I’ve been on vacation out of the country for a couple of weeks, so I’m catching up on the films in theaters. One of the films I brought with me on my iPad was Mohanlal’s Spadikam which is on ErosNow. I love that ErosNow lets you download films now!
I loved the crazy action, but especially the intense family drama between Mohanlal and Thalikan, who plays his stern father. Devasuram is still my favorite Mohanlal film, but this one is right up there.
The film is also readily available on Youtube. Check out how crazy the first 10 minutes of the film are. The viewer is just dropped into the action, with no initial clue as to who Mohanlal is fighting or why.
I unabashedly adore Edgar Wright. His Cornetto trilogy starting with Shaun of the Dead are so hilarious = the second, Hot Fuzz is one of my favorite films of all time. And the brilliance that is Scott Pilgrim!
So, when I saw this trailer for Baby Driver, my anticipations was at a fever pitch. It is fantastic. Not laugh out loud guffaws like I had in Hot Fuzz, but oh, so clever. I’m no Fast and Furious type of girl, but the driving is simply amazing. I’ve read that it surpasses some of the Fast and Furious movies.
The music in it is insanely good. Hot Fuzz is still my favorite film of his. This one is a bit more “straight” heist film, but with quirks.
It doesn’t have quite the laugh out loud humor as Hot Fuzz, but it has more heart. Ansel Englort (Baby) I had seen in Fault in Our Stars, where he was very good, and in the Divergent series only. He’s great.
Baby has to do “one more job” for Kevin Spacey and then he’s done with this life. Yep. Seen that plot before many a time, but it’s got some twists and turns that keep it fresh.
It’s just fun to see Jamie Foxx, Kevin Spacey and Jon Hamm in the same scene. Full stop.
The character Baby has ringing in his ears from a childhood accident so he always has earbuds in with music to drown out that sound. In one fun scene, one of the robbers — an actor I recognized from Walking Dead — challenges Baby about the head phones and takes off his sunglasses. Baby just calmly pulls another pair of shades from his jacket pocket. The robber knocks those off, and turns around, and Baby pulls out another pair of glasses from his other pocket.
In another scene, he stops the gang of robbers from pouring out of his car to start a heist until he can restart the song on his iPod. Then every movement and shot of the gang is choreographed to the song.
There’s a lot of cleverness like that — and less the outright guffaws that Hot Fuzz gave me. There’s so much choreographed to music and the insanely good soundtrack — the editing is soooo good in this film.
Baby Driver is one of the top films I’ve seen this year.
I loved the romance of Baby and Deborah. It was driving my crazy where I’d seen the actress, Lily James, before. She was Rose in Downton Abbey! Here with a drawling Southern accent. The whole film is set in Atlanta, and I even recognized the Peachtree center food court next to my last conference hotel in one chase scene. (Gotta love those Georgia film tax incentives!)
There’s a wonderful scene in a laundromat where Debbie and Baby share headphones and then dance to the song he’s sharing with her, with different colored clothes swirling around in the machines. Just magical chemistry in that scene alone.
Highly, highly recommend this film. I loved it. It’s almost perfect, in fact.
You’ll leave the theater with a smile on your face, humming this song:
Rarandoi Veduka Chudham (Come, Let’s Watch the Spectacle) is an enjoyable family drama starring Naga Chaitanya and Rakul Preet Singh. This I believe is their first film together, and the first time I’ve seen Rakul in a film.
This film is put out by Naga Chaitanya’s family banner, and he did well in the film, but frankly, I enjoyed his 2016 films Premam and Sahasam Swasaga Saagipomuch more. The first half of this film is slow, but it’s saved by the last hour or so of the film when the conflict comes to a head.
I also enjoyed seeing Jagapathi Babu again as Naga’s father. He was Mahesh Babu’s father in Srimanthadu.
I loved this charming sweet film! Ayushmann Khurrana and Parineeta Chopra were both great in this best friends to lovers romance. First time director Akshay Roy did a fantastic job, and I can’t wait to see more films by him. I loved how he gave a wink and a nod to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, and even directly referenced Natalie Portman in Garden State.
While there were some parts I liked, this movie made me crazy for what it might have been. With the director Mohit Suri and the hits he’s had with Ek Villalin and Aishiqui 2 plus a book by Chehat Bhagat, you’d think this would be great, but it just didn’t work for me at ALL. The more I thought about it, the more infuriated I got. I happened to see the same showing as Kathy Gibson, who REALLY hated it.
