Review : In Hany Abu-Assad's masterwork "Omar", sycophantic sniping takes a whole new meaning.

When was the last time a film started and ended with the livid sound of a gunshot? This one does. And the incongruity of this is that the guy who gets fired upon in the sunny beginning is the one who fires the one at the gloomy end. The ones who fire upon him first get fired upon ultimately, and I don't preach. See the analogy? Yeah, 'course you do. The reason I mention this nimble analogy is because this is where Omar eventually arrives. No, this is not the usual point A to point B film, but the plot goes places before it finally arrives at its stunning finale. All of this while leaving you breathless in its wake.

Oh, euphoria has never been more addictive.

Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad weaves a rattling, intricate and often deeply rooted story of friendship, love, loyalty and betrayal in the deafening sound of artillery. Omar, straight up, no sugar, is one of the best films of last year, a film that has a handful of ulterior ideas that are delicately divulged to keep you on your toes. And I like movies that do not let me settle in. There's always something happening, every moment is crucial to be watched and no time is permitted for you to mull over what's going on. Omar makes you its slave, dances you like a puppet on the snap of its fingers and you have to friggin' dance. Hey, I was gleefully doing it.

For someone like me, whose weekly griping about the lack of intelligent thrillers agitates a lot of people, Omar is a godsend. Look, I know squat about the Palestinian conflict, and what I do know is what I read in the newspapers, and yet I still managed to figure out the good guys and the bad guys, at least in this movie. And Abu-Assad serves up a patriot act that I'll not forget anytime soon.

It's not a film where you have to take sides, no. Which means that it's not an overtly patriotic film, though Abu-Assad doesn't let a moment pass without making his unsung patriotism and the plight of the Palestinians crystal clear. But it's a film about what happens when you do takes sides in a conflict. It's a different thing.

Among many other things, Omar reflects the madness and beauty of pubescence. A young freedom-fighter, Omar, scales the spray-painted separation wall to get to the other side and meet his girlfriend, Nadja, the sister of his childhood friend, Tarek, an agitator, and their friend, the idler, Amjad. After receiving revolutionary training in guns, the trio take it upon themselves to kill an Israeli soldier out of animosity. The gunning down of the soldier in cold-blood is promptly acted upon, and they're picked up, savagely tortured and kept in isolation. The usually quiet Omar is tricked into confessing, and given a choice : give them Tarek to incriminate, and he can walk away, clean. It's like Sophie's choice, to give up his childhood friend or be implicated for the gunshot he did not fire.

The minute Omar begins living two lives, you begin seeing things with a little clarity. For eons, we were shown repeatedly that solicitude can soften even the hardest of hearts, but not here, not this time. This is not a world where solicitude works, this is the real world. Omar doesn't beg or plead, he stands silently as he's given instructions, threatened and instructed. He doesn't even retaliate. He doesn't do what you think he'd do, doesn't say what you think he'd say.

This is a good thing, you know. Unpredictability is often a film-director's biggest strength. It's only that Abu-Assad makes a show of it.

More than once, Omar threatens to lapse into needless melodrama, but thankfully stays put. It even has a love-triangle to give it a bit of an emotional whirl, and it's handle gently, like a side-story should be. The tautness of the script is never imperiled. Damn, now I think of it, a lot about this film is rare in terms of quality.

So, yeah. If you want a film to compliment your intelligence and shame your imagination, Omar is your ticket to fantasy-land. You go and watch it, while I dig up this Abu-Assad guy's works.

Handpicks : Where I tell you which English-language movies I'm waiting for in 2014.

When the new weekend releases are irrevocably stodgy to even think about, my mind goes in a funny haze and starts thinking about the weekends I'm going to look forward to all year. And from those dreamy thoughts births a list such as this, a list of quixotic and bewitching beauty that peps me up when I look at it.

I'm here to tell you which films I am looking forward to this year. So, I talk, you listen, okay?

Since we've all agreed that 2013 was an unusually strong year for cinema of all kinds, the tantalizing roll-call for the 2014 talkies sure looks like a delectable meal to dig in. We had a few great films last year, beginning with the three films I'm dead sure will make the list of the defining films of this generation three decades after. You want to know which ones? Alright. Gravity, 12 Years A Slave and The Wolf Of Wall Street are my humble predictions. Haters of the last movie I named : I know you laughed. But I still think it'll make the list. Go on, laugh some more.

Before we begin, I have to say that I haven't named Interstellar or Transcendence in this list. Why? Because those are obvious. And I'm not here to feed you the obvious.

Alright, here I go :

• Boyhood 

dir. : Richard Linklater

Oh, give Linklater the Oscar, please! The brains and the bravura behind the Before trilogy pops back up with this intensely fascinating look at puberty. What makes it special, you ask? Linklater and actor Ethan Hawke began the project in early 2002, and shot it, little by little, over twelve years, allowing the actors to age and encapsulated their natural acting ability to narrate a story about a boy's relationship with his parents over the period. 

Linklater has long been one of the strongest voices in American cinema, doling out great independent films and occasionally flirting with the experimental side of cinema. And anyone who watches a lot of films would know how significant Linklater's contribution to American cinema is. He needs to be acknowledged. And - forgive the brief profanity here - this project is ambitious as fuck.

