Review: Amit V Masurkar’s “Newton” is that rare satire that gets it right.

[May contain spoilers, many of them.]

The most telling line, in a movie full of telling lines and telling images, comes about twenty minutes into Amit V Masurkar’s Newton. At four in the morning, amidst pitch darkness, a team of armymen and government officials prepare for an eight-kilometer trek to a school where an election will be held. Bulletproof vests are slipped into, guns are kept at ready. (The CPRF officer, Aatma Singh, cannot emphasize enough on how ‘dangerous’ the area is; at one point, he makes the group a most unusual offer: that his men will brave the forests and go to the villages to get votes from eligible voters instead of the whole team doing it in a more democratic way.)

We see a woman walking up to them. She is a local, we find out; there to ensure that no city-educated, Hindi-speaking (the local language is Gondi), gun-cradling individual can mislead the locals into voting or, more likely, not voting. Her name is Malko. Aatma Singh is at once vigilant. He asks her for identification, which she has, but he asks her to return. Newton’s, the protagonist, way of introduction is friendlier; he smiles and welcomes her with a traditional namaste. Aatma Singh is dour. He accepts Newton’s request of allowing her to come along (though he clearly does not seem to be too happy about it) and orders his men to give her a bulletproof vest, too. Only she does not want it. ‘I am a local,’ says Malko. ‘I will be in greater danger if I wear one.’

It’s a marvelous line. It is that moment, one of the many in this film, where optimism and skepticism clash and the results are for everyone to see. Her understanding of this region has been conditioned by its political turmoil and years of violence, so she knows exactly how someone will react upon seeing her wearing one of those ‘government’ vests. She feels safer without it.

The other side of the same coin is Aatma Singh. He, too, has been conditioned to expect the worst. There’s a hint of distrust in the way he looks at her and speaks to her. But it’s not his fault. He’s passionate about his country and his boys; he wishes for a fatter budget so that the government can buy better weapons for them.

In the middle is Newton. An idealist and do-gooder through and through, Newton’s understanding of the world lies in the pages of his copy of the election manual. Both the woman and CPRF officer, inform him on more than one occasion that he doesn’t understand this region; while his intentions may be noble and his sincerity hard to rival, he’s far removed from the world they are accustomed to. His determination is childlike because he doesn’t understand, or maybe because he’s ignoring the hard truths. The film is, in a way, Newton’s introduction to his own country, a country he wants to protect and serve but one that won’t let him.

The Maoists have asked for a complete boycott of the elections. There is a looming threat of an attack. Every crack of a branch, every rustle of leaves is a cause for alarm. Newton, accompanied by two colleagues and Malko, and the CPRF officer and his team, has to conduct a fair election. The total number of eligible voters is seventy-six. Most of them are illiterate and unfamiliar with the voting process, partly because nobody really cared about their votes till now and partly because they never really cared.

But Newton wants to change that. He wants them to vote of their own accord. And not just that: he wants them to vote for the candidate they want to see as their leader. Without oppression or threats, like it should happen in a proper democracy. It’s far from simple. When he explains to them how an electronic voting machine works and rattles off the list of names of the candidates, Malko helpfully steps in to illuminate him about how things are. These people have never heard of these names before. They do not know the parties they represent. Or the promises they have made. How could they possibly know whom to vote for? When they push a man from their group forward saying he is their politician and leader, Newton is more bemused than amused. That’s not how a democracy functions. But again, have they ever been part of a democracy?

And therein lies the beauty of Newton. It asks these questions which, at a time when political discourse has been reduced to babel, qualify as brave. The approach isn't accusatory but shrewd; it's almost miraculous how the makers get away with it. Masurkar and his co-screenwriter Mayank Tewari aren’t really interested in exploring Newton’s disillusionment with the system. Newton isn’t readily made a hero of nor is Aatma Singh made a villain; they are both right in their own ways, and we get their agitation. Both have flawed ideologies. Both have been caught in the crossfire between the government and communists. And both have now found themselves in the same boat.

