Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places - Some Thoughts on Miss Lovely.

I have grown weary of movies that begin with a character narrating about his past. In most cases, this narrator is a guy, a hapless one and he usually ends up dying or losing the girl. In certain cases like About a Boy, High Fidelity or even Savages, it ends up defining the movie and making it better.

In Miss Lovely, Sonu (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) serves our window to the world of seedy C-grade filmmakers. He speaks reluctantly and regretfully. That's similar to the way he works in the business of C-grade filmmaking. He's only assisting and doing menial jobs for his older brother Vicky (Anil George).

While Sonu is hoping to switch to something else, Vicky is the big brother with big plans. He's liaising with some big shots to up the 'production value' and 'star cast' for his next C-grade Citizen Kane. Miss Lovely's plot slowly simmers to a form a coherent story and give its tragic conclusion. (It's an indie film about C-grade films, were you expecting a happy ending?)

But like most stories, Miss Lovely is not about what it says but how it says it. We see Sonu struggling to make peace with what he does for a living while his brother bullying him into buying his plans. If you have an older sibling, you can understand the power dynamics of their relationship. Older siblings often convince and sometimes command their younger ones to do their bidding. Here Nawazuddin borrows some cues from his 'Faizal' from Wasseypur. He's a short, stick thin chap, who's always looking at his feet as if admitting his submissiveness. Notice how in nearly every conversation with Vicky and even in their confrontations, Sonu's spine is slightly arched, as if even after 40 years, he's still supplicating to his brother.

Like all C-grade movies, Miss Lovely's plot is anchored around women. Most just mere playthings, unwillingly obliging to the shady men and all exploited by the seedy system. Well nearly all except Pinky (the astonishing debut from the Aditi Rao Hydari-lookalike Niharika Singh). Pinky plays it smooth. Curving her luscious lips innocently enough and showing Sonu her photographs when he tells her he's a director.

She's the femme fatale which most 80s C-grade flicks never had. When her secrets are revealed, you won't be exactly surprised but realise that the only sympathetic person in this story is Sonu. And what makes him so sympathetic? He really wants to get out of the business. He lies to Pinky about being a director but he's so sincere that he actually steals from his brother just so he can make a proper clean 'romantic film' with her.

I am a child of the 90s. I grew up when it became hard to separate the world from the world wide web. I never had to get my kicks from C-grade films. I haven't even seen any C-grade movie in its entirety. I have seen bits here and there while channel surfing and some stuff that goes viral because of its sheer hilarity. That being said, the makers of Miss Lovely went to great length to get its look just right. The grainy Technicolor look is just right. What's better is it works wonders for all the foreign film festival film shots too. And there are plenty of those here. A vulture hanging over Vicky's head while he is in hiding. A shot of Sonu walking down a narrow corridor to pursue Pinky cueing that this is a dead end.

Normally, audiences don't notice sound design. It's always in the background but Miss Lovely is possibly the only film where I felt the usage of sound was extremely pronounced. Each hammer, scratch, screech used to add to the milieu. I particularly enjoyed when the rattle of a camera in action goes up as Sonu and Vicky's conflict escalates.

On most parts Miss Lovely is a good but a flawed film. I recommend you to watch it for the Nawazuddin Siddiqui's hapless Sonu, Anil George's manipulative misogynistic ploys and Niharika Singh's bitch-aari Pinky. Mister Ashim Ahluwalia take a bow, we are waiting for your next.

PS: There's always something I miss out. I wasn't ever around in the 80s, so if I say they got the period details right, it'd be ridiculous. I really admired a scene where they managed to show moving traffic using 3 Ambassadors and a Maruti 800. And, if anyone knows the name of the long-haired guy who plays the C-film director, e-mail it to me. His long locks win the most ridiculous hairdo in films award for 2014.

A Classic They All Forgot About.

Wrote this review on a site I write for once in a while. Then due to some web admin error my account was deleted. Reposting it here for posterity's sake and seething in disappointment that my work is out there somewhere. Hoping just like my review this movie too will be sought and found. 

You know you are seeing something different when the guy behind you says, ‘Yaar, Inception bhi itni complicated nahi thi.’  In Cloud Atlas you see, a man helping an African American slave hide in his ship cabin in the 1800s. The same actor then plays a man in the 22nd century, trying to rescue a Soomni (a futuristic humanoid cyborg workforce) from her eminent ‘recycling’.

