Shaitan [2011]

Bejoy Nambiar had won a competition comprising of aspiring filmmakers and he was supposed get an opportunity to direct a movie backed by Ashok Amritraj. Amritraj, who’s spent his life producing sub-par genre films, didn’t honour his commitment, and fortunately for the wannabe filmmaker, the maverick Anurag Kashyap stepped in in the nick of time. Shaitan is a dark, psychedelic and wickedly funny tale of five friends, and their hallucinatory journey through hell. The five delinquent, emotionally bankrupt youngsters, most hailing from wealthy families, end up inadvertently committing a crime during one of their many hedonistic sprees, thus setting them on a rollercoaster ride involving blackmail and murder. Meanwhile, an excellent cop, who has long stopped acting by the books, takes charge of the hunt. The hyperstylized, unabashedly violent and deliriously amoral film is unrestrained in its depiction of a modern-day urban dystopia. The film however is not without its drawbacks. For one, the young director’s overindulgence ought to have been kept under a tight check by Kashyap. Further, since most of the characters have been painted in broad strokes, they end up just as “types”. And not to forget, it started seeming overlong by the third quarter. Nonetheless, criticisms aside, the film has provided ample proof of Nambiar’s immense potential as a filmmaker.





Director: Bejoy Nambiar
Genre: Thriller/Black Comedy/Crime Thriller/Psychedelic Thriller
Language: Hindi
Country: India

Invisible Stripes [1940]

Invisible Stripes wasn’t a ground-breaking film by any stretch of imagination – just that, coming during an era that must have reminded Great Depression to most, the film was an apt portrayal of how life can turn out for a reformed criminal, and how the merciless world around him compels him to take recourse to crime even though he always wanted to go straight upon his release from prison. Yes, a tough looking picture, and it sure had some tough moments, but there’s also enough of melodrama to make his impoverishment and crisis all the more obvious. George Raft played the role of the former criminal trying to go straight, and his role was anything but inspiring. A young William Holden played his younger brother who might be on the verge of going into crime, and who, in a way, compels Raft to take the bent road for some time. Humphrey Bogart represented the other side of the world. He too got his release from the same say as Raft, but went straight back to the world of organised crime and bank robbery. But past has a way of catching up (as the censors wanted to make the director have us believe), and so it does for Bogart’s life. Director Lloyd Bacon, a veteran filmmaker, ensure the film never gets boring despite a script that seems repetitive today courtesy the heavy social message. And it sure had good supporting turns from Holden and Bogart. Raft too did quite a good job.

p.s. Invisible Stripes is part of Humphrey Bogart: The Essential Collection, a wonderful boxset release by Warner Bros.




Director: Lloyd Bacon
Genre: Crime Drama/Gangster Film
Language: English
Country: US

Gorosthane Sabdhan [2010]

Sandip Ray’s latest Feluda venture Gorosthane Sabdhan (which, translated, means "Attention at the Symmetry") might easily rank as his best Feluda movie till now. Adapted from a highly engaging and mystery-ridden novel of the same name belonging to the immensely popular Feluda franchise of Sandip’s late father Satyajit Ray, Gorosthane Sabdhan starts off with the digging off of a grave at Calcutta’s South Park Symmetry that goes awry with the unanticipated arrival of a man, thus kick-starting a tale of murder and betrayal. Prodosh Chandra Mitter, or as he is popularly known, Feluda, is drawn into the incident as a fish is drawn towards water, and along with his trusted nephew-cum-sidekick Topshe, and middle-aged friend Lal Mohan Ganguly aka Jatayu, a crime fiction writer, ends up unraveling a racket, headed by a wealthy megalomaniac, which into getting hold of antic watches. For once Sandip Ray based the entire film in Calcutta, and it was sure a pleasure watching on-screen some of the famous locations of the city. Boasting of a highly original credit sequence, the films also comprises of some impressive interior designs. Sabyasachi Chakraborty as the extremely knowledgeable sleuth with a razor-sharp mind is good as always. Though newcomer Shaheb Bhattacharjee as Topshe is a minor letdown, and Bibhu Chakraborty’s Jatayu, despite reducing his antics, is a bad shadow of Santosh Dutta’s unforgettable turns in the Satyajit Ray films. However, Dhritiman Chatterjee and Tinu Anand in their respective cameos are worth looking out for.





