Movie Review: 12 Years a Slave

12 Years a Slave is a tough watch. It’s depressing, distressing, gloomy, violent, brilliantly acted and shot. It’s also a little overrated and director Steve McQueen’s least impressive film to date.

It’s only expected that a well-directed film about slavery would be lapped up by the American press. But since we’re not directly involved with that aspect of history it allows us to look at the film a little more objectively.

In the opening minutes of 12 Years a Slave we’re shown a slave being whipped mercilessly. It’s a shocking, brutal scene that makes you cringe in your seat. Now here’s the problem – the film makes its point in this scene, and proceeds to whip us with the same point over and over again through the rest of its runtime. Here, the protagonist suffers and misses his family, then moves to a different location, then suffers and misses his family more, and repeats the cycle endlessly. This is not the Steve McQueen we know and love. His movies are not supposed to be predictable. McQueen’s films are arresting, but never repetitive. And even in the repeated sequences like in Shame, McQueen develops character arcs that much more, showing us something new about his subject. He fails to do so in this movie.

That said, 12 Years a Slave is a great acting showcase for its cast. It’s poetic justice that Chiwetel Ejiofor had a minor but important role in Spielberg’s Amistad which dealt with similar subject matter. He’s going to win the Oscar but the guy who really deserves the accolade is Michael Fassbender who renders a raging performance of a vile slave owner. Fassbender has worked with McQueen in all of his films and this is his best turn by a long margin. He’s scary, ruthless, sickening, and perverse and completely believable. Lupita Nyong'o makes a great debut, and there are a few quiet cameos from bigwigs like Brad Pitt, Paul Giammatti, Paul Dano and Benedict Cumberbatch but Fassbender just blows everyone away.

McQueen and his DOP Sean Bobbit deserve credit for making the film look epic despite the small budget – they used just two cameras, natural lighting and real locations for the film. But it’s impossible to not be disappointed by the lack of McQueen’s trademark uniqueness. There was a fifteen minute long uncut single shot interrogation scene in McQueen’s Hunger. There were long tracking shots of Fassbender running in Shame. These images are ingrained in our memories forever, but there’s nothing of that sort to be found in 12 Years of Slave. You'll tend to watch the movie, be mildly moved by the torture scenes and forget about it in two days. Sure, this could again be because we can't relate to the movie as much as the Americans can, and this was the conundrum in Fruitvale Station too, but there's no excuse for lackluster writing.

Moreover, the music by Hans Zimmer is extremely reminiscent of Harry Escot’s main theme from Shame. Some of the plot points are a tad clichéd, and the final scene is full of saccharine, coming dangerously close to mawkish territory. That makes it a well-made and well-acted motion picture that will win a lot of awards, but one that is merely ordinary, given the talent driving it. Luckily even an ordinary film from McQueen is better than most of the stuff out there. 

(First published in MiD Day)

Movie Review: Jai Ho

According to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Total Perspective Vortex is the most horrifying form of torture in the known universe. The Vortex is a small steel box in which its victims stand and are suddenly shown for a mere instant something so mind bogglingly demoralizing that they fall out of the box dead. I can now disclose to you what that something is: footage from Salman Khan’s latest release, Jai Ho.

This is a list of recent Salman Khan movies that are universally considered as bad, horrible or Nazi torture: Marigold, Lucky No time for Love, God tussi great ho, Heroes, Yuvraj, Veer, Ready and Bodyguard.

As difficult as it is to believe, Jai Ho is worse than all of those films. I can’t look into the future, but I’m fairly certain the police could soon throw Jai Ho DVDs instead of tear gas to pacify a mob.

With Arbaaz Khan directing Dabangg 2 and Sohail Khan helming this film, the Khan siblings have formed a Shamanic Triangle of Terribleness. A remake of the Telugu film Stalin (which in turn was a remake of the Hollywood film Pay It Forward), Jai Ho time travels back to the ’80s and delivers an outdated, clichéd and ham-fisted attempt at showing a hero fighting for the common man. Bhai plays Jai, a Hulk Hogan version of Arvind Kejriwal, who fights corrupt politicians, saves damsels in distress; helps injured beggars, amputees write exams; restores kidnapped children to their parents and beats up goons who dare to lay a hand on his sister (Tabu).

