An Jo on the real Master – Lokesh Kanagaraj

 

 

(Spoilers ahead)
One of the striking shots and, if you will see in ‘Master’ is that Vijay Setupathi’s ‘Bhavani’ has scars at the same place just above his left-chin compared to Vijay’s ‘JD’ where he sticks two small band-aids. And then there’s a scene that’s inter-cut when Bhavani kills the last opponent in his quest to become the president of the lorry drivers’ association: That scene is finely executed where the director while laying out the commonalities, spreads out the differences more beautifully and intelligently. Bhavani kills the opponent brutally – it is raw – while at the same time, JD takes out his 6-7 opponents who come to a jail cell to kill him. The skill that Lokesh possesses lies in understanding that he is working with two radically different actors/stars and that with the budget/money at stake, he cannot afford to go wrong. He does equal justice to both the actors and that’s truly the preliminary joy of this film. This is one hell of a marriage between so called ‘mass’ and ‘class’, albeit, not completely solemnized thanks to issues like length and excessive concentration on catering to Vijay’s Tamil Nadu fan-base.

An Jo on Parinda

Linky
‘Parinda’ released in 1989, was one hell of a crimemovie from the Bombay film industry on Bombay and one that shook and held its audiences by the throat and screamed—albeitcoveredin its veneer of ‘subtlety—a violence so unleashed, that one could feel iteven more after-the fact.
The way Nana’s Anna is introduced, more importantly, the under-belly of Bombay is introduced, is awe-inspiring to-date. Right from the topographical view of Bombay during the initial credits—with a terrific usage of ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ piece— in its neon-light nights to graduallycutting down onto Nana’s ‘Anna Seth’ office and Rama Reddy (Kamal Kapoor) and Shiva Subramanyam’s ‘Francis’ wiping a knife decorated with blood after killing a non-decrepit man [Vidhu]; director Vidhu Vinod Chopra sets a broody, grimy, and a grisly atmosphere of the metropolis.

Read rest here

References:
https://www.rediff.com/movies/special/twenty-five–poetic-frames-of-parinda/20200525.htm

An Jo on Bhavesh Joshi

On Bhavesh Joshi, a fine experiment by Vikramaditya Motwane…

This movie I think was released in 2017 or 2018; I don’t remember. I totally ignored it thanks to some horrific reviews the movie got. Overall, it was in the negative space. I left it at that thinking Motwane had some experiment up his sleeve that had massively mis-fired. On top of that, you have a bad actor like Harshvardhan Kapoor; not just ‘relatively’ incompetent as Arjun Kapoor but, terribly bad actors surviving thanks to their, well, ‘insider-trading.’

I was genuinely surprised how good a movie this is, and what in God’s mind were the reviewers/critics thinking by dismissing it altogether? This is not a perfect film; it is highly flawed. But Motwane turns it on us and plays a cunning game: Those flaws, are what make the film questionable, are highly and equally enjoyable!

Naveen’s note on Laxmii

In the genre of horror comedy the best i have seen still remains Bhool Bhulaiya and most recently Stree.

I had also liked the tamil movie Kanchana which was a low budget good entertainer (timepass) despite shoddy screenplay.
Thats because Kanchana never had anytjing serious about itself. The characters, issues etc were all cartoonish so overall it worked.
To overcome those gaps in screenplay, significant and serious changes have been made in Laxmii. However the changes needed to be goofy in nature and not serious. This is where the movie goes wrong.

An jo on Ludo

LUDO: A film that doesn’t know what it’s talking about...

LUDO is such a deceiving and a bad movie at the same time that it is improbable to believe that it’s an Anurag Basu film: A person/artiste who has gone through the physical and emotional pain of enduring cancer would have greater sensitivity and insights into the human emotional-core. If one is bereft of religion, of philosophies that have been stamped on our brain, what would we be? How would we judge people and their actions? And that’s what I thought would be the premise of the film when it talked of ‘karma’ and ‘Ludo.’ Alas, it turned out to be one of the most pretentious, and pseudo-philosophical film of its times, with political innuendo like salt added to a dish.

An Jo’s viewings (Updated)

The Occupant
This is a remarkable but strange film; odious in its plot and quite strong in its philosophy. What happens to a man when he turns middle-aged, and has, supposedly, not climbed the ladder of success to pigeon-hole himself into a position commensurate with age — as deemed by society & professionals of course — and finds himself cornered? Answerable to his wife, to his kid [who claims that he’s being made fun of in school but doesn’t tell his father why?

An Jo On HELEN

On HELEN, and the art of cinematic subterfuge

Mild Spoiler Alert

Do yourself a favor, do not watch the trailer, or read whatever I have written, before watching the movie; just watch the movie – and then, if interested, read my piece.