Director: Sandip Ray
Genre: Thriller/Mystery
Language: Bengali
Country: India

Raajneeti (Politics) [2010]

Prakash Jha’s Raajneeti, as the name suggests, is a no-holes-barred indictment against dynasty-based, votebank, dirty politics that is quite prevalent in India, in general, and in the North Indian states, in particular. This Mahabharata-weds-Godfather epic shows two warring political families who would go to any lengths necessary, including blackmail and murder, in order for them to win the Chief Minister-ship of the state. The film boasts of a packed, powerhouse starcast – Nana Patekar has given the best performance of the lot, with able turns by Manoj Bajpayee, Ajay Devgan and Arjun Rampal; Ranbir Kapoor has turned out to be a surprising revelation as the cool, sinsister Michael Corleone-esque protagonist; even veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah has shone in his cameo as a firebrand Communist leader. Katrina Kaif, however, is predictably horrendous, and her horrible accent has turned out to be a hilarious parody of Sonia Gandhi, intentionally or otherwise. Though eminently watchable, at the end of the day, the film has turned out to be rather a mixed bad courtesy, largely, the overblown length. A more compact script and tighter editing might have made this reasonably effective film a far more powerful piece of work.





Director: Prakash Jha
Genre: Drama/Political Drama/Ensemble Film
Language: Hindi
Country: India

Charlie Chan Collection

Turner Classic Movies (TCM), a subsidiary of Time-Warner (still known as Warner Bros. among old-timers) has been kind enough to send me their newest release, a boxset comprising of 4 Charlie Chan movies – Dark Alibi, Dangerous Money, The Trap, and The Chinese Ring, for review at my site. For the uninitiated, Charlie Chan, the character created by Earl Derr Biggers, is a Chinese-American detective who has featured in over a dozen low-budget, noir-ish crime/mystery films.

Dark Alibi (1946) has Chan trying to save a former convict who, he’s convinced, is innocent of the bank robbery charges for which he’s been sentenced to death. In Dangerous Money (1946), set mostly aboard a ship and on an island, Chan tries to uncover a trail of hot money that results in a series of inexplicable murders. The Trap (1946), the last movie to star Sydney Toler as the investigator, has Chan trying to solve the strangulation murders of pretty young showgirls on vacation. And finally, in The Chinese Ring (1947), Chan gets busy uncovering the mysterious murder of a Chinese princess at his very home, that almost gets him killed.

Dark Alibi, without doubt, is the best of the lot, and might even be categorized as a film noir. The films go downhill from here, despite the presence of Sydney Toller as the deadpan, wisecracking detective, courtesy some one-dimensional plots and characters. The series is, however, saved in the end by The Chinese Ring, what with its fine noirish atmospherics and shady characters, though Roland Winters, cast as Charlie Chan in this film, never really managed to hold a candle to Toller’s Charlie Chan. Mantan Moreland, as Chan’s chauffeur and sidekick Birmingham, is absolutely hilarious and provides enough comic relief.

The Charlie Chan suite has been presented by TCM Spotlight in a very well designed pack worth the buy. Though the dvd-s do not boast of any extra features, the important aspect is that the print quality – both picture and sound, of all the four films is exceptional and the transfer too is stunning, despite the films being over 60 years old. The boxset should be a collector’s item for all you Charlie Chan aficionados out there.






