Review: Vetrimaaran's "Visaranai" is a chilling work that deserves high praise.

A few years back, I watched a compelling Argentinian film on television, Israel Adrian Caetano's Chronicle of an Escape, which told the story of a bunch of youngsters who are kidnapped by the secret military police and chucked into a detention center outside the city where they are routinely tortured for 'names'. The names of more youngster who are suspected of being 'anti-government', or just simply names of other people. If they don't croak, they will be subjected to various forms of torture till they do.

It was easy to spot that Vetrimaaran's harrowing Visaranai, inspired from M. Chandrakumar's novel Lock Up, a true-life account of what he went through when he was jailed for two weeks, has a few parallels with Caetano's film. It opens with four Tamil migrant workers getting scooped up by the police one day for no real reason and taken to the station, and instead of being given answers, they are introduced to their newfound nightmare with a round of relentless, meaningless beating. Their cries go unheard. Their questions remain unanswered. When one of them tries to scamper, he is smacked across the face with a steel bucket. The resounding thunk is enough to send shivers down the spine. But the only difference between this film and Caetano's film -- which was also based on a true story -- is that the bad guys there had traces of goodness in them. And the good guys had hope.

In the first fifteen minutes, the mood is created with expertly built tension. A second round of carefully controlled bone-crunching beating follows. Then a third. Then a fourth. (The sound design is absolutely top-notch.) In between a round of whacking, they are untied and made to walk around the room just to prevent clots from forming in their legs. Their questions don't change. The cops want them to confess, but they are not given the details of the trumped-up charges they are being held for. They have no idea what they are supposed to have done. They are left to guess, which scares them even more. The punishments meted out to them become increasingly sadistic, almost playful, with the cops treating them like puppets. A ghastly kick in the face is an answer to an angry question. The dinginess of the station and the gloominess of their cramped cell signify the hopelessness of their situation.

Visaranai makes us cynical without ever resorting to tricks that filmmakers usually use to do so. We don't get out-and-out evil caricatures as the bad guys (the film does come close to creating one in one of its most brutish sequences), but quiet, mysterious ones. Strange as it may sound, their evilness has a justification. To them torture is just another way of life, a routine. A beating, though shocking, lasts only for a short period of time. They know when to stop. The film reinforces the idea of them being human by turning them into machines during the torture scenes: to them, it is a chore that they must carry out. They are not settling a personal vendetta against the victims, so the beatings are largely emotionless. This detail stands out among the many, many little ones that make up this miraculous film.

But what works in Visaranai's favor is the layered screenplay by Vetrimaaran which keeps unravelling through twists and turns, never letting the film become hackneyed. The first-half is mostly about the time the quartet spend in the police station, but it crosscuts between another sub-plot that simmers away gently and emerges as the core in the film's second-half. Each sequence has a purpose, even the ones where the protagonists are thrashed black and blue, because we need to be in a particular frame of mind for what the director has up his sleeve. Paranoia seeps in without invocation in the film's second-half, one of the film's smaller but significant achievements and a sign of how marvelous the film's screenplay is.

And then Visaranai has those occasional touches of irony and symbolism. The victims are assigned the task to clean a police station of the filth ahead of a puja, a detail so ironic that it amusing. Or like how every road leads to a police station from which they never seem to escape. Or that bit where they get stuck in a swamp and the police eye them silently like hawks. It is probably indicative of the flawed justice system the film seems to indict; we cannot escape it. The system will find a way to get back into our lives in some way. In a way, it is like a maze without an exit, as the protagonists learn with time and so do we.

Ultimately, Visaranai is a significant achievement. It tells us about the deeply sown seeds of corruption and power play between the levels in the system. It remains a work of great finesse. It doesn't ever impose or manipulate. And surprisingly, for a film with unsettling amounts of violence, it is never unwatchable. In the scene where the polite request to clean the police station is made to the victims by a cop they like and trust, we see a slight fear and unease creeping into their faces. It is a look of disillusionment. To them, it doesn't matter anymore who the good guys are. They don't trust anybody, especially a person is in a uniform. That look skillfully sums up what the film was aiming for.