Kartik of BollyFools was seeing the IMAX showing right after mine so he asked if I would do a short video review after seeing the very first showtime of Bahubali 2 in the US. Salim of BollyFools then edited it down to this video they posted on the BollyFools Youtube channel. Thanks for the opportunity!
Under two hours is just not enough time for all the things this film wanted to be and do. I have been anticipating Noor for months and months, mostly because I heard comedian Kanan Gill was going to have his debut in a Bollywood film. If you’re not familiar with Kanan Gill, he has a hilarious Pretentious Bollywood Review Youtube channel, and is extremely amusing on Snapchat [@kanangill].
Kanan Gill plays the character Saad from the book Karachi, You’re Killing Me by Saba Imtiaz who is the childhood best friend of Sonakshi Sinha’s Noor (Ayesha in the book). There are films that have improved upon the source novel, but Noor is not one of those films. Karachi, You’re Killing Me at first seems like a Bridget Jones knockoff, but the unique thing about it is the city it’s set in — Karachi, Pakistan! In the book, Ayesha is a journalist with an incompetent male boss, and she covers everything from terrorist bombings to fashion shows. It gave you a true sense of her life in the city in all its variety — how she had to get her liquor from her bootlegger — and how she loves the city, but also yearns for an international life working for CNN. The novel reaches a real peak near the end when she and her boss are caught in a terrorist bombing, and her calm quick thinking saves her boss.
Noor the movie has some of the same fun light tone in the first half. Like Bridget Jones, Noor obsesses about her weight, snacks on junk food, drinks a bit too much, and feels that attractive young men are merely an “urban legend” in Mumbai. Changing the film’s setting to Mumbai just inherently takes away what was so unique about the novel. But I think Sonakshi does a great job still in playing Noor. She’s a modern young woman journalist, who cringes at doing a Sunny Leone interview when she really wants to be doing SERIOUS work.
The film keeps her Three Musketeer friendships with Saad (Kanan Gill) and Zara (Shibani Dandekar). I loved Noor’s friendship with club DJ Zara and I wish there had been a bit more of their interactions, but again, this film was really short for a Hindi film. Noor keeps the seemingly distracted but actually very supportive relationship of Noor’s widowed father. I liked the actor who plays Noor’s boss, Manish Chaudhary but they made him a sort of Lou Grant type. This was one of my biggest problems with the film adaptation because in the book, the boss is a total incompetent, and Ayesha’s mentor is another woman in the news business. Missing that strong female role just erases a lot of the feminist message of the book. If the boss is going to be a fusion of both book characters — then make it a woman for cripes sake!
Not only does Noor change the setting to Mumbai but the serious issue that Noor the journalist covers is now organ trafficking. They keep the romance with the sexy photo journalist, Purab Kohli as Ayan Banerjee. She gets betrayed in her career for the scoop she has, and that leads to Saad (Kanan) taking her away to his home in London to get her away from the danger she’s in.
Film stylist and costumer – I love you for giving Kanan this sweater/scarf look!
Kanan plays the devoted best friend with his signature snarky humor very well. You could see the loving looks he gives to Noor who seemingly never catches on. One minor quibble with the film adaptation at this point in the story is that Ayesha sees that the first photo prominently displayed in Saad’s apartment is one with her – not with any of his many girlfriends. That little realization moment is missing, but I can forgive because Kanan is so charming in these scenes.
This second half of the film gets super serious because of the organ trafficking plot with Noor’s maid’s brother. The actress playing Noor’s maid is one of the best things about the film. She will break your heart.
But I found the whiplash change in tone a bit too much. I think the film would have succeeded more if it had stayed more in the lighter rom com mode. Maybe if the film had been a more traditional 2 and half or three hour length, it could have incorporated this dramatic change in tone better.
Sonakshi did a good job as Noor, and I’m glad she’s getting these starring female centric films, but I wish she could get ones with better scripts. Kanan Gill did very well for a debut, especially in the lighter moments. I hope this leads to more roles for him.
The director, Sunhil Sippy, is my biggest problem with Noor. The direction was at times amateurish and horrible. Scenes felt awkwardly filmed or dragged on much too long — like Noor’s tearful, “Mumbai, you’re killing me!” diatribe monologue that miraculously goes viral online. I know the source material could have been a really great film, and that’s why I left the theater disappointed. It’s not Sonakshi’s fault, or Kanan’s or Purab Kohli’s. The fault lies squarely on the shoulder of the director. Sonakshi and Kanan deserve a better script and film. The last epilogue scene over the credits where Saad awkwardly proposes to Noor was adorable. Give us more of that!
