The History Boys (English, 2006)

We are so inundated with English movies from Hollywood that we hardly ever think of UK film industry as a significant one. This month, though, I had the privilege of watching two good movies from England. One was Queen, about which I have written earlier, and one this. Both very English in nature, and nice to watch.

The History Boys is the movie adaptation of a famous West End play by the same name. It traces the preparations of a group of intelligent but undisciplined boys from Sheffield Grammar School preparing from the Oxbridge exam (the exam to get into the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge University). The boys oscillate between the teaching styles of their English teacher, Hector (Richard Griffiths), who has won multiple awards for portraying this role in the play), who teaches for knowledge sake and not for achieving some goal and that of Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore), a teacher hired specifically by a results-hungry headmaster to get the boys into Oxbridge and who trains the boys to modify their answers, their thinking purely from the point of view of impressing the examiners.

The theme of the movie is wonderful. In this age of achievement and goal-oriented actions, the question of what is education really for is haunting. Its nothing new of course, but it's a pertinent question, nevertheless. Is education supposed to make us better human beings or help us earn more money? I know the answer is both, but when it comes to drawing a line, which side should we lean to? And which side do we actually lean to in real life?

Does the movie convey the theme of the movie? Does it raise these questions in our mind? Yes it does, and to a reasonably effective degree. With good performances from all the actors and a lot of funny moments thrown in, the movie is one of those which takes you to your school days and makes you compare what you are today to what you thought you would be back then (and I am not talking careers here).

The movie has its negative points. The theme of homosexuality is a bit overdone, the literary references, which the movie is full of, are beyond most people not so in-love-with-literature and the movie at times seems dragging. All these put together, however, are but a small dent on an otherwise fantastic movie.

Recommendation - Watch it, if you like this kind of a movie.

Rating - ✔✔✔

Hoodwinked (English, 2006)

OK, here's another of those I-want-to-ride-the-animation-movie-success-bandwagon movies and end up leaving the viewer, as the name of the movie suggests, hoodwinked. The concept is simple, take a famous fairy tale, in this case Little Red Riding Hood. Put on a contemporary set-up. So, make all characters suspects in a CSI investigation. Then put some twist of the characters personalities. So is the big bad wolf really bad or just a journalist? Is the Granny really a helpless creature or an extreme sports champion? And who is the actual villain?

A short review for a short movie. Nothing great.

Recommendation - Not worth it.

Rating - ✔

The Departed (English, 2006)

Imagine for a moment that you are a director and you have a star cast of Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen.... Then you go ahead and make a movie about the police cracking down on organised crime. Well, you can do only two things. You can either be a run-of-the-mill director who keeps struggling with balancing so many greats and ends up making a movie where things keep on happening and characters keep on coming in and going out without too much sense. Or, you can be Martin Scorsese (you can't really be Martin Scorsese, very few people can match that level of filmmaking, but that's neither here nor there) and make The Departed.

The Departed is the story of 2 people - Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon). Both cops and both Mob. It is the story of Boston police department, specifically Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Seargent Dignan (Mark Wahlberg) of Special Investigation Unit supported by Captain Ellerby (Alec Baldwin), trying to get the better of the Mob head, Costello (Jack Nicholson). Costigan is the undercover cop who has infiltrates the Mob and rises fastly in Costello's trust. Sullivan is the criminal who gets recruited as a cop and is rising fast in the Special Investigation Unit. Police and Mob both realise that they have a mole in their midst. The movie is a gripping story of the double life the two men lead and their chess game of outwitting each other.

Amazing performances from Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson. It was ten years ago that Jack Nicholson's As Good as it Gets had stolen the best actor award from Leonardo's Titanic. Now this movie is not on the soft, emotional side of life as those two were. In fact, The Departed is quite gritty and a bit gory, my wife averted her eyes from screen several times. But the performances are certainly Oscar winning, with Leonardo having a slight upper hand. Matt Damon is also brilliant and gives one of his all-time best performances. Ably supported by the rest of the cast, these three people keep you on the edge of your seat, guessing what will happen next and giving you a lot of those "I didn't understand what just happened, what does that mean?" and "Wow! That's clever. So this is what that meant" moments which make any intelligent thriller a thrill to watch.

