gang.  As you can probably guess, Arya teaches him to release his inner lion.  Cue training montage and action scenes.

This isn’t the greatest movie in the world, but it was entertaining and I loved the chemistry of Arya and Madhavan together as brothers.  Madhavan was really, really great in all the scenes where he is the gentle timid sensitive giant.  He has a great comic touch.  In his native Tamil, I think he has an even greater comfort in playing comedy.  I haven’t seen as many Arya movies.  I’ve seen his action film Urumi, and I’ve seen his sweet romantic roles like Raja Rani and Size Zero.   He carries most of the water in the romantic scenes in Vettai, and there’s a funny subplot with an NRI that is supposed to marry the sister Arya loves.

Three and a half stars out of five.   Nice entertaining light action romantic comedy.  Plus Arya and Madhavan dancing together!  Who can ask for more than that?

Pizza – A Seriously Creepy Tamil Horror Film with a Disarming Title

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I am not really a horror movie person.  I rented the  Tamil Horror thriller Pizza (2012), which was recommended over and over on the Quora post.  It’s the debut feature film of writer/director Karthik Subbaraj.

It was SO intense that I had to take a break in the middle of watching it.  I am really impressed the level of scariness and creepiness the director was able to achieve with a guy running around an empty modern house with the lights out and carrying a shaky flashlight.

It’s called Pizza because the main character is a young pizza delivery guy.  Michael (Vijay Sethupathi) and his girlfriend Anu  (Remya Nambeesan) live together.  Anu is writing a ghost story novel, and doing research by watching lots of horror films.  Anu finds out she’s pregnant, and that causes a crisis in their relationship as Michael doesn’t think he’s ready to be married.  He’s not earning enough working at the pizza shop.   Michael and Anu don’t seem to have any family.  They patch things up, and we get a very sweet love song sequence.

Michael makes a pizza delivery to a house, and then gets locked in when the woman who had answered the door goes up to get change.  The lights have gone out, and that’s when things get super creepy and weird.  Pizza was the first Tamil film to use surround sound, and the soundscape of the film is part of what makes it such an effective thriller.  About an hour in, I was so affected that I had to stop the film for a bit.  It’s that good and intense.  Realize that I’m a scaredy cat and I don’t usually watch many horror films at all.

In the last 20 minutes or so of the film there is a great twist, and then a final double twist at the very end.  Part of what makes the film so good is the performance of the lead Michael,  Vijay Sethupathi.  He was great.

Not my usual choice of flick but I’m glad I saw it.  These scrappy low budget filmmakers have to be so inventive.  I’ll be looking forward to seeing Karthik Subbaraj’s other films when he has a bigger budget to work with.

Tom Holland as Spiderman gives Captain America: Civil War a Nice Spot of Levity

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How else to spend Mother’s Day but to go see Captain America: Civil War with my family?  My husband was disappointed in the film, and felt it was too dark.  I don’t agree.  I thought it was a very good installment in the Marvel Comicverse.  I loved that it wasn’t yet another alien force threatening the existence of humanity on earth vs. our superheroes movie.  This film was about relationships, and the complexities of the aftermath of those huge battles in the past movies.  Civilians died.  Buildings and cities were destroyed.  Shouldn’t the Avengers be answerable to oversight?  But what are the risks of that?

What Captain America:  Civil War had was some great moments of humor that Batman vs. Superman utterly lacked.  Civil War introduces us to the Tom Holland incarnation of Spiderman.  I’ll be honest.  I groaned when I heard that Marvel was rebooting yet again the Spiderman franchise.  We’ve already had Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield.  I felt no urge for yet another telling of Spiderman’s origin story.

That is, until I saw Tom Holland in Civil War.  He actually looks like a young high school kid.  He has that youthful exuberance about him.  And Marissa Tomei is Aunt May!  Tony Stark decides to become Peter Parker’s patron, and visits him at his home, to ask for help with the capture of Captain America and the Winter Soldier.  This was one of my favorite sequences of the whole movie.   Peter has been dumpster diving and has an ancient iMac and other spare old computer parts on his bedroom desk.  He looks and acts like a kid.  And when he joins into the battle at the airport (that we’ve all seen in the trailer), he can’t help but be a fan boy meeting all the heroes.  He tells Captain America he’s a big fan as he snatches the shield.  He exclaims over how cool Winter Soldier’s metal arm is.  In a big throwing parts of airplanes kind of huge battle, Spiderman adds some welcome levity.

