X-Men: Days of Future Past

The world of the present sees a dark place for mutants. Robot Sentinels roam the planet rooting the holder of the mutant genes out and sending them to meet their maker. Any humans harboring them are dispatched too. This situation has brought Professor Xavier and Magneto together as they struggle to hold off the robot enemies. The solution that is forced upon them is to send Wolverine back in time to try and fix the root of the problem. Time travel is treated differently here as it is more like sending someones memory back in time. And it kind of makes sense. The past sees a very different Professor and Magneto with Beast in tow. Jeniffer Lawerence takes on the role of Mystique and kicks some ass. A fun watch in what arguably could be the best film of the X-Men series.

Rating: * * +

Godzilla

The iconic Japanese monster is back at its rampaging best in this American avatar of the king of monsters. It starts from the point of view of the actor who actually drew me to the film. Bryan "I am the danger" Cranston plays Dr. Joe Brody who is caught up in the terrifying destruction of the power plant that he oversees. Soon it flows to his son and family while the back story about the creature and its predators are filled in. Storyline is simple. Monsters converge on to San Francisco and destruction ensues as we watch in awe. The original allegory of Godzilla to nuclear weapons / US and rest of the world, give way to a correlation between arrogant humans and disregarded nature. That alone could have sustained this film, but the director had to pander to the masses and introduce a human angle. Blank that out and you are left with one of the better reincarnations of this franchise.

Rating: * * + 

Missing

Another film in the endless parade of South Korean thrillers, sees a supposed feeble old man in the outskirts of a sleepy South Korean town picking up young beautiful women as his pets. The only difference being that he treats his dogs and chickens with way more empathy. More torture horror than thriller, the film's production quality is on the lower side but the atmosphere created by the director does keep you taunt and guessing.

Rating: * * 

Big Fan

Paul Aufeiro is a full time parking garage attendant, but his real job is that of a hardcore New York Giants fan.  He goes the full distance for the team, tailgating at the stadium during games and calling into talkshows to defend his team. He does all this while living with his mother and jerking off in silence giving you the sense he is a loser with a misplaced unrequited love. This is brought to the forefront when he is assaulted in a club by his favorite player. It throws his life into a loop as he finds himself struggling to deal with his team's downturn thanks to the incident. A tragic comedy that makes you question and wonder about the mental health of rabid sport fans all around the world.

Rating: * * +

The Lunchbox

Saajan Fernandes (Irfan Khan) is gearing up for retirement from his sleepy accounting job from a firm that is stuck in the past. Mourning his dead wife, he starts wading into the mists of after work life. This is when he finds a new spice entering his life through the lunchbox delivered by the famous Mumbai dabbawala service. The service that prides itself for never making a delivery error, ends up giving Saajan the lovely cooking of Ila who is a struggling housewife  yearning for the love of her disinterested husband. 

Interwined in this story is Shaikh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), Sajan's replacement at the firm, who starts off as an irritant to everyone but slowly makes his way to the viewer's heart. That sort of acting is hard to come by these days and Mr. Siddiqui's talent needs to be nurtured and given more exposure. Then there is Ila's invisible neighbor whose voice conveys so much more than what some actors convey with their faces. Throw in another appendage from the past; handwritten letters, and you have a romantic film that reminds one of Wong Kar Wai during his better days. 

Rating: * * * + 

Life of Pi

Yann Martel's worldwide bestseller is awoken by Ang Lee in this mega blockbuster. Pi Patel and his phantasmagoric struggle on a raft with a Bengal tiger are retold in great CGI glory. As in the book you are left with the decision to see if the story as told is true or was it Pi's way of coping with what he had to do to survive. 

Rating: * *

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Dr. Watson and Mr. Holmes are reunited in this film... oh wait that is not the case until further reincarnations of the characters. The Unexpected Journey of Bilbo Baggins continues in Peter Jackson's next installment of The Hobbit. If you were left wondering at the end of the first film how Mr. Jackson was going to drag this out into three films, the movie does provide you with the answer. Other than that and the introduction of Benedict Cumberbatch as Smaug, the film serve no other purpose as it acts as a boring bridge to the grand finale of the battle against the dragon. Throw in some unnecessary twists to the plot by the director, we are left with a rather staid, head scratcher of a film. But if one could suspend their knowledge of the Tolkien novel, you could force yourself to be slightly entertained by the movie.

