Populated Movies Revisited!

Many years back I wrote a piece titled 'Populated Movies' that was later included in my first book 'Laugh and Let Laugh' in 2017. In that piece I argued that since India is an overpopulated country with high unemployment rates the creative art forms do adjust to that reality by trying to generate maximum employment opportunities in their projects. For example the goons in a mainstream Hindi movie: whereas just one bullet through the head by one villain is enough to kill the hero or the protagonist, the chief antagonist or the main villain sends an army of goons armed with an assortment of weapons for the job. I argued that this is done with a view to generate more employment. But I was mistaken, and so I just want to admit this here. 

My argument got almost fatally shot after I watched all the three movies of the 'John Wick Franchise' (2014 onward). I failed to keep count, but hundreds of hapless goons got killed in each of the movies at the hands of the 'legendary' assassin cum killing machine John Wick (played by Keanu Reeves). The goons keep on appearing out of what the moviemakers imply as the underworld of citizen assassins and which in fact threatens to take over the whole world. Of course there are some other movies too: 'Red' (2010) in particular where a secret agency launches veritable armies to kill a few retired agents. But John Wick Franchise should still qualify for the world record in this, barring the war movies, of course. With the upcoming John Wick-Chapter 4 in early 2023 this should not be a problem at all.

Now, America or for that matter the whole of the developed West doesn't have population issues, although does have unemployment niggles from time to time, particularly in the aftermath of the pandemic. Therefore, my argument of 'employment generation optimization' falls flat here. And so, we'll have to focus our attention on the other usual factors like wholesome booming entertainment that applies worldwide, and with special reference to America, factors like spreading the gun ideology and its consequent aspirations. Just another argument only, mind you! 

Movie Watching: A Few Bovine Observations!

Based on my lifelong experience as a rather discerning and somewhat fastidious movie buff I beg to offer here a few of my rather bovine (no necessarily offending anyone) observations about movie watching. You may or may not agree with these which is quite natural, movie watching being kinda of subjective entertainment. You can also choose the near-absent option of putting your views too here in a way to enrich or annihilate my observations. My observations here dwell on characteristics that adversely affect the viewing pleasure which are more important, because the absence of those acts on the positive side.

Ø  In quite a few movies I fervently expect something to happen at some point of the narration, and if that takes too long a time or doesn’t happen at all I get impatient and immediately try confirming again the genre of the film. Most often, I find Suspense as the one. Well, heady kind of suspense that! This phenomenon mostly happens in Hollywood productions where the filmmaker can easily indulge in such experiments, having the world market at his/her command. However, in Bollywood movies this is almost unheard of, because such indulgences normally lead to a poor show in the crucial box office. In any case, such experiments obstruct my viewing pleasure.

 

Ø  The beginning of any movie is always very crucial, and therefore, all movies try to begin with a very evocatively or violently created scene that may structure my expectations. However, just after the beginning things like ‘Two weeks later’ or ‘Two years later’ or even ’20 years later’ appear on screen disappointing me thoroughly. More saddening part is when the super declare ‘Two weeks earlier’ or like that which kinda wearies me out without the would-be wear and tear, if any. In any case, such interventions obstruct my viewing pleasure.

 

Ø  As a corollary to the above I must mention here that the custom of ‘flashback’ is as ancient as the art of filmmaking. To make a time transition the creators need, compulsorily at times, to bring in a flashback, particularly when adapting very voluminous novels for the screen. As long as the flashback is done smoothly, like in most Hollywood productions where these are done with the help of a montage or recurring terrible moments of the past, my viewing pleasure is kept intact. But unfortunately, in Bollywood films flashbacks always start with a song or a huge song-dance sequence which normally kills all the expectations built up so far. In any case, such experiments obstruct my viewing pleasure.

 

Ø  In Bollywood a serious no-nonsense movie means the absence of songs or dance sequences; however, in such movies too, the background songs suddenly intrude at many crucial points of the story, adversely affecting the latter’s flow as well as my viewing pleasure. This is a common factor in some intense Hollywood or other foreign-language movies also, particularly in movies where I have to rely, to a varying extent of dependence, on the subtitles. Now, in such a delicate scenario, the somewhat crusading subtitle writers don’t even spare the intruding background song lyrics and there follows such a maze of subtitles, of the song and of the dialogues of the characters, that I get lost completely in a flood of words, whereas I’m watching a creation of the visual media. To make it worse, the writers take pains to create subtitles like ‘phone chimes’, ‘music strings’, ‘wind blows’, ‘footsteps sound’ or of the sort that I can hear and watch all the time. In any case, such intrusions obstruct my viewing pleasure.

 

Ø  There is also the rather universal problem of modern cinema where the rampant use of technology always, deliberately or as a kickoff, suppresses the dialogue track and blows the background effects/music track out of proportion. This makes me crane my ears all the time to catch the nuances of the dialogues and to jerk back violently when my vulnerable ears get nearly blasted away with the sudden thundering of the background sound track. Unfortunately, the Bollywood movies nowadays also try to imitate this unfriendly techno surge. This is more important in light of the pandemic-induced non-theater movie watching; because, amid the unavoidable play of the hush and the thunder, I just cannot avoid getting the warnings from the streaming platform about the used audio volume threatening to damage my eardrums. In any case, such experiments always obstruct my viewing pleasure.

Movie Runway 34: Ajay Devgn Gives a New Bollywood Treat in a Fairly Gripping Drama!