I wrote two paragraphs worth of plot synopsis and character descriptions and then deleted them because I realized they’re pointless. Anyone reading this review falls into one of three categories:

1) Those who love Salman Khan so much they’ll ask for an Ek Tha Tiger screening as their last wish on the electric chair.  

2) Those who love Shahrukh Khan and want to gleefully place a dynamite under Bhai’s movies.

3) Those who prefer more challenging and cerebral cinema than ‘commercial masala’, but want to know if Jai Ho is fun enough junk for a timepass viewing.

If you’re in the third group, you’ll find this movie as interesting as a game of Pin the Tail on a Donkey. If you’re in the second  cluster, well, have fun. So the burning question is, does Jai Ho work as a ‘commercial masala movie’ for its target audience? The answer is a gigantic no. Jai Ho is a milestone in the marriage between boredom and nonsense. Those who watch Bhai’s films turn off their brains to enjoy his masterpieces, but they don’t deserve to be insulted or bored.

First, the songs are absolutely unbearable - they feel like the Khan siblings are punching our ears with cactus-embroidered gloves. Secondly, the film looks cheap, is atrociously written, lazily shot, clumsily edited and delivered with all the class of a mud wrestling match. Director Sohail Khan seems unsure of what his own target audience needs from their heroic and godly Bhai. Even die-hard Bhai fans will be bored to tears with the painfully drab romantic subplot between Jai and heroine Daisy Shah, who makes an entry with a classical Indian dance number to portray the purity of the Bhartiya Nari.

The lack of novelty, intelligence and cinematic artistry is not as much a criticism of Jai Ho as much as its lack of entertainment value. Most the comedy of Jai Ho is a humour-impaired tragedy. Here we have jokes about women’s underwear, horny neighbourhood MILFs and the usage of the Gujarati word ‘Gando’ because it sounds like a certain Hindi expletive.  Not to blame the audience, but if you find these ‘jokes’ hilarious, you should see a neurosurgeon and ask about getting a brain.

However, the worst thing about Jai Ho is neither the lousy jokes nor the turgid songs, it’s the antiquated and aggressively stupid attempts at emotional wrangling. You get gaudy dramatic music when a woman receives an urgent kidney transplant from her son in law. You get a 30+ year old ‘brilliant’ college student who commits suicide because of a traffic jam. You get a set of goons who gel their hair, drive posh cars, wear gansta hoodies, play rap music and boast about raping women.

Heck, in one scene Tabu tells Bhai to not rise against a villainous politico because she is finally close to her estranged mother; she watches Bhai get beaten up and then looks at the camera and gives him the command to fight back. If all that weren’t enough, there’s the theme of “helping three people who in turn help three other people” that every character mentions at least twice in the film, rendering some unintentional hilarity in the process.

There's an unmistakable sense of desperation in Jai Ho, as if the nearly 50-year-old Salman is wary of his shelf life in the industry and must do everything possible to hold on to his star power. With an army costume, yellow rimmed dark glasses and jeans, Salman’s Jai is a cousin of Chulbul Pandey injected with the nauseating germs found in Ready and Bodyguard. Daisy Shah can dance well but gives Sneha Ullal a run for her money with her lack of acting chops. The only little ray of sunlight in this black hole of boredom is the young Naman Jain who plays Jai’s nephew with a lot of spunk.

The supporting cast is an amazing array of actors filed under Where Were They For All These Years’: Genelia D’Souza, Ashmit Patel playing a living breathing side table, Yash Tonk in a hilariously fake wig, Mahesh Thakur who looks like he still hasn’t recovered from the shock of Satya 2, Mahesh Manjrekar playing an autowala, Aditya Pancholi playing a corrupt cop and even Danny, Sharad Kapoor, Nauheed Cyrusi and Vatsal Seth. The great Mohnish Behl also makes an extended cameo, sharing screen space with Bhai, bringing back memories of Maine Pyaar Kiya. This could have been a solid nostalgia trip if all these actors didn’t show up only to leave like robots.