Of course, it’s become common in the Malayalam film industry to churn out fine movies by the dozen that are rooted in culture and God’s own country’s various sub-cultures and sub-texts: But what is even more cunning, and so beautifully wily that director Xavier and writers Alfred and Noble pull out a completely different movie than they initially seemed to ‘promise.’ I was taken on a 180-degree ride of joy, feel-good sentiments, middle-class values, chauvinism, misogyny, scare, and thrills all within a span of just about 2 hours. I definitely wouldn’t compare it with ‘Parasite’, though the closest that comes to mind is surely Bong Joon-ho’s snake-and-ladder play of genres.

Munna on Gunjan Saxena : The Kargil Girl

I was avoiding Gunjan Saxena but Rajen asked me with his glowing review..I have lived almost most of my life in Air Force bases around in India, I knew my comment/review would be critical of Karan Johar style’s movie treatment..I understand, people who have not seen Air Force life, it is a decent time pass movie about women empowerment and gender bias.

An Jo’s note on RAAT AKELI HAI

I quite loved RAAT AKELI HAI! There are so many things going on in the movie – it is like a labyrinth of emotions, moods, and the nightly colors. It covers so much, that the whodunit mystery is the least on your minds, though very smartly, the makers give you a clue that what ‘starts’ at home hits you at ‘home.’! Casteism, class-privilege, money, position, power, inferiority/superiority complexes, everything is dealt here; and the best part is, it is never preachy but veers you toward thinking about them.

An Jo on PANCHAYAT

Link
On ‘Panchayat’ and its unbridled yet subtle homage to ‘Swades’ and ‘Doordarshan’

Spoiler Alert

The finest scene in Amazon’s PANCHAYAT is reserved for the last episode. Very subtly, the makers dove-tail women’s rights versus nationalism; or hyper-nationalism, as the liberals would call it. With diktats raised on playing the national anthem in theaters, and people not standing up, it’s quite telling that Neena Gupta asks the ‘Sacheev’, ‘Do I have to stand even when the national anthem is playing on my phone?’ And then there’s the scene of the District Magistrate [DM] coming over and blasting the ‘Pradhan’ and the ‘Sacheev’ of not letting the woman take center-stage; because, of-course, she is rightly the selected one! And Neena Gupta’s husband, the revered ‘Pradhan-ji’ is asked to take a back-seat by stepping beyond the boundaries!

The brightest spot or idea in PANCHAYAT is that it talks; it talks, and doesn’t preach, All the ideas, all the writing, is built so organically that you just submit yourself to the series. An absolute master-piece of 8 episodes. I did feel a Season 2 coming t, and though I am impressed and curious apropos the inevitable 2nd season, I would say, the series has already done its job.

Please read rest here

An Jo on GULABO SITABO

On GULABO SITABO and the battle between crumbling traditions and modernity

Beneath the comic musical-beats of GULABO SITABO, there carries a twang of pain for every beat. There’s a reasoning for everything here; why Amitabh was chosen? Why was he made to be a hunch-back? Why was he lisping on about his famous movie ‘Deewal’?

In perhaps one of his most unadulterated movies ever, coming close on the heels of October—that had a bad actor to begin with—Shoojit takes the finest actor-star the Hindi film industry has ever seen, and pits him against an actor who is known to own small-town-actor roles.

tonymontana’s random thoughts on Gulabo Sitabo

Juhi and Shoojit try to keep things as subtle as possible, even in moments that could have exploded on the screen as those of sheer lunacy. There’s plenty of humour here, but not one that’s forced down your throat or that plays out to draw cheap laughs. There’s an event that sets things in motion: a wall that breaks down when a tenant is relieving himself, and that remains the only instance that might draw guffaws. GS plays otherwise unfolds at a leisurely pace, playing out like a social satire, but the joke’s on you if you do not understand the larger implications of it. This is a delicious take on the Gulabo Sitabo folk tale of two women fighting for the same man. The ‘man’ here is a decrepit old building owned by a woman well in her 90s, constantly flanked by vultures about who are waiting for her demise so they could get their hands on the massive (or not) fortune.

An Jo on ‘A Death in the Gunj’

– Spoilers ahead

The first scene of ‘A Death in the Gun’ itself kind of informs the audience as to how the movie might shape out. Gulshan Devaiah’s Nandu and Ranveer Shorey’s Vikram open up the trunk of a blue-colored Ambassador car and talk, as a matter-of-factly, about twirling the body in a fetal shape: You will know at the end the significance of that scene. What is a fetal position? It is just the stage/state before you are born from the womb; the child then born sees the out-side world, but it still is oblivious to the world’s and its human inhabitants’ machinations. Its brain is still not mapped with tricks. This is hardly a horror movie; well, in a way, yes, it does talk about the horrors of not being worldly-wise.