Filled with so much, even the poster seems to be bursting at the seams. Do note the Warli-like painting on Tom’s face.

Seems complicated and unrelated? It is. I won’t defend or even try to detail the six parallel storylines you will see in Cloud Atlas. And, as if taking on six parallel story lines weren’t enough, these storylines span over a period of 5 centuries and have different actors playing different characters in them.

The make-up used here is so flawless that apart from a few instances, you won’t even be able to recognise these characters. For example, you see that  weird looking alien thingy below, it’s actually Hugh Grant.

You ask what the point of it all is. I guess on your first viewing of the Cloud Atlas, you won’t get it. In its entirety at least. On repeated viewings, you might get an outline, but it will still be blurred. But, I assure you on every subsequent viewing you will be delighted and awed. You will feel a generous amount of gratitude and understand through the ages, and despite our difference we always have been and always will be similar. Or simply put, you’ll experience an efficient demonstration of the term literati calls ‘The Human Condition’.

The movie nudges towards karma, reincarnation and other spiritual ho-hum. And you don’t even have to believe in it to enjoy it. It shows that as a race, we humans tend to repeat the same mistakes again and despite that, we all mean to be good in the end.

The word epic somehow doesn’t do justice to this movie. It’s ambition personified. In its spirit and its scale, it embodies the spectacle and scope sci-fi and cinema can cover. And you might say, what’s the big deal with spectacle? We’ve seen Avatar, giant robots squash each other to death and even had 7 superheroes come together for rescuing our world.

Right when you feel you’ve seen it all, Cloud Atlas takes a different approach to spectacle. Its stories are more in line with the works of sci-fi greats like Richard Matheson and Arthur C. Clarke. It uses sci-fi and spectacle not as a plot devise but to raise profound questions about humanity and our very being. What’s even more impressive is that its film makers had the courage to not answer those questions for you, or nudge you towards the answers. ‘Atlas’ is way too mature to indulge in that kind of cinematic spoon-feeding.

Sounds a bit daunting? Well, don’t forget it’s got the Wachowkis (The Matrix Trilogy) at the helm. You also enjoy a sumptuous feast of visuals and some stunning chase scenes too. It took 3 years to decide the editing of its sequences and its thoughtful influence is evident through the film. Its editing helps simplify things and make it easy to follow. The editor Alexander Berner avidly uses match cuts to connect one character’s actions to another character in some other century. So you see a character rushing to open a door in one storyline and a door being opened in another storyline. Thanks to Berner’s deftness, the near 3 hour length passes by like a breeze.

Let’s not forget the music. ‘The Cloud Atlas Sextet’ is one of the most haunting themes ever to accompany a film. Part mellifluous, part chilling, it closely walks the line between a dirge and love-song and makes you want to take out your smartphone and download it right away.

Now to wax poetic on the direction. It always surprises me when 2 directors direct a single film. I think it’s most uncommon to find two people sharing the same distinct vision. When the 2 directors involved are brothers (the Coens, the Hughes, Abbas-Mustan: D) the common background and upbringing must help. But here as the German genius Tom Tykwer joins the Wachowskis to form a 3-headed director tour de force, the result still is a seamless feature without any tonal shifts. If it took 3 directors to tame this beast of a film that’s based on David Mitchell’s Man Booker nominated tome, then it surely needed some gifted actors to ensure the magic on paper seamlessly translates on the screen.

Tom Hanks and Halle Berry do most of the heavy lifting here as star crossed lovers, separated in most centuries who finally come together in the final segment. You see, there are happy endings in the distant future too. And once you see Hanks as an angry Irish writer, you can only wonder why don’t you see him do this more often. We have all come to find relief in seeing our good ol’ Tom play good ol’ guys onscreen, but this is quite refreshing and Atlas serves as a great showcase for almost every actor involved. There’s much to be said about Ben Wishaw’s haunting performance as a libertine career-climbing composer, who realises his slyness is no match for the cruelty of this world.

I could go on about its overwhelming scale and its heartfelt stories. But, I will keep it short instead – get off your chair and see this movie NOW. For when it grabs the Oscars next year for Make-up and editing, you can act like a true-blue film buff and say I watched it before it came on blu-ray. Now that it’s mostly out of theatres, there’s always the blu-ray.

