Essay: The quirks of the crappy Indian Censor Board.

I'd told everybody that this Alok Nath piffle will come back and kick our butts one day.

This week, the Indian Censor Board saw a change of saints, and one Rakesh Kumar announced his arrival, fresh from the shrine of Baba Alok Nath. This godly man swore to set things right, which actually means taking us back to the 10th Century BC, when running your hands through your hair was considered worth a guillotine. The man in question, a former Railway employee, had problems with everything in the films he saw. Whoa, whoa, hold it right there! This galoot is a Railway employee? Oh damn, no wonder I don't get my train pass on time. Those folks are always meddling in affairs that don't concern them.

So, I came across his interview in a Mumbai tabloid, Mumbai Mirror, and I couldn't stop laughing. The last time I had laughed this hard was when the possessory credits of Sajid Khan's bilge masterpiece Himmatwala read A Sajid Khan Entertainer, because the entertainment quotient was roughly equal to having your face splashed by ice-cold water in a Delhi winter. Kumar reacted sharply to the increasing vulgarity and violence in Hindi films, saying that an actor of Aamir Khan's stature shouldn't have produced a cussload film like Delhi Belly.

So, while I'm getting a load of the observations made by this prehistoric soothsayer, I notice that he's not too kind with anything the films have to offer. He scorns Gangs Of Wasseypur because of its terrible language, Agneepath for its gory content and Shuddh Desi Romance because his five-year old daughter chirped that it had too much love. Really, you take a midget to watch a film about consensual sex and live-in relationships? And since he's so kindly mentioned going for the drivel Yaariyan as well, I want to question him on his decision to take his daughter to a movie which had bikini-clad girls and a lot mature talk going on in the trailer. I mean, that's what trailers are for, right? To give you an idea what the film's like, warn you if Sajid Khan or Ram Gopal Varma or Prakash Jha have helmed it and you need  to down a couple of shots of whiskey through your gullet to get through it if you're deciding to go for it.

You know, I have written endlessly on the need for creative freedom on this blog, and I hope the three visitors who have accidentally ended up here in search of trailers for Interstellar remember it. The Hindi film industry needs radical filmmakers, and if we appoint someone who drinks holy water for tea and was born somewhere in the 18th Century, we might as well get used to Ekta Kapoor's saas-bahu sagas.

A while back, I saw flashes of Qaushiq Mukherjee's, popularly known as Q, controversial extreme Bengali film, Gandu. Though dunked in striking imagery and explicit sexual content, Gandu was a compelling watch, an example of insurgent filmmaking trying to find a footing in a conservative country. Madly ambitious as it was, I was almost hoping that the Censor Board would concede and get it a limited release. And that would've surely meant that Anurag Kashyap, who I assume is getting through bottles of gin after hearing of Kumar's appointment, could have released his Paanch, which is still lying in cans. But those noobs are intent on killing cinema, which has long since been the hobby everyone named Ram Gopal Varma, so I don't really expect this Chief to bolster the freedom we're getting now.

I mean, really. We can't birth a few Sooraj Barjatyas, nor do I want to see filmmakers like him in the industry anymore. With those stolen wedding videos he releases as films, I don't really see them getting a good market now. But Kumar does, and he will get them released because every film will now pass under his scrutiny and those are the kind of films he prefers. Abuse of power? I'd like to think so. Take cover, chums, we're going to get hit by a load of shit now for a while.

I'm sorry, I'm not censoring this write-up. When I get mad, I speak my mind, and I'm speaking my mind. I don't give two colossal damns about this guy, but I'm dead worried that this pious agarbatti-smoker is going to doom us. Unless someone goes to him and snarls in his face, "Saale, Alibaug se ayela hai kya?"

Let's wait and watch. If not, keep DVDs of Jai Santoshi Maa handy.

Review : David O. Russell's "American Hustle" needs to be enjoyed like a whimsical cocktail.

In a scene in David O. Russell's riotous crowd-pleaser, an FBI agent observes, "This whole thing is racist. Abscam? "Arab-scam"? It's completely racist!" The guy in question, a proud Mexican minus an accent, is being dressed and drilled to carry out a sting operation to criminate a mafia mob and a couple of US Congressmen by posing as an Arab. To which his peppy, batty senior casually quips, "So, what do you have to worry about, Sheik? You're Mexican."

That, among the many very funny moments in the film, was where I screamed with laughter so loud that I invited a few miffed glances. I couldn't help it, and that's what American Hustle makes you do. When you're watching it, you're so involved in its world and characters that everything else seems picayune. Like breaking into loud guffaws in an empty theater.

