Heading South

Three middle aged women land up in Haiti during the 70s and vie for the attention of the young native virile black men there. A drama that uses female sex tourism as a backdrop.

Rating: * +

Who Killed the Electric Car?

The name says it all; a film that searches for the electric car killer. A very well pieced together and succinctly presented crime "drama" but I think they are off on the murder victim. The victim in question is really Mother Earth.

Rating: * * *

4

Two men and women meet in a bar in Moscow and spin wild lie tales about their asses lives and what they do in it. They disband back to their mundane lives which director Ilya Khrjanovsky views through a pair of mundane and surrealistic lens. At the end of which you are left wondering what drug the director was on.

Rating: *

Il Mare

Yet again the South Koreans show us that they have the romance genre down to pat. Eun-joo (Gianna Jun) leaves a note behind in the postbox of Il Mare which is the name of a quaint little cabin that is the vortex of this film. Little does she realize that note makes its way through the time space continuum to Sung-hyun (Jung-Jae Lee), a resident in the past. The wheels of time start to spin and a romance ensues across time-scapes.

It is evident that this film's echo is heard very clearly in Ditto but Il Mare speaks more eloquently to the viewer. The only knock against the flick is the poor soundtrack.

Rating: * * *

Tasuma

Sogo (Mamadou Zerbo) is an African war veteran who spent many years fighting in Algerian and Indochina as part of the French army. His nickname is Tasuma which means fire. Now retired he goes into the city everyday trying to claim his pension. On one such excursion his wife asks him for some soap. He returns sans pension but with a mill for the village which he buys on credit, mortgaging his non-existent pension. As his pension show no signs of appearing and his creditors start closing in, he decides to live up to his nickname.

Rating: * +

Mathrubhoomi - A nation without women

A very imaginative but plausible scenario set in India where female infanticide has drastically reduced women population in a rural district. Men are starved of a woman's touch and the price is high for a girl. The film explores the situation through a family of six men who are lucky enough to be able to welcome a woman into the house. A film devoid of melodrama but tinged with morbid realism.

Rating: * *

Meerayude Dukhavum Muthuvinte Swapnavum

I now realize that the presence of Prithwiraj does not alway guarantee a decent flick. Couldn't take more than 30 minutes of this tripe.

Rating: +

Three Days of Rain

The old man who likes his booze and can't help lying to his son and everyone around him. The heroin addicted mom places herself in a horrendous situation just to be able to see her daughter. A happily married husband starts to question his marriage. The brick maker finds moisture disintegrating his bricks. A movie based on Anton Chekhov's short stories where life treats the characters in the film in a variable fashion. Rain is the only constant in all their lives.

Rating: * * +

Almost Brothers

Brazil in the 70's saw political prisoners and common criminals being sent to the Ilha Grande under the National Security Law. This intermingling of the two opposite strata of society is supposed to have given birth to the street gangs of today. Writer Paulo Lins and director Lúcia Murat (who was once in the same prison) captures the decades long friendship between political diffident Miguel and Jorginho who ends up running the slums from jail. Shuttling back and forth between past and present, the film paints a vivid and raw picture of problems facing Brazilian society.

Rating: * * * +

Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors

The film shows the modern courtship between young South Koreans from two perspectives shot in black and white. Soo-jung (Eun-ju Lee) is a young script writer who falls for Young-soo (Seong-kun Mun) who is affluent in a subdued way. Like other Sang-soo flicks, this film too introduces a sense of competition and forced issues in the dating play. After watching this third flick of Sang-s00, it almost seems that his best is just around the bend.

Rating: * *

Gloomy Sunday

A love triangle forms between restaurant owner László (Joachim Król), his waitress and his pianist. András (Ben Becker), the pianist composes a piece called Gloomy Sunday for Ilona (Erika Marozsán) which forms a loose bond between the three. While creating harmony between the lovers, the song invites suicide in others. Set in Budapest during the late 1930s, the gloom only deepens with the onset of World War II.

The fabric of this melodramatic film is held together by some fine acting by the three leads. One is easily mesmerized by the easy grace of Marozsan and the brooding melancholy in Becker whose acting reminded me of Tony Leung. So in spite of the gloomy theme, the film is very riveting and will entrap you. To cap it off there is a Schindler's List angle to the film too. The flick also leaves you with a question if such a triangle is viable if the two men involved are genuinely fond of each other.

Rating: * * *
PS: There is a scene in the movie showing László and András getting drunk on Unicum. So people do drink it in Hungary :-)

Sex is Zero

Freshman year in the US involves horniness, drinking binges and some background academics (or at least that is how it is portrayed in films). Things don't look much different in South Korea. Eun-shik (Chang Jung Lim) after a stint in the army finds himself being surrounded by luscious young women in his first year of college. He soon starts to obsess over the hot Eun-hyo (Ji-won Ha) who does not care much for him. He and his pack of friends keep us entertained with their trysts with women in embarrassing and unbelievable scenarios. A film taken in the spirit of American Pie but with a much more raunchier side bordering on soft porn.

Rating: * +

The Black Dahlia

From the master of some classic gangster movies, Brian De Palma brings this fictional take on a true incident - the unsolved murder of a young nothing in Hollywood. But somehow, I found the movie a victim of trying to be very stylish - fastly packed first hour or so, with no real buildup. Unlike the Zodiac for instance, which I liked for its very deliberate plot. Worth a watch though for a reasonable thriller - Scarlett Johansson comes out the strongest I think, while Hilary Swank somehow doesnt fit playing an evil one. Blame it on stereotyping.

Rating: * *

At Close Range

Sean Penn plays Brad Jr. who understandably wants to be a part of his father's (Christopher Walken) crime syndicate. Unfortunately things go horribly wrong between them and it comes down to whether Junior Brad can stand up to Senior. Based on a true story; however the mid-80s print makes it not more than a reasonable watch.

Rating: * *

Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd

Another pot smoking young director's debut: about some 6 couples - and their different takes on how they got together - take a honeymoon bus to Goa. The director has a Superman fixation which comes across as a ridiculous side story than an outrageously funny one. Ofcourse there is Boman Irani, Shabana Azmi and Kay Kay Menon, but it doesnt really matter.

Rating: * +

Room

Julia (Cyndi Williams), a mother of two, finds herself fainting into a dream on a regular basis. All that the dream features is a room. She soon finds herself abandoning her family and heading to New York looking for the room. The director tries hard to create an eerie atmosphere filled with tension and mystery. All he ends up doing is leaving the viewer befuddled in a WTF kind of way.

Rating: *

The Motel

A quirky coming of age tale of a young Chinese boy who lives around a seedy motel run by his single mom. A debonair South Korean arrives at the motel who attempts to be his father figure with disastrous consequences. A film that will leave you in a pleasantly bored state.

Rating: * +