In all my Bollywood, read Hindi movies, viewing experience this should be the first movie with a serious attempt to deal with an air disaster or a possible air disaster, a genre that the commercial Hindi films never really tried to explore barring a few on plane hijack, most prominently the intense drama of Neerja (2016) based on a real-life brave air hostess. The movie Runway 34, also loosely based on true incidents and released on the occasion of Eid in April-end this year, tells the story of a flight from Dubai to Cochin that entered the vortex of a raging cyclone nearly crash-landing in the Trivandrum airport with 150 passengers on board, and then followed by the grueling investigation into the near-crash. The first half of the film dwells entirely on the flight starting at the wee hours from Dubai and is a gripping saga of what happened on its course from the takeoff onward, told with the required details and intensity that are always missing in most commercial Bollywood movies. However, as per some traditionally cherished ingredients of a typical Hindi movie we get treated with a background song during the climax of the flight landing, instead of making it a memorable one with the main pilot Captain Vikrant Khanna (Ajay Devgn) steering the plane to a landing on his chosen Runway-34, blindfolded and with an unlit cigarette on his lips. There are bound to be more of the kind as we move on; but the first half indeed makes this movie immensely watchable.

 

Ajay Devgn, one of the most intense and powerhouse actors of Bollywood, also makes his first successful film as a director after two pathetic attempts in the past. His firm, Ajay Devgn FFilms, is also the producer of this film. With an admired and adored superstar hero at the helm of all possible affairs of this movie, particularly as the Captain in the cockpit too, we’re bound to confront more and more of the cherished values rampant in a big Bollywood production. However, despite this overpowering fact in fiction, the likes of the superstar of the millennium, Amitabh Bachchan, were strictly kept under wraps, perhaps as a surprise package for the viewers, as he appears out of nowhere and takes full charge of the second half. Before we go to him let’s take note of the ‘cherished values’ we’ve talked about.

 

Rated as one of the best pilots of the country who is admired as respected as a hero by all in the airline industry, Vikrant Khanna seems to be doing all the wrongs things, right from the beginning. In the night before his flight he goes to a party to join a friend, does all kinds of mischief and hardly sleeps during the night; he lies to his doting wife Sumaira (played by Akanksha Singh) in Cochin with their daughter’s birthday coming up the next day; he behaves rather arrogantly with his co-pilot Tanya Albuquerque (played by Rakul Preet Singh) and shows off disdainfully during the pre-flight briefing; he tries to smoke everywhere possible, but scoffs with a refrain ‘Haven’t lighted it yet, right?’ to the reminders in the no-smoking zones; during the flight, when alerted of inclement weather in Cochin, Vikrant ignores Tanya’s suggestion of diverting to Bangalore and makes the near-fatal mistake of trying to land in the mouth of the cyclone in Trivandrum. Nonetheless, Vikrant is played by none other than Ajay Devgn, and therefore, despite all the shortcomings he must emerge as a hero at the end. This brings us to the second half and to Amitabh Bachchan.  

 

In the role of a dedicated air-accident investigator Narayan Vedant, Amitabh Bachchan was expected to put in more intensity and drama into the story; but unfortunately, despite being the superstar of the millennium and a craze for character roles since 2000 he fails to uplift the movie. This has several reasons: firstly, he’s grilling Vikrant, played by none other than the superhero Ajay Devgn, and naturally Vikrant has to emerge as the ultimate hero here too, for the obvious need of having the empathy of the viewers; secondly, thanks to the first reason, the most crucial details like the advice of the co-pilot are brushed under the carpet, with the supposedly honest-dedicated investigator not caring a damn for those links; thirdly, his techniques seem to be more like a cunning lawyer in a normal courtroom, instead of being a technically-proficient air-accident professional; and the owner of Vikrant’s airliner, Nishant Suri (played by Boman Irani) is shown to be only indulging in clichés. As a result, the second half of an otherwise gripping drama falls flat and disappoints the audience sorely.

 

I don’t want to give spoilers’ alert here and so cannot disclose the intricate details involved in the final emergence of Vikrant as the ultimate hero. Unfortunately, all these have cost the movie dearly as it’s flopped at the box-office, failing to recover even half of its budget. Such ambitious, sincere and new-genre movies should never fail like this. It’s said that the movie is inspired by, naturally enough for a new Bollywood genre experiment, by several Hollywood movies on air disasters. However, if it’s inspired it should be inspired enough to not indulge in the traditional Hindish ingredients and do a real inspired job. Rakul Preet Singh and Boman Irani have done very well in the limited roles assigned to them. Amitabh Bachchan too seems to have suffered from the limitations of the role assigned. And of course, not to forget at all, Ajay Devgn delivers a powerhouse performance yet again to make the movie watchable, even if it amounts to only because of him.

Web Series Bosch: The Lovable Honest LAPD Detective!

The law enforcers, the police and other related agencies, wield immense power to utilize it for the protection and the betterment of the common people if they want to do so. But unfortunately, such powers are more often misused and so, we keep on hearing stories about police corruption from the petty level of taking bribes on any pretext to the highest level of politician-criminal-underworld nexus. This is a global phenomenon, not just limited to more prone countries like India. Such is the impact of police corruption in society that thousands of fictions in terms of thrillers written or movies or television series have been made all over the world since decades. In most commercial films in India, we see police personnel portrayed as horrendously brazen and sadistic characters. In the US and the West through the franchises of James Bond, Mission Impossible and The Bourne Identity among others we invariably confront a traitorous bad cop within the system. I cannot possibly mention various outstanding movies in this regard so as to avoid giving spoiler alerts to the readers. Therefore, whenever we hear or read reports about a good honest cop and watch movies portraying honest cops, we get elated with the conviction that good brave and honest cops do exist who have the courage to fight the system from within apart from doing their duty in the best possible interest of the victims and the larger public. Harry Bosch is one such cop of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), no matter that he’s fictional.