Rating: * *

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Two years have passed since the events in The Avengers and Captain America finds himself adjusting to the 21st century as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Things are turned topsy turvy when Nick Fury is brutally attacked and Steve Rogers finds himself with no one he can trust. But the real action begins with a whisper from the past that comes attacking him in the form of the Soviet hitman called the Winter Soldier. Thankfully the cloying American propaganda that was a huge part of the first Captain America movie has taken a back seat and you are left with a good vs evil superhero flick. Marvel unleashes another sidekick and they have picked well in choosing the Falcon. Throw in some hot red headed action in the form of Natasha Romanov and you have yourself a fine escape from reality for a couple of hours.

Rating: * * +

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Wes Anderson is back with the symmetry of his frames, still camera and arrestingly strange characters. In his latest masterpiece, the story is centered around an old hotel that lingers on in the cloud of its prestigious past or I should say around that of its concierge. The movie starts off as a simple retelling of the legendary concierge's past that soon becomes part murder mystery, part prison break, part thriller and full on fun ride. Manifested with big name actors and actresses playing their bit and lead roles that they only would for Mr. Anderson, you are left marveling at this genius who makes complexity so simple. Or is it the other way around... 

Rating: * * *

Innocent Blood

James Park leads a quiet life as a forensic lecturer at a university far removed from his life of an undercover detective. The quietness is disturbed when his past comes screaming back and his son is  kidnapped by an apparent psycho. The usual detective - psycho cat and mouse game ensue but nothing in the film draws you in. The dialogues are almost funny even when trying to be bone chilling and when you hear laughter at the theater during a film like this, you know that the scriptwriter needs to find a new job. All the viewer can do is wait for freedom from the induced boredom. 

Rating: *

Great Gatsby

Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel, yet again makes it way to the screen. The old story is retold of young Nick Carraway's tryst with high society during a New York summer. The vehicle into this flamboyant party land is his mysterious neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Gatsby is young, suave and sophisticated and Nick falls under his spell. But soon cracks appear as an obsession comes to light. Leonardo DiCaprio plays the lead role with a constant tinge of nervousness and hysteria that does quite match Gatsbys of the past. That takes a lot away from the film but if you are a connoisseur of the era like my partner is, the sets will not disappoint. According to her the film captures the spirit of the era very well. However sets can only take you so far.

Rating: * *

Pee Mak

Set in the mid 19th century when Thailand was constantly in conflict with its neighbors, Pee Mak is based on a popular Thai folk tale that some claim is based on true events. Mak is a soldier who is gravely wounded in a battle. Miraculously escaping with the help of his four close friends, the group takes him back to his village and reunites him with his wife and child. His wife, Nak (Davika Hoorne), is an uncommon beauty that has him under her spell. The friends soon start to notice that something is not quite right with her but are terrified to do anything about it. Director Banjong Pisanthanakun could have taken the route of making this a regular horror thriller. Instead, he updates the version of the legend and peppers it with slapstick humor to turn it in to Thailand's highest grossing film ever. It is worth a look just for the reason but cinematically it is only gets high marks for its production quality.

Rating: * * 

The Headless Woman

Vero (María Onetto) is an affluent dentist whose world turns dark when she hits something while driving. Not sure if the creature was a dog or a human, she finds herself plunging in to psychosis. The storyline is vague as the director shows you her life and resulting emotional detachment from it due to the accident. There is also an effort to show the disparity between the servant class and the rich but nothing sticks. All you are left with is a window in to a person's existence after a traumatic episode. This kind of structure in a film can work but it fails miserably here.

Rating: * +

Dallas Buyers Club

For a film that is far from being perfect, Dallas Buyers Club is an entertaining watch. Credit goes entirely to Mathew McConaughey who is brilliant as Ron Woodroof - who throws everything into his personal fight with AIDS, driven by the commercial opportunities of beating the system. The film however struggles to develop any kind of real chemistry between Woodroof and the supporting characters. Jennifer Garner is hopeless and drags everything around her down. Jared Leto plays a dreamy transgender woman, Rayon, but remains just that - dreamy in appearance with no real depth in character. A film that engages but leaves you wondering how different it could have been.

