Not a Review - Mad Max Fury Road

A desolate man stands with a heavy bag atop a sand dune, looking at the vastness of the desert sprawled in front of him. The sky is swathed with the heat of a thousand suns. He’s thirsty, his canteen is almost empty. ‘My name is George Miller’, the man’s husky voice reverberates, ‘I trawl this desert named Hollywood’.

Strewn across the desert are rectangular black boxes with pictures of movies on one face. Vacant posters float across the dunes, taking them wherever the wind turns. The sand on the dunes shifts slowly as Miller walks across them. Images from his past flash in his head from time to time, showing him a bygone era and a traumatic event that changed his life forever. An image of a dancing penguin suddenly flashes and he screams. He holds his head to remain calm, rubbing his sand soaked hair to restrain himself. It doesn’t help much because Babe, the talking pig then appears in front of him, and he falls on his knees to the ground and screams again.

‘Too much damage has been done’, Miller says, ‘there’s no going back. It’s the end of the road for me’. He’s old, no longer fit, lacking inspiration and mostly dispirited by the products in his industry. The lure of easy money had corrupted him when he made Happy feet 2. He had not once but twice made great sequels in the past, when dancing penguins were not in the league of Babe: Pig in the City and Mad Max The Road Warrior. He loathes himself, and ever since the box office of Happy Feet 2 he’s been wandering the desert, scavenging for minerals just to survive. When you spend your whole life fighting a system, winning gloriously, and then falling right into the system’s trapdoor, self-respect goes for a toss. You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.

Miller walks aimlessly in the burning heat, sweating and wheezing. He stops to take a swig from his canteen, when the wind blows it away. ‘This is the moment to give up’, he thinks, ‘my life is over. I shall die remembered as the director of Happy feet 2’.

The wind suddenly blows a photograph smack on his face. He peels it off, and sees a picture of Mel Gibson in a black car. The sound of a rumbling engine kicks inside his chest. There’s a tiny spark. It all comes back to him. He throws away his bag and runs. He’s faster than the wind, as he scales a dozen dunes. He stops suddenly, and gazes upon the machine in front of him - a black car standing majestically amid the sand. ‘This is it’, Miller whispers, ‘if a sequel almost killed me, a sequel will make me reborn’.

He gets inside the car, slams the door shut, hits the ignition and slams on the gas. As the car careens through the sand Miller is formulating in his mind the greatest action movie ever made in the history of cinema. ‘It’s got to strike a balance between fans of the original movie and newcomers’, he realizes. Out in the distance a cloud of sand can be seen. Miller looks through the binoculars to see the cloud is formed by a bunch of renegade degenerates on bikes making their way towards him, with a clear intent to kill him. ‘Studio execs’, he mutters, ‘they’re ruthless’.

He jams the accelerator, and the element of surprise is too much for the execs – they just stare wall-eyed at the incoming Miller’s car that smashes through all of them, sending little pieces in the scorching air.

There isn’t much time to celebrate because a horde of gangly degenerates on All Terrain Vehicles suddenly show up on the left and open fire. ‘Goddamn Expectations, I’m gonna gut you like a fish’, Miller mumbles, 'witness me'. He presses a button and a machine gun unfurls from the side of the car and opens fire. Bullets hit the ATVs, sending the Expectations flying in the air, smashing into the rocks.

The noise of the chaos is heard by the dreaded clan of the Franchisers, who swarm into their gigantic trucks with twisted designs and begin chasing Miller’s car from behind. Miller looks in his reverberating rearview mirror and smiles. He drives straight into a desert storm, challenging the Franchisers to follow him. They take the bait, and some of their vehicles are swept away by the storm, while the others ate struck by lightening.

‘Oh what a day... What a lovely day!’, Miller screams, as he shifts gears, blazes through the storm in the direction of the city metropolis. His modern masterpiece is ready to be unleashed upon the world. He’s going to call it ‘Fury Road’.

(First published in Firstpost)

Movie Review: Bombay Velvet

Few films have the ability to get your attention right from the opening shot. In Bombay Velvet Anurag Kashyap, jumping from ‘sort of mid budget indie’ to full on mainstream mode does this exceptionally well. As the opening credits roll a nostalgic surprise from the 90’s greets you to the backdrop of Amit Trivedi’s Jazz, and the world of Bombay Velvet becomes yours before you can blink. The atmosphere is intoxicating, the sets, costumes and scope are far beyond anything done in Bollywood.