The movie moves at a good pace, the plot keeps you engaged every moment. The dialogues are a bit rough, with swearing almost of the level of Scarface. A bit gory, as the movie has a lot of bloodshed and shooting in the head scenes. Violence is paramount, it is a movie about cops and Mob killing each other.

Recommendation - Don't go to the movie if you can't see blood. Don't go if violence on the screen puts you off. But if you don't go, you would have moved one of the best movies of the year.

Rating - ✔✔✔✔

Da Vinci Code (English, 2006)

Every once in a while comes a phenomenon which captures popular imagination like crazy. Anywhere you go, people are talking about it, discussing it, analysing it, selling merchandise in its name, and so on. Da Vinci Code, the book was such a phenomenon. The next step normally is for Hollywood to take the theme and make a movie of it, normally trivialising the concept so much that the movie marks the beginning of the idea getting out of people's heads. Da Vinci Code, the movie, is such a movie. I won't go into the plot of the movie. For that, go and read the book review, or better still, the book.

Let us have the basic point clarified upfront. It is a good movie. Granted it is no Godfather, where u could debate whether the book was better or the movie. Here, clearly, the book is much better. It is still a good movie. Well paced, wonderful acting, very nice editing, nice cinematography, keeps audience involved and interested and intrigued about the next step. If you have read the book, and are not expecting the movie to be as good as the book, you can follow the plot better than Dan-Brown-newbies and hence enjoy a bit more than newbies. Brilliant performances in the roles of Teabing and Silas quite match the mental image you would have drawn on reading the book. The roles of Robert Langdon and Sophie are also well performed. Tom Hanks seems the right choice for any role that he performs, as usual.

Where the movie fails is - its not larger then life. The book is. The characters are not developed as carefully, the whole imagery of the supposed Christian suppression of sacred feminine fails to come out, the brilliance and sheer beauty of Robert's symbological interpretations that left you dazzled and wanting for more in the book is not emphasized. At the end of the book, you feel an aura of two millennia hanging on you, at the end of the movie, all you feel is having heard a good longish story.

Recommendation - Go watch it, but don't expect the magic.
Rating - ✔✔✔

Click (English, 2006)

Adam Sandler - What can you expect from him? American Pie, American Pie II, American Pie III.... Does the guy grow beyond that or not? Apparently not. In Click, he gets a universal remote control. And what does he use that remote for? To fast forward sexual night with his wife (Kate Beckingsale in an insignificant role) to the point of climax. I mean, how weird can weird get?

Anyway, that apart, the movie is basically the story of Michael Newman (Adam Sandler) , a man constantly sacrificing his personal life for the sake of his career, and feeling so stretched with conflicting demands on him that he just wants the troubling parts to fast-forward themselves. So when he gets a universal remote control, he sets to do exactly that. He fast forwards himself to his next promotion, then next and finds that he has missed whole his life in between. The remote actually controls his life while he watched from remote. And it is the end that he realized that life is all about family and the struggles they face together.

The way Hollywood talks about work-life balance feels anyone who likes his work to feel like a criminal. But if you have to make a statement, any statement, do it with panache, do it with style, do it with conviction, do it with at least some level of sincerity and sense. Click is neither a no-holds-barred comedy nor a sensible message movie, for that matter nothing in between. The best that can be said about it is that it is another Adam Sandler movie.

Recommendation - Avoid
Rating - ✘✘✘

The Wild (English, 2006)

It had to happen. Last few years have seen so many animation movies that sooner or later, they were bound to run out of ideas. And that's what happens to the Wild. A cross between Finding Nemo and Madagascar, this film The Wild will drive you wild with frustration as you see the antics of four animals from a zoo - a lion who has the reputation of being wild and ferocious but was actually born in a circus, have never seen a forest and has no hunting instincts; a she-giraffe, a self-absorbed koala and a squirrel who thinks he is the God's gift to females and is attempting to date the giraffe. The plot is that the lion's son has been taken to the wild, and these four animals leave the zoo to find him and get him back.