I like Slate’s Josh Brogan’s take:

In fact, he’s kind of a comics nerd: Mid-fight, he pauses to geek out over the composition of Falcon’s wings and the makeup of the Winter Soldier’s mechanical arm. That he does so while everyone around him is trying to beat each other into submission neither takes anything away from the proceedings nor slows down the action. Batman v Superman fixated on feats of ponderous badassery when its protagonists finally smashed into one another. Civil War rejects that dour attitude, starting from the premise that it’s fun to be a superhero—and fun to hang out with them too, even if they happen to be tossing each other into walls.

Now, I can’t wait to see the new Spiderman.  Tom Holland totally won me over.

I also was lukewarm about Black Panther until I saw Chadwick Boseman ooze amazing cool as the character in Civil War.  In a film filled with superstar actors, Chadwick Boseman stole the entire movie, in my opinion.  It was just enough of a taste to make me super curious about his character, his origin story and where that very cool headquarter place he has in the jungle might be!  Chadwick Boseman has been consistently excellent in biopics like 42 and Get On Up.  I’m excited to see him get his own superhero franchise.

Captain America: Civil War does not really advance the overarching Avengers narrative.  It sets the stage, dividing the Avengers into opposing factions, presumably leaving them vulnerable for the next antagonist.

It was an enjoyable Superhero flick.  Four stars out of five.

Okkadu – Now My Favorite Mahesh Babu Movie so far

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Over the last two days I watched Okkadu, my third Mahesh Babu movie.  It’s on Google Play.  But in looking for a clip I just discovered the whole thing with subtitles is on Youtube.

 

I got about 20 minutes in and I realized I was watching the Southern film that Arjun Kapoor’s Hindi Tevar was based on!  Kabaddi and all.  Okkadu has a better title, because it means “The One” which has several meanings.  The girl is the one for the villain (Prakash Raj again!) and Mahesh is the one who can save her and win her heart.

Normally I don’t notice the background score very much in Indian movies, but this one started by riffing off the opening music of West Side Story.  I kid you not.  It was the Jets and the Sharks all the way complete with snapping fingers and jazzy music.  Not a direct copy of the music, but definitely inspired.  Totally inspired by, and it made me smile.  Watch the first few minutes and you’ll see exactly what I mean.

It’s fascinating to me what they kept the same, and what they changed for the Hindi version.  I was one of the few people who actually liked Tevar (because Arjun!) but Okkadu is so much better.

Okkadu was a megahit in 2003 for Mahesh.  It was remade in Tamil, and Bengali (both megahits) and then twelve years later as the Hindi Tevar — not so much a hit.

In Okkadu, the young woman Mahesh saves is played by Bhumika Chawla who the same year had almost the same sort of role with Salman in the Hindi film Tere Naam.  Swapna (Bhumika) is being forced into marriage with a goon  (Prakash Raj) who has killed her brother.  Ajay (Mahesh) sees the goon dragging Swapna towards a car as she’s crying.  He punches the goon and rescues the girl, not realizing he has just punched the crime boss of the town.

The negative to Bhumika’s role vs Sonakshi Sinha in Tevar, is that Bhumika starts the film very passive, and Sonakshi gets to reject the goon villain with some tevar of her own at first.  Bhumika as Swapna is mousy and terrified (but with good reason) and only when she’s kidnapped at the end to be forcefully wed to Prakash does she get some gumption.  She tells him, go ahead and force yourself on me but I’ll only have my one, my true husband before my eyes, Ajay (Mahesh).  (Much more effective and satisfying than the parallel scene in Tevar).

Prakash Raj as the villiain is way creepier than Manoj Bajpayee because Manoj falls in love with Sonakshi just from seeing her dance one time.  Prakash has been waiting for Bhumika to “mature” for it sounds like years so he can marry her against her will.   She has reason to be terrified from the get go.