I'll tell you something straight up - I can't say I'm a fan of David O. Russell, but I really enjoy his work. I liked Three Kings, really liked The Fighter and liked Silver Linings Playbook. The point is, I didn't love any of his films. His style of storytelling is kinetic, infused with a blast of humor and drama while also being self-involved and spectacularly excessive. It's a fail-safe cinematic technique, used to great effect by the legendary Martin Scorsese in his crime-operas in the '90's.

Russell valiantly ventures into the Scorsese-esque territory with aplomb in American Hustle, a territory where many filmmakers have been to heaps of times before and failed despicably. He's got the zing factor perfectly in place, he's armed with a splendidly funny script he co-penned with Eric Warren Singer and he's got a dream cast to help the plot chug along. But what he lacks, and what makes Scorsese Scorsese, is a cohesive narrative.

Russell wanted the film to be about the characters and not about the plot, and that's what he got. The characters are the real deal here, but that's not to say that the plot is dreadful. On the contrary, it's one of the most wildly inventive films of last year that I've seen, a densely plotted, well-edited script that keeps you engrossed till the final showdown. We're cheekily told that some of this actually happened, which actually means that the writers and the director have taken considerable liberties in order to deliver a gobsmacking piece of cinema. You know, that's totally understandable and mite sad too, because if this were a completely original script, I'd have been rhapsodizing it.

The film opens in a hotel room, where a paunchy Irving Rosenfeld is working on his toupee with great concentration, combing and gluing it till it's perfectly in place. Rosenfeld is the kind of guy you instantly label as a dork because he wears gaudy clothes and tinted sunglasses that don't match his persona, but when he starts talking and conning, you start believing. He has the brains you don't have. Christian Bale, gaining fifty pounds for his role, is a live-wire. What he can achieve as an actor beyond his Batman role is astonishing, revealing great emotional depth to his character that almost no one in the film achieves. Almost.

His partner-in-crime is Sydney Prosser, a glamorous, swindling femme fatale who walks and talks with an unmatched swagger. I had doubted if Amy Adams was indeed suited for this role because she had played characters which were contradictions to her character in this film in Doubt and The Master. Adams, the magnificent Adams, gives an edgy, nuanced performance that rightfully fetched her an Oscar nomination this year.

The guy who leads the coup is FBI agent Richie DiMaso, a likable loony eternally on steroids. Bradley Cooper plays him with a striking screen-presence and infectious avidity. In a priceless sequence, DiMaso mimics his boss with such surprising accuracy that my sides throbbed sharply from laughing. DiMaso nets the two partners-cum-lovers and agrees to unfetter them only if they help him net a few more. Irving is doubtful, Sydney is ready. The plan is set, a really simple one on paper until it spins out of control as DiMaso's unquenchable greed gets the better of him.

And completing this cast of casts are Jennifer Lawrence and Jeremy Renner, two future luminaries who get better and better with their films. Lawrence's character of Rosalyn Rosenfeld, Irving's neglected wife, is feisty and kooky, an incredibly bovine, reckless and unfit mother of an adopted child who blows up a microwave, the science oven, which she disparages because she believes it takes all the nutrition out of the food. Lawrence is in top form here, playing an odious yet sympathetic character who thinks it's interesting to talk about the smell of nail-polish on dinner dates. She also provides a great number of chuckles here but it's more of a plaintive character who needs to be listened to. Renner sleepwalks through it all, and a role like this would've been a piece of cake for an actor of his calibre.

The plot unfolds like a breathless sprint through the mafioso and politics of the Americana of the '70's. Russell isn't content with his film being limited to being a caper, and he goes for the big catch that'll do Scorsese proud. Involving sex, money, politics and con games to an already risque plot, it's an insanely ambitious risk to take, but here's what - he pulls it off. Yes, he does. Though I'd have enjoyed more it if it were a bit less indulgent, it's grand to watch a filmmaker imbue his baby with the daft risks you think won't pay off but they eventually do. Russell is a sagacious raconteur who needs to make more films.

A few days ago, I was on Twitter, one of my sparse appearances there, but I was simply interested in getting the pulp of the buzz that had surrounded the newly-announced Oscar nominations. And there, I read a snide tweet from a guy, who expressed his contempt for the ten nods American Hustle received, calling it to be also nominated for Best Impression Of A Great Movie. Ouch! That's a pretty hefty blow, but I couldn't get it out of my head. Still can't. And as I mull over those words, I find myself agreeing to some extent. Yes, this isn't a new concept but it's done differently. I found it to be an original potboiler, but if you aren't of the same opinion, there's a very slim chance you might like it. Yes, there are minor stretches of boredom when the plot swerves from its course one too many times, and you find yourself trapped. A couple of inessential characters try to provide some depth to a plot that needs to be enjoyed in the moment, and that's where it goes awry. But the moments are far too few to be bothered about.