The film does seem to pit them against each other too often, given how Aatma Singh always seems to patronize locals, which Newton disapproves of. But this film isn’t about who wins between the two of them; they are simply cogs in a much larger machine. It’s about a bigger war being fought in the background, which we never see, and how innocent civilians are inevitably sucked into it. It’s a film that concerns itself less with the big problems and more with the consequences they have.

Newton works, as it should, due to its remarkable writing. With its roots firmly in the satirical territory, it allows us the luxury to laugh at certain things that one would only laugh at in a satire. But beneath the humor there is truth, stinging and uncomfortable, making us squirm. There is poignancy. In a particularly vivid scene, the villagers are grabbed from their homes and herded to the polling booth (the scene wisely crosscuts between that and a chicken getting caught and killed) because a foreign journalist wishes to get a piece of the election pie on tape. The façade is captured on camera and peddled as ‘democracy’ and ‘development’. The metaphor of the chicken couldn’t be more obvious, but it works.

Newton falters a little in the film’s third act when our protagonist, in a desperate bid to do the right thing, does something totally outrageous. It’s handled lightheartedly, making Newton come off as a Gandhian hero more than anything, but sometimes subtlety cannot be the answer. Something less theatrical would have worked beautifully here. Still, it is hardly a blot on an otherwise darn impressive film. The country moves on, as do our characters, in the same flimsy, flawed way it always has. But I could not resist feeling that the characters belong elsewhere. Maybe if Newton and Aatma Singh would have put their determination to use in better circumstances, we would have been better off.

(Not For Reproduction)

Review: Damien Chazelle’s “La La Land” is an early jewel in his filmography.

[Might contain spoilers, many of them.]

Boy meets girl. They are first a little aloof, but then keep bumping into each other. They are both struggling in their respective careers, and are stuck in jobs they do not like. They dream of bigger, better things. They fall in love. They support each other. And then comes that moment where they must decide whether they want to be together or pursue their dreams.

It’s a familiar template. And yet, in La La Land, the incredible new film by Damien Chazelle, each moment feels like a discovery. Not a ‘rediscovery’, mind you, but a discovery. It’s an old-fashioned romance told with so much imagination and style that none of it seems familiar. It makes us forget that we have seen bits of it before. Maybe in this film, maybe in that film – it doesn't matter. Here is a film that is going to take the familiar and turn it into something memorable. It promises as much in the first ten minutes. La La Land has us enthralled before it even gets going.

I am not big on musicals. It’s not a genre that appeals to me much. It’s difficult for me to find context when talking about them because I skipped watching them for the longest time. I have only seen a handful of them. And I cannot remember the last time a musical, from the very few I have seen, swept me off my feet the way La La Land did. (To think I grew up on Hindi films.) From its splashy opening number that plays out in a traffic jam in the middle of the day to its splendid final scene, it’s a film that made me want to sink my teeth into this genre. It’s an ode to a city, an era, and to those strugglers living out of suitcases who dare to dream. It captures the complexity of struggle and the beauty of wanting something so desperately that it drives you. It captures how love makes it seem, if only for a moment, that it's indeed possible to get anything that we want if we want it badly enough. Yes, it's nothing that we haven't seen before. Yet it is new, every moment of it.



It's in the aforementioned traffic jam that Sebastian and Mia cross paths for the first time, he a struggling musician and she a struggling actress. They lead dull, unsatisfying lives. They are always hunting for opportunities to break out of it, to pursue something that makes them happy. They fail, and get back to their old lives. But Chazelle does not allow them to become sorry characters; he focuses instead on the sparks that fly when they are alone. The world around them ceases to exist when they are allowed to do what they love. Mia’s audition for a role is impressive; she can obviously knock it out of the park. But she does not get it. Sebastian’s job demands that he play a few standard Christmas tunes on the piano at a restaurant where nobody is paying him any attention, and he gets fired for leaving a room breathless when he, feeling suddenly inspired, drifts away and plays what he wants. She’s there, passing by, and she is left astounded. Fates intertwine.

Although these two sequences end on a sad note – both don’t ‘make it’ – they leave us feeling hopeful for them. Our attention is drawn to their passion and determination. They’re likeable underdogs. They soon find each other. They see themselves in each other. When they take a walk after a party, they impulsively break into a joyful song-and-dance routine. Failure does not bog them down. They keep going. It’s a film that belongs as much to its director as it does to its actors, and the magic that we see is as much a creation of its director’s as it is its actors’.