 

The Amazon web series ‘Bosch’ was premiered on Prime in February 2014 with a 10-episode Season-1 and in 2022 the seventh and final season was released. The Series have been rated very highly, almost 100% for some seasons, by the premiere rating agencies and critics, ‘Bosch’ has been termed as one of the best detective television series ever. I had a sneak preview when ‘Bosch: Season 7’ started streaming on Prime Video and got interested immediately, coming to know that the stories are based on the novels of Michael Connelly, a bestselling author of 31 suspense-thriller books and the creator of the character of Harry Bosch among many other memorable ones, whose books I never read. Sensing an inevitable continuity in the storyline even though every episode features at least one new case, I decided to start at the beginning, that is Season-1. And I got so immensely immersed in the smart plotting and storytelling that I made sort of a world record for myself by completing a total 68 episodes of 7 seasons in less than a fortnight.

 

If you expect a young dashing cop capable of incredible feats then you’re bound to be disappointed. Bosch is an elderly cop, having fighting experience in the Gulf War and then serving the LAPD, Hollywood Division, as a homicide detective for about twenty years; as per the series backgrounder he is 47, and the actor Titus Welliver who has brilliantly portrayed Bosch is about 60 years of age at the moment. However, he has quick reflexes, sharp intellect or insight, is a sharp shooter and is capable of intense physical action whenever required. His response to an escape by a high-security serial killer who was erroneously allowed by the District Attorney (DA) to take a police party to his crime factory; his intense mid-air fight as part of his daredevil undercover antics to investigate an addictive medicine racket; his gun-fights while tracking the killer of his mother and while trying to save the life of his daughter Maddie Bosch (played by Madison Lintz); and many other action scenes are fully at par with the likes of Sean Connery, Tom Cruise, Piece Brosnan, Matt Damon, Daniel Craig and so on.

 

Most importantly, Bosch is honest, uncompromising, brave and always ready to fight with the system or with his bosses as the situation requires. He has deep compassion for child victims, female victims and for that matter any kind of victims of brutal abuse and crimes. His traumatic background always influences his emotions. Bosch was the child of a prostitute and at a very young age his mother was brutally murdered by a young client who later became a very influential personality of Los Angeles. His relentless quest to bring his mother’s killer to justice is a running thread through most of the Seasons till he succeeds in tracking down the killer, to the utter dismay and discomfort of his police chief Irving (played by Lance Reddick) who is very ambitious, not even deterred by personal tragedies to carry on with his career progression.

 

Like the Indian honest cops or that of most other countries Harry Bosch and his partner Jerry Edgar (played by Jamie Hector) believe strongly in dishing out full justice to the criminals, often instant justice, which is not possible due to the lingering legal process. In America homicide is a very serious offense and even police officers involved in seemingly justifiable killings face trial and suspension. Every criminal is interrogated without any use of the third degree and has to be allowed to have his/her lawyer. And then the ‘deals’ which reportedly account for more than 90% of the American criminal case settlements. Even offenders of heinous crimes are allowed to make deals with the DA for a lenient sentence in exchange for more information about the crime rackets. Bosch and Jerry detest such practices, have their moments of instinctive actions and the painful mental conflicts that follow. Unlike in India where police officers escape easily enough after dubious encounter killings or extra judicial killings and custodial deaths.

 

The web Series Bosch gives us a very convincing picture too of the rivalries between the cops and top bosses within the department. The ever-present character of Lieutenant Billets (played by Amy Aquino) whose lesbian inclination threatens to impact her career progression adversely, but she always stands by Bosch for all his actions including even throwing a superior crashing through the glass wall to be on the side of the truth. At times, interferences in cases assigned to a particular cop cum his/her partner cause intense rivalries between detectives too. 

Then of course, the bad, corrupt and criminally involved cops within the department that call for most careful handling. Further, as is observed in India too, the coming of the FBI or the CIA into the scenario causes a holy mess, the cops complaining about their own investigations and leads neutralized as they’re always the first to reach the crime scenes. On the positive side the comradery within LAPD in times of crisis, personal or departmental, is heartwarming. Comic interludes are also nicely provided by the lovable veteran duo of Crate (played by Gregory Scott Cummins) and Barrel (played by Troy Evans).

 

All the characters are fully developed and believable. This is being helped by the fact that the plots and the storylines follow Connelly novels very closely with the latter being one of the producers of the Series. As an inevitable result most of the episodes are primarily dialogue based which seems to slow down the pace as regards the usual suspense-detective storytelling. However, this does not hamper the viewing experience, because the interesting dialogues bring out the detailed process of investigation—discovering more and more leads and then tracking these, finally leading to the conclusion. Of course, a bit of criticism can be valid at stages in one or two episodes when the storytelling somewhat loses its steam and personal tragedies have to happen to pace up the tension and the momentum again.

 

Titus Welliver brings out all the mannerisms of the character of Bosch in lovable glory, his expressions mostly convey what he is actually thinking about an issue or his ideas about it—the wry smiles, the smirks, the tilts of his head sideways and so on. Like many of his LAPD colleagues Bosch too has tremendous love for his city, and for the visual enhancement of the viewers his hilltop residence commands a beautiful panoramic overview of Los Angeles. We are treated to some sweet homely scenes in this house involving his ex-wife Eleanor Wish (played by Sarah Clarke) till the 4^th season and his daughter Maddie from season-2 till the end.

 

The 7^th Season is the end of the Bosch story. It has to be the end because in the last episode his confrontation with the Police Chief who is busy planning his second term becomes extremely severe with the enraged Bosch quitting his job on the spot. In the last scene Bosch is shown to apply for a license for a private detective and he smiles sardonically when the counter lady tells him that the FBI has to give the approval after proper verification. Titus Welliver would be missed sorely as the lovable Bosch. However, the good news is that a spin-off titled ‘Bosch: Legacy’ is set to stream on Amazon next month. The adaptations from the Connelly novels have been done expertly by Eric Overmyer in all the Seasons.