The end credit song feels just completely tacked on — wait, we need a Badshah rap and throw Diljit Dosanjh in too, for no reason at all.
I wouldn’t run out to the theater to see Noor, but it would be fine to stream when it becomes available online for the a timepass. It tries to have a feminist message, with a modern Indian career girl at the center, so kudos for that at least.
Lijo Jose Pellissery’s 2013 Malayalam film Amen has all the elements that should make it a tailor made movie for me. It’s a quirky comedy about a band competition and the lead actor even plays the clarinet, the very instrument I played as a child. The film reminded me very much of the comedies of Michel Gondry or Wes Anderson. We have a cast of odd characters in this Kerala village. Pellissery seems to have a troupe of actors he likes to reuse — like Wes Anderson does in his films. The film has a magical realism element to it, like the film Amelie. There’s an inherent sweetness to the story, and a nostalgia for life in this little village with it’s troubled church.
The film opens with a story about a prank delivery of a packet of faeces causing a fued between two families in the village. This has nothing to do with the main story of the film, but sets the scene of a village where everyone gets in each other’s business.
The opening credit animated song was perhaps my favorite song sequence of the whole movie:
The cinematography of the film is stunning, set in the scenic Kuttanadan area of Kerala, where the most common mode of travel is by canoe or ferry boat. The ferry brings a new priest to this village, Vincent Vattoli (Indrajith) but at first he’s not recognized as a priest because he wears secular clothes and dances with a young French tourist on the ferry boat. He arrives at the church under the iron grip of the stern head priest Father Abraham (Joy Matthew) and the corrupt sacristan. Father Abraham is ready to tear down the church and abolish the church’s band.
Fahahd Faisal (Solomon) plays clarinet only in secret to his love Shoshanna (Swathi Reddy). He’s the son of the most famous clarinet master player of the area who died in a boat accident. Solomon can’t overcome his fears to play with the band, and in their yearly competition, until Vincent Vattoli comes to town.
There are some gorgeous set pieces when Solomon plays his clarinet in the dark to Shoshanna, and on a boat in the moonlight. But his character is such a nebbish that I had trouble sympathizing with his plight. Shoshanna’s family locks her away after she almost elopes with Solomon. Swathi Reddy does a decent job and has some spunk to her, but she doesn’t have a lot to do in the film.
There’s another one of Pellissery’s long tracking shots for a song set during a “toddy” shop fight between the two rival bands, with the cameramam ending the scene floating away in a boat.
This film should be my catnip, as I love Wes Anderson films, but this Amen film just did not resonate with me. The romance between Solomon and Shoshanna is sweet, but I really didn’t like Fahahd’s nebbishy wishy washy character. I did like Indrajith’s priest character, and he even gets his own song as the French tourist fantasizes about him!
The music was interesting because it’s entirely Western musical instruments. In fact, with songs like When The Saints Go Marching In, it had a sort of New Orleans Jazz sound to the band combos.
This is my third of Lijo Jose Pellissery’s films, and so far my least favorite. I love, love, love Angamaly Diaries, and I really enjoyed City of God. Evidently, before Angamaly Diaries, I think Amen is the director’s most crowd pleasing film. It must evoke strong emotions for the Kerala audience that just didn’t translate to me. I admire the technical brilliance of the film making, and Margaret of Don’t Call It Bollywood does a great job expanding on that aspect. But, Amen for me is a film I admire, but doesn’t make me love it.
A new Mani Ratnam film is an Event with a capital “E”. He is one of the top Indian film directors and an auteur. He makes the films he wants to make, and doesn’t just try to chase commercial success. I’m lucky in that there is a theater five minutes from my house that shows Tamil and Telugu films. I was able to catch a matinee of Ratnam’s latest film, Kaatru Veliyidai today – the title translates to something like “Breezy Expanse.” I haven’t seen tons of Tamil films, but the ones I’ve sought out are mostly Mani Ratnam films, Roja to OK Kanmani. He is the master.
Kaatru Veliyidai is a romantic drama set around the Kargil War. Karthi plays Varun or “VC”, a cocky fighter pilot, and Aditi Rao Hydari is Dr. Leela Abraham. I have never seen Karthi in a film before, but I could tell he is a STAR and quite a good actor.
I looked him up when I got home, and he’s the younger brother of Tamil Superstar Surya, who I really enjoyed in 24.