This is extremely confident filmmaking. Chazelle, who last made Whiplash, is adept at creating lovely moments that stay with you. Some involve dance, the others drama. When Sebastian, a purist, joins a band and, in a concert that Mia attends, plays the kind of music he does not believe in, Mia gets disillusioned. He's not the same person she fell in love with. She slips out before the audience begins cheering wildly. This is Sebastian's first brush with real success. But she does not see herself in him anymore. It's a terrific moment, when his success becomes their failure.

It only helps that Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling play off each other wonderfully. They infuse Mia and Sebastian respectively with such charm and feeling that we can't help but fall for the pair. Chazelle recognises this, which is why he lets them command the film. Even when a certain scene demands that they work without music, they make the film soar. Surprisingly, though, their performances aren't extraordinary. It is not a film that requires them to be, really. All the elements work together without overpowering one another. Rare.

La La Land is one of the best films of the year and an early jewel in Chazelle's filmography. With three films to his credit now, this guy seems to be warming up. His little touches are exquisite. Sometimes, it's not a question of whether the story a filmmaker chooses to tell is new or not. It's about how it is told.

(Not For Reproduction)

Review: Jonas Cuaron’s “Desierto” is neither terrifying nor particularly thrilling.

[Contains spoilers, many of them.]

Jonas Cuaron’s Desierto, the Mexican submission for the Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film this year, should have worked. It does not.

There is no doubt that it will find a place in the current political climate. Immigration is a topic currently in the spotlight, thanks to a demagogue who has been opposing it vociferously. We read about incidents in the papers where immigrants have been attacked or threatened for no reason at all. So, a minimalist film about immigrants being hunted down like animals couldn’t have come at a better time. We think it will be urgent and exciting, not limp and ineffective. Certainly not limp and ineffective. But Desierto – well, you can guess.

It opens with a truck carrying illegal immigrants breaking down in the middle of a parched desert along the US-Mexican border, who then continue the journey on foot. On the other side of the desert, a drunken and clearly racist lunatic hunting rabbits notices them, and then, on a whim, decides to pick them off one by one. It’s not a random act of violence; he chases the ones who get away for two days without pausing for breath. For him, it’s a game where he has the advantage, a game in accordance with his beliefs. The unarmed immigrants have no option but to run, to hide, and to save themselves. But stranded in the hot son and in the middle of the seemingly endless expanse of a rocky desert, where could they run?

Like Gravity, Desierto makes it clear in its first ten minutes that it will be a straightforward, if simplistic, survival thriller. It was probably meant to be that way. If anything was different, like a villain with a conscience or maybe a bunch of immigrants who fight back, it would have compromised on its power to provoke. It wants to be provocative, so much so that there is no attempt to provide any background to any of the characters. They are markedly categorised into two groups: the unarmed and helpless are the good guys, and the armed inebriate is the bad guy. We just know that one of the good guys has a son somewhere. He's the good guy because he has a son, a family. The bad guy, well, has a dog, a savage one. He swigs from a bottle, laughs, and woohoo’s after massacring most of the group. Then he yells, “It’s my home!” in case we had any trouble figuring out just how evil he really is. So much for subtlety.

(Image source: www.screenrelish.com)

Like Gravity, Desierto makes it clear in its first ten minutes that it will be a straightforward, if simplistic, survival thriller. It was probably meant to be that way. If anything was different, like a villain with a conscience or maybe a bunch of immigrants who fight back, it would have compromised on its power to provoke. It wants to be provocative, so much so that there is no attempt to provide any background to any of the characters. They are markedly categorised into two groups: the unarmed and helpless are the good guys, and the armed inebriate is the bad guy. We just know that one of the good guys has a son somewhere. He's the good guy because he has a son, a family. The bad guy, well, has a dog, a savage one. He swigs from a bottle, laughs, and woohoo’s after massacring most of the group. Then he yells, “It’s my home!” in case we had any trouble figuring out just how evil he really is. So much for subtlety.