Movie Jalsa: Poor Storyline And Half-Baked Characters Make It An Immensely Forgettable Viewing!

Thanks perhaps to the conditional benevolence of the OTT streaming platforms some filmmakers, ostensibly under the pretense of being serious creators, get the rare opportunity to indulge in their experiments or otherwise while always managing to rope in talented actors to create a pre-release hype about their ‘darkly serious dram/thriller’ movies. They always prefer to choose female-centric themes or stories with female protagonists/antagonists, and most of them deliver their favorite ‘emancipation of women’ templates by making the ‘swear-word liberalism’ gender-neutral. They get the much-needed support too from similar or like-minded souls of the mainstream media who praise the movies to the heavens. Fortunately, the Amazon original movie ‘Jalsa’ that released on Prime Video on 18^th March, 2022, is totally free of that ‘liberalism’ while still sticking to the female-centric theme with three major roles of women protagonists/antagonists in the movie given to the immensely talented actors Vidya Balan, Shefali Shah and Rohini Hattangadi.

 

‘Jalsa’ tells the story of a popular TV anchor/journalist, Maya Menon (pivotal role played by Vidya Menon), who is established at the very outset as a fearless and ethical journalist. Although in that episode of her supposedly celebrated interview series she just reclines on the chair gazing smilingly at the restless Judge Gulati (actor-comedian Gurpal Singh totally miscast in that small role) without speaking a word.

 

Anyway, working late hours after the interview a tired Maya bumps off a girl while driving back home. And, a journalist of the fearless brand sits inside the car paralyzed with fear despite knowing clearly that it was not her fault as the girl came in front of her car out of nowhere, and horror of horrors, decide to escape from the scene leaving the bleeding teenaged girl victim on the road. Hit-and-run drivers are considered as scourges of the modern society and we always curse them in all our righteous indignation. However here in the movie, we’re forced to sit through the explorations of the guilty mind of Maya for the simple reason that the role is played by none other than Vidya Balan. Unfortunately, the viewers lose sympathy with her instantly and scoff at her eventual trembling fits, screams and a final confession at the very end.; and that’s why, we preferred to keep the options of ‘protagonist’ or ‘antagonist’ wide open earlier in this piece.

 

More agonizingly, the girl’s boyfriend (one of the deadwood performers of the movie) also decides to get paralyzed with a fear of an entirely unknown variety and leaves her bleed to death on the Mumbai Road. The movie director (Suresh Triveni) does not bother to tell us who finally finds her and admits her in a hospital. The victim is revealed to be the daughter of Maya’s maid Ruksana (played powerfully by Shefali Shah).

 

Maya, of course, decides to tell her secret to her boss or colleague or whatever the next day. As is revealed the boss or colleague or whatever possesses an even dirtier mind and goes on scheming cunningly for her or his own interests, not known so far, after the truth of the victim’s identity comes out. Obviously, the director has little knowledge about the functioning of a TV channel and therefore less about the functionaries involved in management, production, reporting, live feeds and so on. This particular channel office hardly anyone other than Maya, her boss or colleague or whatever and a fat editor are shown.

 

Of course (with the boredom of repeating), Maya acts in full responsibility taking care of Ruksana’s daughter, admitting her in a good hospital and bearing all expenses. Policemen—the about-to-retire More and the younger Pradeep come in now— and the duo, for reasons very unknown, had a drunken party out in the open inviting dead trouble from the local politicians or mafia or whatever along with a possible fatal blow to More’s unblemished career. So, they are hellbent on doing a cover-up job.  A suspense element is thus introduced.

 

And then comes the deadpan trainee-reporter Rohini who, for her very existence’s sake, tries to uncover the story tormenting the guilty-minded Maya more with her scary leads. The suspense element gets confounded when we witness Rohini laughing like a hyena while talking on phone to her outstation mother. In the meanwhile, the ‘covering-up and the uncovering’ process sets the ball of lies/bargains rolling and alive as far as the emotional Ruksana and her other deadwood accomplices are concerned.

 

The deadwood boyfriend has to be beaten up confess the full accident details to Ruksana and then the movie races for a climax that leaves you shattered and without a clue in the end. The web of blackmailing tactics involving Maya’s driver, Maya’s boss or colleague or whatever and the deadpan trainee-reporter also leave you shattered. The director and the writers actually wanted to capture everything black about Mumbai like corruption in police or in police-politician-crime nexus or in journalism or even in poverty, but found themselves with too much loads to do justice to the final delivery.

 

This writer is too foolish even to understand why the title ‘Jalsa’ (normally meaning fun gathering or musical gathering or just celebrations) is taken, and when he watches the title flashing up on the screen during the scene of the local politician’s birthday celebration out on the roads, he is rendered totally helpless. The write also doesn’t know why at all Maya decides to give her confession to the deadpan reporter during the climax.

 

Vidya Balan, the powerful actor for her memorable performances in movies like ‘Kahaani’ (2012), ‘The Dirty Picture’ (2013) and ‘Mission Mangal’ (2019-Orbiter Mission to Mars), is a pity in this role as she is unable to breathe life into it. Shefali Shah, with much more motivation to drive on, delivers a more powerful performance as the maid. It’s also refreshing to watch veteran Rohini Hattangadi as Maya’s mother after a long break. Other highlights include the absence of class or religious or caste divides in the movie.

