Review: Vijay Krishna Acharya's "Dhoom : 3" is the reason why you should spend Christmas sleeping.

Once in a while, we really ought to let the oldies enjoy the privilege of a vacation. Like how Shah Rukh Khan takes a vacation with piffle like Chennai Express or Salman Khan - whoops, if that notion is to be believed, Salman has practically been taking a vacation for the past six years. Anyway, Aamir Khan decided one day to join the bandwagon and that he wants to be a part of the Dhoom franchise, a newscast which made me cough in my coffee. But I'll cut him some slack. I mean, look at the guy! He's been working on good projects, both as producer and actor, for a decade now. He ought to have some fun.  Ah, but not the Yash Raj kind of fun. No, not that, please. Because the production house once sold us dreck like Neal 'n' Nikki as amusement, and my ears still hurt from the blitz. But Khan was intent on doing a Dhoom movie, so I okayed his pep.

But I'm appalled that we were sold an atrocious lie as a publicity shtick. You might've been hearing all those rumors that Khan was sold to the script, which is why he took up this incredulous step. Whoa, whoa, let me digress for a jiffy - what script?  The franchise isn't popular for its script, but for its bikes, beauties and baddies on bikes who get the beauties. We know that, but the question is - do they? I think they do, because I was looking high and low for a plot of some kind so that I know I haven't blown up a couple of hundred bucks just to watch the three supporting non-actors trying hard to display their fictitious acting chops. But I was sorry to find out I was a sore loser to have done so.

About the movie, well, not all of it sticks. What do I expect from the guy who last made Tashan? I mean, taking that into account, I wasn't expecting a great movie. I just wanted a film that could indemnify the torment that Tashan was. To be fair, Dhoom : 3 is not as bad as Tashan. 

To be nasty, Dhoom : 3 is a masterwork in comparison. Acharya still hasn't done away his habit of thinking that his overtly cheesy lines will earn him wolf-whistles. And it's sad because the gloriously untalented Uday Chopra gets to say them, which makes me dislike him even more. Abhishek Bachchan doesn't exactly complete a dream-team with him, does he? 

We start off with a withering magician trying to pull off a class act that can save his circus from being gobbled up by a greedy bank because of an unpaid debt. And, in the blink of a eye, we're in downtown Chicago, breathtakingly shot by cinematographer Sudeep Chatterjee. A bank has been robbed - yes, that's how we start a heist film in this country - and the thief whizzes past the dumbfounded police on a bike, which is an old cliche that the police are simply twits who can't pull themselves together. As we protrude the many lows and scant highs of Dhoom : 3, we find that there isn't much to like. Except, of course, Aamir Khan who manages to kind of salvage a shockingly amateurish movie.

You might've guessed from the trailer that there isn't anything more than Aamir Khan in this twaddle. The trailer was like,"There's Aamir! Look! Look, he can ride a bike! Look, he can twirl a hat! Look, he can mouth a dialogue!", and yeah, there isn't anything more to it. Saddens me to say that, really. Because I actually believed for a moment that there was a script he liked and Acharya wrote it. 

Coming back to the preposterous plot, I won't delve much into it. Because there isn't one to delve in in the first place. We have a seriously pissed-off protagonist, who wants to avenge his father's humiliation. By the time the chase sequences, which had the a few of the most abused slow-mo cuts I've ever seen, were done and dusted with, I was cringing in my seat trying to let the schmaltz waft over me. It was like being chained to the wall and made to listen to a sickly fairytale which you've already listened to a few hundred times. That's not a pretty picture, no. Nolanesque fans with ears as sharp as a dwarf's might've already picked up the big twist. I won't reveal it here, but if you don't know about it, like this woman who sat behind me in the theater who let out a loud gasp, you might feel differently after the sly revelation.

I don't know why they made this one, I really don't. I liked the first Dhoom, which was enjoyable and vexing but a damned good time. I loathed the second Dhoom : 2, loathed it with all my heart. Because, firstly I don't like Hrithik Roshan, I don't like Aishwarya Rai, I don't want to see them together and I still saw them together at the end of it. 

Aamir Khan makes Dhoom : 3 better than I thought it would be because, well, he is a terrific actor. There isn't a single lapse in his marvelously controlled performance. The other three are squandered though. What, you want to listen to how I felt about their performances? I'm stultified enough to even think about it now. 

I was never hog-wild about the franchise but don't you go wagging your crooked finger at me and accusing me of disliking this film because of that. Acharya is better off writing movies, I feel, if this is the kind of baloney he keeps coming up with. This one is a Christmas dampener.

Reminiscence: Martin Scorsese's "Mean Streets" and "Taxi Driver" : The Choice Puts Me In A Pickle.

In 1973, a year after Francis Ford Coppola changed the game for gangster movies by making Brando place the head of Khartoum on Jack Woltz's kingsize bed, Scorsese was gearing up for his would-be breakthrough film. Mean Streets was certainly iconic in its perusal of street crime and its attempts to mould a gangster movie with words and not guns. Scorsese knew crime, you see; he was brought up in Little Italy, a place in New York City where, as he disclosed in the making of the film, a whole bar would tussle over nothing at all. Maybe if you said something in jest or you didn't get a drink on time, tempers flared up and every single guy in the bar would brawl until one capitulated. He fashioned these observations into Mean Streets, which starred a young Harvey Keitel and an even younger Robert De Niro.

Harvey Keitel in Mean Streets.

I watched Mean Streets a couple of years ago when I was sixteen or maybe seventeen. It remained incised in my mind ever since because I couldn't believe a modernistic movie like that was made in a time when family films were walking away with the Oscars. 'Course, Mean Streets was spurned at the Oscars because it was too small a movie, too low-budgeted. I mean, you won't want a layman winning an Oscar, would you? Well, as they found out in the next four decades, Scorsese wasn't just another filmmaker. Anyway, I loved the movie. The coarsish script was talky, layered with dense jargon and the execution was masterful. That was pretty unexpected since I was under the daffy impression that we were dealing with a supposed amateur here. Keitel nailed his role, kept the urgency at the apex with his terse exchanges with De Niro and walked away with a coolheaded performance. Skookum!

But De Niro was the revelation here. He was. Even in his salad days, he could put together a textured performance that showed sparks of promise of a future luminary. His was a more controlled performance, a character that he was seemingly familiar with and he played him accordingly. In his four decades as an actor, I'd probably single this one out as the most neglected. Second comes the one in Ronin.

So, I was watching Taxi Driver the other day on television, a rare instance when the channel operators choose a movie sagaciously and another one of my most cherished movies, I wondered why was Mean Streets the movie with the shit end of the stick. Yes, Taxi Driver was a landmark film for obvious reasons, maybe the most audacious of all movies, but it came four years after the ravishing Mean Streets which ushered in the heavily eye-browed master filmmaker in the first place. Taxi Driver was a gorgeous piece of cinema, I won't dispute that, but it couldn't match Mean Streets in terms of style. Mean Streets was a ballad, an ode to the movies that young Scorsese saw as a boy. The soundtrack, a stockpile of old American classics, complemented the images smoothly. And it did what it did with such finesse that you're captivated from the moment it begins. 

Conversely, Taxi Driver was more of a character study. A demented man falters in his romantic life and he avenges this humiliation on the world that he sees as merciless. He meets loonies like him who fuel the rage inside him. And, in the end, it all comes forth. He goes bananas all over New York City. Scorsese isn't new to characters who work like a ticking bomb about to go off. He strayed in those waters later with Raging Bull, Cape Fear and even Goodfellas up to a certain point. But Taxi Driver was his most fearless coup, a 'man against the world' story that gave an insight into the mind of a wacko. In those times, movies like that were hard to come by. No wonder legendary film critic Roger Ebert instantly affirmed it as one of the greatest he had ever seen. Hell, here I am, all of twenty, four decades later and it's one of the best movies I've ever seen.

Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver.

But when it comes to judging between the two, I'm iffy. Sure, go on, point your stubby little finger at Taxi Driver and chide me for not seeing the obvious choice. But when I think about it, and I mean really think about it, I ask myself - what would Scorsese have done if he had got a healthier budget on Mean Streets? What would that movie have been like? Hey, to all you twits who doubt it, remember - Scorsese made Goodfellas on a bigger budget so I wouldn't necessarily maul the idea. He can work both ways, you know. He made After Hours on a scant one and The Departed two decades later on a pricey one.