The bloke who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically to annoy his wife, and Sohail and Salman have basically made Jai Ho to annoy their audience. Like the vortex, Jai Ho gives you a glimpse of the vast infinity of art, filmmaking craft, humor and talent, and somewhere in the vastness is a tiny little mark, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot which says “This is Jai Ho, you are here”.

(First published in Firstpost)

15 Best Films from Sundance 2014

What better way to start the new year than discovering a bunch of good films? Here are 15 titles that received the most buzz at the recently concluded Sundance Film Festival. Let's hope at least some of them make it to the Indian shores. 

Frank

Director Lenny Abrahamson’s Frank chronicles the bizarre real life story of musician Chris Sievy (played by Michael Fassbender) who wears a large mask and turns into an alter ego named Frank Sidebottom. The film co-stars Domhnall Gleeson and Scoot McNairy and as per the reviews is a funny, warm and insightful debate on an artist’s dependence of someone other than himself to find his artistic inspiration.

I Origins

Three years ago director Mike Cahill and his writer-star Brit Marling stormed the indie circuit with Another Earth. The duo is back with a new science fiction drama I Origins that delves into the conflict between science and religion. Michael Pitt plays an atheist PhD student who madly falls for a devout Christian girl, and the film puts us in a crossfire between their conflicting personalities, until a scientific breakthrough that sends both characters questioning their own ideologies. 

Kumiko The Treasure Hunter

David and Nathan Zellner’s Kumiko The Treasure Hunter stars Rinko Kikuchi (Pafic Rim, Babel) in a rather unusual plot. Kumiko watches the Coen Brothers’ film Fargo on the television and goes on a quest to find the fictional buried treasure from the movie. It’s been acclaimed as a strange but touching character study of disillusionment and the fine lines that the title card ‘based on a true story’ crosses in motion pictures.

The Internet’s Own Boy

Exactly a year ago Aaron Swartz, the internet hero who operated Reddit, compiled data for all of us, and faced 35 yrs of jail for the same, committed suicide. He was 26. The internet paid tribute to Swartz but still no one away from keyboard knows who he is. This could be fixed thanks to director Brian Knappenberger’s film The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz which records the young prodigy’s heartbreaking rise and fall.

Ivory Tower

Andrew Rossi’s documentary Ivory Tower takes an introspective gander at one of the most important subjects of modern America – the exorbitant college fees that forces students to repay loans over 15-20 years. The system is deeply flawed seeing as most kids either don’t receive higher education or are forever struggling with debt - it’s affected the society and the economy of the country. Ivory Tower is a damning look at the system in place and is definitely one of the most important movies of the year.

The Guest

Director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett put a new spin on the home invasion genre in the critically acclaimed You’re Next a couple of years ago and their latest project is evidently even more visceral. The Guest is a mixture of a 90's Cronenberg movie and an 80's John Carpenter movie, and is a dark comedy mystery thriller with a heavy dose of violence.

Life Itself

Possibly the most adored film of Sundance, Roger Ebert’s biography Life Itself has been acclaimed as a sensitive and moving ode to the most famous film critic of our generation. Reviewing a biography of a film critic at a film festival seems a tad indulgent but the film chronicles even the unflattering shades of Ebert’s life instead of just mindlessly worshipping the man.  

Web Junkie

If last year’s A Touch of Sin delved into the social stigmas of China this year’s Web Junkie takes us through the unsettling addiction of the Chinese to the internet. The problem has risen to the levels of a national crisis and the country has set up ‘rehabilitation camps’ to forcibly get adults and even young children away from the internet.

Calvary

John Michael McDonagh and Brendan Gleeson who made the hilarious The Guard two years ago reteam for Calvary, the second film at the fest that argued the necessity of religion in the modern world. Gleeson plays a priest and the film is a dark drama stocked under the winning tone of its cast that includes Chris O'Dowd, Kelly Reilly and Marie-Josee Croze.