• Big Eyes 

dir. : Tim Burton

I admit, I enjoy Burton's films more than any other auteur's. Often dealing in the outlandish and the fantastical, Burton's command over the camera is indubitably masterful. Bringing visual beauty to his quirky films is his forte, and the cast, consisting of Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams, looks spiffy. A biographical drama based on the life of artist Walter Keane, known for his kitschy paintings, and the heated divorce with his wife, I doubt this'll be the Burton we always knew. This seems different. And Burton's excels in the different.

• Birdman

dir. : Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Now, this is very, very interesting, compadres. This seems surreal. Inarritu, the Inarritu, master of gloomy tragedies, is making a comedy? Did I hear that right? Well, what do I expect from this film? A facade, most probably. Believe you me, this'll be a lot darker than you'd expect. The plot sounds disappointingly hackneyed, but I think Inarritu has something up his sleeve here. He doesn't fiddle with cliches. I doubt he ever has. And when you have the excellent Michael Keaton playing the lead role, I expect something great. Mark my rant, this'll be one the year's strangest films. I look forward to it.

• Enemy

dir. : Denis Villeneuve

Villeneuve tore apart and took gleeful potshots at the human conscience in his pessimistic and riveting Prisoners last year, and he's up again early this year. Lucky bastards, us. Now, now. Villeneuve is relatively new in the hotshot arena, and I haven't seen his only other film, his debut that is, so I don't know how this'll fare. But seeing as he had made one of my favorite films of last year, how bad will this be? No, wait - how good will this be? I'm an optimistic klutz. And I'll point something out : the premise is wonderfully baffling. I dig those kind of films, you know.

• Foxcatcher

dir. : Bennett Miller

You don't know who Miller is, do you, you riffraff? I do, because I've seen and loved Capote. And I knew nada about baseball but still found myself cheering at the end of it, and I mean loud. Like his past two films, Miller has based his new one on a true event, delicately dissecting and exploring the bowels of human emotion, and the beauty of it. And though he spends a lot of time messing with your mind, he'll hit you in the heart. At least he did with Capote and Moneyball. I have no reason to suspect that he won't with this one.

• Gone Girl

dir. : David Fincher

Why? 'Cause it's David Fincher, that's why. How does he whip up an immaculate career in the arts? That's a seemingly impossible job, chums, and yet, there he is, adding weight and glory to his name, augmented by my newest addiction, House Of Cards. New filmmaking aficionado Ben Affleck joins him in the quest to adapt author Gillian Flynn's thriller novel, and knowing Fincher's polished skills when it comes to making thrillers, this'll make one hell of a movie.

• Inherent Vice

dir. : Paul Thomas Anderson

You don't need a reason to watch PTA's films. I mean, the guy's a walking, breathing reason for you. His films are unlike anything you'll ever see, like those artsy films Terence Malick loves to swamp us with. One of a kind odysseys, everyone calls them. I agree, albeit a bit grudgingly.
So, he's okayed Joaquin Pheonix again for this crime-drama about a private detectibe investigating a disappearance. Ah! If this is even remotely Altman-esque, like The Long Goodbye, we are sure to have a ball at the movies. Till then, I'll delve into his Punch-Drunk Love again. Some films get better with each viewing.

• Only Lovers Left Alive

dir. : Jim Jarmusch

For some obsessive suckers of independent cinema, like me, Jarmusch is a figure to revere. A connoisseur of cinema who mainly makes experimental films, there's no question that he's one of the most exciting filmmakers around. And if we're lucky, he'll be making films for many more years to come. This vampire romance - don't groan, you boor! - got the critics raving last year at its Cannes Film Festival premiere, and I can only wait breathlessly. Ugh, waiting is harder than life, I philosophize.

• Snowpiercer

dir. : Bong Joon-ho

Ah, Joon-ho. The Korean filmmaker got me hooked on his films after I saw Memories Of Murder and Mother. His deft blend of horror, comedy, crime and drama is something filmmakers can rarely pull off, but he does. Every single time. This ambitious sci-fi saga is impossibly intricate, but that comes with every film Joon-ho makes, doesn't it? I mean, sometimes you got to do the thinking for yourself. Looks like a typical sci-fi epic spray painted with The Matrix, we could guess what element of this will make it a Joon-ho film. Let's see.

• The Grand Budapest Hotel

dir. : Wes Anderson

Two words for you, amigo : Wes Anderson. What else, the first trailer of this film had me wondering if my imagination was really that puny in comparison to Anderson's. I envisaged myself standing in a queue on the first day when it hits the screens later this year. It received a positive response from the critics and the audience on the other side of the world. Some called it Anderson's best. It has the best cast I've seen in a movie in eons. The usually dour Ralph Fiennes is trying his hand at comedy. Oh, oh, this is too much! Could this be any more perfect?

Review : Vikas Bahl's "Queen" is impressively aberrant.