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Review: Raja Krishna Menon's "Airlift" is marred by labored storytelling.

One of the things I loved about Ben Affleck's Argo is how, even when it took certain creative liberties and was comfortable in being a cracking evacuation potboiler, it distanced itself from exploring the melodramatic aspect of the story. The exceedingly smart script by Chris Terrio had enough meat to ensure that Argo worked without the histrionics that generally finds its way into films adapted from true stories, but it gave in to the temptation of lionizing its protagonist. Still, with the perfect blend of surprising humor and uncomfortable suspense, one could forgive that it bent certain facts to make for a more effective thriller.

Raja Krishna Menon's Airlift is no Argo. It doesn't have the sharpness or smarts or slickness. Instead, it trades whatever was good about Argo for sappiness. Although the real-life story it is adapted from is boggling in its statistics -- nearly 1,70,000 Indians were evacuated from Kuwait after Iraq's invasion of it through 488 Air India flights in 59 days in 1990 -- Menon's film fails to remind us of the sheer scale or complexity of the operation. Of course, there might be several reasons for this, the first being that he wanted it to be more about the people than the operation itself. The second reason might be that it falls victim to the itch of wanting to create a character who is the quintessential hero, a people's hero, a role model and therefore disregards the enormity of the rescue mission.

But I wonder: why was it necessary for the film to be a one-man show, a superhero film of sorts, when a simple telling of the actual operation, as intricate and astonishing as any, could have made for a better film?

To Menon's credit, things kick off reasonably well, but not before -- dear me! -- an exasperating and wholly uncalled for song sequence ten minutes into the film. Iraq invades Kuwait in the middle of the night, several are killed or rendered homeless, and brutality spreads its tentacles as far as one can see. Tension gradually seeps into the story as paranoia and dread blanket the streets, and the Indian people nurture a common dream to escape as the death toll climbs. The horrors of the invasion are brought to the screen credibly with fantastic production design and cinematography, and this perhaps is where Airlift gets it right first. The protagonist is etched carefully, his vulnerability and helplessness changing to horror first and then rage. His reaction to the bloodbath echoes how an ordinary person would, not a character in a Hindi potboiler. There is no tearing of shirts or a lightly patriotic tune playing in the background, or the usual emphatic delivery of punchy dialogue; there is uncertainty flickering in every frame. We are not sure whom to trust. Airlift conveys the feeling of world-weariness well. But the problems begin piling up when the relationships begin to develop -- or don't -- in ways that are more annoying than engaging, at least for a film that holds the potential to turn into a fine thriller.

As is always the case, the romantic angle here threatens to sour an otherwise pulpy plot. The arguments between the hero and his wife sound forced and there isn't a hint of chemistry between the two leads, but the songs between the two indicate love and longing. (Which prompts me to ask: why are we being force-fed the romance?) This particular detail of a wife disillusioned with her husband but seeing him in a different light afterwards stays till the end, and it doesn't serve to signify anything substantial. Or that of another little romantic angle that is thankfully kept understated but doesn't entirely justify its inclusion in the film.

But where Airlift really gets it wrong is in the characterization of some of the people involved. We are treated to caricatures in the form of an Iraqi major with a questionable accent spouting Hindi with flair, a grouchy South Indian cynic who doesn't stop with his questions and a casually disinterested politician who couldn't care less about the rescue. Some characters are intelligently written and the actors perform beautifully; the restraint and nuance they bring to their respective roles add to the film's dramatic power in the second half. (Kumud Mishra, playing a government official in a dingy office who eventually sets the ball rolling, is reliably excellent in a bit role.) But what is unfortunate is, scenes with badly-written characters that seem to give way to preachy speeches outnumber the ones that are terse but well-written. And in the flat-out sentimental and patriotic climax that could have done with less theatricality, we know the paths the film took would eventually lead to here. And we wish it did not. To expect a thriller and get a half-baked potboiler in return is akin to finding a slice of rotten tomato in a delectable salad. It won't spoil the meal entirely, but each bite after that would be a cautious one.