American Hustle will almost certainly guarantee you a blast at the movies. It's frenetic, loud and a jolt of adrenaline that never stops to catch its breath. Walking into it is like walking into a perky pool party you don't want to leave.

Let it control you, that's how you enjoy it. Like a cocktail.

Review : Destin Daniel Cretton's "Short Term 12" is my pick for the best English-language film of last year.

Why do we love movies?

Why do we begin to believe in the world they create for us? Why do we go back to them every now and then, trying to soak up more of the atmosphere of their fictitious realms?

I combed over these questions as I watched Destin Daniel Cretton's Short Term 12, the indie stunner of the year that scales a new peak as far as teenage-dramas go. A compassionate, honest perusal of teenage angst, it lays new ground rules for independent cinema and, in the process, delivers one of the most poignant films of last year.

I'm trying to put into words the bliss I'm beginning to feel as my mind shifts back to the film. From a tremendously funny opening sequence to an achingly sad second, the shift of mood is one for the ages. Cretton finesses his story into the hustle and bustle of an institution for underprivileged, sexually-abused teens, who are trying to find meaning in their futile existence. The institution is managed by Grace, a twenty-something young woman, with her simpatico boyfriend, Mason. Grace and Mason run it like a weekend party - they talk, jest, sing, dance and engage into water fights and occasional games of baseball. When one of the kids cusses or brawls, they are curt and stern.

It's like having parents your age, you know. I don't see their relationship with the kids any other way.

Grace lays the rules down to a newbie intern, "Remember, you're not their parent. You're not their therapist. You're here to create a safe environment, and that's it." That's terse enough to get a hang of how everyone is related to each other. Grace is conflicted. She's secretly pregnant, in love with Mason but she's too cloistered. She almost never talks about her thoughts on something, which miffs Mason though he understands.

Mason is the guy everyone likes. He's kind, patient, friendly, gentle and he comes with a grin that's hard to scrap off his face. He's deeply in love with his pregnant co-worker but he's upset that his girlfriend doesn't share her thoughts with him. He tries to get her to talk to him, but she often pushes him away. Not out of annoyance, but out of fear that she'll have to revisit her harrowing past.

Mason's good friends with Marcus, a quiet teenager who had been a victim of domestic abuse. Marcus will turn eighteen soon, and he has to leave the facility, but he doesn't want to. In an exceptional sequence, both Marcus and Mason rap a song in which Marcus speaks his mind to a silent Mason. Mason doesn't know what to say. Neither do we. We can only watch.

The arrival of a new girl, Jayden, changes a lot of things. Grace sees a younger version of herself in the dotty-mouth newcomer, and she's cautious. She wants to articulate her feelings to Jayden, who prefers to be alone, doodling. She doesn't take any shit from anyone, not even the dainty Grace, who wants to help her because she's lived through what the waspish Jayden's living through right now.

Cretton handles the whole relationship delicately. Apart from providing sporadic comic reliefs, Jayden's character also provides a useful insight into the mindset of a neglected teen wanting to belong. Her inclination to claw herself to channel her inner rage is intelligible, and Cretton has observed it well. That's the kind of movie this is. It charms and ruffles you with its candid observations.

I've never really had a thing for teenage movies, you know. Yes, I have watched quite a few of them, but in most of them, I've observed that we're being fed a fantasy world. The men, too masculine, and the girls, too girly. There isn't even a shred of veracity in these mumbo-jumbo kiddie flicks. But some of them have stood out because they were different. I loved Jason Reitman's Juno because it gave me a teenage protagonist who, apart from being unbelievably likable, wasn't scared to talk about her boyfriends in front of her cool father. Or John Hughes' Ferris Bueller's Day Off, where I had to agree that kicking the Dean's butt is sometimes fun. Or The Breakfast Club, my favorite teen movie, in which we find out that the nerds and the thugs can indeed be good friends at the end of the day. It only requires a tiffin box.

But, you know, in all these films, the writer and director take liberties in knowing that it's a film after all. That's why these characters don't deal with situations pragmatically. And we enjoy watching what they do, but in some hidden nook of your mind, you'll say, "That's never going to happen in real life. That's just sad."

Alright, if you don't say that, you're lying. I say that.

The thing is, whatever happens in Short Term 12, is real life for you. It's pragmatic, familiar and relatable. You won't doubt the authenticity of the world Cretton creates for even a split second, because he's been there. Based on his real-life experiences, Cretton aptly creates a palpable world that's way too real. So real, in fact, that it's overwhelming. And to get lost in it is a thing of pure joy.