In Okkadu, Mahesh is mid-20’s and still has that boy to man thing going on.  The film is really about him becoming a man.  In the beginning his boy gang is fighting another boy gang.  His whole life is just winning the kabaddi championship.  Tevar is the same, but the first fight (also in defense of a harrassed girl), but Arjun fights an adult man.  In Okkadu, his fight with the adult goon Prakash feels like his first step to taking on the responsibility of manhood.

(adorable!)

Tevar uses the Taj Mahal as the backdrop, and Arjun’s house in Agra has this whole roof top terrace with a view of the monument.  It’s similar in Okkadu, but instead the movie is in Hyderabad and Mahesh’s family rooftop terrace overlooks the Charminar mosque, but it’s much more woven into the plot.  At one point he hides Swapna inside one of the minarets, and they escape by running through the crowds coming to afternoon prayer.  (In Tevar it’s Holi.)

One thing Tevar is missing is that in Okkadu Prakash Raj (and his politician brother) have this goonda cigar smoking mother who was a RIOT.  Her intro scene:

One thing that Tevar did better was the relationship of Arjun’s character and his policeman father.  In Okkadu, the father arrests Ajay (Makesh) but it doesn’t feel like it was for his own protection as in Tevar.  I didn’t like the father of Ajay, although there were a few funny family scenes.  But I loved Arjun’s father in Tevar — you saw where Pintu (Arjun) got his tevar from.  Exasperated with him, but ultimately respecting Pintu.

There was one thing I hated about Okkadu – one scene that just infuriated me.  Mostly Mahesh was adorable and steadfast.  At one point, Swapna (Bhumika) is reluctant to get to the airport and asks to stop for a snack on the way.  Ajay turns around and she’s vanished.  He finds her and slaps her in a “What were you THINKING?” kind of way, and then she reveals she had just bought him a gift — “Knee caps” (knee pads) for his Kabaddi championship game.

Other than that one off note, I adored the movie.  I’m just going to pretend that moment didn’t happen — like I ignore the undressing scene in Baahubali.  Ajay does feel major remorse later looking at those knee caps — knee pads.  But he doesn’t grovel or apologize.

And while the action scenes are just as gravity defying, somehow they are a little less ridiculous than Arjun being stabbed and slashed by a sword and still getting up to wallop Manoj.  Gunasekhar, the writer/director of Okkadu just keeps a fantastic pace to Okkadu, and the action scenes are really well done and inventive.  It’s just filmed better and edited better than Boney Kapoor’s Tevar.  The songs feel organic to the narrative.  There is no shoe-horned item song as in Tevar.  I do like the music in Tevar and listen to Superman all the time, but the music numbers in Okkadu have better placement and flow for the most part.

The scene that is absolutely better in Okkadu is their parting at the airport, because Swapna (Bhumika) runs back and proposes to Ajay.  “I don’t want to leave.  I want YOU.”  It’s a fantastic moment.

This is just going to be one of those movies for me, one of my favorites I will rewatch.  I mean, West Side Story music!!  But mostly Mahesh is awesome.

Manjhi: Mountain Man – Nawazuddin Siddiqui is amazing as always

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I was at my local library looking for another film (Dookudu!), when I happened to see that Manjhi:  The Mountain Man was in the new release DVD section.  Our local movie theater had shown trailers for Manjhi for months, but it never came to the big screen in our town.

I absolutely love the acting of Nawazuddin Siddiqui.  He is consistently amazing in every movie I’ve seen him in.  Like Irrfan Khan, I’d bet he could make reading the phonebook a dramatic triumph.  Since half the movie has Nawaz acting only with himself and railing at his mountain, you need someone of Nawaz’s talents to pull it off.

Manjhi is based on the real life story of Dashrath Manjhi, who really did carve a road through a mountain with just a hammer and a chisel.  Dashrath’s wife had died from a fall, and died because it took so long to get her to medical care.  After her death Dashrath Manjki vowed to make a road through the mountain to allow for faster medical access for his remote village.  He worked at it for twenty-two years.  It sounds like a story that is so fantastical that it couldn’t even be real, but it is.

My favorite part of the movie was the first half which has the romantic story of Dashrath and his wife Phalguni (Radhika Apte).  Dashrath was born in a caste so low that they were the rat-eaters of the village.  There is a tyranical zamindar and his evil son who rule the village with an iron fist.  Dashrath runs away from home to escape being forced into lifelong bondage to the zamindar.  He returns to the village after some years working in the coal mines.