Airlift does get some things right, though. Akshay Kumar delivers one of his best performances in a role that, for once, didn't require him to be all sound and fury. But when our protagonist engaged in a fistfight with four armed and hefty Iraqi soldiers to save his people and still lived, I was done. I knew where that path led to. And it wasn't a very jolly discovery.

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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.

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Essay: Decoding the subtleties of Kanu Behl's "Titli."

Two weeks ago, Kanu Behl's Titli was unanimously hailed as one of the better Hindi films of the year upon release. It was not an exaggerated claim, as I found later, thanks to its meticulous structure and carefully written characters that I found worth raving about. 

Before I begin, I should attribute a large chunk of this naive essay to my friend, Ashwini Dabadge. She noticed an important metaphor that I missed, and she told me about it during a rather illuminating discussion I had with her after we both watched the film. 

There are several tiny throwaway details, little flourishes, that stayed with me many days after I watched Kanu Behl's debut. Many reviewers of the film have pointed out Behl's seemingly weird obsession with personal hygiene. A recurring detail where some or the other member of the vulnerable family of violent carjackers is brushing his teeth and clearing his throat noisily -- something of a morning ritual in the family -- hardly seems like a detail a filmmaker would want his audience to watch repeatedly. It's simply unpleasant. Unless that filmmaker is trying to indicate something through it. 

Behl introduces us to this incorrigibly evil male family that engages in small but brutal crimes to earn a living. And he tries to acquaint us with his characters by taking us through their routines, emphatically stressing on how they begin their day. Through the film, three of the four members of the family are seen brushing their teeth vigorously (I don't recollect seeing the character of middle brother, Bawla, doing the same), making nauseating noises throughout. 

As I soon discovered, this detail signifies how the family is trying to rid themselves of their inner evil but always fail to do so. As the character of Bawla only lends a helping hand in the crimes, never being a perpetrator himself, he is not seen doing the same. He is merely a slave of his volatile elder brother, which doesn't entirely redeem him of his sins but makes him a sorry figure. But because we see the characters of Vikram and Titli channelling their inner monsters through their immoral acts, we see Behl's careful placement of these sequences after they partake in something unlawful or unethical. The character of Daddy gets a brief "brushing" scene, too, for not trying to reform his eldest son, choosing to be a silent spectator instead. In Behl's eyes, that makes him as much a criminal, if not more, than his son. The confrontation between Titli and the patriarch near the end is actually Behl's speaking through a fictitious character, I feel.

This theory also applies to the scene where Titli throws up before taking the high road. I believe it alludes to him ridding himself of the evil he had kept bottled inside for so long. As soon as he is done vomiting, we suddenly see him in a new light. We see him as a better, stronger person.

Although this is not a metaphor, the middle brother's strongly implied homosexuality lends itself wonderfully to the intriguing bunch of characters. This detail is implied through brief scenes scattered throughout the film and is kept restrained, bringing a nice subtlety to the character of Bawla. It also demonstrates how thoughtfully Behl and co-writer Sharat Katariya have fleshed out the characters.

Yet another metaphor I observed which was pretty discreet was the house this dysfunctional family lived in. A crumbling, perpetually messy house might be an indication of the crumbling, messy lives of the gents who live in it. And that we never see the characters clean or redo the house and the fact that they don't even seem bothered by it might hint at them being criminals beyond reformation. In one sequence, we get a quick glimpse into the wardrobe of Neelu. It is a tidy one. This bit, I feel, suggests that she is the only upright member of the family.

There are many more such trivial details crammed in the film that might be symbolic. Starting with that framed picture of their forefather, a detail that shows up in many a sequence and which I tried to but couldn't quite understand the relevance of. Maybe another viewing might shed light on that. Or maybe, as I discovered mulling over it in the last two weeks, not knowing what it signifies makes the film all the more fascinating. Maybe like Titli himself, we don't really know whether we want to know. Well.