The film is supposed to borrow from Gyan Prakash’s historical book, Bombay Velvet is no historical sermon, it’s a love story, pure and simple. There’s Ranbir Kapoor as Johnny Balraj, a boxer turned mobster. It’s a showy role. He looks great in a boxing vest. He looks great in a suit. He looks extremely cool as he chats up Rosie, the girl of his dreams, played by an equally attractive Anushka Sharma. She croons velvet on stage, he woos her with his eyes and smile. Paisa vasool date movie stuff, hyper romanticized at the moment Anushka beautifully lip syncs to ‘Dhadaam Dhadaam’. And they’re a great couple – deeply in love even when the girl smashes furniture on the guy. It’s been a while since we saw an on screen romantic couple to root for in a Hindi film, Ranbir and Anushka’s chemistry is a breath of fresh air.

Then there’s Karan Johar as the villainous newspaper baron Khambatta, pulling off an unlikely, uncontrollable snigger when you least expect it, and Satyadeep Mishra as Balraj’s pal, chewing scenery with just his stare. They’re all only matched by the incredible production design that recreates 50’s Bombay with such detail it’s impossible to differentiate real sets from CGI. Truly gorgeous and entertaining stuff, and the first half glides along to perfection, with Trivedi’s background music always on to stitch scenes together.

In the second half of Bombay Velvet there’s a sequence featuring a massively long buildup with sexy lighting and music, that develops into a dazzling slow motion shot of a vengeful man firing dual tommy guns in slow motion. The walls are peppered with holes, the furniture explodes into pieces, it’s so powerful it seems like he’s spraying the whole world with spitfire, extinguishing whole countries in the process. He ends up killing two, inconsequential and faceless people and you’re left wondering what the buildup was for.

This scene accurately reflects the essence of the second half of Bombay Velvet, and the effect it has on the audience. Post interval the story wilts out and Kashyap dedicates himself to making everything look cool, and that is the problem - the film looks like a million bucks but has no depth. It feels like a beautifully crafted, well-timed shot only to be caught at the boundary.

While the first half is a homage to 70’s films, the second becomes a 70’s film, complete with clichéd blackmail negative rolls, double rolls, madh island gold biskut maal, damsels in distress. Kashyap is known to take cinema clichés and subvert them, but here he goes head first into the clichés with great seriousness. Despite the magic of Thelma Schoonmaker (and there’s a lot of it), the film’s story elements are mostly incoherent. There is a 50’s Bombay real estate scam plot point which is pretty much indecipherable. It’s tough to figure out what Khambatta actually is about, and what his deals with the real estate barons are, and what exactly is at stake. There is a rival newspaper too, the intentions of the editor of which (Manish Choudhary) are unclear. There is some history about the World Trade Center force fed to us during the end credits which makes even less sense.

Rather than being its own beast this is more a throwback to older, better gangster films by Scorsese, the Coens and Curtis Hanson. There’s a Goodfellas car trunk nudge, and a Miller’s Crossing hat wink, and neither of them add anything to the plot except for fan service and a strain for greatness that remains out of reach. There’s a noticeable lack of humor in the film, but the film’s elements are not dark enough to warrant such seriousness. All the elements are mainstream ‘filmi’ things, and it’s hard to imagine why there is only one joke in the whole movie.   

Needing some sort of punch in the second half, Kashyap makes a late grab for thrills and renders the aforementioned tommy gun scene, but it speaks more of the desperation to compensate for a weak story than it does about delivering a great cinematic moment.

Make of it what you will, ultimately what Bombay Velvet lacks in complexity it makes up for in sheer beauty. It’s a cinematic achievement for sure, but it doesn’t always succeed in camouflaging its narrative limitations with its imagery. Clearly, the curse of the second half gets to even the best.

(First published in Firstpost)

Movie Review: Piku

Having already watched and being disappointed by Finding Fanny last year, the thought of seeing another modestly budgeted Deepika Padukone quirky road trip comedy didn’t inspire much confidence. It’s rare for expectations to be smashed to smithereens and even rarer for a Bollywood film to do this with so much confidence. Shoojit Sircar’s Piku has arrived smack in the twilight of the blue moon. This film features the best ending to a Bollywood movie in a long time, and the stuff that happens prior to it is also quite lovely.