So, I'm trying to gauge what I want to say. It's a known fact that Scorsese has made a landmark movie in every decade he has worked in, like Jack Nicholson who is the other bigwig of the honor. But a lot of folks believe that Taxi Driver should walk away with the glory. I'm going for Mean Streets. I treasure those films that can whip up a ravishing experience on modest production and Mean Streets fits the bill perfectly. It gave us a gangster movie with minimal violence and a lot of smarts. A generation later, on a better production, crime movies don't match the panache of it.

Mean Streets is as close as you'll ever come to knowing a gangster in New York City and still be aware that it's just a movie. That's genius, you know.

Review: Thomas Vinterberg's "The Hunt" is the best movie of the year. Or the last five years.

The best movies out there twiddle with something you don't see coming and then, just when you buy that thought, they come right at you like the typhoon who wants to wreck your life apart. Thomas Vinterberg's too clever a man to make that so easy for you, you know. Because he's the shady guy behind the movie about shady guys, and which is perhaps the best movie I've seen in a long, long time. The best part of it is that I didn't even know that until it ended. The Danish-language drama The Hunt is in contention for the Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film this year, and I don't know any other movie I've seen lately that's meriting of the prestige. Because for a little over two hours, Vinterberg made sure I wasn't likely to forget the stakes, and he made a movie like the agony a dog feels when he's stuck in the poky wheels of a kid's bike, a movie that howls and howls and yet feels so quiet, so smothered. 

To aid that beguiling brute of a movie is Mads Mikkelsen, whom you might remember as the suave antagonist who poisoned Bond and broke his balls (probably not in the way Joe Pesci and the wise guys meant it in Goodfellas) in Casino Royale. I never knew much about Mikkelsen's acting chops, because he's never really had a role he could bite into. He's been playing the urbane bad guy for the Western audiences for too long now and finally he's been fed a role that's intricate in its construction and a cinch in its portrayal. And Mikkelsen hands in a towering performance that the Academy will be too foolhardy to ignore, that that terrific script is worthy of. The best acting piece of the year? Yes, yes, yes. Don't buy it? Don't buy it. Screw yourself.

Believe you me, I'll be goddamned if you find me a better script in the recent spew of films that uses its characters so well. Mikkelsen plays Lucas, a divorced dweeb who's living a rather insipid life. He isn't getting much done except walk his best friend's daughter to school and back everyday. He's the kind of guy you empathize with in a jiffy. And Vinterberg touts that thought for the rest of the movie in a manner so nifty that's bound to provoke you, to terrify you and to unsettle you.

Lucas has a job at a local kindergarten. He capers with the kids for most of the day, initiates a romance with his co-worker. Hell, he even has his teenage son back in contact with him. So far, so good for ol' Lucas. Then comes the guillotine. 

One day, right out of the blue, he's accused of being a pedophile. There. No one wants to tell him why. He wants to ask questions but no one wants to answer them. He's looked upon as a rapacious soul, even by those who would've sworn that he was anything like that. Soon enough, the whole town's believing it. There begins his ordeal.

Don't you let the strikingly simple plot deceive you. It's all peekaboo until the second half of the movie kicks in and you begin to fathom how the movie's going to turn out. Spoiler! Spoiler! : You actually don't, haha! It's unpredictable, it's hellish and it needs to be watched, mulled over, analyzed. Why? Because it doesn't give you the luxury of choice. That's not negotiable, no, no. It's a supremely well-told tale of how a man's life is torn apart by an innocent lie and how that one lie becomes the truth when it travels from whisper to whisper, from mind to mind. Try looking away.

Vinterberg keeps it brief. He doesn't want to ask questions, he doesn't give you any answers. What he does instead is suck you hard into the life he builds for his protagonist and see things from his perspective. He wants you to observe, that's it. That's all he does. He doesn't hesitate to sporadically pull cuffs and take shots at morality and social injustice, at us as human beings. That's a pretty ballsy brouhaha, eh? The script he has jotted down with Tobias Lindholm is a piece of writing of rare craft. Intuitive, observant, unflinching and sympathetic, it doesn't shy away from being candid in the truest sense of the word, even if it means slipping on the sloppy marsh into the sharp pebbles to deliver the impact it envisages. It gives us an affable protagonist and an abhorrent little antagonist but you can't fault either of 'em for the babel. That's how I figured out how good it really is. You will, too.

If I don't see the thousands of Academy heads nodding in one unified, swift motion when the Best Actor nominations pool in, I'd say Mikkelsen was robbed. He's so good, in fact, that the rest of the cast ought to not exist at all. He'll do the work alone. But, yeah, it's a terrific ensemble that captures the wrath that unfolds with just their eyes doing most of the talking. Rare, rare.

The Hunt is a great movie, an intelligent film that has depth and honesty in handfuls. It's also intrepid and gritty but in a quiet way, capturing the emotional turmoil on celluloid like no other movie this year. It leaves you a lot wiser, a little more aware.

Essay: We take pride in being chauvinists, even in the movies. Why, really?

A few days back, I happened to chance upon an extract of Bosnian filmmaker Danis Tanovic's interview at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, an extract which made a very interesting reading. Like thousands, including me, Tanovic was obviously pretty upset that The Lunchbox wasn't the Indian submission to the Best Foreign-Language Film category this year. One quick perusal and you can tell that Tanovic skipped over many of the cusses that he was raring to spit out and, in his stalwart defense, I do agree to most of his views.

There's one line from the excerpt that stuck in my mind because it abridged the problem that's been nagging the Hindi film industry for a while now :

"It's not a question of a good film. It's about whether you really want to win an Oscar, or do you want to send a film which you think is great."  

(source : NDTV)

In essence, his views are correct. Why, why, why did we send The Good Road? It's like we had reached out for the gold and now we find our palms clamped around a dubious handful of hope. Oh, we knew, we knew we stood a chance with The Lunchbox. I mean, it won an award at Cannes, it got an overwhelming critical and commercial reception and those bozos pick out a small movie because, well, because it showcases a different side of India, in their own inane vindication. And if rumors are juicy enough for me to believe in 'em, The Good Road isn't half as good as The Lunchbox. I surmised as much, you know. I did.

But no, we won't hear any of it, no sir. I mean, come on, look at the bright side - has the Film Federation Of India ever had the slightest perception of what kind of movies should be sent there, to compete with the other heavyweights from around the world? Has it? If you think I'm jabbering, believe you me, when I run you down the list of the Should Have and Shouldn't Have, you're in for a wild ride. We won't send movies that are daubed with the stuff Oscar-winning movies are usually made of. You want to know why? Because we are too aware of what the world thinks about us. We'll send the optimistic movies, like Barfi!, which made you cry a river. Of course, it made me cry too, because I couldn't believe I had invested my time into something so no-plot. We won't send the fiery movies, like Paan Singh Tomar, because earthy, moving and meaningful movies never win an Oscar, according to our conception of the whole damn thing. We strive to entertain. Pity, the other half of the world pisses on that very word. 

Then came the opinions of the industry personnels, which I often go back to for some comic relief if I'm stuck in a rut and need something to resuscitate me. Someone said,"We don't need the Oscars to prove that we churn out quality cinema." Fine, you two-faced twit. If you win - and believe me, I really hope you do just for this - be sure not to go there to collect the prize. Another dork said,"What's the big deal with the awards, man?" The big deal, man, is that you, in that cocky little life of yours, believe that you live in a country where you don't need to prove that the movies made here are of great merit but there are some who need evidence to buy that idea. Get it?

I don't want to assume that I'll have to wait a whole decade to see a movie that's worthy of competing for the gold. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that we make great movies only once in a while but we need to change the way we choose which film to forward for the competition. But missing out on the gold now does hound. Like Tanovic grouched,"We blew it."

We did. And it's going to cost us. 

Essay: The Indian "24" : A landmark? Yes. Great? No.

Last week, the Indian adaptation of 24 hit the screens, eliciting loud groans from the grandmas of the Indian households, who are used to watching saccharine-soaked family-dramas, and making them go bonkers over the violence and the impudence of the show. And it's also no secret that this wily adaptation is, by far, one of the best things to happen to Indian television. The last time I enjoyed a show on Indian television was Kaun Banega Crorepati, a spin-off of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, back in 2000 when it was actually good. Now it's just filling in for the family-dramas since it's got almost the same amount of tears and melodrama albeit Amitabh Bachchan is a magnificent host as always.