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Review: Kanu Behl's savage "Titli" is noteworthy but remains stubbornly short of greatness.

Kanu Behl's Titli isn't an easy film to review. It has sequences and ideas that flirt with greatness, a promising premise complete with a stock of great performances from an exemplary cast, and yet somehow it never quite comes together in a way indelible films often do. Behl's character study takes a grim peek into the household of a small, closely-knit, predominantly male Delhi family who moonlight as small-time criminals while the youngest member nurtures dreams of running away. However, in analyzing the dynamics of this volatile family, the film loses sight of its half-done plot that unravels amidst bursts of brutality.

There are a lot of things to admire from the outset. What needs to be applauded foremost is how precisely Behl has managed to capture the bubbling anger that lads from an urban Delhi locality harbor at all times. Borrowing bits from his own upbringing, Behl's vivid representation of how a sullen lower middle-class male family deal with everyday violence and their own enigmatic selves is refreshingly real, giving us an hopeless clan of wife-beaters whose dark past is revealed in sharply written exchanges. And there are little touches that are a stroke of genius; the old patriarch that grunts and garbles and dances impassively in a glum wedding procession; the middle brother's homosexuality is kept ambiguous, adding to the film's many layers; the protagonist dons fake t-shirts of classy brands.

Such fastidiousness speaks volumes about Behl's forte: he knows the city, his characters and the jargon they choose to speak in inside out, and how the city molds his characters. In a Delhi trudging towards development, a joyless place where a car salesman is bashed to near-death with a hammer in broad daylight and the perpetrators get away with it, not granting the poor guy any empathy before dumping his body near a desolate stretch of highway, lives Behl's titular protagonist whose life isn't any better. This, perhaps, signifies the lives of his own characters: bleak, perpetually stuck in the "developing" phase but without any hope of ever being completely "developed."

Titli has these moments, these references in handfuls. We aren't introduced to the characters or the world they inhabit in a straightforward manner. We observe them as they go about living their miserable lives, confronting their piling problems with exhaustion and fury. We sympathize with the impassive Titli's plight until he ill-treats his new bride, a strong-willed young woman who doesn't take domination lying down. (In her debut, Shivani Raghuvanshi is a revelation.) In a hazy sequence of uncomfortable moans and stubborn, silent opposition to his advances, she refuses to consummate her marriage. That's how her character is introduced to us. The sequence is barely two minutes long but we still learn all we need to know about her. And in a later sequence where a bizarre deal is cut in the eerie locality in the middle of the night, she handles a difficult sequence -- once again, brilliantly written and performed -- with grace and deftness. And it is the kind of grace and deftness we don't usually expect from newcomers.

But there is a more urgent problem plaguing this otherwise fine film. The sequences, each crafted elegantly, work individually but not quite as a whole. The plot seems rather simplistic for this complex bunch of people with no firm sense of right and wrong. There simply isn't enough of it. Behl crucially chooses to place them in scenarios of which we can predict the outcome instead of placing them in ones where we might get to see a different side of theirs that is not all black and grey. And when wonderfully fleshed out characters are left scrambling with little plot to work with, it adds up to a frustrating cinematic experience. The thread that ties up the tightly written individual scenes, alas, is too thin to bear the weight of the ideas this film boasts of.

As a character study on a personal level, Titli is probably the most evocative one in recent memory. A film where we see, empathize with and eventually come to care for a bunch of despicable characters is rare, and it is a film that still leaves us with a little hope. Still, there is such a thing as too much unconventionality. Titli makes our acquaintance us people and situations we might have not seen in Hindi cinema before -- at least not in the last decade or two -- but it is a film whose freshness is bogged down by its inability to remain entirely convincing. Still, for Ranvir Shorey's marvelous turn as the belligerent eldest brother and for the amount of potential Behl shows in his debut, this might be worth a second or even third viewing.