Desierto suffers from the same problems as Gravity, which Jonas co-wrote with his father, Alfonso Cuaron, but, notably, also has similar strengths. Our protagonists here, like the protagonist there, want to escape to safety. They need to improvise a way to get there with a lunatic and his loyal dog hot on their trail. We are filled with horror when the gun-toting bad guy attacks them for the first time, but that feeling doesn’t quite return even when the others are eliminated in gorier ways. Owing to a poor screenplay and inadequate character development, Cuaron turns a promising premise into a mostly predictable mess. It’s a slog where we feel nothing at all. We can’t be blamed, though; the characters in the film hardly show any emotion, whether empathy or fear, when their companions are killed. They remain unaffected, panicky. And if they can’t summon empathy, how can we?

Somewhere in the second half of the film, I lost all interest. It was too late to expect it to give me something more. The villain became unimaginably caricatural with his occasional murmuring of “Let's get them,” and even uttered a roar of anger at one point. (Oh, come on!) The last remaining immigrant – played by the ever-reliable Gael Garcia Bernal – tries to dodge him in the inevitable final chase, not fighting back even when his life is in mortal danger. It became frustrating. The most he does is utter a cry of helplessness to counter his hunter’s roar of anger. Such flatness overwhelmed me. The one-sided perspective managed to inspire some sympathy, but it made it less of a thriller. And that is a major flaw, even if the intentions behind it were noble.

Apart from stray moments of terror and wonderful work from cinematographer Damian Garcia, Desierto manages to remain mostly unimpressive. Some thrillers lack heart, others cleverness. This one lacks both. It's disappointing to see it being reduced to a rubble.

(Not For Reproduction)

Handpicks: The 10 Best Films Of 2015 -- Vol. I

Still plenty of films left to watch.

2015, for me, was a year of debutants. Some of the most promising efforts I saw had first-time helmers behind the camera, and I have mentioned as many as four in the list below. And then, there were some definite bummers, big and small. Hou Hsiao-Hsien's The Assassin was a gorgeous wuxia tale whose editing pattern was frustrating and rendered it inscrutable; Paolo Sorrentino's English-language debut Youth had both grandeur and flair, but was somewhat lacking; Matteo Garrone's Tale of Tales was riveting and imaginative for the most part, but flat and tedious in places. I don't know what to say about Jia Zhangke's Mountains May Depart. One can't classify it as a misfire, surely, but the uneven, ambitious picture made promises but didn't live up to them. But some niggles aside, these were films that offered more than what an average fare at the cinema usually does.

To the list, then. But first the honorable mentions, in no real order: Paul Thomas Anderson's Junun, Hou Hsiao-Hsien's The Assassin, David Zellner's Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter, Matthew Heineman's Cartel Land, Jia Zhangke's Mountains May Depart, Roy Andersson's A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence, Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy's The Tribe, Ronit Elkabetz and Shlomi Elkabetz's Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem, Veronica Franz's and Severin Fiala's Goodnight Mommy, Alex Garland's Ex Machina, Paolo Sorrentino's Youth and Matteo Garrone's Tale of Tales.

Of the films that I saw last year, my favorites are:

10. Amy (UK) and Sicario (US)

I couldn't choose between the two. While Asif Kapadia's Amy expertly culled and stitched together events and tidbits from her life to give us a three-dimensional portrait of her, so tangible that it felt like each one of us knew her personally, Denis Villeneuve's taut thriller that he describes -- and rightly so -- as a "dark poem" dealt directly in high-quality tension. The impeccable craftsmanship that went into packaging the two films made it impossible for me to take a call. And if the two films were indications of anything, it is that their respective directors can do no wrong.

9. The Lobster (Ireland/UK/Greece/France/Netherlands)

There is absolutely no doubt that Yorgos Lanthimos is able to handle black comedies, drier than usual as they are, better than his peers. In The Lobster he demonstrates this to great effect. It takes us back to his world where impassive cynics rule, people are sophisticated beasts and violence is acceptable and somewhat mundane when it is carried out with neither the drive nor deliberation with which it should be. But The Lobster has one major plus point: it has got heart and humor, which is most unlike Lanthimos for he rarely makes accessible films. That said, The Lobster is still an acquired taste. But with his most commercial outing yet, here is a master filmmaker who proves once again that he can handle a fatter budget and a broader story with the same finesse that he does his indies without compromising on his style.