Now, I was also one of those who caught the first segment of 24 as it went on air, bumming around on the couch because the promos looked really promising. A suave Anil Kapoor went bang-bang in a manner so sly that I'm sure half of this insanely populous country would've tuned in just to see that again. Like I did. I've got to be honest, I was hooked on 24 the minute it began. Slowly, gradually, it gripped you, owing to Abhinay Deo's skillful direction and some marvelously brisk editing. What didn't impress was the dialogue, which touched a new corny high, by the way. There's a few "I didn't want to hurt you" or "My country is more important now". Try "I thought I could trust you when I couldn't trust anybody". In any case, they sounded like lines, the characters are characters but there's something that makes it fascinating. Anupam Kher's cameo was terrific, the cinematography is unusually killer for the Indian television standards and the series is intrepid in its storytelling.

24 is obviously created by a bunch of tenacious chauvinists. They've rebelled, to my delight, against the tyrannical Ministry Of Information & Broadcasting, which passes content for television. There's a brief shot of a thumb of a dead guy getting hacked off in the second segment, something that would've been hindered to be shown otherwise. So, I wouldn't really lambaste it as being just another action series because this one's different. This one's significant.

Now, you may wonder why I'm mouthing off when just six episodes are done with. I beg to inform you that 24 is down with the Indian Television syndrome, which is slang for kicked in the nuts. The action has been flushed away, the vile feeling of melodrama has creeped in and there's no way out of it. There's a hint of an odd romance too, which makes me nauseous, and the script, which promised a great deal, like I said, is bitten by the hackneyed bug. The bad thing is that we already know who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. So, if the writers are thinking of making a revelation later on about this, you can pass. The plot of the assassination of the Prime Minister is compelling enough on paper but the sequences which illustrate the situation at the Prime Minister's hotel room are mercilessly boring. That's boring in big, bold letters. And the series, which was supposed to be exhilarating and zippy, is so goddamn slow. If you miss one segment, don't sweat it, really. You'll find out that you haven't missed much and you can still pick up from where you left off.

What infuriated me above all is the unprofessionalism when it came to publicizing the content. And I blame the channel and the team that heads it. If you see the promos, you'll find out that they give away the plot-twists beforehand, without the slightest bit of shame. Why on earth are they doing the hunches for us? Are we pea-brained? Are our heads made of fluff? When you see the heading Next Week, you better close your eyes. Because those bozos are going to tell you, whether you like it or not, what's about to happen. Oh, it's easy-peasy to guess, which is what they've misconceived 'cause they think we'll want to tune in to watch what we already know is going to happen. Those fools!

24 is a landmark surely but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's great. It's cliched, it's predictable and it's a work of craft that's rare. I enjoy watching it because this is something that I haven't seen on Indian television but it did let me down and kicked me in the teeth with its incredibly tacky writing. Still, I'd suggest you watch it because I don't know who'll be the next one to stand up to the customs we have here. Better enjoy it while it lasts, eh? 

Review: Alfonso Cuaron's "Gravity" : Bingo, Houston!

You might have been hearing murmurs that Mexican virtuoso Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity begs to be watched on the IMAX 3D screen, which, incidentally, is also a place where no one can hear you scream. Or gasp. And I'd regret this to the day I'll be on my way to the grave that I missed watching it there, screaming and gasping, like the folks who did do well to go there.

I'll divulge a little secret of mine : I had already read the plot way before the movie even hit the Indian screens. And if you haven't done something this asinine already, don't do it. Because Cuaron ever so cheekily steamrolls your puny imagination and crafts an experience that will be talked about for years. Because I sat there, those fat 3D glasses resting on my crooked nasal bridge, tub of popcorn lay forgotten, iced soft-drink gone runny, and I watched the beauty of quixotic cinema that we seldom get to see.

How irrelevant it seemed to be buying a tub of popcorn when the lady behind the counter paid me a look like I was nuts. And she was right. Gravity doesn't much value your popcorn. But you're in for one hell of a ride when Cuaron explores the vast tract of space with an eye out for detail. Gravity is scary because it's believable and brilliant because it's scary. It's the sort of thing that 3D was invented for in the first place. You get periodic mind-baffling visuals, mystical imagery used sparsely and dialogue that's rigged with tension.

Gravity opens with one of the most beautiful long-takes I've ever seen. A fifteen-minute sequence set against a backdrop of Earth as seen from space, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's fluid camera captures the beauty and terror of being up there with no human contact and many miles above the solid ground with effective urgency. And then, after the three astronauts are informed about a catastrophe yet to befall them, they're hit from the oncoming shards of debris. Dr. Ryan Stone, a medical engineer on her maiden voyage, gets entangled and bullets out into the dark space.

Her only hope is Matt Kowalski, a veteran astronaut who comes with a swagger and is also the second survivor of the calamity. As the two stranded astronauts are left howling in space and left to improvise a way out with zilch contact with anyone except each other, you, sitting in that goddamn seat in a theater with a soothing drink by your side, realize like a bolt of lightening that you are about to be taken for one hell of a jaunt.

I'll be honest with you. I rarely watch space movies because they are all bonbon for the eyes, not so much for the intellect. My favorite space movie is Ron Howard's trivialized Apollo 13, which is Gravity minus the hypnotic visuals. While Apollo 13 was too crowded, Gravity is too deserted. Dr. Stone is the only character we get to see, the only character who should be seen, yeah. That tickles the tension and creates a sense of hysteria. Cuaron, who last worked on the stunning dystopian-thriller Children Of Men in 2006, assembles a yet another tightly-wound movie with Gravity. Nothing's added for effect, there's nothing here that's extraneous to the plot. It's a desolate place up there and, as Cuaron shows, there's nothing we can do other than panic.

Gravity delights in its scrupulous detailing. There's a million-dollar shot of a screw lodging out and spinning towards us, which an alert Kowalski grabs. The details are so carefully daubed that they're impossible to notice. Yet they are there in all their glory. Keep your eyes open. They'll be anyway, I guarantee you.

I have only one thing to say about the cinematography, which is easily the best feature of the film : please don't spurn Lubezki at the Academy Awards this year. In one scene, the camera slowly pans in on Stone's face, penetrates her helmet to get her POV of the view and then pops out again. All in one fucking take. Can you believe that? I had to blink to believe what I just saw, if it wasn't an act of some dark sorcery, I don't know what it was. All I could do is mouth a soft, "Wow!" and try to remember it the next time I'd see this movie. I won't forget that, that's not a niggle.

Sandra Bullock, who has been a kind of a nagging presence in most of her movies, is all Oscar stuff. She's utterly believable in a role, which is her meatiest yet, and I was awed to see her carry the whole film so deftly all the way. Dr. Stone is a character easy to empathize with and yet also gallant and inspiring.

George Clooney is terrific in a surprisingly minor role of Matt Kowalski. Clooney, I thought, would be the one riding the mantle but he's reduced to a supporting role. It was strangely wonderful to see him passing on the reins to Bullock, knowing full well what's the movie about and who should be stealing the limelight. It's the most significant sacrifice in a movie that's as much about survival as it is about sacrifice.

Since Gravity is a space movie, there will be comparisons between it and Stanley Kubrick's mystifying 2001: A Space Odyssey. 2001: A Space Odyssey milked an existential-realism theme whereas Cuaron's is more of a survival thriller. I don't think one should necessarily be the better of the two, since they have a crack at two very different theories but Gravity should be proudly placed beside it.

The best movies out there are the ones that make you go, "Whoa, that's something I'm not capable of creating." That thought hassled me for over two hours when I watched Gravity. Those of you who peed their pants watching Avatar in a 3D theatre and went bonkers over it should check it out sometime. Avatar looks wimpish beside it. Gravity is an astounding cinematic achievement that smashes every 3D movie to hit the screens to a bloody pulp.

Review: Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs" : These Dogs Bark More Than They Bite.

Back in 1992, before Pulp Fiction created the furor it created, Quentin was digging a crime movie, which is a given considering he's Quentin, about a bunch of guys who have divided views on tipping and Like A Virgin, the song by Madonna. And then, they're put through a diamond heist which goes horribly wrong, which leaves one of them with a lesion, one of them trying to save him, one of them doubting all the things that he can doubt and one of them cutting off the ear of a cop who happened to be a spectator.