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Review: Colin Trevorrow's "Jurassic World" is a lackluster homage to the original.

Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park is the first Hollywood film I remember watching. For a seven year-old kid with no prior experience in watching monster flicks, it was the kind of stuff that nightmares were made of. The small ripples of water in a glass, one of my favorite moments in the movies, became synonymous with clammy fear. And after I watched it for the umpteenth time a month ago, I was still left feeling slightly queasy as the vicious and merciless dinosaurs clobbered, crushed and chomped on everything that we saw on the screen. As a loyal Jurassic Park enthusiast, I chose to skip its sequels to not let the exhilaration I felt upon watching Spielberg's classic dampen. I should have kept it that way.

Colin Trevorrow, who delivered a rather smart debut in Safety Not Guaranteed three years ago, reinvigorates (or at least tries to) dinosaur flicks with this new cinematic diversion. Jurassic World, both a homage and a sequel to the first Jurassic film, adheres strictly to monster-movie formula, but somehow the affair with the big ones makes for a somewhat lackluster viewing. This showy Jurassic Park reboot might be toothier with ambition too bulky for its thin plot, but it's also detached from the very things that made the first part a triumph.

What made Spielberg's version far superior was the amount of suspense and chills he managed to wrest from his setup even when we didn't have dinosaurs on the screen. With little details that contributed in a major way to the terror, most notably torn-down fences and trampled-on cars complemented perfectly by John Williams' exuberant score, Jurassic Park made for a riveting ride that skillfully blended humor with thrills. Jurassic World, on the other hand, has a premise that makes similar promises, but the end product relies heavily on how desperate the audiences were to go back to dinosaur-land. That is not a good sign.

As mentioned before, this is a film that adheres to the formula that can turn any monster movie into a success. Pit humans against something that is gargantuan, cold-hearted and murderous and bingo, there you have it. It is easy to guess where Jurassic World is going with its cliche-ridden story, but the makers can't be blamed here. After all, the dinosaurs are what we want to see, and we get a proper eyeful of them. It impulsively presumed on the part of the makers that the audience would want to see, in broad strokes, humans getting gobbled at the precise moment when everything goes quiet momentarily on-screen and dinosaurs more fearsome than the ones that had been put on the screen in the past installments. If this was the basic idea, it would be fair to say that Jurassic World hits the right spot.

But therein lies its core problem. There are plenty chases that terminate with characters narrowly escaping being meals or irking a new creature enough for it to be hot on their trails. It has been seen before and there's nothing new to heave a sigh of relief about. We don't get a congenial bunch of characters we can invest in or a story that hints at something unique. Instead, imagination is substituted by stereotypes. And that is a major letdown. Essentially, for a monster movie to work, we need to build an emotional relationship with the characters. But with characters like these that are cut straight from the cardboard who try their best to be endearingly funny or anxious, it's hard to genuinely care as they scamper for safety hither and tither.

But there are some things that Jurassic World gets right. The amusement park is bigger, grander and more ostentatious twenty-two years later, and to see it in its entirety for the first time -- a panning shot across the skies supported by Williams' popular Jurassic Park theme -- inspires awe without even trying hard. It is this idea of guiding us through the place that we will be a part of for the next two hours, complete with a few quick glimpses of how meticulously this fictitious world has been envisioned, that really informs us about the ambition this film wants to meet. And the only sequence, I felt, that was reminiscent of the old magic of the first part was when we get to see the Indominus Rex, our fanged baddie, for the first time. It's a clever sequence, utterly unpredictable and executed with great finesse after a typically tense build-up.

Jurassic World culminates in a disappointingly loud, clunky and over-the-top climax that doesn't salvage its many flaws, grave and trivial. Unlike other great films like Steven Spielberg's Jaws or Bong Joon-ho's The Host that had plots where man was pitted against a more powerful and intelligent creature (and also where the "monster" was seen only fleetingly throughout the film), Jurassic World sees Trevorrow decidedly choose thrills over originality and put fang-baring dinosaurs before emotion and character development. It works to an extent if it's a joyride you are seeking. But, for me, I still wished I could see some of Spielberg's mastery at manipulating the slightest details to generate suspense. How unfortunate it is that Jurassic World's cheesiness can fetch it a place on pamphlets advertising pizza.

