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: 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: 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.

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.

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: 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!

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?