Reservoir Dogs had acquired a cult status of the height independent filmmakers can only dream of acquiring. A talky film about a botched heist, we're being thrown into a whirlwind of details about the heist, the people involved and what happened. Here's the thing : we don't actually see it happening. So, we've got to take their word for it. What I don't get is how Quentin arranged the financing needed for this. Made at only a million and a half, the budget may look exiguous but this is a unique film that's an amalgam of an experiment and a commercial project. You may enjoy the incredibly funny discussion on tipping early on in the film, the crackling one-liners but the schizophrenic violence may pose as a problem for you folks. I mean, you really won't savor watching some poor sod's ear being chopped off using a straight razor while having your lunch, would you? Thought so.

So, the shocked men go apeshit after returning to their rendezvous point, an abandoned warehouse. Mr. Pink, the cocky one who doubts stuff, he's the one scared shitless. He's trying to figure out without any luck what just happened. Mr. White, the expert, is trying to save his friend, Mr. Orange, who's been shot in the belly. Mr. Orange's about to die, he's lost a lot of blood and he's losing more every minute. Mr. Pink's all over the place, he's getting on everyone's nerves. Both he and Mr. White degrade the suave Mr. Blonde, who landed them in the soup in the first place. Mr. Blonde was the one who started shooting people and nearly shot them both in an attempt to ward off the cops that were swarming the place.

The script, penned by Tarantino, takes its own time to build the characters and supervise the setup. There's a liberal amount of profanity the coarse jargon is laced with. That's not to say the dialogue is not amusing. Tarantino, the master of great dialogue, delivers a substantial amount of quotable quotes beside the witty one-liners. But he falters when he creates his characters, whom we're supposed to sympathize with, as unfeeling and austere. Which makes it difficult to invest in them, hence the story which runs purely on its characters. Steve Buscemi's Mr. Pink is one evolved character whom I enjoyed watching going nuts on-screen but I'm afraid I can't say the same about Harvey Keitel's or Michael Madsen's characters.

Michael Madsen's Mr. Blonde is a mirthless loony who shoots innocent civilians and captures a cop, Marvin Nash. Later on, before Joe and Eddie, the father-son bad guys who hired the Loony Toons, arrive, he proudly shows off his catch to Mr. Pink and Mr. White, who proceed to coax out some information to a pressing problem they might have : is there an undercover cop in the unit? Mr. Pink suspects there might be, Mr. White agrees and Mr. Blonde just wants to have fun. He's not as interested in finding out as he is in torturing the poor fiend. He cuts off the ear of Nash before being shot.

Here's where I stop with the plot because here's where it gets real interesting. We have a bunch of dorks trying to figure out what happened, trying to keep things cordial but are still suspicious of one another. They drool on each other, commiserate but they would not hesitate to pull the trigger if need be.

I liked Reservoir Dogs. I liked the dialogue, I liked the idea, I liked the ritzy approach. But, what I found really surprising was, I didn't love the movie. Yeah, if you ask me if I enjoyed it, I'd probably say yes. If you ask me if I'd want to watch it again, I'd probably say no. Two contrasting thoughts in essence but they make sense to me.

Look, I liked how it started off. The opening sequence establishes the characters with wonderful finesse, allowing us a glimpse into their thoughts, their way of things. I loved how it was structured, you know. Editor Sally Menke was arguably one of the finest, most influential film editors of her time. But it's harrowing when you find out at some point of time that the director isn't very sold to the idea of making the movie about its characters. He's got a plot he wants to work with. Some of the characters are unevolved, under-written but their thoughts aren't. When we want to know more about the character, we're being told of what he makes of the things that transpired. Sad, sad.

But I'll cut Tarantino some slack. Maybe it's because I'm sitting in my living room in 2013, watching it on television so I have no idea how it was like to sit in a theatre in 1992, watching the hoodlums go cuckoo on the big screen. Time blunts the impact, yeah.

Reservoir Dogs may be the greatest independent film of all-time, because it's a marvelous product to achieve from such a scant budget. But, in terms of storytelling, it promises a lot but not a lot of it sticks. Still, it can be worth your time if you enjoy a piece of cinema that's unique and ornate in its construction.

Review: Ritesh Batra's "The Lunchbox" salvages a bumbling industry.

Once in a while comes a movie that leaves you lost for words and impels you into thinking a great deal about where cinema can take you. And seldom do we give that sort of recognition to a Hindi movie. Until someone, and I'm talking about Batra here, changes the general conception of Hindi cinema and delivers a grand little film about life and its aggravations. I'm here to disclose - alright, jabber - about a little gem that made me want to hop into the screen, into the story with its characters and have a talk with them. Batra's The Lunchbox is not only the best Hindi film in about a decade or so but also one of the best romance-dramas in a while to make its way to the big screen.

We often see the city of Mumbai being delineated as an unostentatious character but rare is a movie that actually exploits that attribute. That's precisely where The Lunchbox grasped my attention. Batra works up a script with a minimalist plot to serve as our guide through the city's beguiling streets and creates characters that are so tangible that you'd mistake them for being actual people. There is one dotard, Saajan Fernandes, who is retiring from his job of thirty-five years next month. Fernandes is a frigid recluse who likes to do things his way. He lives alone, his wife's been dead for a long time and the neighborhood kids aren't taking a liking to him. Not that he minds that one bit. He's been living the same life for a long time, it seems, since his daily schedule doesn't change much. Always the same train, always the same seat and always the one cigarette he allows himself after he gets back home from work.

Ila is a glum housewife who isn't enjoying her life either. A mother of a young daughter, she finds solace in cooking new dishes to send to her husband, who is at work, for lunch. She has devised a sagacious way of communication with her elder neighbor, who lives upstairs and with whom she exchanges recipes and stories.

Aslam Shaikh is an ebullient and talkative young trainee who is up for Fernandes' job when he retires. Shaikh wants Fernandes to train him, build him into a workhorse, but Fernandes is reluctant, unrelenting.

One day, Ila decides to try out a new recipe. She whips up a palatable meal for her spouse but the tiffin ends up on the desk of Fernandes. The dabbawallahs - tiffin carriers - of Mumbai are infamous for never getting a delivery wrong. This a story of what happens when they do. Fernandes is dumbfounded to find his lunch so tasty. Ila is stunned to find the tiffin empty. Both realize something is amiss. On the insistence of her neighbor, Ila decides to write a letter to Fernandes and thank him for doing justice to her dishes. Fernandes replies, a cold, bruising letter, but Ila writes back. A strange bond develops between them when they talk about their personal lives and what are their views on anything that fancies them. They advise each other, sympathize with each other and occasionally share a joke or two. It's an escapade neither of them wants to give up. Until the time they decide to meet up.

The Lunchbox is a rare piece of cinema that revels in the most inimitable detailing. Crafted with great elegance and dexterity, Batra creates a movie that at once disarms us with its honesty and then amazes us with its simplicity. The characters don't indulge in anything out of the ordinary, like we'd expect them to, and instead scour their routines to find something that'd delight them. Like in a scene where Fernandes buys a street-side painting because he's fascinated by the work put in by its artist. Or when he learns and marvels at how carefully Shaikh cuts his vegetables and with great skill. These are little things, you see, little things that make someone's day. We aren't following the lives of some influential people. These characters are like us, they are us. They're thrifty. They do what we do, say what we say. It's a careful perusal of the city and the people that live here. It's also a vey affectionate obeisance to them and to the dabbawallahs, who are integral to the film.

My favorite sequence of the movie was the talk after Shaikh's wedding. Shaikh and Fernandes have a conversation and Shaikh cheekily confesses to have travelled without a ticket the first time they travelled together. He fears what Fernandes may think of him. He doesn't want to lie anymore to the one person who he is comfortable being with. The scene is rather mellow but it's written, directed and performed adeptly. Phenomenal!

Irrfan Khan, who plays Fernandes, is on some sort of a mission here. He's flawless. I can't describe his performance any better. I'm trying to find a word to describe just how brilliant his performance really is but my vocabulary shames me. It's his personal best. Fernandes is someone whom we've known all our lives, someone who happens to be in every train, every bus we travel in. Khan does a remarkable job of playing him that way. In one scene, after he's pleased with his day's work, he writes to Ila saying that he treated himself to a taxi ride home. I chuckled at that small moment when a small sentence said something really profound. And, at that moment, I realized that I often do the same thing and so do most of the people in the city. That's his triumph, you see. He succeeds and how!