There’s been a ‘yellow-faced’ controversy attached to the film. You know the whole bit about using Western actors to play Asian roles and just changing the look of their eyes during makeup. Well, I think it’s unfair and hyper-sensitive. Had the directors cast separate Asian actors, it would only make the movie more difficult to follow and besides a movie that asserts the similarities all humans share, the controversy only muddles the message of the film.

Although, there’s one instance that disturbs me. I know this part of the story occurs in 1800s, but why in almost every film when an African American has to show some skills, the skill always involve his physical prowess. When will we get to see an African American ‘Will Hunting’ maths wiz?

Bollywood’s no better either. With its easy-to-stereotype approach it has given us plenty of horny Jatts, silly Sardars and nerdy Malyalis. *Sighs*

Small Town Psychosis at its Finest - Frailty Movie Review

You might have never been to America but you already have an idea what it's like. And am not talking about how Times Square looks on New Year's Eve. I am talking about its interiors, the small town America. The home of the American dream. The house with the white picket fence. All in a town where everyone is on first name basis and live like one big family.

Years of watching 'The Wonder Years' and several other films from the 90s have attuned us to this wholesome pure form of Americana.

Imagine what happens when a film shows you the cracks between the white picket fence, the critters that flourish under the yard. Of course you flinch, but you keep on watching because darkness does draw us in.

Bill Paxton's excellent debut feature Frailty is an exercise in getting his audience to flinch. Repeatedly and intensely. Frailty's concerns lie with the Meiks family (Yes, pronounced as 'Meek').

The two Meik siblings, Fenton (Matt O'Leary) and the younger one Adam (Jeremy Sumpter) are lovingly raised by their widowed father Bill Paxton (curiously referred to only as 'Dad').

They are a happy little bunch, Dad's a blue collar worker who's gentle and caring and Fenton obediently looks after his kid brother. Their early scenes together radiate such warmth that it only punctuates the horror that unfolds.

Dad wakes up one night after having a 'vision' from God. He says God's chosen their family to slay down demons. Demons who look like human beings but have done cruel deeds and must be slain before judgment day. Fenton looks dismayed, understanding that his father may have lost his marbles but young Adam believes every word he says.

Things usually go downhill when your Father starts talking like this.

Things only proceed to get more gruesome.  He asks his sons, kids aged 7 and 10 to join him on this quest. Bill Paxton is careful enough to not make the Father seem psychotic; he's still the same gentle soul who has utter conviction in his visions. When he brings home his first demon, a middle aged woman, Fenton is shell-shocked. Dad says when he touches her, he sees all the sins she committed. His body starts convulsing and it's supposed to mean something. But what exactly?

Fenton keeps questioning his father, who is patient at the start. As their confrontations start getting edgier, his father starts getting harsher. He first punishes him by asking him to dig a 10 ft. wide hole for their family cellar. Even when he punishes him, it's not out of spite, he is only doing it to help his son see the way of God.

There are many murders in this film, but we see no bloodshed onscreen because Frailty is not about violence.

 It's about the psychological violence Adam and Fenton endure.

Putting kids in danger is an old enough cinematic pet peeve. Frailty draws its inspiration from an even more urgent minefield of feelings. You see Adam and Fenton aren't in danger in the usual way you have seen in films. They haven't been kidnapped, or are standing on a slippery ledge of building. These two kids are stripped away of their innocence and are driven to a path so dark, it leads straight to hell.

And, who's the person doing this? Their own father who truly believes that it's best his family. As if the film doesn't have enough surprises up its sleeve, its chronology adds a few more. The film starts off with an older Fenton (Mathew McConaughey in another stunning role) walking into the office of FBI Agent Wesley Doyle (Powers Boothe) because he has some information to share about a brutal murderer called the 'Hand of God'.

The conversation between them forms the crux of the story and unravels some previously unseen details.

There's a twist at the end and it's so unbelievable and brutal,

it makes the film seem like a Stephen King novel.

No wonder King himself heaped praise on Frailty. Frailty would never have been made without the character actor Bill Paxton stepping up to direct it. You see for any other director this film would be career suicide. But for Bill directing would never be his sole source of income. Though that shouldn't take away any praise from him. He works well with actors and extracts honest performances from kids. Which is a darn difficult job and I speak from experience. Unfortunately Frailty can be a dull film to look at. It resembles the work of a first-time director with most of it shot in close ups. He should have done something to light the film in a way that it highlighted the religious undertones. Nonetheless this film makes for a nice roller coaster ride by switching gears between suspense and surrealism. 