Rating: * * +

Philip Seymour Hoffman

 

Much has already been written over the past few days about the actor that he was. I think I saw him first in '25th Hour' and thought here was a discovery. Some one, with the right role, who would be the finest. Then as I watched more of him I realised he was the finest already. 

It all got personal some time in 2012, as I contemplated the arrival of junior, that I came across an interview of him where he talks about his experience as a father, parenting - past and present. The relevant bits starts after the 5th minute I reckon.

And now he is gone. As a friend put it, he was getting prepared to bat out a day with some 80 bags of heroin, but then fell in the first over. Sad. I want to understand more about the man - the genius that he was as an actor and a person who eventually succumbed to all kinds of internal strife.

In order to commemorate the man, I have decided I am going to hunt down every movie of his.

Rating: * * * *

Photo source: http://danbusta.tumblr.com/

 

I saw the Devil

How the South Korean cinema maintains this kind of consistency in the psycho thriller genre is a mystery to me. Yet again, here is a film that takes the age old genre and adds a slightly new twist to it. Kim Soo-hyeon is inconsolable as he finds his pregnant fiance brutally murdered. Unfortunately for the killer, Soon-hyeon is a top secret agent who takes matters in to his own hands. He tracks down Kyung-chul (Min-sik Choi), a human flesh crazy psychopath and starts to give him a taste of his own medicine. But like in the wild it does not take long for the hunter to become the prey. A film that is definitely not for the faint of heart.

Rating: * * *

Rachel getting married

This is one of the reasons why I liked this film. The quiet Sidney, who is getting married to Rachel and played by Tunde Adebimpe, singing Neil Young's 'Unknown legend', which I had not heard in many years. Quite similar in premise to Margot's wedding experience, Kym's (Rachel's sister) one is also about the family's emotional baggage. Which hit close to home - what do you do if you are entirely responsible for an accidental death of a family member? Bollocks really.

Anne Hathaway who normally is more irritating than skilful, gets it right as the troubled one. With the backdrop of a wedding 'Indian' style, much gets played out in front of everybody (including a random bunch of musicians) and credit to the director Jonathan Demme in getting all the many characters involved, including you the viewer.

PS: The writer Jenny Lumet is the daughter of Sidney Lumet. Which explains Adebimpe's character's name. Jonathan Demme subsequently directed a documentary called 'Neil Young journeys', which explains the song choice for Sidney.
 
Rating: * * *

Blue Jasmine

Woody Allen has been a bunch of hits and misses for me. More of the latter. This one, however, surges to the top of the list because of The Spectacular Cate Blanchett - who plays a neurotic ex-socialite struggling with the turn of events in her life. Heads to her sister's place in San Francisco, who is everything what big sister Jasmine isn't, to seek refuge. Things just get worse as she slowly and comically struggles to stay in the race with the Joneses. Louis C K makes a cameo as a cheating sound engineer and is perfect for a Woody Allen film - straight faced, dark, and makes more out of nothing. 'Blue Jasmine' does have a social angle to it - should be the campaign video for the President's latest brainwave on inequality.

Rating: * * * +

Inside Llewyn Davis

I have this weakness for films about music & musicians. That is why the latest from the Coen brothers gets the stars it does. Llewyn Davis is a folk musician trying to strike out on his own before Bob arrives on the Greenwich village scene and makes folk hip. Llewyn lives off other people's couches in & around Macdougal street and has nothing to show for his "principled" view of music. Has his priorities all wrong, which could be irritating to some, but I kind of get what he is about. However, 'Inside Llewyn Davis' doesn't get inside of anything and rambles Coen brothers style. Which still is pretty good.

Rating : * * +

Any Day Now

An attractive man quietly watches a drag show in a gay bar. The follow up is a hot and steamy hookup but never would you think that this would be lead up to a poignant battle for child custody. Rudy Donetallo (Alan Cumming), a drag queen, and Paul Fliger (Garret Dillahunt), who works at the district attorney's office, struggle to convince the courts to give them custody of Marco (Isaac Levya). Marco suffers from Down's Syndrome and has a junkie for a mother. An odd situation indeed and made odder given that the film is set in the 70s. Movies like these need to be made, but they are contrived to tug at the viewer's heart strings, and that is unacceptable in my book.

Rating: * *