3 idiots: Masala puri , but where is the taste?

3 idiots is a movie about 3 friends, each having different family backgrounds and hence different nature and different view of life meeting at the country's top engineering college, starring the marketing machine of the country, Aamir Khan and with an ensemble of cast who can make any other movie maker jealous,. The story follows their life for these 4 years of their lives with loads of comedy and sentiments in the movie. Sounds perfect, right?

But in my humble opinion the movie is hardly perfect. A movie preaching about doing things unconventionally and questioning the conventional ways of our education system , takes the conventional bollywood masala way of becoming a hit. Otherwise how do you explain the typecasting a south Indian as being one who does not know hindi and all he knows is to rot the books and vomit it out on the papers. How do you explain the over dramatic and loud climax where a vacuum cleaner is used for doing delivery of a baby or the scene where a paralytic patient is carried to a hospital in a scooty that too with two other passengers. These were nothing but an insult to the medical profession in my humble opinion.And did you know that you can steal another person's degree and get a job with it and that too a degree from the country's number one engineering college. Well this was a news to me and I feel how come I did not know this all this while.

3 idoits teaches us to be unconventional in a conventional way.

Two 40+ men and a 30+ man playing engineering college students, well this sounds so much filmy. Yes, the movie has certain funny scenes and dialogs, but most of them have been lifted from forward messages one gets on his/her mobile phones or from you tube videos. And as for the sentimental scenes, they have been lifted from the maker's previous movies,how convenient. Then why not read the same engineering book again and pass out with flying grades. After all it is the same thing right. As for the performances, Aamir is as usual very good, apart from that Sharman Joshi gets good scope. Kareena has a very miniscule role. Bomman Irani is over the top and bad. Music of the film is strictly ok and goes well only with the scenes. Cinematography is first rate. With more than dozen sponsors for the movie , the kind of publicity done for the movie and the kind of compromises the movie has done for becoming a hit, the movie is sure to become a massive hit and the makers can safely say " All Izz Well" but I doubt if they will be able to do it with their hands on their hearts.

Kaminay: Treat to the brain

There are those good movies which make you watch them again and again. But very rarely you will find a movie which while you leave the theater you want to feel the pride of making one such movie. I felt the same pride this sunday when I watched Kaminay.

Kaminay is from one of my fav bollywood directors Vishal Bharadwaj. The feeling you get after watching the movie is that of reading a fool proof novel. The writing is so powerful. The best thing about the movie is its boldness. No, I don't mean the boldness in the dialoghes and the handling of the story. I meant the boldness in the director saying that if you have come for mindless entertainers go to the other screens in the multiplex. Because if you leave your brain at home, better be at home. When I spend so much money,brain and energy in making a movie, you ought to spend at least a part of it in watching it. And no I am not spoon feeding you.

It was an entirely new feeling for me , may be because I have not seen movies by Quentin Tarantino, Guy Ritchie and the Coen Brothers, which many claim are the inspiration of this movie. But the dark humor interspersed with unpredictable turn of events are a treat to watch. All the characters in the movie will remain etched in memory for a long long time. Though I am not very convinced with all ends well ending, nevertheless I believe that was a compromise done towards commercial success.

If this is how a Kaminay is, then Kaminay's are wow and I want more of them.

Vennila Kabaddikulu: Movie Review

Warning: Spoiler ahead. Details of the plot and twist revealed.

Vennila Kabaddikulu happens to be one of the progressive movies in the Tamil industry by one of the directors who have now started to think beyond the obvious. The plot , or the absence of it , is filled with such twists and turns which the viewer would not have expected at the least. The movie is character driven and moves along only with the help of some situations and the reactions of the various characters. Some scenes are certainly worth speaking about, for instance the way the friendship between the bus driver and hero develops and the scene where the heroine is scared of the dog. The movie gradually shifts its focus to the kabaddi game in the second half and those portions and the nuances of the game are portrayed well. The photography,music,background music ,performances and the comedy are all first rate.