So here we have Piku Banerjee (Deepika Padukone), a Bong architect who live in Delhi her dad Bhashkor (Big B). Pappy is a raging hypochondriac, and perpetually constipated, and also, naturally, highly irritable. Everything in his life, and also somehow everything in the life of people around him depends upon his ungodly bowel movement. It doesn’t take much for his antics to drive people insane. So it becomes a task when Bhaskor plans to travel from Delhi to his native Kolkata, and naturally Pappy declares traveling by flight could be problematic for his bowel. The solution? Piku has to accompany Pappy on a cross-country road trip, along with Rana, a cab company owner turned driver (Irrfan), Pappy’s Pot and Potty assistant, and even the Pot seat.   

It’s incredibly easy to dig this movie at the onset, not just because of fun performances from Padukone, Bachchan and Irrfan, but because it’s so darn easy to relate to it. There is a Bhashkor in every family – the stubborn, grumpy old man with the temper of a child and a heart of gold is omnipresent. And Big B portrays the character to perfection - he’s a well-meaning chap, just a bit forward in his manner and cranky owing to his illness. His utter lack of empathy for those on the wrong end of his forwardness is hilarious, as is his unreserved innocence regarding his prickly nature. You can’t stand the guy’s eccentricities but you can’t help love him.

There’s a lot going on in Piku, and writer Juhi Chaturvedi’s strong script coupled with Sircar’s solid direction somehow makes it all cohesive. The film explores some rather interesting themes – what does one do when the parent becomes difficult to handle and is totally dependent on you? How does one react when the parent is clearly upset about no longer being able to be independent, and becomes passive aggressive to assuage his frustration? Where does one draw a line between the parent being merely difficult and being a life stopping burden? How much can you sacrifice to make a relatively thankless invalid parent happy? Is it noble to consider moving out of the house and giving your invalid parent in the care of someone else so that you can focus on your career and social life? What can the parent do if he thinks he’s being a burden to his children? Piku doesn’t have the answer to all these questions, but it is bold enough to take you through them and make you ponder.

The film also makes the best case for women empowerment since Queen. In the film Piku is single, but has a casual sex life, and this fact is established very subtly, and not in a pointedly manner. This is not a ‘character trait’, but it just happens to be another normal thing that this normal girl does. And to top it all, even her father is liberal enough to not make a fuss over that. He has the occasional well-meaning concern, but he’s not the regressive honor killer that is so prevalent in both in and outside our cinema. When was the last time you saw a Bollywood film where the father suggests to his daughter that getting married soon is only for those with low IQ? Last I checked, Sonakshi Sinha wanted to be ‘blessed for marriage’ by seeing Ajay Devgn’s schlong. In this film, the Bechdel Test is effortlessly kicked in the nuts in a terrific ‘will they won’t they’ scene between Piku and Rana that warrants a huge applause for both Chaturvedi and Sircar.

Most importantly, the film glides over all of these heavy-duty themes with breezy lightness and consistent, well-timed comedy. This is a road trip movie after all, and it’s got hysterical rapid-fire montage of cuts of the back and forth between the trio of Piku, Bhaskkor and Rana. The teeny bit of melodrama is handled beautifully by shuffling laughs and tears together like a pack of cards, making Piku one of the more emotionally honest films to have come from the industry.

(First published in Firstpost)  

Movie Review: Gabbar is Back

I was always curious to know why the new Akshay Kumar movie was called Gabbar is Back. This isn’t a sequel to any movie called Gabbar, so why does its title indicate otherwise? My existential query was answered during the opening credits of the movie, where we pretty much see the whole film through GIF images. To the backdrop of blaring music, we see that Akshay Kumar is a vigilante named Gabbar, he fights corruption, and finally kicks the villain in the nuts. And then the actual film begins – voila – Gabbar is back!

Hold on to your seat belts because this is going to blow you away - Gabbar is Back is a Hindi remake of, a Tamil version of, an Akshay Kumar flavored version of, a Gabtun Vijaykanth flavored version of, V for Vendetta. That’s right, Akshay Kumar’s character Gabbar is the man in the Guy Fawkes mask, out to avenge his dead family and lead the young men of India to also wear masks and revolt against corruption.