Aditi I did not realize I’d seen before in a small role in the Hindi film Khoobsurat. She is just luminously beautiful in this film, especially the way Ratnam films her. She’s quite a good actress as well.
The film opens with VC flying his jet in a mission somewhere in Kashmir. His plane is hit and he is forced to parachute, leading to his capture by the Pakistanis. The film is a series of flashbacks from his time in prison to how he meets Leela and falls in love. He gets in a car accident, and she tends to his injuries on her first day as a doctor in the general hospital in Kashmir. There are some amazing feats of cinematography in these hospital sequences as VC goes in and out of consciousness and we see Dr. Leela reflected in his dilated eye. He sneaks out of the hospital once he awakes, and Leela doesn’t meet him again until the Air Force ball, which is gorgeous tango dance sequence. VC is so cocky in his attitude — his whole demeanor made me think of the film Top Gun. He’s shocked when Leela stands him up to his invitation for a flight over the Himalayas.
At first their relationship seems to follow a familiar path, but VC’s cockiness is also an arrogance and self absorption. The relationship has some dark tones to it. VC can be cruel and thoughtless. Leela wonders why she keeps going back to VC again and again. One scene struck me particularly when he gets her back and proclaims to his buddies in front of her, “I told you I’d bring her back. She’s MY girl! You owe me a whisky!” Was it all for a bet? Or can he really not live without her? They have such a volatile passionate relationship, it’s really an open question if they should be together. It reminded me in some ways of Rani and Abishek in Yuva.
Just at the moment that I was worried that Leela was turning into a dishrag at a critical juncture, she takes her life in her own hands. And while there is one of those key “confrontation with the girl’s parents” scenes, it’s key that while they are NOT pleased with Mr. Varun Chakrapani, they don’t scream and yell. It’s Leela who asks him to leave. She is an adult, and she makes her own decision as to the direction of her life. Mani Ratnam writes such great roles for women. Both of these characters in this romance are wonderfully complex, but especially Kartihi’s VC character.
As we flash back to the prison scenes, his goal is to escape and to get back to Leela to prove he is a better man. That leads to some gripping action scenes in the second half of the film.
I don’t think this is Mani Ratnam’s greatest film, but he truly excels at complex relationship films. I left thinking about Roja, and Dil Se. This is not a film about terrorism, but it does return to the theme of Kashmir.
The score is by A. R. Rahman and has some stand out songs — Rahman saves his best for Tamil cinema, and his very best for Mani Ratnam. Ratnam has a really clever way to include the most commercial song, Azhagiye.
VC sends Leela a videotape (VHS! It’s 1999!) with a Marry Me song filmed with his air force buddies. It’s sounds like the a cappella groups like Penn Masala. It reminded me of all those amateur Youtube videos of soldiers or sailors lip syncing and dancing. Brilliant!
There’s a family wedding setting for another great song, Saarattu Vandiyila. That shot with the red powder! Breathtakingly beautiful!
The ending left me satisfied, but yet wishing there’d been a little more. I do like to see my rogue heroes grovel quite a bit to earn their HEA. I’ll definitely be seeking out more films with both of the stars, especially Karthi. Dear Reader, if you have any to recommend I watch first, let me know in the comments.
After seeing the fantastic Malayalam film Angamaly Diaries last week, I couldn’t wait to seek out director Lijo Jose Pellissery’s other films. City of God was the one recommended to seek out first, and glory be, it’s on Google Play for rental and purchase. At $4.99 to buy, I snatched it right up.
City of God is part of the New Generation of Malayalam films with a hyperlink non-linear narrative of four interlocking stories. It came out within months of Traffic, the first of the new wave Malayalam cinema, but City of God was pulled within a week of release. It may have been a bit ahead of its time. It felt much grittier and more violent than Traffic, and isn’t really suited to a broad family audience. I felt Traffic relied a bit too much on the audience’s familiarity of all the actors in that multi-starrer, and I didn’t really get to know any character that well. I liked City of God much more.
A signature of Malayalam New Wave films is an accident, and coincidences that bring people together and set off the events of the film. City of God starts with a horrific car crash. Prithviraj is driving a car that crashes into a street light pole, after hitting a motorscooter with a young couple. There’s also a van full of toughs that pile out to confront Prithviraj after the crash, and then we flash back. We see the events of the film from several perspectives, replaying various key scenes from the point of view of different characters. This is a movie where you have to pay attention a bit to catch on to what is going on.