The feeling you get in watching the movie is ennui. The centerpoint of an animation movie is imagination. It has to pull be back from these stupid adult years and take me to those wonderful days when anything was possible, anything was believable and there were so many exciting things that could happen. Well, this movie doesn't. It fails to recreate the magic of Finding nemo, the pain of a father and his bravery in taking on the world is simply not there. It fails to portray the friendship of Madagascar and it fails to stand as a good original cinema on its own. The dialogues attempt to be witty, but sound street-wise and shallow. The animation is good enough, but does not bring you those wondrous sceneries possible only in animation movies. And the narrative is repetitive and uninteresting.

Recommendation - Avoid it, unless you have kids who have nothing better to do.
Rating - ✔

Cars (English, 2006)

It was said about Sergie Bubka, the legendary pole-vault champion, that the question is not whether he will win, the question is whether he will better his previous performance. That is exactly what we can say about the Disney Animation films. Pixar Studios has established a reputation of turning out one good animation movie after another. Cars is no exception.

Animation movies have experimented with animals and toys having human personalities. Now its the turn cars. Cars is based in a world where the main species is cars. Where there are cars, there's car racing. Lightning McQueen is the hotshot rookie car competing against two seasoned pros for the Piston Cup Campionship. McQueen is the typical young professional, wanting to quickly rise above his current circumstanced, aspiring for fame, money and bigger contracts, full of personal pride and considering pit-stop-crew as appendages rather than team. As he is travelling to California to attend the big race, he gets lost and ends up in a small sleepy Town called Radiator Springs. And it is here that he realises that life is not all about running and winning, but about enjoying it, making friends and helping them, paying and gaining respect, and love.

There are many people in this world (yours truly included) who consider thier cars as living beings - as things of beauty, as mean vast machines, as objects of desire. It is the magic of Pixar to expand on our feelings for cars to understanding thier emotions, and to start loving a rusty tow-truck for tis friendliness. The beauty of Cars is the perfection with which it connects us to all its characters, the smoothness with which it puts feelings into these metal objects we call cars and the flow of a story which reminds us of that which is beautiful in all of us.

In Cars, Disney and Pixar have a new winner.
Recommendation - ✔✔✔

The Night Listener (English, 2006)

Robin Williams has a knack of being in movies which explore human thoughts at levels you did not know existed. Whether it is exploring the mind of a pedophile in Insomnia or depicting what does obsession mean in One Hour Photo, Robin Williams always comes up with performances which leave us dazed with their sheer intensity and real-ness. There's hardly ever that you feel the guy is "acting".

The Night Listener is another great psychological thriller with Robin Williams in the lead. What it explores is something very distressing - the need of human beings to lie to themselves and to others, the action of human mind of distorting reality to make the world seem a better place than it is. All of us do this to some extent, at the other extreme is delusion. Its the area in between the so-called sane perception of reality and delusion that movie investigates.

Gabriel Noone (Robin Williams) is a celebrated late-night radio show host. He develops an intense relationship with a young listener Pete and her adopted mother, Donna (Toni Collette) and because of his own domestic problems, becomes mentally dependent on this relationship. However, questions soon arise whether Pete exists at all or not. In a bid to resolve this, Gabriel goes to meet Pete but is met by Donna and is told Pete is in hospital and cannot be visited. The film's plot is all around the psychological interplay between Donna and Gabriel regarding Pete's existence.

Marked by brilliant performances, the film leaves you thoroughly impressed. Don't be surprised to realize that there's Robin Williams in the film and you end up appreciating someone else's acting more. And that someone is Toni Collette. Her depth of portrayal of a role where here emotions can either turn out to be mother's grief or a delusional person's rambling is absolutely great.

The movie is nothing about a plot or any happenings or any great chases or cinematography. Its sheer acting of these two lead characters that carries the movie through.

Recommendation - Watch it if you appreciate psychological thrillers and/or individual acting brilliance.
Rating - ✔✔✔

The Queen (English, 2006)

Its the year 1997, Tony Blair has just become the Prime Minister and Princess Diana has died. Endless miles of film-reels have been spent talking about Diana, her affairs, her trials and tribulations and frankly, enough is enough. However, here comes a movie which takes an absolutely fresh look at the incident - from the point of view of British Monarchy; from the view that the incident affected British people's relationship with their Queen.