The film is directed by someone named Krish, who, presumably also wants to remain anonymous, either as a meta homage to the anonymous Gabbar character in the film, or evade the blame for this laughably bad movie. The thing is, this was originally a Gabtun Vijaykanth movie, and anyone who’s seen his amazing work in cinema will know taking the content too seriously will only invite ridicule. Ramanaa, the film on which Gabbar is Back is based on, was the same film that contained the worldwide sensation of a scene where Gabtun types a document in Windows Media Player. The same guy has also performed a heart surgery with the aid of a mobile phone.

It would have been perfect had this movie featured Akshay Kumar pulling a Gabtun and going the whole hog with ridiculous VLC Player typing and smartphone surgeries. For some reason the filmmakers decided to root his character in reality, and attempted to address some ‘serious’ issues and actually ‘inspire’ the youth with eyeball shattering manipulation. The ‘corrupt officials’ are caricaturist as hell, as are the ‘long suffering common man’ characters. You literally get characters expanding their chests, looking at the camera and declaring something either villainous or jingoist. You get wailing vidhwas, mustache twirling goons, doctors sniggering and frothing at the mouth while charging money for treating dead bodies, pot bellied police officers constantly eating, and a police van driver who somehow takes medical leave, goes undercover and unearths the identity of Gabbar when the whole Mumbai police couldn’t.

You also get a main villain named Patil, who constantly declares that ‘he is a brand’, accompanied by shots of the brand in question. You also get Gabbar grabbing Patil by the collar and shouting ‘GABBAR IS A BIGGER BRAND THAN YOU’. It feels like watching Gunda without the amazing characters and lines.

There is, of course, an attempt at amazing lines, as Akshay drones in his trademark passive voice ‘Tum corrupt officials ko rishwat aur naariyal dono ek cheez ho gaye hai, roz chadhana padta hai’. There is also a cringe-inducing cameo from a big star, including a song featuring the star and Akki breaking the fourth wall, in a totally white setup, as if in a soap ad.

V for Vendetta is not just ripped off visually but also aurally, thanks to Sandeep Chowta who simply recycles the background score and makes it loud enough to turn the Guy Fawkes mask’s smile into a sad emoticon. The only ray of light in this rumbling assault of stupidity is that the film is only two hours and ten minutes long, short enough to return home and assuage your grief by browsing Vijaykanth’s resplendent clips on YouTube.

(First published in Firstpost)

Review: Avengers: Age of Ultron

A lot of things changed when the original Avengers hit theaters in 2012. Marvel’s ambitious plan of slowly building a ‘cinematic universe’ actually worked. Clubbed together, the mediocre Iron Man 2 and the Captain America and Thor films actually gave way to one of the most astonishing team ups in cinema history. The result made so much money every single major movie studio is now desperately trying to replicate the formula.

After the post Avengers films and the Guardians of the Galaxy world the Marvel universe is now so big it feels like an unstoppable expanding force. In fact it’s so big that the sequel to The Avengers, titled Age of Ultron has become a small, middling entry untoward a bigger goal. That is the undoing of this film, an extremely entertaining summer blockbuster of the year that still feels like a step back from the first movie.

If you’ve seen the first film or any of the trailers of this movie, you know the plot – Iron Man creates a highly intelligent Artificial Intelligence that somehow goes rogue and threatens to destroy the human race. The AI is called Ultron, and he’s voiced by James Spader in his trademark sardonic grunt. And that is the end of the plot. The remainder of the story only involves the Avengers teaming up, breaking up, and teaming again to thwart the villain. Flimsy and predictable? You bet.

The thing with Age of Ultron, apart from the flimsy plot, is that it drops the ball from the very first scene, by assembling all of the Avengers for a sequence that is as action packed as the finale of the original movie. The scale is set to such a rousing high in the first ten minutes, director Whedon has no choice but to attempt incorporating more special effects on bigger and grander scales. The only way to do this, is by making even more buildings crumble, causing more destruction, more pain to the heroes, and rendering all this with a darker palette. As people witnessed in Man of Steel, exploding buildings don’t necessarily add dramatic heft or much wow factor, you become desensitized to it after the fiftieth explosion.