Prithviraj is sort of a capo or enforcer for his rich friend Sony (Rajeev Pillai). He gets lots of very cool fight scenes, mostly just kicking and punching his way out of various jams, but in the photo above wielding a firehose like a urumi sword! Prithviraj looked pretty bulked up, and this film was around the time of the filming of Aiyyaa. Hubba hubba. It was super fun to see Prithviraj be a sort of gangster tough guy, smacking people down first, and asking questions later.
Sony is obssessed with a young actress, Surya (Rima Kallingal). He had a romance with her in the past, but his parents made him abandon her, and he’s trying to get her back, even though she’s married to an abusive husband. Surya is a big actress, and one of the big musical numbers is cleverly one she’s doing for a film within the film. The director was very clever about the songs. There was this one during a film shoot, one big one at a wedding, and then a couple more playing on a radio and so on.
There’s a complicated land deal going on between some corrupt business types, Sony, and some mafia. Prithviraj is sent out to “deal” with one guy, and his wife then vows revenge.
My favorite story line involved the migrant Tamil laborers who were working on the building project for Sony. My reader Mohzin let me know that half this film is in Tamil, including half the songs! He said that the Malayalam audience didn’t need subtitles for the Tamil speaking parts. The love story of Swarnavel (Indrajith) and Marathakam (Pavarthy) is just so wonderful. It’s the heart of the whole film. Marathakam has fled Tamil Nadu and her abusive husband. Swarnavel obviously loves her, but holds back as she is already married. Marathakam’s friend Lakshmi (Rohini from Baahubali!) urges her to marry again, but Rohini has other ideas than poor Swarnavel. She tells both the other thinks of them as either brother or sister, and so Marathakam, heart broken, agrees to marry a supposedly wealthy man. Then comes my all time favorite scene of the whole film. The cops come and arrest her husband, and then she finds the drunk Swarnavel to chastise him for letting her marry this thief. Then the sparks just FLY once they realize they don’t view each other as siblings AT ALL! When he breaks off her mangalsutra — so hot! Another favorite thing is that she won’t kiss him as he’s drunk, and sobers him up with a bucket full of water over his head!
Roh
This is the couple from the opening scene accident who were on the motor scooter. Why they were so frantically racing on that bike gradually is revealed.
Prithviraj doesn’t get a full on romance in the film, but he does rescue a damsel in distress and gives her very swoony longing looks through the rearview mirror. Mostly, in this film, he just gets to kick ass in very cool fights, and he seems much more savvy and smart than anyone around him. But then Prithviraj usually does seem like the smartest one in the room.
The tone of the film can change dramatically from scene to scene,as we’re going from one character’s point of view to the next. There are several side characters who have comedic moments — quite a few sort of comedy uncle characters. The main actors were all pretty good, but the guy playing Sony didn’t make much of an impression on me. Prithviraj, Pavarthy and Indrajith were the standouts. Indrajith stole the whole movie, in my opinion. I don’t really remember him from Classmates, but he’s in Amen, which I’m going to try to watch next. Pavarthy looks so completely different from any other character I’ve seen her play, that I honestly did not recognize her until I saw her name in the end credits. Once I went back and rewatched that HOT love scene song, I could tell it was her, maybe with darker makeup? Quite the different look than in Bangalore Days or Charlie!
The cinematography was quite interesting. Some cool different angles to many shots, and great editing. The fights didn’t feel quite as intimate as the recent Angamaly Diaries. There was a steadicam being shook up, I guess to imitate the Bourne films, but it just made me dizzy. It worked in Angamaly Diaries, and didn’t work for me here in the same way.
As I said earlier, I didn’t really enjoy the hyperlink in Traffic, as there were too many shallow stories that weren’t developed. Here, there were four key stories that interconnected, and the characters were more fleshed out. This film can be gritty and violent like Kammatti Paadamor Angamaly Diaries. Maybe the audience 6 years ago wasn’t quite ready for an innovative film like this. Angamaly Diaries is still the better film, but it was really fascinating to see this director developing his signature style.
A new Mani Ratnam film is an Event with a capital “E”. He is one of the top Indian film directors and an auteur. He makes the films he wants to make, and doesn’t just try to chase commercial success. I’m lucky in that there is a theater five minutes from my house that shows Tamil and Telugu films. I was able to catch a matinee of Ratnam’s latest film, Kaatru Veliyidai today – the title translates to something like “Breezy Expanse.” I haven’t seen tons of Tamil films, but the ones I’ve sought out are mostly Mani Ratnam films, Roja to OK Kanmani. He is the master.
Pardesi Reviews 