To finish off this post, here’s a glorious near Malick-ianshot from Frailty.

The divine calling.

Random cinema trivia: Lionsgate Films once used this corny thing on their credit rolls.  

  

If Lisbeth Salander had a soul sister - Red Road Movie Review

Imagine a woman so extraordinarily inconspicuous that you wouldn't notice her till she spoke to you. That's the kind of person Jackie (Kate Dickie) is. Insular and withdrawn, Red Road's leading protagonist drives action through inaction.

Jackie (Kate Dickie) quietly on the lookout.

Jackie works as a security technician supervising CCTV camera feeds from the streets of Glasgow. The job seems hardly stressful and we see Jackie enjoying it, turning her work into a reality show of sorts. She admires a kind man look after his sick dog. She pities an overweight cleaning lady who brushes windows and has a bad brush with office romance. It's hard not to think that anyone working this job is a voyeur or will soon turn into one. And it somehow complements Jackie, she's more comfortable with watching than with action.

Then, one fine day she notices someone. Her seemingly calm composure is shaken. When she obsessively tracks him down, her worst fears are realised. It's him, alright. 

Wait, who is this guy?

That's another virtue of Red Road. We know something terrible transpired between this strange man and Jackie, but the film takes its own sweet time to tell you about it. Such patient economical storytelling is rare and delightful.

Jackie isn't just content with following the man from behind her desk. She lurks around his house, follows him across streets.  As for Clyde, the man in question, he barely notices. He's fresh out of prison and played by Tony Curran with a certain rakish edge. Clyde fancies himself as a silver-tongued ladies' man, which is de facto due to the current low-life company he keeps.

We know that Clyde wronged Jackie, but instead of fearing him we see Jackie befriending him.

To Jackie, Clyde is like cancer.

Yet she is intrigued by him. Not attracted, but drawn to him. When he compliments her, something stirs inside her. Mind you, this is a woman who seems to be making grocery lists while having sex. When Clyde's compliments seemingly go down well, you wonder if they were lovers in the past? Did he break her heart? Or worse, did he sexually violate her?

The brilliant Kate Dickie as Jackie with Clyde. Also, there's a lot of Neon
in the film, which has become a staple of gritty realistic films.

Despite the fact that being with Clyde makes her retch, and she actually does puke after their first meet, she goes ahead and has sex with him. The sex itself is explicit, raw and nearly as messy and unchoreographed as it is in real life. This ain't no stylised PG-13 rom com romp. What's worth noticing here is that we finally see Jackie come alive. She is, pardon the expression, in the moment.

And then the rug is pulled out from under as we learn Jackie's real motives. What she does forms the crux of the story and the revelation will surely blindside you. Yet you will see Jackie with more admiration and empathy.

The film switches gears from the sex scene, which is nothing like anything you've seen before. The grim  resolve shown by Jackie here is only mirrored by Lisbeth Salander from the famous 'The Millennium Trilogy'. In 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo', when her government appointed guardian blackmails her and rapes her, she unleashes a fury upon him that could have been the subject for a feature film itself. In both these films, we see women using their beauty not as a mere trait, but as a potent weapon. Is it moral? Not really. Is it misogynist? Passively.

Is it showing female protagonists in a light you've never seen before? Absolutely.

Another great attribute about 'Red Road' is how impartially it views its characters. Jackie shouldn't even be using her CCTV access for stalking Clyde. And you would certainly be crept out by how easy it is for her to track Clyde down. The government's watching every step you take and Andrea Arnold suffuses  this big 'Big Brother' theme with utmost subtlety.

The film is bereft of any background score and uses strong gusts of wind to an ominous effect. Even the landscape seen here makes Glasgow look like a wasteland and the characters inhabiting it look just as weary. I am not saying they look everyman, they look worse than the everyman. The harsh terrain is meant to mirror Jackie's inner state of mind and does no favours to the Glasgow tourism department.

Eventually the drab colours brighten, the harsh gust mellows. There's relief for Jackie. Blue skies with a gentle breeze. There' s even a new dog for the man she used to watch before. 'Winds of change' you might call it. And Red Road, which makes for the first part of a Dogme 95 based trilogy is just that.

Jackie 'moves' towards something at the end, whereas when the
film starts, she is 'idly sitting' in her chair. A nice touch.

PS: If you find the amazing Kate Dickie familiar, it's because you have seen her in Ridley Scott's Prometheus.