Regardless of the Man of Steel Syndrome, the ensuing mayhem in Ultron is no doubt entertaining. There’s not a penny spared in creating some of the biggest action set pieces ever in cinema, and Whedon certainly deserves the praise for that. The money shot in the film is the one featuring Iron Man and The Hulk battling each other – every second of that sequence is snazzy enough to make a fan pass out due to excitement. By now the Avengers have learned how to fight as a team, and some of the stuntwork is like a tag team ballet dance of nut kicking, and it’s beautiful. What’s missing however, are those sweeping, crescendo like moments where an action scene culminates into something jaw dropping, like Banner saying he’s always angry, turning into the Hulk, punching an alien and leading up to the Avengers assemble in the first movie. Here it’s ‘smash boom bang wham bam thank you man I’m off to the next action scene hey look out behind you!’.

Age of Ultron, unfortunately, is a portal to the Infinity Wars movies, and thus has the task of introducing new characters into the universe. So apart from Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Black Widow and The Hulk, we get to meet half a dozen new superheroes, plus a few old friends and that’s where the film begins tearing apart at the seams. Juggling so many characters is where Whedon crumbles under the weight of his own ambition, and each character plays out as a factory-like contractual obligation of X amount of establishing dialogue and Y amount of stunt work. Characters enter the scenes, add something unsurprising to the film, and exit awkwardly, disappearing amidst the explosive chaos. It becomes frustrating after a point of time. The gap between the lack of characterization and the giant action is padded up by a painfully cheesy romantic track between two of the Avengers, and it ends up being an eyeroll. Whedon has publicly ridiculed stereotypical cinema women who keep falling for the hero for no reason, and that’s exactly what happens in this movie.

Some of the plot points are incoherent. There’s a sequence where Thor meets professor Selvig and goes to a lake and screams, for no clear reason. There’s a new all powerful gem stone in this film, but its power is hardly enough to beat Ultron, which is never explained why. The villain in question, Ultron is like every other Marvel universe supervillain – inconsequential. We’re shown that there is a great deal of simmering thought process in Ultron, yet we’re never told what his plans are and why he’s doing things. We’ve seen the story of AI gone wrong countless times, so one expects a fresh spin on the genre trope, but we don’t get any. Ultron is as generic as they come.

The lack of Ultron’s motivation is made up by an addition of Hawkeye’s story, compounded by some hilarious self aware takedowns. We know a guy with a bow and an arrow is no match for nuclear powered aliens dropping down from the sky, and Whedon finally does some fan service to that notion. While the Quicksilver in this movie isn’t as impressive as the one in Days of the Future Past, Scarlett Witch (played by Elizabeth Olsen) is an interesting character that, along with Vision (Paul Bettany) would be the major draws of the upcoming films.

The one thing that never disappoints about a Marvel film is the comedy. The salty humor is present in full form here, from Stark’s throwaway lines to Hulk’s screaming and pounding, it delivers wonderfully. The comedy makes it easy to just ignore the film’s gaffes, sit back, unload the tub of popcorn in your mouth and let the mayhem on the screen awash your eyes. The Avengers Infinity War movies are years away, but there’s a ton of gap fillers on the way. It’s up to Marvel to now deliver something unexpected, seeing as we already know the path. Perhaps the looming threat of Batman vs Superman will ensure socks being pulled up in the Marvel camp.

(First published in Firstpost)

Thoughts on Margarita with a Straw

It’s never been an easy path for films surrounding issues of disability. They either veer towards misguided sentimentality or turn out to be downright manipulative fluff. Some of the even worse films defeat the purpose of showcasing the plight of differently abled people by insulting them instead of doing the opposite. Disability has seldom been properly understood by filmmakers, and their lack of insight into the subject often comes across in their films. So even though their intentions are noble, the final product often turns out to be a heavy-handed attempt to address a serious issue without the skill to do so.

Most times, it’s a case of a ham-fisted endeavor to extract sympathy from audiences. There’s either a blaring song to wrench your guts or sobbing faces breaking the fourth wall. Even the good films fall into this trapdoor. Take for example Taare Zameen Par - as good as it was, it had both of those aforementioned elements. Can you imagine the film without the ‘Maa’ song? Would it have the same emotional heft without that song? Probably not, because the song in the film does most of the work, the direction and the acting become secondary entities. That also holds true for the climax of the film – without ‘Tu Dhoop Hai’ the ‘triumph’ at the end would not have the same emotional punch. The need for commercialization of a film in India further takes away its quality, and pandering to lower common denominators takes center stage, rather than delivering a heartfelt story that feels genuine in both intention and execution.

Therefore Shonali Bose’s Margarita with a Straw had a lot of ground to cover and obstacles to avoid. It succeeds beautifully. Halfway.