The film vastly benefits from a near-perfect script made better by fluid direction and fantastically naturalistic performances. Cretton's script is witty and sympathetic, jumping from laugh-out-loud funny to melancholic so neatly that you'll be surprised it's the work of a debutant. It's a nicely textured piece of writing that's meticulous and profound. His direction is sincere, impelling us to mull over his characters and their problems, and urging us to try and figure out what we would've done if we were in their place. And that's something rare, a film that not only involves us as an audience, but also involves us as human beings.

The casting works brilliantly. Young Brie Larson, whom you might remember as Jonah Hill's cranky girlfriend in 21 Jump Street, is a major revelation. The emotional detail in her performance is exceptional for a relatively unseasoned actress. And she has that strong screen presence that young actresses generally do not have so early in their careers. She's sweet, tough, fiery and understanding. And she makes Grace a character I'll remember for a long, long time.

This is the first time I'm seeing John Gallagher, Jr. in action. I don't watch a lot of soap operas, so I have no idea how these younger actors fare there. Gallagher shines in a role that looks so easy to pull off but is actually pretty hard. Mason is as conflicted as Grace, and while she acts her emotions out rather than talk about them, he does the exact opposite. It's a difficult character to write and play, and Gallagher does well, really well.

The rest of the cast doesn't let us down. It's a solid acting ensemble that shows us that good films need good actors, not stars who think they can improve on a good script. It's a lesson well learnt, you know.

Short Term 12 was my favorite English-language film of last year, a film made at a measly budget of less than a million and yet managed to shame many of the biggies I saw. It's passionate filmmaking you don't get to watch very often, and a spirited wake-up call for the revival of independent cinema. A film that is so quiet, entirely devoid of violence and shticks, theatrics and boredom. A film that needs to be watched and cherished. A monumental achievement in itself.

You may find me droning on and on, and boring the hell out of you. And it's totally cool with me if you think I'm lackluster, but for Christ's sake, do not miss this movie.

In a year of discoveries, I think we may have found the biggest one. Remarkable.

Review: Paul Greengrass' "Captain Phillips" is a marvelous film.

I became a fan of Paul Greengrass in the spring of '09 when I watched his harrowing depiction of the last hours of Airlines Flight United 93, one of the flights hijacked in the 9/11 terrorist plot, which crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania when the passengers stirred up a surprising rebellion in the airborne flight. I had sworn a secret oath to myself back then that I'll watch every single movie Greengrass ever makes, because it had rocked my world and given me the creeps that had me staying up all night. For days and days, I was scared stiff by the sounds of screaming and images of hands reaching for the yoke. I went on to rank United 93 as my favorite film of the '00's.

The funny thing is, the movie was good until the last thirty minutes kicked in. And then, I was made to chew my own words that had initially doubted its prowess. I wrote a small treatise on the film, as a tribute, you know, and I'll add an extract from it. To quote myself :

"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."

That was the first thing that made United 93 stand out. In the movies we get to see, the last thirty minutes are a real bummer. Some lazy filmmaking bogs down the whole film, as if the director doesn't care enough how it finishes as long as he's dolled up the rest of the film. It's a slow traipse to the end, after which you're left, disillusioned, because you know the film has squandered its potential. And how the words 'could have been so much more' aggravate!

See, Greengrass is a filmmaker who knows the importance of those thirty minutes. His style of filmmaking is perceptible. He builds his plot tenaciously, layers it thickly with emotion and dramatic tension and lets all hell break loose in the end. Scrap off the top and you'll find a textured plot underneath, neatly done and ready to be utilized for the knockout punch. Captain Phillips is no different.

Being an ardent admirer of United 93, you might have already guessed how excited I was for yet another hijack-drama from Greengrass. I was positively stoked. But, you know, the problem was that the movie did not drizzle me with its magic right away. There's a long build-up involved to get the film going, give it its wheels, which details diligently how Captain Richard Phillips treats its crew. He's methodical, unerring and flinty. His crew envies and scorns him, but never doubts him. It's a well-etched character but it did not require the lengthy prologue.

And then, there's someone else who admires Phillips. Abduwali Muse, a young Somali pirate, winds up a crew of his own and strays into the Somali Basin to carry out a hijack. He works for a boss, who needs money, and Muse gets his hands dirty. He's determined, and even when it's a question of life or death, he stays put on his principles. He hijacks Phillips' ship after repeated attempts, and belittles Phillips' offer of thirty grand and a ship back to Somalia. I'm not a beggar, he tells Phillips, and holding the captain hostage, demands a shocking ten million. You've got to admire the courage of the young lad. He's not dangerous, he's even likable to some degree but he's like a ticking bomb that could go off any second. And go off it does.