Directors: Phil Karlson/Terry O. Morse/Howard Bretherton/William Beaudine
Genre: Crime Thriller/Mystery/Film Noir
Language: English
Country: US

In July (Im Juli) [2000]

In July is at complete odds with such deadly serious movies like Head-On and The Edge of Heaven that Fatih Akin is renowned for. The only commonality it has with his body of work is where capturing both German and Turkish diaspora and people goes; otherwise, the film seems something of an aberration. A light-hearted, whimsical and charming rom-com and a breezy road movie, it is filled with simple character sketches and idiosyncratic scenarios, is shot in resplendent colours, and is bereft of any socio-political commentary. A shy German teacher (Moritz Blebitreu), convinced that the pretty Turkish girl he has befriended by chance is the girl he’s destined to be with, plunges head long into an adventure road trip that doesn’t just require him to do stuff beyond his wildest imaginations, but also brings him closer to the girl who indirectly kick-started this odyssey of his. And this girl, a good-natured Bohemian lady who’s been holding a candle for him for long, also happens to be, through a stroke of coincidence, his partner in his crazy journey from Hamburg, across Europe, to Istanbul, silently wishing he realizes her feelings for him. Look out for an interesting cameo by the director as a corrupt Romanian border police.





Director: Fatih Akin
Genre: Romantic Comedy/Road Movie
Language: German
Country: Germany

Alien 3 [1992]

Though Alien ³ starts off from where Aliens ended, it is quite obvious right from the first frame that David Fincher, who helmed this film – his feature film debut, wanted to take the project in a different direction altogether, instead of blindly imitating the previous two films of the franchise or trying to feed on their successes. That certainly rubbed a lot of fans in the wrong places, and understandably so, because the Fincher version is dark, depressing and moody, and thus turned out to be a revisionist Alien film, if I’m allowed to say so. Set in a dank, dreary and dingy all-male prison in a god-forsaken planet where Ellen Ripley has crash landed, and filled with convicts with violent pasts who have now taken to religion, the film opted for a gloomy tone instead of visceral thrills. And in a bizarre sense of irony, the vicious alien here is a four-legged canine creature. In a plot twist, Ripley has ended up having alien blood in her body, thus making her impervious to the lethal hunter – that, and her wits (because there aren’t any weapons in the prison) are what she uses to get even with her new-formed kin. The movie is slow, nihilistic and emotionally cold, and could have done with a tighter plot; nonetheless, it also forms an impressive indication of things to come from the talented former music video director.




Director: David Fincher
Genre: Science-Fiction/Thriller/Action/Horror/Prison Thriller/Creature Film
Language: English
Country: US

033 [2010]

033 conforms to the themes of its predecessor Madly Bengali in that it is about a Bangla Rock Band, it is about a group of four egocentric and lost youths who learn to come to terms with themselves, and it is also about how the immensely rich and dynamic musical history of Calcutta has found a new face in the form of its underground rock circuit; so how does it stand out? Not so much in content as in form. The film, which is about a boy-band named after the STD code of the city they are based in, and on how a melancholic young girl, in search of her roots, manages to leave a small impact on the band members, has been presented in a manner that is wildly experimental and out-of-the-box in terms of treatment. It manages to be freewheeling and even a wee bit iconoclastic, like the songs of the Beetles and Dylan, or the ideologues of Che Guevera, whose posters adorn the trench, a neon-lit shack owned by a veteran music lover who calls himself Santiago, where the band practices their music. Jerky camera motions, jump cuts, handy-cams, slow-mo-s, psychedelic lightings, etc. have all been fused into the breezy improvised script, along with wit, humour and some wonderful original compositions by Chandrabindu (as well as a terrific redo of a Mohiner Ghoraguli classic), to present a movie that its debutant director must have had one hell of time while making.