Boyhood

While making School of Rock, A Scanner Darkly, Before Sunset and Midnight, Richard Linklater had been shooting a radical project over the course of more than a decade. The project, titled Boyhood is a film that follows a child who grows up in Texas over a course of twelve years from 2001 to 2013. It’s a technique that’s been done in Michael Apted’s ‘Up’ series but never before in a feature film of this scale. Boyhood finally premiered at Sundance to overwhelmingly positive reviews and is undoubtedly the most ambitious motion picture in a long time.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

Ana Lilly Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Alone at Night got me super excited when its eerie, atmospheric teaser hit YouTube a couple of weeks ago. The film is a rarity on many levels – it’s a black and white Iranian vampire western film noir directed by a woman. As per the reviews the film goes the extra mile and actually lives up to its making, forging new ground in the vampire genre and offering insightful commentary on Iranian culture.

The Raid 2

The Raid 2 was by far the most anticipated Sundance film and it delivered in bucket loads seeing as the acclaim is through the roof. Evidently Director Gareth Evans has taken the best parts of the original film and pumped some seriously high dosage of acid for the sequel. The buzz ranges from ‘the best action movie in recent times’ to ‘the most enjoyable Sundance film in ages’. We should be thankful that we’ll get to see it this April. 

Others: The Signal - which has been described by Slashfilm as an "ambitious, mind bending sci fi thriller" starring Lawrence Fishburne.

The Voices - A comedy horror from Persepolis and Chicken with Plums dir Marjane Satrapi, starring Ryan Reynolds as a psychotic man who is told by his cat to be a serial killer.

Whiplash - A student-teacher drama starring The Spectacular Now's Miles Teller as a drummer. Won the grand jury award. 

For the best coverage of Sundance, head over to Indiewire who reviewed 66 films at the fest. 

(First published in DNA on 26/1/2014)

Case Study of the Sherlock Season 3 Finale

Case History:

There was a two year wait post the Sherlock season two finale The Reichenbach Fall. Sherlock Holmes jumped off a building, but didn’t die, leaving only a frenzy of theories and questions. There was no way writers Steve Moffat and Mark Gatiss (who also plays Mycroft in the show) could live up to the fans’ expectations.

But they did. They not only lived up to the expectations but also smashed said expectations to smithereens. Season Three was the funniest, the most personal and the most bromantic segment of Sherlock and it ended gloriously with His Last Vow.

The ‘warm’ and ‘emotional’ side of Sherlock that we saw in the first two episodes disappeared without a trace in The Last Vow. The episode was scripted by Moffat and it was one of the coldest segments and probably the darkest of the series. It also had the much needed mystery-driven tone that was missing in the first two episodes. If you’re in the tiny section of people who still haven’t seen the Sherlock finale, turn away because spoilers follow.

The Facts:

Sherlock’s latest threat, the icy, terrifying Charles Augustus Magnussen (played by Lars Mikkelsen, the brother of Mads Mikkelson) was the first villain of the series to really make the hair at the back of your neck stand. Unlike the other villains in the series Magnussen literally touches his victims, with bodily fluids at that. He has an even more insane skill for deduction than Sherlock and his own gigantic mind palace that he uses to blackmail and exploit people. The reveal of Magnussen’s vaults, and the red herring of his 4G LTE glasses shook up Sherlock more than Moriarty ever did. This was a downright unsettling guy, and it was great to have a villain for the first time since Moriarty shot himself in the face. The all too obvious nod to Rupert Murdoch was a fun addition to his character.

The episode also turned out to be a waterfall of twists and turns, least of which was the one surrounding Watson’s wife.

The reveal had some heavy duty shock value due to the fact that Magnussen, a legitimately scary bloke was shown as being afraid of her. Watson’s propensity towards danger and psychopaths was suspected previously but is pretty much cemented here – his best friend is a high functioning sociopath and he fell in love with an international assassin. He loves peril, he misses the war, and he can’t handle the truth. The scene where Watson is made to face this fact plays out beautifully, and Martin Freeman brings so much depth to his character.

Cumberbatch himself is at the top of his game, especially in the terrific scene where he hurtles around his mind palace after being shot by Mary. It’s an incredible sequence and props to director Nick Hurran for bringing his own vision into it. Molly and Anderson appearing as the physical manifestations of Sherlock’s inner voice was a nice touch, as was Moriarty appearing as Death, trying to manipulate Sherlock into submitting to the dark side.