The Queen revolves around the political public relations handling by the Prime Minister's office and the Queen. The huge public uproar about the British Monarchy distancing itself from the death of the famous Princess Diana at the time of her death and the effect this uproar had on the Queen is what this film is all about.

Helen Mirren in the title roles gives performance of a lifetime, portraying a monarch torn between the traditions of monarchy and the demands of public. The pathos of being a powerless head of state is beautifully conveyed; as is the suppressed anger at being forced to sacrifice personal beliefs and long-held traditions for public appeasement. The irony of the situation - the queen considers Diana to have tarnished the image of royalty by flagrantly violating all norms, when royalty is all about norms and traditions; and the same queen is told that her handling of the death of the same Diana is what has spoiled the image of British Royalty beyond repair - is certainly worth appreciating and watching well portrayed on the screen.

Recommendation - Good Enough to watch once, but can wait for the DVD.
Rating - ✔✔✔

Little Miss Sunshine (English, 2006)

Little Miss Sunshine is a comedy about a dysfunctional American family trying to live as a family dealing with their individual issues and issues with each other. 7 year old Olive (Abigail Breslin) is the only loved-by-all in the whole family and the movie traces the travails of the family traveling in a broken-down van from Albuquerque to California to make Olive participate in Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant.

A wonderful collection of characters - a heroin-snorting, sex-magazine-addict grandfather; an inspirational speaker of a father who himself is a failure and a nobody; a suicidal Proust-scholar of an uncle; a silent, angst-ridden family-hater brother; a high-strung mother (Toni Collette) who is trying to adjust to all these varied people and sweet little Olive, an ordinary girl with extraordinary ambitions, whose beauty lies in her nature rather than in face.

A good acting by all the people make you love all these characters in spite of their faults, and enjoy the darkish-comic situations that present themselves to these interesting set of people. The movie will make you laugh, and at the same time connect to the failure of each individual and then as a family.

Recommendation - Worth watching, though can wait for the DVD
Rating - ✔✔✔

Flightplan (English, 2005)

Very few actors have the capacity to do a good comeback. Jodie Foster comes back after a long gap, and does that with aplomb. Flightplan is one of those terse thrillers which fool you into thinking that you have got the plot, and then do a U-turn.

The movie begins with Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster) looking absolutely dazed and jerky. We soon come to know that her husband has just died and she is going back from Berlin to New York with her daughter and her husband's casket. Mid-air, in a huge aircraft, she wakes up from a doze to find that her daughter has vanished. And apparently, her daughter was never there on the plane - the passenger manifest doesn't have her name, the ground staff don't have any record of checking her in, no crew-member or passenger remembers seeing her, and the clincher - the morgue director when contacted says that her daughter died along with her husband.

The movie is a story of a rude awakening. Kyle, who has more or less switched off after her husband's death, is surrounded by evidence that questions her sanity. Everyone around her is implying that she believes in a daughter who is already dead. She has to get out of her "hung" state, get her senses back and find out what's really happening. A tough role, amazingly well done by Jodie. I won't tell you the story further because that will spoil the movie if you haven't seen it already.

The movie is brilliant on several counts. First and foremost is the superb performance by Jodie Foster. This movie is an intelligent thriller. Any thriller relies on four points - its pace, its plot's twists and turns, the portrayal of characters stretched to their limits and the cinematography. This movie is not very fast, though it keeps on moving at a nice enough pace. But the plot, you cannot help admiring the twists as they unfold. The performances are brilliant. The movie revolves around Kyle and Jodie does an wonderful job of it. And the cinematography, the attention to details is amazing. The whole movie is inside a large aeroplane, mid-air, and is about exploring all its parts to search for a missing child. And all the time, you keep on saying to yourself - hey, this plane is beautiful.
Rating - ✔✔✔

Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (कभी अलविदा ना कहना)(Hindi, 2006)

After a long time, a Karan Johar movie. With Shahrukh and Rani. A supporting cast of Preity, Abhishek, Amitabh and Kiron Kher. The trailers showed a story around love and triangles, Karan Johar's speciality. Expectations all around were for a reasonably good movie, at least worth a dekho. And then came the first surprise. The day before I went to see the movie, I go to a party and all the talk there is about how bad the movie is. Big disappointment. Not having a high opinion of either Karan Johar (let's admit it, I was going only because of my wife) or of these critics' movie acumen, I did not worry too much about it. I went into the movie primarily to see good sets, beautiful actresses and colourful dresses. Then came the real surprise. What I saw was neither some syrupy love story about love at first sight, nor the nautanki of Ekta-Kapoor-serial-type extramarital affairs. What I saw was a very mature narration of the story of two people in uncomfortable relationships falling for each other and how the relationships progress. It was not half-bad! Not bad at all.