Nawazuddin Siddiqui is incredible as Shaikh. Shaikh often doubles up as a comic relief but Siddiqui manages to be charming and immensely genial with his antics. He has plenty of room for extemporization and he manages to make Shaikh as warm as the romance between Fernandes and Ila. You won't believe it's the same guy who played a murderous druggie in the Gangs Of Wasseypur saga.

Nimrat Kaur makes her debut with this film but it seems like we've known her for a long time. Ila's conflicted and undervalued. She's a bungled distraction for her husband. Kaur manages to give an enchanting performance that never lets up. Like her exchanges with her brash neighbor, her performance is often insightful and always delightful.

The Lunchbox should've been sent to the Oscars as India's official entry for the Best Foreign-Language Film award but it couldn't make it. Which is a shame, because it would've been the best chance any Indian film ever had in the span of five decades. Still, it is the best Hindi film in a long, long time and it would be felonious to spurn it.

If you haven't already watched this small masterwork of a debutant, please do so. And if you do go for it, I'd advise you to go on an empty stomach. Because The Lunchbox glorifies the hot tiffin and the women who make it, and it's impossible that you'd walk out of it unsmiling. Dig into this nummy concoction.

Bon appetit!

Essay: John Hughes : A Filmmaker Who Understood The Audience.

There's a really good chance that you'd walk into a John Hughes film and come out smiling, aware of the fact that you might have just seen a movie that you know at the moment would not be the last time you'll see it. And when I really think of this stuff, I find that nobody has invented a situation wherein you won't enjoy a movie by Hughes. You can watch it when you're angry, sad, hopeful, despondent, it'll go all too well with your lunch and your dinner, you can make your Sunday by lazing out on a couch, curling up against a bowl of popcorn and watching the goofiness unfold.

It's never easy to make a movie on teenage angst. Never. And when you check out the profile of Hughes, you'll find out that the guy had PhD'ed in the genre. A rather quiet loner when he was young, all his movies were a result of his acute powers of observation and unabated creativity. Hughes made movie after movie on young people and their ambitions, often incorporating characters who are conflicted and frustrated, and he did it better than any filmmaker ever could.

I remember watching Hughes' Ferris Bueller's Day Off, my first Hughes movie, and surprising myself by how much I enjoyed it. You walk into a theater for one of the two reasons : either you're looking for an escapist diversion from your poky little life or you're looking for a spiritual and meaningful experience that only cinema can provide. The second case is rare, which makes you a definite sucker for the first one. Hughes understood that. He knew his audience, he knew their expectations when they lay down a few bucks for a ticket and he made movies suitably conforming to them. His films were just as they were - uproariously funny, frequently moving, gleefully goofy and always, always optimistic. At the end of the day, every single character went home a little wiser, a little happier, like you.

I haven't seen his debut, Sixteen Candles, though. But my first viewing of The Breakfast Club left me speechless. A coming-of-age comedy drama set in an authoritarian school, it's how six starchy students spend their time in detention on a Saturday. And the whole movie's shot in a single location with only seven characters giving it its soul. There's the Brat Pack, as they were known at the time, their conversations, their secrets and worries, their ambitions and their contrition. If you're looking for a visual feast, there isn't any. There's not even an attempt to allure you by utilizing tawdry gimmicks, which seem to have found a sure footing now, or by getting a big-shot star cast with hearty smiles. No, here's a movie that's aware of its audience, aware of its content and here's a virtuoso that illuminates his observations through his characters. There's a really slim chance that you weren't an ear at some point of time to what these characters talk about. It isn't new, you know, it's just too real. There isn't any fucking around, the characters are really honest in their answers and there's a whole lot of truth to sit through. A hell of a movie, I found.

Hughes' movies are often accused of being formulaic, which they most certainly are. Break down two of his movies, any two of 'em, and you'll find that they do resemble each other in terms of structure and writing. I mean, look at John Bender from The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Are they similar? Like two peas, aren't they? Yet the situations we've seen them in aren't similar. It's the same old story, the one we know too well, but it's treated differently. It's the cue of a great filmmaker when you watch a concept that's you identify with and then you find out that it has taken you by surprise by its newfangled scrubbing.

Unfortunately, we saw far too little of Hughes. His last directorial outing, Curly Sue, was way back in 1991. And after it being a bomb at the box-office, he sustained himself by writing and producing movies till his death in 2009. I was sad to hear about his demise, for he was the one filmmaker who took me back to my adolescence with his movies and his survey of the trepidation of the young.

There have been attempts to clone his movies, his formulas, his ideas but they haven't been acceded to, at least by me. Because I don't believe anyone's got that zing that Hughes galvanized his movies with. Thank you, sir, for reminding me of my salad days, for making me believe that cinema can be so enjoyable that nothing else would even remotely matter. And may I add that your movies still make my Sundays rapturous.

Essay: The "Before" Trilogy : Is it under-appreciated?

I'm not a big sucker for romantic movies, especially if they involve a lot of drama. Comedy? Fine, I'll sit through it without grumbling even if the jokes don't get to me. You know why? Because my perception of romantic movies has been bludgeoned over the years. I've noticed that movies often delight me boundlessly by their observations, not by their creations. And what do you get to see in a romantic movie? What? You get a boy and a girl, you get forbidden love and you get a happy ending. And, if the director's got enough balls, he opts for a tragic denouement. That's the hackneyed romance that makers often dye and coat and puff right in your eyes. Smug, ain't it?

One day, I got wind of this movie called Before Sunrise, which was what you'd usually call a movie with a minimalist plot. I could probably describe the story to you in a line but what the movie really was can't be. I checked out the trailer, a really promising one, and I decided to grab a seat and watch it. To be honest, I hadn't even heard of Richard Linklater back then though I really dug up his works after I saw Before Sunrise.

Before Sunrise was the ancient yarn of a boy who meets a girl. On a train. Going to Vienna. He's American. She's French. They talk. That's the story.

This probably sounds dumb in your head, doesn't it? And yet, here I am, talking about it like its hot canard. Yeah, go ahead, call me a loony, but the magic of Before Sunrise does not lie in what you see but it lies in what you hear. Richard Linklater, like some dark wizard that he is, takes an absurdly simple story, twists and turns it into a living, breathing firecracker of a film that's at once fluffy and honest. Before Sunrise isn't all fluff, no sir, but it's a movie that braves to put forward some thoughts that you'd rather not think aloud, especially not in front of others, but Jesse and Celine speak them aloud for us. They're still kids but they are kids who understand what life is, what feelings are. They know it, they have experienced it, they are experiencing it. And we follow them during the time their thoughts animate on-screen as they stroll on the beautiful streets of Vienna, which doubles up as a comfort character. Never since Roman Polanski's masterful Chinatown has a movie had me gaping for every word of the conversations. They sound extemporized, like Linklater thought it'd be cool to throw in a boy and a girl in Vienna and film what they talk about. They go places, yeah, they meet people and they see some of the city. They're divided in their opinions, honest in their answers and casual in their behavior. There's romantic tension between them and it's handled sensitively. It's found gold this, because I haven't seen a romance movie quite like it.

Until I saw its sequel Before Sunset.

Thank God for small mercies, I got a chance to watch Before Sunset right after I completed Before Sunrise. Because I pity those poor sods who had to wait nine whole, long, agonizing years to hear them talk again. Jesse and Celine grew on me, their thoughts arrested my fascination like no other characters' ever have. I met them again, this time in Paris. Yeah, life went on for them but their notions hadn't matured yet. That part is still ripe, much to my delight. It was like meeting old friends you hadn't met in a long time and now you can't wait to hear their side of what went on for them after their last meting with you. Jesse was now a successful writer doing a book-tour. His first book was about a girl he had met whilst on a train and the one night he spent with her in Vienna. And the girl finds him in Paris nine years later. He's married, she's not. He's tranquil, she's not. They're still kids in their own way, like in a scene where Celine jokingly shows him the finger when he contradicts her conception on a subject. He has eighty minutes till a flight out of there. She invites him for a coffee, he agrees. All good, all excited. But seriously, we get eighty fucking minutes? If you have seen Before Sunrise, you'd know that eighty minutes is scant. Way too scant.

Ah, but it's still eighty minutes of pure bliss! Linklater outdoes himself yet again, creating a romance like no other. One may argue that Before Sunset is no romance. True, it's not, it's more like a rendezvous in Paris. Attraction is mostly absent this time around, sadly, though I had not expected one. One again we're an audience to a witty, allusive and strikingly intelligent talk about life and other things. Eighty minutes later, Jesse and Celine are a tease. Linklater joshes us by fading out at the precise moment when things get critical. The anguish, the fucking anguish!