 

Photo: neweynews.co.uk

The biggest highlight of ‘Jalsa’ belongs to the child actor, Surya Kasibhatla, who in reality is a victim of cerebral palsy and is from Texas of Indian origin, plays the role of Maya’s differently-abled 10-year-old son Ayush with an endearing and enriching naturalness cum freshness. His role is very well-defined to the credit of the director, and brings out the nuances nicely in the boy’s bond with Ruksana and her son Imaad, his daily chemistry with his grandmother and his protesting outbursts against the wrong acts of his mother. For this foolish and rude writer, the movie belongs only to the duo of Ruksana and Ayush.

Movie Kimi: A Slick Thriller Capturing The Pandemic Lockdown Times!

For the first time I have had the pleasure of watching a movie that strives to capture the pandemic or lockdown-era hassles and problems. Filmmakers the world over in a film industry that has taken the pandemic hit most painfully, wouldn’t like their heroes or heroines masked-up after trying hard to realize the movie at last. However, in this Hitchcockian a thriller titled Kimi that was released by HBO MAX on 10^th February and now streaming on Amazon Prime Video too, we find the female protagonist masked up in the most crucial scenes outside of her home in Seattle. The movie is directed, edited and photographed by Steven Soderbergh, a renowned filmmaker of Hollywood who, at 26 years of age, became the youngest director to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival for his debut film Sex, Lies and Video Tapes (1989) and the film was both a commercial success and critically acclaimed; he earned the Oscar for Best Director for Traffic(2000); and then created the immensely popular The Ocean’s Franchise starting with The Ocean’s Eleven (2001). It is also heartening trend to note that such a stalwart director should make movies for streaming platforms. Kimiis produced by New Line Cinema, Warner Bros Pictures.

 

The story of Kimiis grounded entirely on the female protagonist Angela Childs, played brilliantly by Zoe Kravitz, whose agoraphobia gets aggravated by a previous assault (not shown in the movie), the pandemic and lockdowns, her continuous work-from-home as a tech executive with only her laptop, mobile and other gadgets for company. She panics and shudders at the idea of going out of home; she works on her gadgets, particularly ordering the Kimi for every action, the smart digital assistant like that of Siri in Apple and Alexa in Amazon; she does workouts, picks her ailing teeth daily and gazes often out of the window taking in the movements of persons inside various surrounding apartments; she talks to her mother or co-workers virtually; and invites her boyfriend cum neighbor Terry (Byron Bowers) for an occasional fling. She violently resists any request from anyone asking her to visit them, let it be her dentist or colleagues. Her lonely existence goes on till something happens that forced her to come out of home.

 

The first scene of the movie shows the CEO (Bradley Hasling, played by Derek DelGaudio) of a tech corporation called Amygdala, interviewed by a TV channel for his forthcoming IPO. He explains the smart speaker device of Kimi that works on voice commands and involves human monitoring of the incoming data streams from Kimi users. The CEO says that the device is working very well among the users and that he expects millions from the initial IPO issue.

 

Angela Childs works for Amygdala and monitors all the incoming streams from users taking further measures whenever necessary to improve the experience. One day she picks up a stream where loud music is playing, but in-between she hears a women’s screams. She starts editing the stream, minimizing the music and concentrating on the voices. Getting convinced that that stream could possibly involve a violent sexual crime against the woman she talks to a co-worker and wants him to give her the full streams of that user. The co-worker gives her an admin code with which she could enter the data zone of Amygdala and get what she wanted.

 

Angela succeeds in getting all the Kimi recordings and the final video stream, and is horrified to find a murder of the user woman being committed. Shaking all over she speaks to her boss, the CEO, for necessary action. He tries to evade and refers her to a senior Amygdala executive Natalie Chowdhury (played by Rita Wilson). After Angela’s several attempts to reach her, finally Natalie calls her and convinces her to come over to her office, further assuring her that her disclosure would be done in the presence of an FBI officer. So, Angela moves out of home at last and what happens afterwards is a sequence of events leading to a shattering climax.

 

Zoe Kravitz portrays the character of Angela Childs as effectively as Soderbergh visualizes. She behaves weird and shouts often indoor; shakes all over violently in sudden panic; is extremely fastidious like taking out the pillow covers and bedsheet in the very presence of her boyfriend Terry after the act was done; and while outdoor she is masked up and covered from head to foot, walks with her head lowered, stops suddenly in corners, walks like in dazed huddle. However, the string of terrifying happenings awakens her energy and she fights for survival gallantly. Soderbergh did not make any special attempt to keep the suspense element sacrosanct, because during the very beginning of the film he reveals a vital clue for the viewers to remember.

 

The storytelling or the antics of the protagonist is entirely convincing and realistic. As is often observed by critics, suspense/mystery thrillers with a female protagonist are always convincing as to her acts or heroics while a male protagonist is always led to do the heroics of a different level, making us wonder at his superhero abilities. Steven Soderbergh, always committed to avant-garde arthouse approach despite his typically Hollywood subjects, delivers his punches everywhere in this pacey thriller, from the lingering camera work that captures his tacky character in the rather spacious apartment to the outdoor scenes where the hand-held camera just freaks out.

 

In all, Kimi is immensely watchable and enjoyable. It also satirically brings out the increasing dependence of modern humans on gadgets, devices and various digital platforms. All the keys-tapping, searching, surveillance and tracking which have been an inseparable part of almost all Hollywood films for quite a while now, are also here in this film; but with a kind of emphasis that can be safely called a warning.

Movie Gehraiyaan: An Ode To Luxury Yachts And Alibaug!