For more than an hour, we see Phillips' attempts to convince the pirates to end everything peacefully, and to let everybody live in exchange for the thirty grand. The pacing is languid, but the film stays consistently engaging. Maybe the unpredictability of its guileful antagonist helps in keeping the tension palpable. Muse is diffident in his actions, he often turns to Phillips' advice when the Navy SEALS circle the ship, much to his comrades' chagrin.

Greengrass directs with equanimity, the air of a man who knows what he has and what he can do with what he has. He takes his time to set the tone of the film, establish his characters so well that we begin to understand them. We can predict their actions, their words, their thoughts. It's not a slip-up, that's genuinely great filmmaking. I could almost feel the dearth of oxygen when the film entered the thriller mode. Greengrass makes his characters tangible, keeps the plot rife with violent tension. And when the characters splutter dialogues, they vent some of the tension out with them. It's the kind of movie where the dialogues make a difference because they allow you a quick peek into the minds of the characters we have come to know. Shrewd.

But in the film's final thirty minutes, your breathing will grow increasingly ragged. Because knowing Greengrass and knowing what he can achieve with his films' denouements, I stopped trying to predict what's about to unfold. Well, the film was entirely predictable, seeing that it has been adapted from Captain Richard Phillips' autobiography, so it's not a give-away that we know how it'll end, is it? But how it gets there is something that made me stand up and applaud. One of the most unapologetically exciting action sequences I've seen in the recent cluster of films, the final showdown is nothing short of riveting. Skillfully executed, well crafted, acted and scored to perfection, the final moments live up to the kind of film Captain Phillips promised it would be.

It's easy to find fantastic performances from each and every member of the cast in a Paul Greengrass film. And it's not a surprise that Greengrass manages to coax Hanks to give his best performance in years. I've been trying to find a word that effectively describes Hanks in Captain Phillips but every single adjective downplays his performance. I'll settle with brilliant but it's not even close, you know. Barkhad Abdi, a young newbie who plays Abdawali Muse, is equally captivating. Mr. Abdi, I'm your fan already.

The rest of the cast are efficacious in keeping a real sense of urgency at all times, ably backed by a tightly-wound, nifty script from Billy Ray, who relies heavily on words to keep the pace as brisk as possible.

Captain Phillips is a marvelous film that definitely ranks as one of the year's finest. A bit indulgent in places and a tad slow for a thriller, but technically sound and terrifically shot by virtuoso cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, it's a vitriolic drama that smothers you with its power but, in its final moments, leaves you moved. Keep a oxygen tank handy.

Review: Abhishek Chaubey's "Dedh Ishqiya" is delightfully deft.

In an early scene in Dedh Ishqiya, a wily gangster asks his crony if he has ever heard of Batman. The Batman analogy in question is the reason why he spares his blood relative of getting killed, or worse, getting buried alive. He goes on to state phlegmatically that there is no Batman without the Joker. Yes, siree, we too are of a similar opinion, but his is more rational, see? And his smugness is something you ought to bask in.

And from that winsome opening sequence, the baroque plot that unfolds is something only a writer of Vishal Bharadwaj's stature can pull off. Chaubey's second crack at direction is endlessly surprising, explosively funny and, like those numerous poets who iterate their beautiful lines of Urdu poetry, is handled with careful poise. 

It's a canny world that Bharadwaj and Chaubey fashion, where people win people over words and a pleasantry goes a long way. The same kind of wonderfully atmospheric world thwarted my expectations in last year's snafu Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola. But not this time, not this time. Oh yeah, a fun fact I was dying to joke about : the C-word is being subtitled as snafu, believe that? And the film does do its bit to kill the lovely repartee by using those snobby subtitles. I couldn't believe the goddamn impudence of the coot who ordered them to be blemish the waggish banter. Anyway, those who have an ear for poetry should better see over them. You'll love to hear the mellifluous words, I can guarantee as much. After all, it's Bharadwaj, who is a magician with a pen in hand.

We had met our guides around the ominous badlands of North India, the dream team who bicker, steal, quote and quip in 2010's Ishqiya. Uncle Khalu and nephew Babban who had taken periodic cues from Romeo and fallen head over heels in love and lust with a femme fatale in the predecessor, are blessed to have two different women to fall in love with this time. Khalu loses it to an old flame, the reigning queen of Mahmoudabad, Para Begum, while Babban is besotted with her ancillary, Muniya. But there's a catch - the widowed Begum will choose a groom for her through an annual poetry competition, where Urdu maestros, armed with lines and lines of glorious poetry, compete against each other for the throne. Too fusty for you? Yeah, yeah. I thought as much. 