Director: Birsa Dasgupta
Genre: Drama/Existential Drama/Musical/Experimental
Language: Bengali
Country: India

Up [2009]

Film critics and cinegoers have called Up a rousing success, and have named it, along with Wall-E, as one of the great masterpieces of modern cinema. I wouldn’t go that far; but yes, there’s no doubting the fact that it happens to be one of the most noteworthy outputs from PIXAR, the ever-dependable makers of jaw-dropping 3-D animation. The tale of Carl, a former balloon salesman, now in the twilight of his life, who undertakes the journey of a lifetime in order to fulfill a dream that he shared with his wife, that of exploring South America, is, at the end of the day, still a movie aimed principally for kids. Agreed that it contains the “adult” themes of ageing, loss, unfulfilled dreams, and broken families, but at its heart Up is essentially the kind of movie meant to engage the viewers, lift their spirits up and provide a whole lot of fun and entertainment in the process. And in that sense it is quite a success because fun and engaging it certainly is. But despite its solid, old-fashioned tale of fantasy and adventure, what would remain longest with the viewers is the first quarter of the movie which shows how Carl, as a kid, met with his future-wife, and then, through an extended and extremely poignant silent sequence, we are given a brief preview of the journey covered by Carl and his wife from youth to old age, through various moments of love, joy and grief.





Director: Pete Doctor & Bob Peterson
Genre: Animation/Adventure/Fantasy
Language: English
Country: US

Avatar [2009]

Despite returning from a long hiatus – 12 years to be precise since he made Titanic, James Cameron has yet again shown his unsurpassed ability in making larger-than-life blockbusters with Avatar, a project that had been gestating for quite a long time. The movie is of epic proportions, and it screams to be seen (and preferably in 3-D), though it should not be taken as seriously as the director perhaps intended it to be. Cameron certainly hasn’t forgotten how to enrapture his audience, even though the visual extravaganza and technical virtuosity of the, well, preposterous end product, surpassed its intellectual or artistic merit or the pseudo-emotional content by a very long distance. This Matrix­-meets-Last of the Mohicans­-meets-Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World-meets-Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Avatar, which is about power-hungry plutocrats trying to colonize a far-off plant named Pandora and its indigenous inhabitants called the Na’vi, and which could easily be seen as a political allegory to George Bush’s annexing of Iraq for oil, albeit in the name of ‘war against terrorism’, is a stupendous spectacle that one will enjoy despite its wafer-thin plot and shallow script.





Director: James Cameron
Genre: Sci-Fi/Action/Fantasy
Language: English
Country: US

Hit List [2009]

Hit List, Sandip Ray’s first foray outside “Feluda” movies (adapted from stories written by his late father Satyajit Ray) since the wonderful Nishijapon, has yielded, at best, mixed results. The movie was touted as a thriller, and it opens quite spectacularly with a murder that is almost Hitchcockian in its fine buildup. However, it would be more prudent to consider the movie as a psychological drama reminiscent of lowbrow film noirs – yeah, those iconic low-angle shots are there in plenty. The executive director of an advertising agency, on unraveling a corrupt deal by four colleagues of his, get bumped off and his body disposed such that his death looks like a case of drunken driving. However, as the saying goes, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”, his lovely wife (played with surprising élan by Koel Mallick), who is bloody pissed off, decides to get even-steven with the scot-free culprits. The acting is decent throughout if not spectacular; Saheb Chatterjee was especially impressive, though Dhritiman Chatterjee, in my opinion, was wasted. Perhaps a whodunit structure might have worked better as the similarly styled (though far superior) Shubho Mahurat, by Rituparno Ghosh, did. Agreed, the movie didn’t manage to match our high expectations – in that sense it’s a disappointment. However, despite a few loopholes here and there, I wouldn’t be so highbrow as to call it a failure.





Director: Sandip Ray
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Mystery
Language: Bengali
Country: India

El Crimen del Padre Amaro (The Crime of Father Amaro) [2002]

El Crimen Del Padre Amaro is on a topic that is as complex as it is controversial. The movie concerns with the subject of the fundamentalist and sanctimonious nature of religious (here, Christian) pastors and priests, and this, despite the hypocrisy, corruption, power politics and moral decadence within the Catholic Church. Mexican superstar Gael Garcia Bernal has starred as a young priest who is sent to a small ultra-religious town as part of his training. There he falls for the nubile daughter of a lady, who in turn is having a secret affair with the ageing Padre under whose tutelage he has been placed. The director certainly had the guts to tackle such a subject head-on without diluting any of its contents. However, where considerable subtlety and a more matured storytelling was of utmost essence, the director opted for an overtly brazen approach to ensure that his polemic doesn’t get lost on his viewers. Thus, even though the movie was reasonably engaging to watch, and the social milieu of Mexico too was quite well captured, for me it failed to be the thought-provoking movie capable of creating a lasting impression that I’d eagerly hoped it would be. The acting, too, was mostly amateurish, with the exception of a handful of the older members of the cast.