Fortunately for me, nine years later, they're going to meet again. Some have already met them halfway across the globe but I haven't. Before Midnight is going to be the final chapter in the trilogy. It's an accomplished piece of work, no less, squashed from a one-line idea. It's takes a special talent to make three engaging, astute movies having the same characters talking more or less about the same things but being perky and waggish every single time you bump into them. If we're lucky - and I really hope we are - Linklater will find time to make a small movie on them again. Maybe how they spend a Sunday?

One of the many things that unexpectedly pops up in my mind when I talk about the Before trilogy is - why hasn't it been nominated for an Academy Award yet? I mean, yeah, it has, but nominating Before Sunset for the Academy Award For Best Adapted Screenplay is more like a given, you know, a certainty. Why has it been shivved for Best Picture or Best Director? It's good enough for either one, don't you think? I may be barking because I'm a major fan of the trilogy but when I change perspectives, trade my place for a regular movie-going guy, I don't contradict myself. It deserves appreciation, more than just a single nomination. Now, I don't mean to be biased but when I look at the biggest trilogy of all-time, Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings, I find that Linklater's Before deserves a place right beside it. It may not be a trilogy of a similar scale and grandiose but it does achieve what it sets out to, like Jackson's. It delivers to us an utterly magnificent piece of cinema that engages us and derides our courage, our imagination. And that's something very hard to come by.

I do hope that Before Midnight will be that film which breaks the malediction. If it does, I wouldn't say that one part of the trilogy has won. I'd say it won the Oscar that it wholly deserved for eighteen years.



 

Essay: The Shameless Obsession With Remakes. Arrrgh!

It's raining remakes in the Hindi film industry, which means it is time to smother yourself to near-death with your cushion every time some modern machismo mouths off corny lines when the villain insults his long-widowed mother or his morose spinster sister. No, I'm not against remakes per se but I do have a certain aversion to them. Because the whole shitty business is a way to earn a few bucks more and make the people who were credited with the original have a cardiac arrest in their tub of tomato popcorn right in the middle of the theater while watching the carnage revel in front of them.

What I do enjoy about the whole remake business is how those numbnuts justify their decision to coerce their baloney on us. The most exploited response is, "Oh, I just loved that movie as a child! And now when I watch it again, I still love it! I simply want to pay a befitting tribute to it." And that too accompanied by a vapid droll on how the whole movie influenced the five-year old mind of theirs years ago when the guy had no idea what the movie business was. And so began a trend in the industry. People dove into their memories to search for that one damned bond they have with their adolescence and we were the wretched casualties of the hokum that followed.

Now, allow me to list the recent remakes that got high on the ballyhoo - Agneepath, Chashme Baddoor, Himmatwala, Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag and Zanjeer. I concede, I haven't seen any of these bogeys simply because I haven't dared to. To be fair, Agneepath isn't entirely bad, I'm told, as a matter of fact, it's pretty watchable. Hrithik Roshan reprised the cult character that gave Amitabh Bachchan his identity. The makers retained the names that glorified the middling original for their visionary remake but in terms of storytelling it wasn't exactly unassailable. Oooo! Smart move, getting the stars and the names. Too bad it didn't work for the movie as well as it did for the general public. Tsk Tsk.

Filmmaker David Dhawan has been in the industry for quite a long time. And, if my memory serves, at one point of time, he was releasing four movies a year. All comedies, all nonsensical. But yeah, I confess, I'm a fan of them. Dhawan's Haseena Maan Jayegi, my favorite film of his, entertained and biffed in equal measures. So, the question that pervaded my mind for a while was : why would he bother to remake a classic? I mean, doesn't he already have a sufficiently enviable list of comedies under his belt? But no, David didn't think so. He remade Sai Paranjpye's majestic Chashme Buddoor with a godawful cast that gave me goosebumps. I couldn't bear to even think about it. And when I saw the frenetic promo, I knew that the die had been cast. The makers were intent on creating - or killing - the spirit of the original. Nope, didn't work out either way. Now, can we please have a screening of Paranjpye's magical tour de force? If not, could we have the old David back?

The remaining movies are pure dreck that don't deserve a piece to be written on them. Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag or What Were You Thinking, Ramu? is often considered the worst Hindi film ever made along with a lot of other worsts. Think worst mistake, worst cast and, uh, worst torture technique. So painful, so strident was this Ram Gopal Varma movie that it destroyed a lot of careers. Not that they showed any promise anyway. And yeah, Ramu went down with it. He's still in the movie business though. Made some tripe called Department a while back and gave Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag a run for its money. No, don't worry, Mr. Varma, your movie didn't destroy your visionary debacle. Tsk, I still consider your Satya as one of the best Hindi films ever made, sir. Please don't kill it with Satya 2. The trailer's got me dead worried, sir.

It takes guts to remake a classic. But it takes more to remake it with an unbelievably trashy cast. I'm talking about Zanjeer, the new remake not making waves in tinsel town. The original Zanjeer made Amitabh Bachchan the man he is today. And Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar's terrifically scripted lines and characters made Prakash Mehra the man he was. So, Mehra's sons decided one day that they want to remake Father's old masterpiece. They did, with Telugu superstar Ramcharan playing the iconic role that Bachchan immortalized. Prakash Raj, who usually plays comical villains with a bloated ego, took up the role of Teja. Priyanka Chopra, who was incredible in the so-so Barfi! last year, must've been finagled for a signature on the contract, I think, because no actor in their right minds would agree to this. And did Sanjay Dutt know what he was getting into? The movie's bad, I hear. Worse than bad. I don't have anything to say against it. The casting did the talking for me.

Sajid Khan fancies himself as an entertainer. Not a filmmaker, mind you, but as an entertainer. His movie's aren't anything to yap about, you know. Because when an entertainer is made in the Hindi film industry, creativity usually goes down the drain tooth-first. That's the case with Khan's films. He remade his favorite film as a kid, Himmatwala, that is now used as an example in film-schools as how not to make a movie. I got the gist from the trailer in which the possessory credits read A Sajid Khan Entertainer. Groan! As if the trailer wasn't already bad and derisive, not to forget the remake of an already terrible film, we now have to get used to the misleading credits being misused for an actual entertainer. Because Himmatwala wasn't entertaining in any way. In fact, it wasn't even an honorary addition to those so-bad-that-it's-good kind of movies. Shivved everywhere in every which way, folks.

So, remaking movies is apparently now a business in the industry. And that's a bad enough sign if anything else isn't. Creativity is usually farted upon - can't anyone see that, too? - in the remakes but, you know, I talk to the wall in such cases. I hear some other classics have been racked up to be remade. As if the trendsetters above haven't argued on the case already. If the guys who are thinking of remaking a few other classics into piffle, make sure you watch these movies before the go-ahead. They are valid reasons to kick the whole idea.

Essay: An Excursion Through The Hindi Movies Of The '00s.

The '00s decade was a mixed one for the Hindi film industry. We saw hits, misses, torrid dramas finding a footing in an unforgiving industry and many, many retirees. And a few comebacks. The hits ranged from good to wowee and the misses ranged from, well, blech! to did I really pay for this. And who can forget Lagaan, the third Indian movie to get an Oscar nod. So, all in all, the decade did do us some good, judging from the caliber some filmmakers laid out in their oeuvres, but still it didn't end on a majestic note. Tsk, tsk. But we'll get to that later.

We started on a high, no doubt about it. Lagaan, Aushutosh Gowariker's absurdly entertaining epic, which revolved around a bunch of enthusiastic young men in a famine-affected village in the heart of rural India challenging a British constituency to a cricket match. If they win, they can evade the tax imposed on them. And if they don't, they'll pay treble the tax. A story that could've made a scream of a gag, you know. But Aamir Khan was at reins so I took it seriously. I had to. And, boy, did it come through! It brought the audiences at the cinema - me included - on their feet cheering, and I can't last remember a Hindi movie doing that. But we lost to Danis Tanovic's No Man's Land, a stunner of a war movie that wasn't about war. Lagaan was whiffed out and I couldn't argue, not after I saw Tanovic's vanquisher. Don't believe me? Check it out at your leisure.