For a while back there, I could almost see the struggle put in to keep Dedh Ishqiya from being a period piece. True, these situations, these characters, these words would've melded rather well in a cultured epoch of the twentieth century. I mean, you don't get to see nawabs and begums saluting each other, engaging into an occasional wordplay and inviting shyness by cracking ribald lines now, do you? And I fervently wished Dedh Ishqiya were a period piece, because it would've been so much easier to invest into it. I can't put my soul into a movie I know is not what it seems. I pride and despise myself for that. And with this film, I lean a mite towards the former. Gosh, how I would've loved this movie only if the dates were changed! And the talk about iPhones and other modernistic stuff flagrantly snapped me out of its quixotic world. Jeez!

Baring that one minor niggle, the film is otherwise pitch-perfect. The writing is chiefly Urdu, and the playful chinwags are worth wolf-whistling about. The acerbic humor is cleverly utilized, and the pulp of it is given to the film's most vivacious character, Jaan Mohammed, the antagonist and one of the contenders for the throne. In a riotous sequence, a Mexican standoff lasts all night and is broken only when the sound of a posse of students singing for peace is heard. There are moments like these that win you over, and where you should give in gladly. You won't have a say in it, you know. They will sway you.

The performances are uniformly fantastic. Arshad Warsi and Naseeruddin Shah are sublime, Warsi giving the best performance of his young career. Really, here is an actor who needs to choose scripts assiduously, because half of the films he does do not bring out the acting chops a film like this does. Shah, an old-timer, is enigmatic and earnest, and this is the most fun I've seen him having in a long time. Madhuri Dixit-Nene still has that commanding screen presence she was famed for having. Huma Qureshi, who aptly plays her sidekick, Muniya, also plays the stereotype she always plays. A change of role now, please? 

But the real deal is Vijay Raaz, the scraggy marvel who is brilliant as the rather likable antagonist. Raaz has always been the sly scene-stealer in the movies he does, be it Delhi Belly or Monsoon Wedding, and he proves yet again why he's one of the most underrated actors in the industry who is shamelessly belittled. I sure hope this film would mean we would get to see him more often now.

I can't say if Dedh Ishqiya is an improvement or not, comparing it with its predecessor would mean denigrating both films, but it is better crafted and written. But I sorely missed the dark, mature undertone of Ishqiya, which was far more ambitious in its plotting. And yet, Dedh Ishqiya feels as if this is the kind of movie you were aching to see all this while. I sure as hell was.

Gorgeously shot against the backdrop of Uttar Pradesh's scenic landscapes, dotingly directed and flawlessly plotted, this is a film clearly in love with its language and characters. And it is this passion that makes you enjoy it more than you thought you would. 

Review: Why Hansal Mehta's "Shahid" took my breath away.

A few terse words, pleasantries and then, the sound of a livid gunshot punctuates the arid air. 

That's how you are introduced to Hansal Mehta's Shahid, a spectacularly gripping biopic that susses out why that gun went off in the tiny office of the lawyer in the Kurla suburb of Mumbai on a cold February night in 2010. Shahid Azmi, thirty-two at the time of his death, was gunned down in cold-blood in retaliation for him defending some of those accused in terrorist activities. Because of my perpetual love for newspapers, I vaguely remember having read numerous articles in the papers regarding his death. A controversial figure who was a subject of a number of caustic debates, I didn't find it surprising when Mehta wanted to make a film on his life.

What surprised me though was how vitriolic he made it. Mehta goes on a gleeful offensive against the general belief of how a film should be made in the Hindi film industry. The film opens with a horrific recollection of the communal riots that plagued the streets of Mumbai, then Bombay, in 1993. Azmi, just fourteen then, witnessed murder when he ventured out on the streets to investigate the source of the screaming. Enraged, disillusioned and desolate, he joined the terrorist resistance but ran away from the camp when he witnessed the beheading of a man. Returning back to his unsuspecting family, he was picked up on charges of suspicion of terrorist activities by the police, tortured and flung into jail. Diddled out of a normal life, he sought to complete his education whilst serving out his sentence.

Azmi studied law while languishing in Tihar Jail for seven years. Once out, he pledged to help people like him, who were withering in jail because they could not prove their innocence. 

I know, I make it sound pretty jejune, because a movie like this must be watched, not read about. It dejected me that a film like this had only a few takers, not to forget that it made the long, winding path to the theaters three years after it was completed. But it was well worth the wait. It's the sort of film that piles you with hope and compassion without even aiming for it. The only tribute we can pay a valorous film is to watch it and learn from it. That's precisely what I did with Shahid.

You know, Mumbai's grit and grime isn't easy to put on celluloid. You need to have the coarseness of Anurag Kashyap's masterful Black Friday, you have to make it look bleak, hopeful and redeeming. Filmmakers get it wrong most of the time, take it from a guy who's lived his whole life here. It isn't all about college kids driving chic cars, sitting on a pavement overlooking the sea or shopping in opulent malls. That's the picture the Hindi film industry feeds you. Mehta, thankfully, knows that too. 