Director: Carlos Carrera
Genre: Drama/Religious Drama
Language: Spanish
Country: Mexico

Kærestesorger (Aching Hearts) [2009]

A few critics have accused Danish filmmaker Nils Malmros' Aching Hearts to be a mere recreation of his most famous work Trees of Knowledge. I haven’t watched the former movie, and hence (or perhaps, in spite of that), I found Aching Hearts, which I watched at the ongoing Kolkata Film Festival, to have the credibility to stand on its own. The movie, about a group of adolescent, high school students in 60’s Denmark, has been presented through the eyes of a teenager named Jonas. A nostalgic coming-of-age tale (the movie might very well be semi-autobiographical) has been presented through his complicated relationship with a young, confused girl and fellow student name Agnete, and through his friendship with a couple of guys who too have their lives complicated for reasons of their own. The lilting score added to the various emotions at play here, ranging from teenage angst, confusion and jealousy to finally coming to terms with one’s life. Though the movie dragged a bit towards the end, the director was quick to get things back under control for a well-crafted climax. The movie’s most redeeming feature is that Malmros never seeks to sort out his characters’ complications, thus managing to present a fairly evocative picture of high school life.





Director: Nils Malmros
Genre: Drama/Coming-of-Age/Romance/Teenage Drama
Language: Danish
Country: Denmark

Angshumaner Chhobi (Angshuman's Film) [2009]

Atanu Ghosh might have made quite a few telefilms, but his inexperience in feature direction was palpable in Angshumaner Chhobi. The movie has its fair share of flaws, and that despite the fact that the basic storyline and concept are so strong that it had a spellbinder written all over it. In fact I’d go so far as stating that it is so much a Rituparno Ghosh’s kind of movie that he might have done wonders had he directed it, or at least written its script. Having said that, one has got to admit that the film has been brought to screen with restraint and sensitiveness, and without any undue gloss or flamboyance – something I was hoping for. The film is about a famous film director called Angshuman who has returned to India after a long time to make a Bengali movie. The movie within a movie boasts of two well developed characters – a legendary thespian on self-imposed exile (played very well by Soumitra Chatterjee – a legend himself), and an emotionally fragile actress who is unaware of her true worth (exceptionally portrayed by Indrani Halder). Unfortunately the character of the principal protagonist wasn’t fully realized, and the sub-par enacting of the role as well as the weak script didn’t help matters at all. Thus what could have been a memorable cinamatic experience ended up being just another decent, forgettable watch.





Director: Atanu Ghosh
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Showbiz Drama/Mystery
Language: Bengali
Country: India

Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! [2008]

Dibakar Banerjee’s debut movie, the impressive social satire Khosla Ke Ghosla was a harbinger of a lot of positive thoughts in the minds of cine-goers; with his second feature Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! he certainly hasn’t disappointed those looking forward to it. Starring Abhay Deol, the leading protagonist of a number of good non-mainstream Hindi movies of recent times, Oye Lucky… is another refreshing satire and a comedy of human manners and hypocrisies. The movie, apparently based on real events, is on about a thief whose daredevil acts of thievery relied on tremendous self-confidence, ice-cool nerves and human engineering, rather than on elaborate planning and heists. The most interesting aspect about the movie, in fact was in Paresh Rawal’s enacting of three separate characters with absolutely distinct personalities with effortless panache. The director surely knows his movies, as was evident from his subtle allusions to the world of cinema – the ode to the unforgettable ‘Joe Pesci moment’ in Goodfellas was quite well achieved. In the last third the movie seemed to be loosing its way a bit, especially from the humour standpoint, thus slightly undoing the hilarious opening acts. However, that said, it still managed to be quite an enjoyable and fun watch.