Dev (Shahrukh Khan) plays an ex-footballer who is bitter with life because he has injured his leg in an accident and can't play any longer. He is married to Rhea (Preity Zinta), who is a high-flyer at a fashion magazine. Dev is absolutely uncomfortable with Rhea's success and his own failures, and has become a very negative person. Maya (Rani Mukherjee) is a school teacher and is married to her childhood friend, Rishi (Abhishek Bachchan), who loves her madly. Maya's feelings towards Rishi, however, are that of a friend rather than a lover. Rishi is an events organiser and hence is into a party-every-evening kind of lifestyle, and Maya is a very reserved kind of a person, hating these parties. Their relationship is summed up by a statement from Rishi - गलती मैं भी करता हूँ, गलती तुम भी करती हो; फ़र्क ये है कि मैं हमेशा रिश्ता बनाने की बात करता हूँ और तुम हमेशा रिश्ता तोडने की (Both of us commit mistakes, but I always talk about making relationships, while you talk about breaking them).

The movie is about these two quite negative people (negative not as in villian, negative as in negative-frame-of-mind), how they find an immediate attraction to each other, how they decide to help each other save their existing relationships but instead find themselves coming closer. Even though Rishi and Rhea very much want to save the relationships, the inherent negativity in Dev and Maya leads to those relationships ending. The extent of negativity is such that these two individuals, inspite of loving each other, don't tell each other of these break-ups and drift apart. They meet in the end, of course, its a Hindi movie after all, perhaps that is the only discordant note in the movie.

I can understand why many people do not like the movie. For one, most people cannot/ don't-want-to identify with either Dev or Maya. Second, it goes absolutely against all the family values that most Indians hold dear. Third and perhaps more important, most Indians go to a movie to have fun, not to see a serious movie about how personalities affect relationships. I can understand all that. But that does not make it a bad movie in my view. These things happen, people do develop negativities in them which affect their relationships, and people do get attracted to each other inspite of everything.

It is a very mature plot, with very mature performances by all the actors concerned. I don't see myself ever in Dev's shoes, but that does not stop me from admiring Shahrukh's portrayal of the character. (For that matter, I can't see myself in Superman's shoes, does that mean I can't like Superman?). Good acting, good direction, nice costumes, nice cinematography.

Recommendation - A very heavy-going movie. Go see it, but be prepared for serious stuff.
Rating - ✔✔✔

The Legend of Zorro (English, 2005)

While Bollywood seems to be getting the knack of sequels, Hollywood seems to have lost it. The Alejandro/ Zorro (Antonio Banderas) and Elena (Catherine-Zeta Jones) that we all loved in The Mask of Zorro are still there, the swashbuckling sword-fighting, the comic timing of actions and dialogues is still there, but the soul of the movie is missing. The movie gives you the feel of an aging performer doing "one more gig".

The Legend of Zorro picks up ten years after the point where The Mask of Zorro left off. Alejandro de la Vega has been fighting for last ten years, California is about to become a part of the USA and its time for Zorro to hang up his sword and live happily with his wife and son. However, Count Armand (Rufus Sewell), a dashing French aristocrat intervenes, steals Elena from Alejandro and plots to cause a civil war in USA. Now its upto Zorro to save the country as well as win his wife back.

The performances are good enough, the direction of scenes is good enough. But the audience watching a sequel is cruel. Good-enough is not good enough. A sequel has to be linked to the original, yet have some originality of its own. And that is where The Legend of Zorro fails. The movie has nothing new to offer. Throughout the movie, you have a feeling - I would rather watch the original again. And that makes this movie an absolute drag.