Farhan Akhtar's Dil Chahta Hai glorified the urban India that had evolved covertly sometime in the late '90s, and had people talking and enthusing over it. An acutely observed drama that examined the friendship between three men, it benefited from a magnificently-written quip script by Akhtar, who was a major revelation, maybe the most significant of the decade. Dil Chahta Hai was a landmark film, possibly more important than Lagaan, and was certainly one that opened doors to free speech.

Anurag Kashyap, the rugged brainiac behind the surfacing feisty trend in the industry, proved his mettle as he had promised with his first real movie job - writing the script for Satya. His second feature Black Friday, after his debut Paanch which still remains unreleased - hopefully, not forgotten - was liberated after a long battle. Well-researched, well-detailed, it showed flashes of a promising, uncompromising filmmaker. That tag Kashyap lived up to. Still does.

Vishal Bharadwaj made his directorial debut with Makdee, a feature adapted from a fable, that went unnoticed. But he came back with Maqbool, a perturbing gangland drama that is, in my opinion, the second best crime film after Ram Gopal Varma's Satya. And it introduced one hell of an actor in Irfan Khan. Bharadwaj boasted of his artistry in Omkara and Kaminey too, but Maqbool's expertise cannot be topped. No way, sir, no way.

There's one movie that criminally escaped everyone's attention. That's Khosla Ka Ghosla, directed by a ballsy debutant, Dibakar Banerjee, who proved with his succeeding fleet of films why he's the biggest prevailing hope for Hindi cinema. I'll remember Khosla Ka Ghosla for it's impeccable script by Jaideep Sahni, who hasn't let me down as yet, the witty, loquacious dialogue backed by the swank detailing that defined Banerjee's style of filmmaking. Banerjee is undoubtedly one of the finest filmmakers the industry has nurtured in the past decade.

While some filmmakers addle with movies outside their comfort zone, few of them try making a likable bunch of them without steering clear of the contemporary style of storytelling. Rajkumar Hirani, the mustachioed master of the genre, proved it with Munnabhai M.B.B.S, his debut. Though I did enjoy it, I found its supposed sequel Lage Raho Munnabhai a far better film. Hirani sticks to his exegesis of Hindi cinema. He packs a substantial amount melodrama - sometimes overdoes it, aargh! - with genial characters who are funny without ever trying to be. And, as always, they go home happy so everyone goes home happy. Hirani knows what its like to have an enjoyable experience at the cinema. He may not always pitch cohesively-structured films but he sure as hell shows us a good time. Sometimes that's all you need, ain't it?

When I look at the whole picture, I don't see why I can't classify it as a good decade for the industry. And then, I see why I can't. I contradict myself. Sure, we had a few films that stood out and I've mentioned a few of them in this treatise, but how many of them have been gladly received by the general public? That precise impression gave the producers the idea of making, uh, films apparently, that would entice the audiences to walk into the theaters. So began an armada of godawful poppycock movies that sustained themselves on a paper-thin plot. They'd usually feature a protagonist that tries to catch the attention of a shy female while mouthing off the corniest lines one could imagine, snide humor in handfuls and an antagonist that popped out of a '90s cartoon. I can't imagine why anyone would want to put their money in a film that hyped to be that kind of snotty cinema but, well, the films found the darn money.

The last few years of the decade have been cataclysmic for the industry. We saw an uprising on highly commercialized cinema, which we now associate with the Hindi film industry, and the benighted industry now ostracizes movies having feeble audience connectedness and intellectually compelling plots. One example of this was Stanley Ka Dabba, the debacle that was one of the best movies of that year. Though I realize it released in 2011, Amole Gupte's miraculous film was indirectly rebuffed because of the obsession that jostled out many for the same reason.

So, I've given my views about what I think of the movies the Hindi film industry fostered in the '00s. I'd root for the talent that has emerged in the past decade but sadly I just can't say the same about the movies. If you yak about the variation, I'd say I wouldn't know about. I can't see it.

Review: Nicolas Winding Refn's "Only God Forgives" : It's A Monster And It's Alive!

So, I finally watched the movie I had been waiting for all year. And there's a good chance that you might've not even heard of it. It's called Only God Forgives, a gloriously angry movie about loyalty, morality and, uh, mothers. And before you hawk and hurl a million questions at me, I'd have to state that it was booed loudly by the audience at its Cannes premiere. And that's where I start hunting for a different kind of cinema. Because the legend goes that any movie, any movie, that gets catcalled at Cannes turns out to be a pretty good cinematic experience.

But that wasn't where I first heard of it, no siree. The first trailer, released two months before its Cannes premiere, had me psyched. And after that, I wasn't left with much choice. This is the medical condition which doctors term as getting Refn'ed. And while watching a Nicolas Winding Refn film, you've got to anticipate when to keep your eyes open and when to keep 'em closed. Because if you don't, well, you'll see some poor sod getting his eyes gouged out at some point in the movie.

So, Only God Forgives kicks off with an English gangster, Billy (Tom Burke), whetting his fetish for violence and murder and brutally slaughtering an underage prostitute. And one cop, Lt. Chang, gets the wind of the crime and arrives at the crime scene. Now, Chang (played by Thai actor Vithaya Pansringarm) ain't your usual cop. He's sadistic and he has his own way of doing things. He's dangerous, he's eerie, he's The Angel Of Vengeance. He's earned that sobriquet, by the way. How, you come to know in his first scene. Calm, composed and resolved, he calls the father of the murdered girl and tells him to do whatever he wishes with Billy. He has a cup of tea while the livid father obviously butchers Billy to death - and I'm skimming over the hyperboles here - and then cuts off the father's hand in an act of morality. Whoo, that's way too much violence for the first thirty minutes.

Julian (Ryan Gosling) hears of it and lets the father go. Julian's a quieter version of his dead brother. Angry, silent, cold and calculating, he talks when he wants to talks and listens when he wants to listen. Yep, he's the Driver from Drive, a film in which Refn gave us a David vs Goliath in modern day Los Angeles. He's vying for something bigger here, something that hasn't been attempted before, unless, of course, by Quentin Tarantino.

So, Julian's a weird guy. He slams a whisky glass in the face of an innocent customer in a nightclub, breaks his thighbone and beats the crap out of him. Why? Because he's angry, he's misunderstood and he's fucking weird, that's why. He's obsessed with Chang, the God, and he can't do anything. Not against Chang anyway. His mother, Crystal (the excellent Kristin Scott Thomas), arrives to see her first son's body. She's incensed to find out that Julian's doesn't want to avenge his brother's death and even more so when she finds out that the guy who's actually behind it fearlessly walks the streets of Bangkok. She's a woman with a mission, a foul-mouthed, seething godmother who decides to take care of it. She ridicules her son, his girlfriend Mai (Rhatha Phongam), whose name she pronounces as May, calls her names, cum-Dumpster being one of them, and jeers at her son for being a wimp. She goes after the ruthless Chang, who wants a reason to keep the streets clean, but when it's in the hands of Crystal, it's personal.

Refn encompasses his movies with a certain mood that's evident throughout. Vivid, esoteric, nightmarish, Only God Forgives uses the dark well. Cinematographer Larry Smith, a Kubrick colleague, knows his way around the camera. Tastefully shot and visually striking, there's a lot of eye-candy here. Bangkok has never been as sinister nor as exciting. It's a living, breathing character, no less.

After my viewing of Only God Forgives, I tried to decipher the reason why people didn't accept it. Maybe because it was pretentious, trying to be an art film and trying to fashion violence like poetry, but that just didn't seem right. It's artsy, alright, but I can't classify it as as art film. It's high on the beautifully ethnic score by Cliff Martinez, a rousing winner, but no, still not an art film. Maybe it was because the whole idea was abstract, the dialogue idiosyncratic and the characters were, uh, characters.

Contrary to all notions you might have, I loved the movie. I found it to be an incredible experience, a little disturbing perhaps but fantastically crafted with an eye for style. It's not as good as Drive but it's still a damn good movie. I loved the brawl sequence with Martinez's Wanna Fight playing over, how it ended with yet another classy song You're My Dream, how diabolical the movie is and how engaging it ends up being. It's intensely fascinating, really.

Only God Forgives may not be the best movie of the year but it's certainly one of the ballsiest. Pure guts and skill make this an experience to be had, a movie that's so radically different from a filmmaker who wants to be unusual. It's utterly absurd and yet it makes a lot of sense. Watch it, sit through it and make your day.