The only sore thing for me in the movie is its climax. I mean, it seems to be forced in. There is no logic for the hero to die while playing a kabaddi match and it ends on a jarring note which is otherwise a smooth narrative. One feels happy when all the problems hero faces vanish , call it luck or due to humility of the hero but in the name of a final twist at the end , the director gives a sour taste in the mouth which otherwise is a delicious watch. I beleive the director got carried away in his intention of giving twists and got inspired by the recent village based filcks which all had a tragic end to it.

A Few Good Men: One of the few good films

I am urged to review a movie after a really long time. Some movies linger in your memories for a long time after the movie is over merely by the performances and the strong characterization done in it. One such movie I saw recently is "A few good men". I know it is a very old movie and reviewing it now seems absurd to many but I was trying to grab a copy of it since a long time and somehow i managed to miss all its screenings on HBO till yesterday when I got hold of its DVD. At a running length of 2 hour and 15 minutes it is a bit longer than the normal English movies but it carries the intensity and the sincerity of the story throughout the movie mainly due to the amazing background score. The story is set in US Naval Base in Guatenamo Bay,Cuba and deals with the sensitive and controversial topic of "code red". The movie unfolds itself in layers and as each layer gets unfolded to you, you tend to believe there is more in this story. And tell you what, the expectations come true. For example, when you think its all over and hence forward it is going to be honky dory, comes the latest sting in the tail where the true honour of being in US Marine services is realised. Some scenes have great power held in them. For example, the all famous "You cannot handle the truth scene" and the scene where the accused are finally acquitted but stripped off their Marine post and the reactions thereforth. Also, worth mentioning is the last scene in the movie when after the whole proceedings is over and Tom Cruise is all alone in the court room and he looks at the court room. It is then that you realize that he has got a whole new meaning to the court room at that moment. The only disappointment for me was the character fo Demi Moore which went on a downhill after raising huge expectations of being a brilliant lawyer. Watch it, for the performances of Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise.

Feel proud to be a human

Most of the time looking and aspiring for better things in life, we forget to appreciate and relish the very fact that we are humans and the life is to be enjoyed. A film preaching this very simple but usually ignored message is "The Shawshank redemption". Now, this is a very old movie but I may look crazy to be writing about this now. But the fact is that I watched it only recently and that it left such a mark on my mind that I can write about it even after another 30 years . Now to get to the movie, it is one of the most under-rated movie according to me. And I read somewhere that it didn't make money and to everyone's surprise it didn't win even a single oscar. Though it does not contain any earth defying stunts and a complex narrative, it is a film with a true heart in its right place. It is the story of hope and freedom. It is the story of celebrating the very fact that inspite of all our problems in life, we are human and that itself is worthy of celebration.

The protagoinst of the story is Andy, who is convicted of double murder, which he claims he has not done, and hence, he is subjected to 2 life sentences in shawshank prison. Now, shawshank prison is portrayed as one of the toughest and worst place to be in. And the prison inmates have lost all their hope about life, some even fear about going out. But Andy comes in as a fresh air. He , with his skill with his bank and money matters starts helping inmates and also prison guard and also warden in the meantime getting a lot of favors for the inmates like a very good library. Mid way through the movie he find proof for his innocence, but then when that proof is also lost forever , he still shows a lot of compassion in recovering from the situation. His character is a benchmark in taking positives from the toughest situations in life and then moving on with life with a smile. What happens to Andy and some of his friends marks the rest of the story culminating in a brilliant climax.

The movie is marked with remarkable script,dialogues and acting. The narration by Morgan Freeman is simply awesome. All characters live their part. Though the pace of the movie is really slow, by the time it gets over you end up yearning for more. And each time I see the movie, I derive out a different meaning out of it, probably a different message it wants to convey. And at the end of each such viewing, one thing is for sure, I feel energized to take up the challenges in life. In fact, this is the best movie I have seen yet. Like they say in the movie , Remember hope is a good thing, in fact..the best of things... I will be hoping that you like this blog and keep visiting this page of mine again and again.