Recommendation - Watch it if you must watch all Zorro movies, otherwise avoid it.
Rating - ✘

Aap ki Khatir (आप की खातिर)(Hindi, 2006)

This review comes at a great personal sacrifice. I mean I sat through (tolerated is a better word) this whole movie just because I thought it will be unfair to write a review for a movie without seeing it completely. I mean, the first ten minutes of the movie were bad enough for me to want to get out, but I braved it. I thought the next ten minutes will be good, then the next ten minutes, but the good ten minutes never came. Thankfully, the movie ended.

The fault is all mine. Why did I ever go to see a movie with cast like Priyanka Chopra, Amisha Patel, Suniel Shetty and Dino Morea, I cannot understand. I expected nothing from them, and got nothing. I can't for the life of me understand how Priyanka has become the hottest property in Bollywood, when she can't act to save her life and the music album girls are way prettier than her, but then that's life. What I can't digest is that the man who gave us Sid of Dil Chahta Hai or the Manav of Taal is looking so uncomfortable on screen. I can't for the life of me understand why Akshay Khanna took this role. Anupam Kher, the actor-par-excellence, must be on some record making spree of doing maximum number of films and hence is accepting any film. That's the only explanation I could think of for his pathetic role in the movie.

For those who still want to know the plot, Anu (Priyanka Chopra) is in love with Danny (Dino Morea) but they have had a break-up. She is going to the wedding of her step-sister, Shirani (Amisha Patel) and Kunal (Suniel Shetty). As she knows Danny will be there, and she desperately wants him back, and she thinks that he will get jealous if he sees her with someone else, and that jealousy will bring him back to her, she hires Aman (Akshay Khanna) to be her escort. As the movie progresses, we get to know that Shirani and Danny have had an affair while Anu was away, that Shirani is now over Danny but he is not, and Aman and Anu fall for each other in their acting. Things reveal themselves one by one, cause a lot of heartaches interspersed with comic scenes. In the climax, all is revealed, Danny is thrown out and the two couples, Anu-Aman and Shirani-Kunal get married. Anupam Kher and Lillette Dubey play Anu and Shirani's parents.

The movie has no saving grace, apart from the songs being hummable and a few comic scenes which you can grasp at like a drowning man grasping at straws.

OK, I have done it. I have written this review. Now I will try to forget about the movie.
Rating - ✘✘✘✘

The Devil wears Prada (English, 2006)

I never thought I will ever even watch a movie on fashion, forget actually enjoying it and then writing a review for it. But here I am, having watched The Devil wears Prada last night, and praising it in this review. In this, I am somewhat like the leading lady, Andrea Sachs (Anne Hathway) who, at the begining of the movie, thinks of fashion as - "I cannot understand the fuss people make over clothes" and as the movie progresses, begins to appreciate what this multi-billion-dollar industry is all about. The likeness (I and Andrea Sachs) stops there. Anne Hathway is breathtakingly gorgeous as her sense of fashion graduates, while I am a fat guy.... But then the review is not about me.

So the movie starts with Andrea, aspiring to be a journalist, being recruited as a co-assistant to the Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep, at what age will she stop looking attractive?), the editor of a fashion magazine, Runway, a person so powerful that designers alter thier whole collection if she doesn't like it. The plot is about how Andrea adjusts to the eccentric, impossible and demeaning demands of her boss, because she is told that "any girl will kill for the job" and that "one year in this role and you can get any jornalism job you want". The plot is about how she begins to appreciate and enjoy the world of fashion and the perks which come with her job, namely free designer dresses. But most of all, the plot is about how she realises that she is on the path of becoming the woman she used to hate and how it affects her personal life.

It is an out-and-out chick-flick (how chauvinistic!), based on a novel of the same name, involving all the standard girly twists of a second handsome guy; a need to decide between what am I doing, what I want to do and what do I do about my personal life; and a vision of what i want to do with my life about as clear as the outline of an amoeba. And you will love the movie for these very reasons.

Recommendation - Go watch the movie, preferably with your partner, if for nothing else then for ogling at Anne Hathway (guys) or the dresses she wears (girls).
Rating - ✔✔✔