The Amazon original Hindi movie Gheraiyaan (Depths) that premiered on Prime Video on 11^thFebruary 2022, is set to give tough competition to quite a number of Hollywood movies in terms of the use of swear words, live-in relationships, passionate love scenes, endless rounds of drinks, brats independent of their families and so on; if not for the promotion of luxury yachts and the tourist spot of Alibaug with its beaches and bungalows near Mumbai. The movie features one of the top heroines of Bollywood Deepika Padukone in the lead role of the protagonist (Ayesha), not exactly that perhaps in hindsight, and other accomplished actors like Siddhant Chaturvedi (Zain), Ananya Panday (Tia), Dhairya Karwa (Karan), Naseeruddin Shah and Rajat Kapoor. It is cowritten and directed by Shakun Batra. The movie is produced jointly by Bollywood tycoon Karan Johar’s Dharma productions, Viacom18 studios and Jouska Films. The shooting schedule and release of the movie had been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Gehraiyaan basically involves four upwardly mobile families of Ayesha, Tia, Karan and Zain with relationship tangles, interconnections and cross connections. Ayesha and Tia have been inseparable childhood friends, and had to part as Tia’s family moved to the US while Ayesha lived in Mumbai and Nasik with the childhood trauma of her mother’s suicide and an estranged relationship with her father (Naseeruddin Shah). Both of them have their respective live-in partners, Karan for Ayesha and Zain for Tia.

 

As grown-up Ayesha, the yoga instructor, and Karan, the writer, struggle for their ambitious careers quarreling a lot in the process, there appears on the scene a grown-up-too Tia who wants to reunite with her childhood friend and brings along her live-in partner Zain who is also struggling to fulfill his dream project with the active association with Tia’s family. The movie opens promisingly in a flashback of Ayesha’s past and then the reunion of the friends. But then, the movie breaks loose and the unfolding saga of the conflicting, interconnecting and cross connecting relationships finally lands up far away from exploring the ‘depths’ of human relationships or evil. I sat through the rather longish movie just due to the mention of ‘suspense’ as one of its genres, and I had to undergo a suspenseful wait for the ‘suspense’ to unfold. And when it does unfold it just adds more ridicule to the supposedly abstract theme of the film.

 

The obsession of the four leads along with three of their families to go to Alibaug again and again to just freak out hits you hard, making it rather inexplicable. Of course, the fact that Zain, the stressed-out character with a dream project, does own a luxury yacht to impress upon his prospective lenders, still cannot explain the obsession. Most of the duration of the film is devoted to cocktails and binge parties on-board and in the bungalow in Alibaug with the spicy add-ons of betrayal, love triangles and the lustily repetitive love scenes—the last being showcased very boldly thanks to the streaming platform code. As the stress levels of the characters rise, the use of swear words becomes an increasing function of that.

 

Humor or any sense of it is entirely missing either in the dialogues or in storytelling. The only point that made me laugh out loud is the dialogue of Karan’s father who expresses in exasperation, ‘Ye kya  f***, f***  karta rahta hain!’ (Why he keeps on uttering f***, f***!)! If the director wanted to score some points in women’s liberation front by allowing the female leads to have as exactly equal rights of having live-in relationships, casual choice for partners, use of swear words and so on as that of the males, his experimentations falls flat when he tries to explain the suicide of Ayesha’s mother which turns out to be as regressive as most of commercial Bollywood movies.

 

Deepika Padukone, the huge favorite with Indian moviegoers, uses the most of the lusty ingredients, perhaps to her detriment, because the producers might not try for a theatrical release in India just for this reason and of course, for the strict ‘family entertainment’ regulations of Bollywood, even after obtaining a certificate from the censors. If the director wants us to believe this is indeed the changing face of modern India he is dreadfully wrong. While women literacy and freedom from a patriarchal society remain the most urgent priority his prescription is not on the right direction.

 

On the positive side, performances of Deepika, Ananya and Siddhant are excellent as per the requirements of the script: cinematography is state-of-the-art; and the narration still has a good flow despite the flaws. The ‘suspense’ angle had better be left untold here for the benefits of the OTT viewers who’d like to watch for all reasons, right or wrong. The last shot of the movie showing an elderly lady exclaiming ‘Ayesha’ in front of Ayesha leaves me smelling a rat. Are they planning a sequel? Sordid details, kept safe and sound in the plot so far, cannot possibly make a sequel, it can only succeed in making the viewers squeal! 

Hollywood Vs Bollywood: Two Movies In Unabashed Glorification Of The Antihero!

It just happened that I watched two movies from Hollywood and Bollywood respectively, back-to-back, and was amazed to find both movies singing paeans in praise of the antiheros, depicting their deeds in an unabashedly graphic way and even justifying it by highlighting a few ‘humanitarian’ qualities in their characters. Both movies are nearly 3-hour long, and yet not having a dull moment; both are marked by their relative reliance on machismo, black comedy and violence. The first movie, ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ (2013) directed by renowned new-era Hollywood filmmaker Martin Scorsese, I happened to watch by chance as it was available on Amazon Prime Video and also due to the fact that I greatly enjoyed the director’s two films, ‘The Departed’ (2006) and ‘Shutter Island’ (2010) recently, those two movies being part of Scorsese’s successful collaboration with the ‘Titanic’ (1997) sensation Leonardo DiCaprio which yielded four critically acclaimed and commercially successful movies so far. ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ is also critically acclaimed with some reservations though and is the director’s highest grossing movie ever. The movie also has earned a unique distinction of creating a Guinness Book World Record for the maximum use of swear words.

 

Immediately after that ‘watch’ the details of which I’ll come to later I watched the new Hollywood (well, not exactly Hollywood as the original Telegu movie from Andhra Pradesh was also released in the Hindi dubbed version along with in other Southern languages) movie ‘Pushpa: The Rise’ that released in theaters on 17^th December 2021 and its digital rights are bought by Amazon Prime Video. Made with a huge budget of between Rs. 2 to 2.5 billion the antihero movie, replete with all the masala ingredients of a Hindi formula film, has already grossed nearly Rs. 3.5 billion across the globe. The movie is directed by Sukumar B who is a director-producer-writer of the Telegu film industry and his first film ‘Arya’ (2004) was a huge commercial success that made him a star filmmaker in Andhra Pradesh.