His version of the city is a meld of people and noise, all remarkably detailed right down to the way they talk. The Bombay slang is unerring, with the characters conversing in expletives even while praising each other. In one magical scene, we see the character of Azmi cooling off with a quick drink of lemonade before his train arrives. That's the city I grew up in, and it makes me blissful to see the city peopled with characters I know and not some caricatures that have been dreamt up by someone from fluffy romance movies.

Shot on a paltry budget, which is a tenth of what it took to make The Lunchbox, the best film of last year, Mehta's film is indisputably richer than that. And the sort of passion that went into making it makes it swanky, a deep love for craft and detail. Like Azmi who turned a blind eye to money, Mehta crucially chooses to tell a story without making it a lavish extravaganza. Whatever he knows about the art of filmmaking, he puts into it, catches the spunk and vigor of a young man driven by a cause and how the circumstances change him. It's a fearless escapade that you seldom get to watch, and Mehta makes no mistake. He doesn't cower, even during a disturbing torture scene, he makes you watch as the victim gets pummeled and finagled to sign his own doom. 

There is a warning put in by the makers which states that the facts may have been twisted for dramatic effect but you know that the warning is as useless as a sweater on a wintery morning in Delhi. The film would not have seen a release without that little message, that was my gut feeling. I can't really say how much of it is fact and how much is fiction, but I suspect a lot of it is indeed factual.

Raj Kumar is on some sort of mission, I think. After proving his salt as an actor in Love, Sex Aur Dhokha, Gangs Of Wasseypur II, Talaash and Kai Po Che!, he delivers a soulful performance that is perfectly nuanced. His Shahid is a man of suppressed anger, enamored by his obsession with justice. Keep an eye out for a wonderfully executed sequence, where he questions his own boss, played by Tigmanshu Dhulia in an effective cameo, as to why he is defending a overtly guilty client. Raj Kumar is outstanding in the role, going from angry to desperate to happy without missing a beat. And when he smiles, you smile. That's how good he is.

The rest of the cast is terrific. I think it's safe to say that Shahid is the second best-acted film of last year, after The Lunchbox which was an obvious choice. Baljinder Kaur as his mother and Mohammed Zeeshan Ayub as his overbearing older brother are first-rate, Ayub proving that Raanjhaana and No One Killed Jessica weren't flukes. Give this man more films, please. Vipin Sharma and Shalini Vatsa as the two prosecutors are marvelous, as is Prabhleen Sandhu, a newbie who plays his wife. Confident and commanding your attention, it's a wonderful, wonderful debut from her.

Shahid was one of the very best films I had seen last year, and one that shouldn't be ignored. Well-crafted, well-acted and neatly written, it's a brave little film that deserves to be lauded. This is how films should be made.

Review: Martin Scorsese's "The Wolf Of Wall Street" is a firecracker of a film that explodes slowly.

Wake up, you merry people of the world, you! Wake up and rejoice. The Goodfellas of our time has arrived, in all its vainglory. And it's the kind of film your mother warned you about.

Oh, Mr. Scorsese, where have you been all this while? Where was this sneaky potshot at the pop-culture of the '90s like you promised with Casino and Goodfellas for so long? Never mind, sir, never mind. 

As always, it's a pleasure to witness a brilliant filmmaker spin out of control and crank out a transgressive piece of cinema so exhausting that you know that you now have a new milestone movie to scale. And before I even completed my viewing of The Wolf Of Wall Street, I knew I'm going to have to come back to it soon enough. Because there is so much going on, so much you have to watch, assess and enjoy that a single viewing can't do justice to it.  It's ridiculously dynamite, like Scorsese, aged seventy-one, mind you, wanted to live out his wildest dreams on screen. They animate like arresting fireworks in the sky, try tearing your eyes away, pal. 

Crass, it's not. For the past one month or so, ever since a few lucky clods got their tickets to paid previews, I've been hearing that Scorsese's new film was excessively vulgar. They walk out, shooting mouths and pointing fingers at the master filmmaker like he's done something taboo. Yes, I'm here to affirm that The Wolf Of Wall Street is indeed shockingly vulgar and darkly funny, so much so that it makes Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat Sagdiyev seem like a saint. But, hey, we aren't forgetting what we are watching, are we? The material that served as the film's inspiration is Jordan Belfort's own memoir about his doings as a stockbroker in the good ol' 1990s. This is just a wily adaptation of the book. What's the big deal, fellas? It's not like he's preaching the kind of lifestyle that Belfort led, he's just studying it. Like we are.