He falls in love with a village girl, and realizes that she was actually his child bride.  I just loved Nawaz and Radhika Apte and their scenes together.  Life is hard.  The Zamindar and his son are barbaric to the low caste villagers.  But Dhashrath and his wife carve out happiness together.

Tragedy strikes when a pregnant Phalguni falls from the mountain while pregnant with their second child.  Dhashrath carries her miles and miles to the closest hospital, but it isn’t soon enough to save her.  He is left with two children to raise alone, and at this point he goes a bit mad.  He vows to the mountain that he will break it.

The second half of the the film shows his struggles chipping away at the mountain all those years.  The filmmaker tries to insert some drama here, and it gets a bit metaphysical with visions of his wife talking to him, and soliloquy’s with the mountain.  Nawaz tries his best, but the script is not as good here.

Nawaz does not make Dhashrath a saint.  This is a man so obsessed that he leaves his children in the care of his drunk father to work on his mountain path.

The film is definitely worth seeing just for Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s performance.  Seeing him romance Radhika Apte in the first half of the film makes me anticipate the romantic comedy he’s filming right now even more.

Manjhi:  The Mountain Man was not quite as great as I’d hoped it would be, but I give it four stars out of five.

 

Green Room – A Taut Relentless Thriller

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I would highly recommend Green Room if you love intense thrillers.  Anton Yelchin and Alia Shawkat are members of a punk rock band.  They get a last minute gig at a club out in the boonies, and realize the owners are Neo-Nazi Skinheads when they arrive.  They just want to play the show and get the hell out of there.

One band member forgets their phone charging in the green room, and when they go back to get it, they discover a girl murdered on the floor.  They are then trapped in the Green Room while the people running the club figure out what to do with them.  And who owns the club?  Patrick Stewart in an absolutely chilling performance.

I saw this film at Sundance in January and I was not prepared for how relentless this film would be.  I was on the edge of my seat nearly the entire hour and a half of the film.

To give you a sense, this is what Patrick Stewart tweeted about reading the script the first time:

 

Four stars out of five.  The film is at times very gruesome, but it is a tense taut thriller.  Green Room is writer/director Jeremy Saulnier‘s third feature film.  I can’t wait to see what he does next!

Krrish 3 – Super Interesting With the Current Kangana/Hrithik News

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I watched Krrish 3 for the first time, and it it was super interesting with all the recent news about Kangana and Hrithik and the affair they may or may not have had.  At this point you can’t help but examine every scene with Hrithik and Kangana through that prism.

I don’t have a lot to say about Krrish 3.  I enjoyed Krrish and Koi… Mil Gaya was, well, kind of bizarre.

Krrish 3 is really a decent super hero movie.  The CGI was good.  Yes, there is liberal borrowing from Hollywood films like X-Men and Spiderman.  Hmmm.  A villain with a frog tongue, a villain with a rhino horn.  Gee, where have I seen that?  A villain who can change into any other person she touches.  Hmmm.

I am no Vivek Oberoi fan by any means, but I was actually impressed with him in Krrish 3.  His Kaal is sort of a Magneto villain crossed with Professor Xavier in a wheelchair.  He was quite good as a worthy antogonist for Krrish, and I liked that it being an Indian movie, we had family themes with his character.

Absolutely hated his costume, though.  It looked like a kid made it and slapped some tin foil on a football helmet.  Not cool enough.

It’s standard superhero fare, but for Indian cinema, that’s still saying quite something.  Definitely one that kids could enjoy.  Solid three stars out of five.

And, the extra bonus is that we get a great dance number with Priyanka and Hrithik!  Believe me, Batman vs. Superman could have used a nice song and dance to lighten the mood a bit.  (Zach Snyder, take note!

 

 

 

 

Nawaz Siddiqui in a Rom Com!

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I just heard from the BollyFools guys that Nawaz Siddiqui is currently filming a romantic comedy with Amy Jackson called Ali.  Really excited to hear that he’s getting to be a romantic lead.  He is obviously a fantastic dramatic actor, but he really showed his comedic skills in last year’s Bajrangi Bhaijaan.  Ali is directed by Sohail Khan.