Director: Dibakar Banerjee
Genre: Comedy/Social Satire
Language: Hindi
Country: India

Funny Games [1997]

Funny Games might not be Austrian director Michael Haneke’s best movie, but it sure as hell is the one he will be remembered by. The skeleton of the plot might sound overtly conventional – a family, while on vacation at their idyllic retreat, is taken hostage by a pair of sweet-talking, albeit mercilessly sadistic sociopaths; nonetheless, it doesn’t take long for one to realize that this is as far removed from the assembly-line of popcorn psycho thrillers (particularly the American ones) as can be. It is a vicious body blow to our pop culture, our mass media, and in turn our lives, violence has become a daily diet of which – a theme earlier propounded by Oliver Stone in his equally notorious Natural Born Killers. The acting is very good throughout, not just of the couple (the role of the husband has been played by the brilliant Ulrich Mühe of The Lives of Others fame), but also of the two young guys whose outwardly normal dispositions and their seemingly not having any reason for inflicting the kind of mayhem that they do, have made their characters chilling personifications of evil. However, I must finish with the statement that, despite the movie’s cult fame, it could have been far more effective had it slightly cut down on the pretentiousness front – the ‘rewind’ scene, the talking to the camera and the deeply ambiguous ending are a bit of a turnoff.






Director: Michael Haneke
Genre: Thriller/Psychological Thriller/Psychological Horror
Language: German
Country: Austria

Layer Cake [2004]

If I were to describe Layer Cake in one sentence, it would have to be ‘Guy Ritchie movie minus the black comedy’. Given that it was made by the guy who has produced all of Ritchie’s movies, that's understandable I guess. Of course that doesn’t mean this Brit thriller isn’t good; rather it’s far from it, it’s a pretty darn engaging piece of work all right. Set in the high-flying dog-eat-dog underworld of drug marketeers, this is as stylized a film as it is mind-bending, what with its labyrinthine plot filled with double-crosses and twists galore. And at the centre of the plot is a cool, suave, soft-spoken middleman, expertly played by Daniel Craig, who has decided to quit while he is on top (no pun intended). And, to put it mildly, that’s when the trouble starts – after all he is in the kind of business where nobody gets out alive, even if he has the smarts for it. Sleek, fast, snazzy and entertaining – this is the kind of movie you’d enjoy watching, but not the kind you’d like to ruminate over a drink. The photography is good and the background songs are well chosen. Watch the movie with an empty mind, and you might even end up enjoying it.





Director: Matthew Vaughn
Genre: Thriller/Crime Thriller/Gangster Movie
Language: English
Country: UK

In the Cut [2003]

If you ever want to witness an archetypal example of an actor/actress playing against type, watch this erotic thriller by Jane Campion. Meg Ryan, forever typecast as the cute girl next door in such enormously popular romantic comedies like When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail and French Kiss, shed her clean girl image and inhibitions in this dark atmospheric cat-and-mouse tale set in New York, starring as a beautiful English teacher who gets entangled in a relationship with a mysterious homicide detective (Mark Ruffalo) investigating a series of brutal murders in her neighbourhood. The forty-something Meg Ryan didn’t just bare her luscious ageless body in the graphic nude scenes, but also her soul in her bravura turn as a severely lonely, emotionally fragile woman who experiences sexual liberation for the first time in her life during her torrid affair with a younger man, amid the suspicion, squalor and violence in her surroundings. The tone of this moody thriller might appear ambiguous for many, the characterization of Ruffalo’s cop not chiseled very well, and the constant blurring in and out of images a tad irritating, but superb turns by the two leads and the digressive narration of an otherwise straightforward plot managed to make for an interesting viewing.





Director: Jane Campion
Genre: Thriller/Psychological Thriller/Detective Movie/Mystery/Erotic Thriller
Language: English
Country: US