Right from the opening scene it becomes clear that this is a very different film from what we’ve seen in India before. Laila (Kalki) is in a Matador van driven by her Mom (Revathy), and is accompanied by her dad (Kuljeet Singh) and her kid brother. The dad starts singing and the kid makes a side splitting sarcastic joke. It’s like a scene out of Little Miss Sunshine. Laila, a college girl has cerebral palsy that binds her to a wheelchair but not to the ground. She slurs while talking but is a kickass lyricist for a rock band. She also has a crush on the band frontman but has no idea how to tell that to him, because why would the most popular guy on campus date a disabled girl?

It’s the perfect recipe for emotional manipulation or kitsch. But director Bose is such a talent there’s not an ounce of manipulation or kitsch to be found here. Every scene is executed with solid craft - there are long takes, silences, and not a shred of background music. And with Kalki delivering a terrific central performance you can’t take your eyes off the screen. You don’t see Kalki pretending to be a disabled person, you see Kalki completely disappearing into a character you love and care about, without the easy aid of helpful background music and montages. Every tick and slur in Kalki’s body language is carefully calibrated, and Bose has clearly had extensive hands on research. The results are pretty much a very talented director clashing against an actor who’s done a ton of homework.

The attention to detailing and nuance extend to the elements other than Laila as well. There is sensitivity and authenticity in the way other people in the film converse with Laila, and even with each other. There are bits of comedy as well that hit just the right notes, keeping in with the subdued tone of the film.

The film goes even further - it explores the situation of a disabled person when it comes to the uncomfortable topic of sexual mores. Laila watches porn, uses a friend to assuage her frustration and even has sex with a woman. Exploring a woman’s sexuality in an Indian film is itself taboo, so going this far in a Hindi film feels like a triumph in itself. And Bose explores the scenario with tremendous maturity in her tasteful shots. Through Laila the film renders a few unsettling questions – how fair is it for a disabled person to be a burden to her caretakers? Is it possible for a disabled person to be in a relationship with a ‘normal’ human being?

Laila gets into a relationship with Khanum (Sayani Gupta) a very beautiful woman who is blind, and it is at this point the film reaches its peak by asking some dreaded questions – are both these women in a relationship with each other because men don’t find them attractive or desirable? Can disability only be accepted by disability? Is it ok for Laila to explore her sexuality by sleeping with a man once to make sure she’s a lesbian, and not a heterosexual forced to be in a homosexual relationship due to her disability? And how would the conservative parents of a disabled Indian girl feel when they get to know their daughter is a lesbian? Acceptance of disability in society is problematic in itself, but a disabled lesbian daughter is too much to take.

At this point, which is ten minutes after the interval, you’re sure that this is the best film of the year because by now it has explored a ton of extremely bold topics with exquisite sensitivity. Call it the curse of the second half, but a scene pops up that shows Revathy’s Mom character losing her hair, and it single handedly derails the film. Unfortunately Bose fails to figure out a proper resolution to the already numerous and heavy duty conflicts at hand, and adds one more conflict to the story - the Mom character develops cancer.

So instead of dealing with Laila’s disability, or her lesbian relationship, or her confusion in her sexuality, or her cheating on her girlfriend for a man, or her trouble with her parents accepting her girlfriend, there’s one more conflict of cancer thrown in. None of it adds up, and the film begins indulging in melodrama, and doing exactly those things it had avoided previously, like caricaturist melancholy vocals at the Mom’s funeral. A great deal of the second half is spent in ruing the mother’s death, but her character was never developed enough in the first half to make us care about her. On the other hand Khanum disappears from the movie without any resolution, as does the man Laila sleeps with. Plot threads are left hanging and the film unfortunately becomes Blue is the Warmest Color with disability and cancer.

To add the final nail in the coffin the film ends with a truly ridiculous literal message of ‘love yourselves’, followed by an overused Rumi quote. It’s frustrating beyond belief. It’s also shocking that the film has been through a script lab, I would imagine someone from the lab would have pointed out the gaffes in the film, considering they are so basic and so glaring in nature. It doesn’t matter when a film that is rubbish to begin with ends up in a whimper, but a film that shows such great promise as Margarita with a Straw did becomes an infinitely exasperating experience. Clearly, even a deeply personal story, and the tools to execute it on a high order of filmmaking are not enough to deliver a satisfying conflict resolution.