 

‘Pushpa:  The Rise’ is focused on the smuggling of a rare variety of wood, red sanders, that is found only in the Seshachalam Hills in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh, by a syndicate headed by a politician commanding an assortment of mafia lords spread over Southern India. The protagonist Pushpa Raj, the antihero, is played by the Telegu superstar Allu Arjun who carries the movie forward effortlessly and successfully in more or less as a one-man show. An ambitious daily laborer Pushpa, with his birth shrouded in illegitimacy, in his immaculate showmanship masculinity and a creative genius opts for the high-paying and high-risk smuggling of red sanders job, and starts to rise in stature and power. He finds an equally ambitious Bihari laborer Kesava (played by Jagadeesh Prathap Bandari) who is Pushpa’s devout admirer and the duo sticks on till the end of the movie with really enjoyable comic interludes.

 

In the process of his ‘rise’ Pushpa wins over a prominent mafia lord displaying his ‘genius’ in evolving unique cost-effective ‘smuggling of the wood’ methods which involve passing the police network sans bribing them too much and then on to the international destinations like Japan and China. His eternal quest for a higher price for the precious wood as the ultimate objective Pushpa comes into conflict with other mafia lords leading to inter-gang rivalries. This opens up a saga of bloody violence, murders, rampant corruption in the cops and moral decadence which finally culminates with the syndicate head declaring Pushpa Raj as the chief of all smuggling operations. With a sequel of the movie already slated for release by end of 2022 the story ends with Pushpa’s marriage and an unusual climax with the new police chief Bhanwar Singh Shekhawat (played by Fahadh Faasil, appearing only toward the end) which had better stay unrevealed.

 

And what are Pushpa’s ‘humane’ qualities? Well, his compassion for his the downtrodden; his devoted love for the dignity and position of his mother; and his chivalrous love and admiration for the part-time heroine Srivalli (played by Rashmika Mandanna) whom he rescues from the clutch of a sick womanizing son of a mafia lord. The entire storytelling is predictable and a run-of-the-mill approach all the way; but as we said earlier the film is a thorough entertainer with hardly a dull moment.

 

‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ tells the biographical story of a real-life personality, Jordan Belfort (played over the top by Leonardo DiCaprio), in a crime black comedy genre that Scorsese comes back to after the pure crime-gangster genre that yielded several significant films in collaboration with actor Robert De Niro since the early eighties. Jordan Belfort too is a very ambitious antihero who believes in making the quick bucks irrespective of any scruples involved in the process. His starts his career as a stockbroker in a New York in firm where he finds his Guru who preaches using the drug-sex syndrome combined with the ‘pump and dump’ policy for success in stockbroking, and fully imbibes the glorious principles of success. After several stints he finds a devout admirer-friend-neighbor of his, Donnie Azoff (played by famed comedian Jonah Hill, representing a real-life person named Danny Porush), and the duo creates their own brokerage firm ‘Stratton Oakmont’ bringing in several like-minded trainee brokers.

 

Inspired by the ‘pump and dump’ policy the firm initiates a saga of cheating thousands of potential investors of their millions, creating their own millions distributed in various international bank accounts, inducing or forcing relatives/acquaintances into helping them keep the money safe in the Swish accounts, orchestrating the drug-sex fueled maniacal motivational speeches by Jordan to keep his Heads and employees ever focused on the phone, and unleashing an endless graphic depiction of rampant drug abuse, foulest of words, machismo, objectifying women, unsparing nudity and explicit sexual orgies.

 

Without being an official part of the New York stock exchange, the saga of frauds goes on unabated with the narrative never preferring to take a look back at those cheated mercilessly and the sins of the protagonist who from the beginning boasts of his immense wealth and properties including prominently, his luxurious yachts. Although the movie tries to show the antihero’s supposed downfall with the investigating FBI and a court case indicting his frauds, the antihero manages a ‘deal’ that results in his imprisonment for effectively only 22 months, and the film ends with the glorious return of Jordan Belfort as a motivational speaker; what exactly he is ‘motivating’ the young people for is, however, not made clear.

 

Of course, the real-life Belfort went on making money by his role of a celebrated motivator after the imprisonment, earning millions by writing a book of memoir and then more millions by selling the book’s film rights. What then are the ‘humane’ values of Belfort apart from being a sex and drug addict? Well, he is compassionate to fellow human beings coming to him for help; he loves his wives at various points of their togetherness; he really expresses his gratitude to his friends; he has a strong sense of humor; and he is an exceptional orator.

 

Antihero movies are not at all in short supply either in Hollywood or Bollywood and most of these are commercial hits. Why the triumph of the evil and the ‘humanity’ of the villains never fail to appeal to the viewers or readers? Perhaps, because they find the antiheros capable of doing things that they dare not or never want to do even if they enjoy fantasizing about that. While in Hollywood the morally decadent antihero movies are unabashedly non-conformist to conservative values the Bollywood antihero movies do try very hard to give a Robin Hood image to them or to justify their emergence due to tragic unjust circumstantial backgrounds. The ever-potent appeal of the antiheros could very well be the reason for the craze of the young people for negative publicity, particularly in India. 

Movie The Devil Made Me Do It: The Conjuring-3 Has All The Scares, But A Weaker Storyline!