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Review: Meghna Gulzar's "Talvar" is one of the best Hindi films of the year.

There are several things Avirook Sen's chilling non-fiction book on the Noida double-murder case, Aarushi, did right, but three it did splendidly. One, it managed to commendably reconstruct the events that led to the murder and provide a shade of clarity in a case muddled with "facts," genuine and manipulated Two, it served as an expose of the Indian media's ballooning appetite for sensationalism. And three, it slowly but with a great surge of anger revealed how a botched-up investigation has led to a possible miscarriage of justice.

While flipping through the provocative, extensive and superbly written piece a month ago, I found myself getting more and more engrossed in the web of the details of the horrific crime. I visualized how the house looks, pieced together the minute bits of the puzzle and read into the records of the people on the case until I had a good idea of who, what and when. And the first thing I felt while watching Talvar was not shock nor disgust; it was a strong sense of deja vu.

For those who haven't read the book, Meghna Gulzar's Talvar will be riveting to the hilt; it's a cold docudrama of the crime and its aftermath that gets so much right factually (here, I need to point out that I'm assuming Sen's book is the most factually accurate account of the crime) that one can't help but marvel at the research put into it. But for those who have read the book, it is a satisfying trip to see on-screen that tiny film that played in our heads as we read the book.

Talvar digs its claws into the pulp of facts right away. Faithfully reconstructing the events that led to the discovery of the body of the murdered girl, we see the cops nonchalantly stroll into the crime scene, monotonously burning through their usual questions as the grieving parents come to grips with what has just happened. The following day, a second body is discovered. In between the simple formalities, a vital piece of evidence that could have led to the identity of the murderer is turned a blind eye to by a paan-chewing officer who couldn't care less. It is this terrifying illusion of living in a lawless land Talvar introduces us to that makes it so effective a thriller.

The story, or the many versions of it, unfolds in three different scenarios where three motives are discussed. Akira Kurosawa's classic Rashomon used this strategy to unforgettable effect to unveil how humans readily put the truth at stake to save their dignity. While Talvar is not as neutral as it would like to have been, one must hand it to Vishal Bharawaj who recognized the parallels between that and the real-life outcome of the Noida double murder case, using it to chew over every possible motive but weaving it into the script in such a way that it doesn't hamper the narrative flow. And like Rashomon, it deals with how the truth is willingly put in peril for something as petty as self-importance. Or maybe, as Talvar reminds us, it is not so petty.

Vishal Bharadwaj's tremendous script allows room for little outside of hard facts. It takes stabs at the media's tendency to sensationalize details before they are clarified, how evidence is extracted from a contaminated crime without anyone batting an eyelid and how truth is fashioned from it. But with Bharadwaj, we know it's not going to be as simple as I make it sound. A splash of dark humor, typically sharp dialogue and detailing that helps shape the characters and a nod -- always that nod! -- to his influences (loved the occasional references to Ijaazat; that's where he got the title from for Kaminey, too, I feel) makes it an unmistakable Bharadwaj vehicle.

There's no doubt that this, along with Shoojit Sircar's Piku, is the best-acted Hindi film of the year. A few unnecessary sequences aside, this is top-notch stuff that, unlike other Hindi films based on true events, does not lapse into preachiness and sentimentality. And somewhere near the end, a lethally funny scene dares us to laugh as the morbid details of the crime are discussed and dismissed. We do laugh because it amuses us how an investigation has been fouled up. But what are we laughing at, really? Two people have been incarcerated for life for a crime they might have not committed. We haven't heard about the three other suspects in a long time. It is hardly worth chuckling about.


(Not For Reproduction)