The Highlights:

 - Mrs Hudson’s Marijuana addiction and exotic dancing YouTube videos.     

        

 - Molly repeatedly slapping Sherlock.

- When Sherlock tells Watson that ‘Magnussen is quite simply the most dangerous man we’ve ever encountered and the odds are comprehensively stacked against us’, Watson says ‘But it’s Christmas’. To which Sherlock smiles and replies ‘I feel the same’, and is quickly dismayed that Watson is referring to it actually being Christmas.

 - Sherlock shooting Magnussen to death was all the more fulfilling after the deliciously menacing scene where Magnussen flicks Watson in the eye to display his power over him.

 - In Arthur Conan Doyle’s final mystery ‘The Last Bow’ Sherlock and Watson talk about ‘the East wind’ and part ways forever. That conversation takes place in this episode’s final moments, and you’re led to believe that it’s the end of Sherlock. Slyly, even the end credits drum beats kick in when Sherlock’s flight takes off, and suddenly stop to offer a jaw dropping final twist in the tale – Moriarty’s return. The man appears on every video screen in London and says ‘Miss me?’ Yes, we missed you, you weird evil fucker.

The Clues:

How the devil is Moriarty back? Right now a lot of people need to wear the T-shirt that Magnussen recommended Watson to get: with "I don’t understand" on the front and "I still don’t understand" on the back. Moriarty shot himself in his mouth. Everyone saw him die. Well, everyone saw Sherlock die too, but #SherlockLives trended on Twitter, and I’m pretty sure #MoriartyLives will trend in the Season 4 premiere. So let’s explore the options:

1) Earlier Sherlock said that he systematically dismantled Moriarty’s network over a period of two years. So Moriarty is not really alive, and someone simply used an old clip to broadcast it all over London as a threat. This could be Sebastian Moran, who in the books was described by Sherlock as the second most dangerous man in the world, the first being Moriarty. Moran was in cahoots with Moriarty in the books, and could well be the villain of Season 4.

2) Sherlock orchestrated the Moriarty broadcast. Remember, he was being sent to Eastern Europe on a certain suicide mission. So he could have planted the broadcast to make the cops call him back to London. He had hacked into phones in A Study in Pink so this broadcast wouldn’t be that hard for him to pull off.

    (a) He could’ve used help from Lady Smallwood as a return favour for eliminating Magnussen.

    (b) When Mycroft arrives in his chopper to see Sherlock pointing a gun at Magnussen, the sniper bellows ‘target is unarmed’, which means the target was always Magnussen. That way Mycroft was always in league with Lady Smallwood and Sherlock. Why else would he bring a top secret suitcase to his parents’ home for Sherlock to steal and give it to Magnussen?

3) The most plausible scenario is that Moriarty is actually back. The broadcast was a GIF image, but he actually shows up after the end credits, and it would be really silly of Moffat and Gatiss to tease Moriarty’s return for a year and then tell you ‘nope it’s someone else’.

Possible Theories:

1) Moriarty used a fake gun, although Sherlock spotted a fake gun in A Study in Pink. So Moriarty could’ve used blanks in a real gun. At that range even a blank could injure you, but certainly not kill you. We don’t see any blood spurt or brains getting blown out when he pulls the trigger, and Sherlock doesn’t really examine his body. The liquid coming from the back of his head could well have been apple juice.

2) Moriarty used a real gun and didn’t die because Fight Club.

3) Moriarty is Sherlock’s second brother. There is a scene where Mycroft tells someone about a third sibling and he hints that he did something unpleasant to him. As per the books’ mythology Sherrinford is the third brother and is more cunning and observant than both Sherlock and Mycroft.

The Suspects:

Steve Moffat and Mark Gatiss are the same guys who at a recent press conference shouted that Moriarty is dead and there was no chance he’d be back. They remain prime suspects in this case for being lying scumbags and awesome showmen.

(First published in Firstpost on Jan 20, 2013)