Essay: Should "Lootera" be the film India pins its Oscar hopes on?

After my initial viewing of Vikramaditya Motwane's Lootera, an Indian adaptation of the O. Henry short The Last Leaf, I was sure that any person in their right mind would definitely think of recommending it to the Oscars. Because not only was it loyal to its inspiration, the short story it is adapted from, but also it was also a movie we are seldom treated to in an industry obsessed with ringing cash registers.

True, it didn't get to me straight away. Blame the lethargic pacing or the long silences if you must but yeah, it doesn't work that way. It wasn't meant to be instantly likable, I thought. Those of you who remember Motwane's debut Udaan would know. Motwane uses time to magnificent effect, as is discernible in his two movies, he lets his characters grow, evolve and then he sneaks in some plot when you begin to care for them. That's how he makes 'em how he makes 'em.

Having read The Last Leaf before watching this film, I was surprised to see how it all made sense at the end when Motwane followed a different story altogether for most of its runtime. And till the interlude, I was raving about it. The first-half of the movie is breezy, stunningly crafted, masterfully shot, something that I missed seeing in a Hindi film. Motwane then dunks it into an emotionally-charged second, where cinematographer Mahendra J. Shetty employs a dexterous use of lighting to epitomize the change of mood. The emotions run haywire between the contrasting characters when they get the wind of what circumstances have made them do. That's precisely when the plot of O. Henry's marvelous short begins to take shape. I'll have to also talk about the incredible score, a score which compliments the deep, disguised emotions between the characters and one which pays homage to the old Hindi classics, thus creating a nostalgic aura that a period piece like this needs. Terrific.

So, when I heard that the process for the Oscar submissions had started, Lootera was the movie I kept thinking of. Now, I'll be honest with you, I'm a cynic when it comes to India and Oscars. Because I don't believe that the recent Indian submissions for the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar were the best cinema we had. I mean, who ranks Paheli above Black, really? And why, why do we send movies with plagiarized content to vie for the big one? But I concurred when the Film Federation Of India (FFI) sent Anusha Rizvi's fabulous Peepli Live four years back. Barfi! was last year's submission, a decent movie but much of it had been lifted straight off Chaplin's films, something that should've been looked into and acted on accordingly, but apart from the splendid performances, the film had very little to offer to the West. At least Lootera credited its inspiration.

Still, when I weigh Lootera's chances at the Oscars, I'm not too sure. Yes, that would be my choice for this year's submission - and I seldom watch regional films so I'm not confident about my choice - but Lootera was a wonderful film and something that would fascinate the West, I think. It was careful with its adaptation, virtuoso in its execution and above all, fearless in its ambitions. That's why I think it'd make a decent choice.

By the way, Ritesh Batra's Dabba generated a lot of buzz in this year's edition of the Cannes Film Festival. When an Indian film is talked about at Cannes, it should be something special. And Dabba is gearing up for a release next month. I won't be surprised if it wows the audiences, for the trailer is mighty impressive.

Let's see, shall we?

Essay: Howard Beale's Premonition Has Come True. Beware!

One of the most striking images from the movies of the '70s is that of Howard Beale going nuts in front of sixty million viewers.

So, yeah, I'm talking about Network. That beautiful, beautiful film Sidney Lumet crafted way back in 1976 from a deliciously candid script by Paddy Chayefsky that did most of the talking and using a bunch of actors that defined what acting was all about. Yes, that film. Now those of you who remember Network know which scene I'm wanting to talk about. One of the greatest scenes in the history of cinema, made sublime by a brilliant actor and a peerless screenwriter. And when Beale mouths off the magical words from the pen of Chayefsky, what revels is a sequence, a premonition really, that confounds us with its reasoning and its veracity.

Ironic though it is, it was also the first scene of the movie I had seen. I was skipping through the channels on television and I saw this great-looking movie on one of them. And before I could even find out the name of the film, Peter Finch howled why he was mad as hell. And it left me lost for words, because the writing was so powerful, yet so simple. Chayefsky's vocabulary was a marvel, as is evident from the number of quotable quotes the film contains.

No, I'm not here to elucidate Beale's breakdown. What I'm trying to do is comprehend the consequences the speech had on me as I look out of the window and see what Beale meant. We're living in a world that doesn't care about anything, that doesn't want to make this a better place. I often think : what must have Chayefsky thought when he created Howard Beale? Was Beale a gawk? Or was he always as deranged as we see in the movie? In one scene later on in the film, a newscaster labels Beale as a mad prophet. Well, one thing's for sure - the mad prophet says the most insightful things one could think of.

There's a lot to Network other than Peter Finch who plays Beale. But, you know, as an adherent of the movie, I always look forward to his scenes. There's a wonderful speech by Beale later on in the movie, and it's such a kick to see him ravage and rant. It's a fearless performance, one of the best and one of the most significant ones in history. He says he ran out of bullshit on live-television when he's fired from his job, a line's that as funny as it is true.

Over the years, people have bitched about the film being too self-assertive, too aware of its ambitions but its Finch who gives Network its pneuma. Funny how the great Sidney Lumet makes a synecdoche count in his movies. Beale is the soul of Network, Sonny Wortzik was Dog Day Afternoon's.

What stayed with me after my first viewing was the last line of the movie, the line which brought Chayefsky his Oscar and my favorite line from the movie, after Beale is shot dead on live-television  - 'This was the story of Howard Beale, the first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings.' Is this what we'll eventually become? It's creepy to even think that we're heading in that direction. And that, my friends, is Chayefsky and Beale's victory, then and there.

Review: Why Paul Greengrass' "United 93" is the best film of the first decade of the new century.

There have been good films, great films and films which were criminally ignored in the '00s. Though Paul Greengras' United 93 clutched a deserving Oscar nod for Best Director, and being one of my favorite films, I had to endure the scalding insult of answering the disparaging question, "United 93? What's that? Oh, is it, like, a football movie or something?"

Uh-uh. It's something else, you know, something that can't be put into words. Is it enjoyable? Not really. Is it, um, great? Absolutely. But yeah, not many people have heard about it. That's because it doesn't feature any known actors, it wasn't a film of a big, sweaty budget, but it was a film of such prodigious power that it stunned me to my very core. Oh, you'll see, you'll see what I mean when you watch it. That's something a small treatise like this won't do justice to. You can't read about United 93 to get an idea what's it like, you've got to watch it to know it.

So, I had my first encounter with Greengrass' United 93 while I was scanning through the winners of the 79th Academy Awards, which was a big event because, as most film-lovers might recall, Martin Scorsese overpowered his peers to win a long overdue Academy Award for Best Director. And when I saw his name being called out, it was a moment of deep joy for me. But there was Greengrass, the only nominated director that night whose product wasn't in contention for the top prize. I had to watch it because my conscience wouldn't have it otherwise. Little did I know what I was about to see could whiff out any movie vying for any prize on any night.

Concisely, United 93 chronicles the events of United Airlines Flight 93, one of the planes hijacked during the September 11 terrorist attacks, which crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, when the passengers stirred up a surprise rebellion in the aboard flight. And when tackling a film that's based on true events, United 93 gets just about everything right. You've got the hand-held camera style of directing that's almost guerrilla, a way of reminding the audience that it could be passed off as a documentary too, you've got non-actors so that remind us that you don't always need actors to make a film experience endearing and you've got extemporized dialogue that makes the setting look so authentic. And you've got a lot of people playing themselves, most notably FAA operations manager Ben Sliney.

To tell you the truth, for most of its runtime I thought United 93 was spellbinding but not good enough to be ranked as one of the decade's finest, you know. That was until I saw the amount of filmmaking and emotions that Greengrass packed into the last half-hour, the thirty minutes of pure bliss that we are promised and denied so often. And I'm not lying when I'm saying that the last half-hour changed me as a person. Really. A piece of cinema so perfect that it's shattering. I couldn't remember the last time I had watched a film that had moved me so much. And when I finished it, I knew that United 93 wasn't just good, wasn't an experience to be had just once. It was different, a movie that knows what it wants from a director who knows what cinema is.

United 93 is a mammoth achievement, no less, a film that needs to be honored and cherished and watched. I can't tell you just how good it really is, because I don't know myself. My vocabulary shames me. And when a moment like this presents itself, you know the movie's a knockout. If you haven't already seen it, please do so. I can't seem to find a better film to recommend to you. Not in the '00s anyway.