Interstellar Blu Ray Review

Space, wormholes, black holes, time travel, love, loss, childhood, parenthood, brotherhood, death, afterlife, purgatory, the end of mankind and rebirth. There are an overwhelming number of themes in Chris Nolan’s Interstellar. Nolan’s ambition is unrivaled. He’s one of the few filmmakers in the world whom you’d stand in queue for on the first day. And the themes in this movie are exactly what a Nolan fan craves for. So with such humongous expectations, is it even possible for Nolan to deliver something satisfactory? a) If you’re looking for sweeping, epic science fiction along the lines of 2001: A Space Odyssey, you’ll be disappointed. And you’d also be a fool to expect something of that sort – because nothing will ever be 2001: A Space Odyssey. b) If you’re looking for a moderately smart, and a ‘differently executed’ movie in the commercial Hollywood space, you’ll dig this movie.

Interstellar is two different movies trying to be one. The first film features the space stuff, where the protagonist Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is on a mission to save the human race. It’s thrilling, it’s imaginative, it’s gorgeous and it always keeps you on the edge of your seat. The second movie features the protagonist’s children on Earth, hamming, stuck in a cringe-inducing story full of mawkish clichés, doing things no sane adult would do. Interstellar thus showcases both the best and the worst of Nolan. It’s clear than Nolan is trying to emulate 2001 here. A robot in the movie named TARS is basically two walking monoliths, the mysterious black slabs scattered around the solar system in that film. Some of the music is a direct homage to the film. But one wishes the filmmaker tried to make his own film instead of paying homage. If you look at Nolan’s filmography, you either get straight-up action blockbusters with simple stories, or seriously great, complex stories laced in drama. Nothing in between. Interstellar is none of those. It’s got a very simple story, without much action, laced with drama. A tad too much drama. Even a Nolan fan would accept that he’s not very good at drama, let alone melodrama. Of all the films that he’s done in the past, this has the most number of problems. Luckily, it has a ton of goodies too.

The imagery of the wormhole, called The Gargantuan is stunning. As is all the deep space exploration and the treks on other planets. It takes forever for the movie to take off, but when it does, it just doesn’t let go of you. Whether it’s tidal waves on a deserted planet, or heroically docking a space ship on a rapidly spinning port, the space stuff is great. Nolan also manages to give simple Wikipedia lessons on relativity, string theory and singularity without all of it sounding too pretentious. There is also a small sermon on love shoehorned in to debate the merits of human emotion over scientific data – and it sort of works quite well despite its potential to be silly.

The plot vehicle of relativity ageing people on Earth faster than those in space is implemented very well. Matthew McConaughey’s performance itself is enough to recommend this movie. Even in the most implausibly hammy scenarios he manages to bring in a tone of quiet dignity and reliability to the role. It seems there is no stopping the McConnaisance. The most interesting aspect of the film features a big name actor you won’t see coming. There are story and plot elements lifted from Back to the Future, Sunshine and Event Horizon (one whole scene about the explanation of a wormhole is lifted from the last named). It’s entertaining for sure, but you wish it weren’t so derivative, coming from Nolan. The most frustrating thing in the film is the rehash of the intercutting style from Inception, where we see two different dramatic things going on at the same time. In that movie all of the scenarios were relevant to the plot – here we cut from a truly thrilling action beat in deep space to a truly boring domestic drama in a farm back on Earth. And it happens constantly, during every dramatic plot point in the space story. Nolan should have kept the establishing shots of the space stuff and removed the unnecessary story back on Earth.

Regardless of its faults Interstellar offers enough big screen thrills and even has a few interesting questions to ponder over. Is it humane to abandon everyone on this planet to continue life on another? How morally sound are you to sermonize about not abandoning people if you are perfectly okay with abandoning a humanoid to save your own self? And how much would you pay to keep the magic and market of 2D IMAX alive?

The Blu Ray transfer is as expected, quite gorgeous. The sound issues that some people faced in the theatrical version will not be found in the Blu Ray disc - everything looks and sounds crystal clear. The special features include behind the scenes, which for a change, are actually quite entertaining and fascinating. There's an interesting one hour McConaughey commentary on the science behind the film. If you're a fan of the film you won't really find anything out of the box in the bonus features but it's a nice addition to an already great addition to your movie collection.

Not a Review: Fast and Furious 7

Blackness. A familiar, haunting tune from a children’s music box plays. There’s a low rumbling sound of a car engine idling in the distance.