One of the pitfalls of being in the birth country of the Hindi film industry is that we are often fed a sturdy diet of satires pretending to be socially relevant films. That's the case with Gulaab Gang, a film which I gleefully put into my collection called Too Bad, Didn't Whistle! without even watching it. The collection consists of films in which the director had given the audience plenty of time to whistle and cheer, but the only sound that emanated from the theatre came from about a hundred people sticking out their tongues and blowing. 

But I'm not here to talk about Gulaab Gang. What, you think I'd go for a movie in which women beat wussies from Wasseypur black, blue and pink with sticks, nutsos? Oh, groan. 

No, instead, I'm here to talk about this little gem I witnessed today. In a clutter of Hindi films that tackle self-discovery as their primary subject, this one took the genre and put it up there, right where English Vinglish is. And believe me, this genre is abused flagrantly way too often, because the general idea of self-discovery in the Hindi film industry is finding out that you can become a fashion model after all. This niggling norm was smashed to pieces by Gauri Shinde's English Vinglish, a funny, moving story about a mother trying to learn English to impress her family. It's a film that left me grinning stupidly from ear to ear, and that's the only time I like to look stupid. And a film which brings out that in me is something special.

Queen, thankfully, chugs down that unfamiliar path. I took a ginormous swig of the soda next to me in relief when I learned that. Such promise in the first ten minutes is rare for a Hindi film. 

You know, I'll tell you something straight up. I was never a fan of Kangana Ranaut, never. I never watched a lot of her films, barring a few odd comme ci comme ca whits of her filmography. And I used to deplore her choices of films. Really, what choices can you expect from a woman whose ex-boyfriends' list reads Adhyayan Suman and Aditya Pancholi? But she was always a fine actress, you know. I won't dispute that.

Queen is Ranaut at her assiduous, charming, peppy best. Right from the opening sequence in which she curiously gazes at her aunts practicing dance steps to the final buoyant walk back home, her Rani doesn't miss a beat. It's a flawless performance which lights up the screen, scrupulously detailed and earnestly acted out. Now, that's called self-discovery, chums. Like the character, Ranaut may have just discovered her actor self. Whoo!

Interestingly enough, the facade here is that some truly comical moments conceal a revenge drama that Queen was rearing to become. A moralistic Delhi girl is dumped a day before her wedding by her flinty fiance, an anglophile who wears sunglasses in a coffee shop. Yeah, that bastardly. The agony the poor lassie feels knows no bounds. She starves herself while being locked up in a room, cries her eyes out and desperately searches for her phone whenever it makes some sound. And in that wretched state, she wants to scoot off to see Paris and Amsterdam. We do too. Gobsmacking!

The story here is spunkily minimalist, as is its treatment. But in the bare story, we find those tiny moments to revel in. Bahl's attention to detail is astonishing, as he carefully daubs the minutest of nuances to his story. Like the dumping sequence after which the finace dusts the henna bits off the table. Or the sequence in which our lady talks about her honeymoon plans in a worried whisper, or risk her elders to get the wind of them. The touches are snazzy if not crucial, and somewhere, I presume, Dibakar Banerjee, the detail maven of a lackadaisical industry, is feeling unusually antsy.

But, you know, it's a kick to learn that the script wasn't written by a travel agency eager to dip their hands into a tourist film. We don't get to see great visuals of the city as Bahl makes it about his protagonist, not about her travels. And about the mad clan she meets. Oho! The Lord Divine is good to us sometimes.

One of the film's most endearing scenes is Rani dancing to a Hindi song in a drunken stupor in a Paris nightclub. After getting an earful from her boyfriend for dancing at her nuptials, it's oddly hilarious and moving to watch her giving the Parisians a quick lesson in dancing the Indian way; lend your feet to the beats. Somewhere, it's a quiet celebration of a free spirit. Wasn't that what Bahl wanted to achieve? Well, he sure did. Only this is one of the film's minor achievements. Oh, la la!

So, you might be thinking how perfect I'm making the film sound. Well, it was, till the second half kicked in. Oh, no! Yes, yes, the curse of the second half has befallen many a film, buds. Not that the film has any galling melodrama to sew its weak pieces together, but what irked me was how it often sloppily resorted to the stereotypes in the post-interval span. So, you have the protagonist feeding golgappas to hungry people in Amsterdam, and they scarf it up so much that the other stall owners lose their thriving patrons. And what may have caused our nun to take such a drastic step, you may ask? Well, it's some sort of cooking competition she participates in there. Oho, mistakes happen. Tsk, golgappas of all dishes. And in all this, Bahl still finds time to show us her first kiss. Bejesus!

But the mishits are quick and relatively painless here. Phew!

I haven't seen Aisha, so I have no clue how Lisa Haydon fared in her nettlesome debut. But in a film of revelations, she is one of the major ones. Her performance is no match for Ranaut's, and yet she's fantastic. And gorgeous. Sigh.

I find it hard to digest the fact that Bahl, the crackerjack Bahl, was half the brains behind a film called Chillar Party. I haven't seen it, most probably because the name didn't sound even remotely appealing to me, but this is a strong second feature, cineastes. Though not consistently impressive, Queen is feisty, like its enchanting protagonist, and dawdles long enough to make a strong impression.

Here's a high-five. Now for those golgappas.