8. Mustang (France/Turkey/Germany)

Deniz Gamze Erguven's fine first feature is an incredibly intimate and quietly haunting study of growing up in a conservative society. Bookended by two stirring sequences, both buffed to perfection, Mustang draws from Erguven's own childhood. She suffuses this tale with deep empathy, opting for a calmer approach to the story instead of grappling it bluntly. And that's a good thing, too. The result is a film undoubtedly more powerful as a drama than an angry social commentary. By the end, I was left to deal with a lump in my throat.

7. Güeros (Mexico)

Alonso Ruiz Palacios' debut throbs with the energy and creativity that could make it the best film of any given year. But here's the problem: it suffers from a special kind of disease that I call "Screw You, I'm Brash," a disease that has ailed many a filmmaker, especially debutants. Palacios doesn't concern himself with keeping his story taut, and one can't help but wonder whether it was deliberate. Güeros is meandering, supremely indulgent but consistently inventive and immersive. Political anger brewing in the backdrop of a story of three slackers out to find an aging rockstar whose album had given them something to live for shows a lot of promise from a debutant, and Palacios exhibits a knack for injecting life into every frame. What it did was it took me back nearly ten years ago when I watched Walter Salles' fantastic The Motorcycle Diaries for the first time, a film similarly trembling with youthful energy. Güeros is an excellent film by any standard, but the tragedy is, it could have secured a higher spot on this list but did not. And the answer to why not is the film itself.

6. Court (India)

Chaitanya Tamhane's debut was, for lack of a better word, surprising. It showed the conventional Indian movie-goer who is so used to seeing courts being a place for theatricality on-screen how insipid they really are, but that doesn't count as an achievement. The real achievement here is Tamhane's observational visual style that detached us from the characters emotionally, thereby allowing us time to soak in the tiny details. Court is not for everybody; alternatively frustrating and compelling, it encourages its viewers to ruminate on its characters and their lives instead of sniffing around for a plot. With the aesthetics of an European art house fare, Tamhane risked tricky waters to deliver a dryly humorous, keenly observed and challenging character study, and succeeded.

5. Spotlight (US)

Tom McCarthy's film, a sure-fire frontrunner at the Academy Awards in February, takes a delicate, important story and squeezes magic out of it. Never losing momentum or sight of probably thousands of significant details cramped in its vigorous two hours, Spotlight leaves one rapt, hanging on to each word spoken as the story unravels in grave whispers and phone calls. And we ascertain the breadth of the chilling story because McCarthy doesn't soil it with unnecessary melodrama but, much like his protagonists, tackles it with the urgency a story like this demands. And when it ends, one can't help but look up the entire case on the Internet if they aren't already watching the film again.

4. The Look Of Silence (Denmark/Finland/Indonesia/Norway/UK)

In 2011, Joshua Oppenheimer gave us a documentary on the Indonesian genocide that was unquestionably the most provocative of this generation with The Act of Killing. Bone-chilling, difficult to watch and sure to leave one dazed by the end, the documentary was one many wouldn't and didn't return to, me included. With The Look of Silence, the second part in the two-part documentary on the genocide, Oppenheimer delivers another gutting documentary on the extermination of many millions, this one less horrifying in comparison, less aggressive in its arguments but retains the potency of the first. And like The Act of Killing, he boldly turns us into hostages of our own imaginations. Masterful.

3. Killa (India)

There is one thing Avinash Arun's brilliant debut did for me, which is rare for a film at least in my opinion, to do so. No matter how many times I watch it, it always drowns me in my memories of a place I knew as a kid but have never known as an adult. It shows a place of the past that exists nowhere but in our memories and then makes us want to live in it. One could say that Killa plays the nostalgia card better than most movies released this year, and it is in how it engulfs you with its lush imagery and humble storytelling that makes it so remarkable a film.