White light floods in. Writer Chris Morgan appears in close up, facing his laptop. As his hands approach the keyboard in slow motion the sound of the car increases exponentially. He hits the first key and the camera zooms out to reveal he’s sitting shotgun in a black Lamborghini Murciaglo.

Next to him is the driver, a familiar oriental face looking sadly at the tiny music box on the dashboard. He suddenly throws out the box, stamps his foot on the accelerator with full force, and as the car screams away Morgan begins writing the script of Furious 7.

Cue in blaring, boisterous rap music as the backdrop to various flashy angles of the car zooming like a bullet through a Californian desert.

‘We need to make this one special’, Morgan’s deep and throaty voiceover booms, as the car dangerously swerves left. Cut to the men inside the car, at full Zen despite the insane speed of the car.

‘You did well in the preceding trilogy’, the mysterious driver says. ‘We sure did’, Morgan replies, ‘Justin Lin had the balls to change the racing format of the films to a heist game’. The driver nods in approval and curtly adds, ‘I can take this to the next level’.

The Lamborghini approaches a stream that magically seems to exist in the middle of a desert. Around the stream are young nubile girls prancing around aimlessly. Morgan begins writing the first scene of the film – ‘It has to be a race of some sort’, he says, as the car runs through the stream, splashing a few of the nubile girls much to their delight. The driver shifts gear.

‘Enough racing and heists, make this one a revenge tale’, the driver says.

‘That sounds good,’ Morgan replies, ‘but which of the six antagonists from the previous films would still matter? They were all as cookie cutter as they come.’

‘The one with the British accent. We need to appeal to a wider audience than the great kingdom of America. Give that guy...’

‘… a brother. Right on’. Morgan finishes the backstory of this new character, Deckard Shaw, the brother of the random British guy in the previous movie. ‘Whom do we know who kicks a lot of ass and can look good while driving cars like a maniac’?

The camera zooms slowly on the driver, who quietly responds ‘You know who’.

Cut to the driver frenetically shifting gears and Morgan sending an email to Jason Statham. The car is now careening through the snakelike highway. A metropolis is seen on the horizon.

Morgan looks contemplative. He’s unsure of the plot structure and character arcs of the film.

‘Are you unsure of the plot structure and character arcs of the film?’, the driver asks.

‘Yes, I am unsure of the plot structure and character arcs of the film’, Morgan replies.

‘Mix it up this time’, the driver says, ‘make the characters say everything they’re doing. Like “I am back guys”, when someone who has disappeared comes back. Or “I am a great shooter”, when someone does some great shooting’.

The car does a screaming sideways drift as the desert sand whirls around like a tornado and Morgan attacks his keyboard.

A couple of song montages and flashy cuts later the car enters a Middle Eastern metropolis. ‘Let’s pick the stunts bro’, Morgan says.

‘You did cars and you did planes and you did choppers’, the driver replies, ‘this time lets do cars diving from a plane like a Halo Jump, and cars smashing into choppers’.

‘Like in Die Hard 4?’

‘Yeah, but furiously’. The Lamborghini smashes into a shopping mall, breaking everything in sight, exits back on to the road without a single scratch and comes to a standstill. A bunch of girls in ridiculously skimpy skirts flock over to observe the magnificence of the car and its occupants.  

‘Tom Cruise hung from the Burj Khalifa, we should do better than that’.

‘We’ll freaking triplicate the Khalifa and we’ll drive the freaking cars through the fiftieth freaking floors of the freaking Khalifa’.

The car leaps into motion as the blast from the exhaust blows away the skimpy skirts, displaying designer underwear. The music amps up, Morgan and the driver slowly turn towards each other. Even as the car speeds up neither of them look at the road, they just look at each other, smiling and nodding. They know they have to bring back every single character from the previous films. They know they have to introduce a Nick Fury type person who teams them all up. They know they have a blockbuster on their hands.

‘This is our Avengers’, they say in union, as the Lamborghini at full speed leaps off a cliff, unspools a parachute, and floats away into the sunset.

A fade out later, two shadowy figures approach the cliff, watching the car going away from them. The camera pans to reveals their faces - a creepy white-faced puppet in a black suit on a tricycle, and a ghostly woman with a rope around her neck. Suddenly someone claps twice and we black out.

(First published in Firstpost)