 

The third installment of the much-celebrated ‘The Conjuring series’ and the eighth film of the Conjuring Universe Horror Franchise—The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It—was made ready for release in September 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic delayed it till June 2021 when it was released in the US and on HBO Max simultaneously. Unfortunately, it could not be released in the Indian theatres again thanks to the pandemic. Since the HBO Max show-term was very short the Indian fans of the franchise have been wondering where to watch the movie, the way they were thrilled and intrigued by the haunted-house stories of The Conjuring (2013) and The Conjuring-2 (2016) with the adored real-life pair of paranormal investigators Ed Warren and Lorraine Warren, played brilliantly by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga in all of the flicks of the trilogy and in one of the Conjuring Universe franchise movies. Finally. Amazon Prime Video started streaming this movie from the 15^th of December 2021, and the horror ‘fun’ has come roaring back.

  

As usual, the story of this film too is based on a real-life court case in 1981 where the murder accused, Arne Johnson, pleaded not guilty under the guise that The Devil Made Him Do It as he claimed was demonically possessed while committing the act, for the first time in the US court case history. Ed and Lorraine Warren testified for Arne as they were convinced about the demonic possession and gave all their evidence in terms of captured camera images and videos. However, since such a premise could never have a legal basis, the accused was convicted and sentenced to 15-20 years of imprisonment; but he got out of jail in five years due to his exemplary behavior and that he married his girlfriend while still in jail. Dry court proceedings can never be an apt subject for a suspense-horror flick and therefore, a thrilling storyline and a script was built around the case.

 

The film opens with the scariest scene of the movie and perhaps one of the scariest scenes ever in horror cinema history. The scene depicts the exorcism of a little boy, maybe around 10 years of age, named David with the presence of the stricken family, Ed and Lorraine and the exorcist. The chaotically horrifying developments that follow had better be watched than explained, with the results that Ed gets hurt and has a heart attack while the character of Arne Johnson (played by Ruairi O’Connor), boyfriend of David’s elder sister Debbie Glatzel (played by Sarah Catherine), looked into the eyes of the violent David and invited the demon to leave David and possess him, which, incredibly enough, happened. To my experience of horror films this is a new twist as it raises some questions: it seems to be too easy that may lighten the job of the exorcists and that a demon or a ghost possesses someone with a definite purpose and so, why should it leave its prized victim! Anyway, this was necessary as a prologue for the reel-life Arne Johnson to go on to murder someone and face trial.

 

As compared to the earlier absolutely absorbing and tension-filled two films of the trilogy the third one lacks a flow of storytelling hampered by flashbacks, jerk-cuts and scenes left half-treated, jumping to other scenes and then coming back to the former. This can be interpreted as a treatment style of the director, but it does not help storytelling keeping in mind the viewers’ continued involvement. For example, Ed Warren who suffered a heart attack probably rested for about a month (not clearly indicated) during which the demon in Arne preferred to do nothing atrocious. However, the moment Ed recovers with a telepathic dream he communicates to Lorraine to warn the police about an impending tragedy in the house of Arne’s employer and landlord. And inevitably, Arne in a sudden burst of possessive fit murders the landlord and is arrested by the police.

 

Now comes the real turning point of the story: Lorraine, with her super intuitive and psychic powers visualizes a grim connection of the Arne’s act with the murder and suicide of two young girls in the recent days. The police were yet to find the body of second girl who supposedly killed her friend in a fit of the same kind of demonic possession and then committed suicide. So, for the first time in the history of the trilogy the police join the investigations with the paranormal help of Ed and Lorraine, ultimately finding the submerged body of the second girl as Lorraine leads them through a dramatically crafted and a light-n-shadow scene, eminently worth watching.

 

With the ‘connection’ confirmed, Lorraine and Ed revisit the house of David and Lorraine discovers a witch’s totem in the underground chambers of the house, filled with rats. The angle of occultist practices come in here, again for the first time, and Lorraine, convinced that the connection works both ways and it is in the process of completing a curse implying more murders, starts the hunt for the source of the evil—if it was an evil spirit or a devilish human being with supernatural powers should be avoided here, lest it becomes a spoiler. While the first half of the film is very engaging and tension-filled the second half becomes rather predictable. The climax, unfortunately, fails to shock-thrill the viewers.

 

But the film is immensely worth watching thanks to the intense performances, as usual, of the couple—Wilson and Farmiga—and also the jump-scares that come when not expected and do not come when expected, keeping the viewers guessing, particularly a scarily delightful scene of David jumping on a bubbling mattress as if filled with water and then something unexpected happening to him. The sequel, different from the other two as mentioned above, reminds us of the brilliant South Korean horror-mystery-suspense flick ‘The Wailing’  of which we wrote about recently.

 

‘The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It’ is not directed by James Wan who created the Conjuring Universe horror franchise with his Atomic Monster Productions and New Line Cinema of Warner Bros Entertainment thus completing the 20-year efforts led by Tony DeRosa-Grund and his team to make a series of films on the supernatural case files of Ed and Lorraine Warren, and directing the first movie of the franchise ‘The Conjuring’ in 2013. Huge commercial success of the first venture led to productions of supernatural horror sequels and prequels one after the other: Annabelle in 2014, The Conjuring-2 in 2016, Annabelle Creation in 2017, The Nun in 2018, The Curse of La Llorona in 2019, Annabelle Comes Home in 2019 and The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It in 2021 which is directed by Michael Chaves who made his directorial debut with a franchise film, ‘The Curse of La Llorona’. The Conjuring Universe has become the second highest-grossing horror franchise in Hollywood history and one of the most critically acclaimed. Almost all of the eight films have been huge commercial hits the world over with positive to mixed reviews. The franchise is at the moment working on two more horror films—the first being titled ‘The Crooked Man’ and the second film’s title, reported to be a sequel to ‘The Nun’, is to be announced.