2. Carol (US/UK)

One would have to purposefully scan Todd Haynes' new film many times over to find a fault with it. Carol, adapted from Patricia Highsmith's novel, The Price of Salt, is a rare specimen; there's nothing that should be any different. Haynes captures the blossoming romance between two women in cursory glances and unspoken stares with such sophistication that it hoists the film to another level altogether. Each composition is immaculate, each actor outdoes themselves. This is filmmaking of the highest order. Abdellatif Kechiche's poignant Blue Is The Warmest Colour broke new grounds in 2011. Carol is right up there giving it company.

1. Taxi (Iran)

Those who are acquainted with Jafar Panahi's fight against his artistic decay will surely acknowledge the devastating brilliance of his latest. Those who haven't, well, will find something to admire in this filmmaker's unwavering determination to keep going on a path choked with hurdles. Like 2011's This Is Not A Film and 2013's Closed Curtain, Taxi is more of an angry social commentary on the attempts to quash an artist's creative energy than a conventional feature film, but Panahi, with the restrictions imposed on his creativity, isn't painting on a small canvas anymore. This is an ambitious effort that skillfully captures the gravity of the problem that he faces while introducing us to the common faces in Tehran, where he is driving a taxi and picking up conversations with his passengers. And like his last two ventures, this one too underscores his frustration at his creativity being sealed off. In one particularly poignant scene, his niece wants to tell him what she has learnt about making "distributable" films. But he does not wish to listen beyond a couple of points. The moment's translation to the screen deserves not only our sympathies but also our outrage.

(Not For Reproduction)

Review: Damian Szifron's "Wild Tales" is a rollicking ride into lunacy.

After my initial viewing of Damian Szifron's Wild Tales two months ago, I was left -- scarily -- in a particularly malevolent mood. Having never taken a liking to anthology films, this was a charming surprise even for someone who prefers feature films to shorts. With six shorts, six perfectly dark, hilarious, impressively immoral and utterly deranged shorts, Szifron demonstrates his aptitude for handling atmosphere and suspense and tonal shifts. And with each viewing, Wild Tales becomes a deeper, more exhaustive examination of what happens when ordinary mortals are driven to the extremities of desperation. 

With the brand of black comedy that the very Irish McDonagh sibling duo, Martin and John Michael, have made their forte (with four films, namely In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths, The Guard and Calvary, between them), Szifron churns out six immaculately balanced and wildly inventive satirical short films with a common theme of vengeance. Bravely cynical about the future of Argentina, it portrays upright people trying to break free of tyranny and oppression by taking to violence as a way to vent their frustrations. There is no escape; this is gorge of pessimism and we are made to take the plunge. There is the inescapability of the symbolic spurt of brutal violence, but it is almost poetic in its impact. And, in a mad way, it adds to the film's persistent comical undertone.

Much has been discussed about volatile opening short film that sets the mood of the film, that makes the rest of the shorts look slightly pale in comparison. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if it gains a cult status, and I wouldn't mind if it does either. It is so ambitious, so deliciously savage that it's hard not to be a little breathless after it ends. And dazzled. Reproducing its flavor in the subsequent shorts, Szifron imbues his film with great verve that never dampens. Till the scathing last shot, till the last person snaps, the film remains feisty with a subtly seditious edge. Truly, a piece of cinema as polished, as smart and as assured as this is as scarce as a comet. 

The only problem -- as is the problem with many anthology films -- with Wild Tales is, not all shorts work as well. "The Rats" and "The Proposal" might be brief endeavors that would be terrific as independent shorts, but here they do not blend in as well owing to the patent lack of diabolical twists. With the other films bursting with revelations by the dozen, these two follow a disappointingly predictable trajectory. But to Szifron's credit, none of the ventures can be classified as bad or even mediocre. But, alas, the picture overall looks a shade distorted. 

Wild Tales is one of my favorite films of last year, and a film that ousted Sion Sono's brilliant Why Don't You Play In Hell? as the most fun I had had at the movies in a long, long time. Relish it in whichever way you see fit, but the universality and the tragedy of its message cannot be eluded.

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: 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.

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

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

Harvey Keitel in Mean Streets.

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

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

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

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

Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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?