I brought in the weekend before last by reading the final draft of the script I found on some website. It gave me an equivocal idea about what I was in for, with all that witty dialogue peppered with tumultuous sex, nudity and drugs, and that cocky little git that DiCaprio played magnificently was written so well that it awed me. Belfort is an obnoxious man, a sickening voyeur to hoot, to hang out with, to talk with, a conceited bighead who did something shamelessly nefarious like making millions of dollars through large-scale securities fraud and blowing it all up to satiate his drug-addiction. And yet, and yet, he's complete fun. He's reckless, he's stupid and he's funny. I haven't met anyone quite like him, certainly not in the recent spew of films and DiCaprio has never been more ebullient. He's Calvin Candie, only amped-up to several more degrees. And he comes with an swagger to match Scorsese's.

Probably the best thing about The Wolf Of Wall Street is that it doesn't preach. You don't get to hear sermons about what's right and what's wrong, but you're watching something that tells you it's bad. Belfort's drug-fueled antics first amuse you, then disgust you. You're left to figure it out yourself, nobody tells you that. That's Scorsese's genius. He takes a look at the crimes of Wall Street in the '90s through the villain's POV but while you're having a blast like him, you're also shocked by his actions. Like him.

While flipping through Terence Winter's beautifully-written script, one scene stayed with me for a long time after I had finished it. That's a lunch scene between Belfort and Mark Hanna, his boss played by a spectacularly scrupulous Matthew McConaughey, who's goading his avaricious appetite. He slips a cheeky $100 note to the waiter and instructs him to get him drinks every five minutes till he passes out. He teaches Belfort how to make it big by plummeting stocks while high on alcohol and drugs, a character so different from the one he played in Mud. McConaughey deserves an Oscar nomination for this two-bit role, the ten best minutes of the movie by miles, I think. Belfort walks and talks like no one I've met, and when Hanna's company gets wrecked, he talks a geeky Donnie Azoff into joining him. Azoff is impressed by Belfort driving a Jaguar, scoffs when Belfort tells him about the money stockbrokers make and is incredulous when Belfort pops up a check to prove it. And from then on, the ride's one hell of an explosion.

I've never been a fan of films based on Wall Street, I'll tell you straight out. Yeah, I really liked what Oliver Stone did with it, or what J. C. Chandor did in Margin Call with those intelligent colloquies about the global economic crisis and whatnot. I've never really understood the stock game, those are spiteful, wishy-washy things that don't get to me at all. I don't understand what the hell were these guys talking about, all those damn schemes they sold and screamed on the phone while doing drugs at the same time, but I understood what Scorsese and Winter wanted me to understand - they were making a lot of money and none of it was licit. Like Belfort's character sneers bumptiously at one point, none of the audience was expected to understand any of it. It wasn't about how they did it, it was about why they did it. Alright, fair enough.

For three hours, the kind of gross-out depravation that unfolded on the screen sickened me. I didn't find it funny at all, not when I'm watching an abhorrent man scourge and swindle a man into financing his junkets. Or a woman getting manhandled in a drug-induced haze. It wasn't meant to be funny, it was meant to be scary. Point duly noted? You can't wag your damn finger at the film and inculpate it for glorifying drugs and money. Or being sexist. The point is, if this kind of a lifestyle amazes you, seduces you, you're greedy. You're sexist. You're halfwitted. The movie is not.

If The Wolf Of Wall Street is an example of something, it's why Leonardo DiCaprio warrants an Oscar the Academy has owed him for over a decade. He's terrifically wild, perilously peppy and delivers his line, one after one, to comic perfection. In one scene later on in the film, he tries to make his way home from a club, dangerously stoned and delirious, gets there, watches Popeye eating a can of spinach and overdoses on drugs again to save a choking Azoff. It's pretty damn spooky, and it's a definite call to the Academy why he is a definite frontrunner for the gold this year.

The casting, as always in a Scorsese film, is flawless. Jonah Hill is fantastic, as are Rob Reiner and Kyle Chandler, who plays what he has been playing for the past two years. Reiner's aptly cast, much to my surprise, and he does well. Really well. Margot Robbie, as Belfort's wife, is impressive. She's got the looks and she's got the confidence. Good job handling the quivering pressure that came with the role. Jean Dujardin, who was sensational in The Artist, doesn't have much to do here but whatever little he has, he does alright. 

The Wolf Of Wall Street is picky - and we ought to owe it to cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto's magical camera that captures the rousing drama - and I believe it's still way ahead of its time. In the generations to come, this would be the one movie Scorsese would be remembered for, a riveting piece of cinema from the master filmmaker. Scorsese's cinema has never been more alive and it's heartening to see the filmmaker indulging into this kind of exuberance. You won't believe a seventy-one year old has made this kind of a film, it's more like a twenty year-old made it. Dazzling.