Saket on Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota

Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota – A Kung-Fu spectacle and a loving tribute to the 80s that’s marred by misplaced existentialism.

Ever since I saw the trailer of MKDNH, I just had to watch this film. It looked so cool; the film even won the Midnight Madness award at TIFF, and its quirky vibe had me hooked from the get go. This is why trailers can be so, so deceptive. MKDNH’s trailer aroused certain expectations that I thought were reasonable. But, as it turned out, the overall experience was similar to ordering a Vanilla ice-cream… only to get a Mint version, with a bit of coconut chutney on the side. A part of me felt like screaming out loud – this is not what I had ordered! I was expecting a desi Kill Bill, but what I got was Tarantino mixed with Ingmar Bergman! How does one go about digesting that?

Advertisements

NYT on Super-Deluxe (Tamil; 2019)

““Got porn, Madam?” That’s what the high school boy known variously as Milk Carton and Egg Muffin asks a DVD store clerk after some stammering feints in the Tamil movie “Super Deluxe.”

And, yes, Madam has porn. But, surprise: When Egg Muffin and his pals start to watch it, one of them becomes enraged. That’s his mother onscreen.

This sets off a chain of mostly comic events that are, by turns, ominous, bloody and cosmic. And that’s just one plot strand. In another, a married woman’s ex-boyfriend dies in her bed, setting off a chain of comic, ominous events. In a third, a little boy pines for his father to return, and the father does — but now transformed into a woman. (Another chain ensues.)…”

 

Read the complete piece HERE

An Jo on Kesari

KESARI is a surprisingly subdued tale of the Battle of Saragarhi, a far-cry from the lick-worthy news that the ‘liberals’ were expecting about jingoism supporting the BJP govt from Akshay’s stable. It’s a double-pronged narrative: Akshay’s Ishar Singh swallowing the insult of being referred to a slave rather than a soldier by the British; and secondly, the unstoppable attacks of the Afghan tribes aided with the Mullah. [Even here, steps are taken to separate Allah from war-fare: When one of the Afghan tribe rulers interrupts the Mullah to stop taking the name of Allah for the cause of human blood-shed, he stopped thus: आप अपना हथियार इस्तेमाल करे; और मुझे अपना इस्तेम्मल करने दीजिए|

Salim’s Viewing! (updated)

Premier Annee
This French film tracks a couple of first year wannabe medics as they struggle through their year at university. It was all a bit pointless but passed 90 mins on a flight.

Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety
Really enjoyed this. Saw it on a flight as there weren’t many options. This Karthik Aryan guy is decent – can’t imagine him becoming a superstar but he could fit the Ayushman zone (and is way more charismatic). I don’t think the film deserves the misogyny criticism. It just happens to have a lead female character who is not nice.

The Kindergarten Teacher
I really, really liked this American movie about a teacher who becomes rather obsessed by her Indian five year old genius pupil. The lead character is pretty fascinating in terms of what’s going on in her head (it’s never quite clear) and the film becomes increasingly uncomfortable to watch as her she unravels out of control. Gael Garcia has a nice cameo. And the child actor is adorable.

Movie and Series recommendations 2019

This is a complementary thread to commentator’s review and weekly box office thread. Thank You Idea for suggesting. We will refresh the thread when it reaches certain number of comments or 2020.

Gully Boy – An ambitious rags-to-riches story that’s more about the journey than the reward.

While watching Gully Boy, I was reminded of three distinctive Bollywood films – Rakeysh Mehra’s Delhi 6, Kiran Rao’s Dhobi Ghat and Advait Chandan’s Secret Superstar, for very different reasons. The beautifully crafted Gully Boy, is an ode to the city of Bombay as much as Rakeysh Mehra’s Delhi 6 pays homage to the city of Delhi. But it can also be seen as a continuation (in spirit) of the themes that Dhobi Ghat strives to explore. In essence, it’s a slice-of-life film just like Dhobi Ghat, but is packaged with dollops of entertaining scenes that makes it more palatable, a more accessible film, in the end.

Gully Boy is the story of an inherently good and a very decent human being.

As most people are aware, Gully Boy is the story of a Dharavi resident called Murad. The trailers reveal this much. But Murad’s journey through the film reveals a very positive outlook on life. He is not what one would call a happy-chappy. There’s quite a lot going on in his life. The wrath of an abusive father, who doesn’t think twice before getting married, a second time, with a girl who’s not much older than Murad himself. There’s the ignominy involved in foreign tourists disrupting his privacy at home for a ‘scenic’ tour of the slums, where he happens to reside. His father doesn’t approve of his interest in rap music and constantly berates him. One of his close friends is a drug-peddler and a car thief. He receives love and support from his girlfriend, but he loses her too, at least intermittently. The only constant in his life is his love for music (a refuge in the arts, something that I can personally identify with, as a cine-lover; I too find my immersion in cinema to be an exercise in shutting out any external chaos).

The Universalist (NYT Mag Profile of Asghar Farhadi)

“Asghar Farhadi, the most successful director in the history of Iranian cinema, may have little interest in global politics, but global politics are interested in him. On Jan. 27, 2017, less than a week after “The Salesman,” Farhadi’s seventh feature film, was nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign-language movie, President Trump signed Executive Order 13769, more commonly known as the Muslim ban. Under its terms, citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, Iran among them, were barred from entering the United States for 90 days — apparently the time it would take the new president to figure out “what the hell is going on.” For Farhadi, a connoisseur of human particularity whose nuanced, open-ended films about the cultural fault lines within Iran have been embraced by audiences around the world, Trump’s order was an offense both moral and intellectual.