Category — Film Reviews

I recently read a piece by a friend that bemoaned our fraught relationship with our own cinema; I immediately thought of all the usual elements that have brought us notoriety — the melodrama, the song and dance, and of course Bollywood’s miserable attempts at making ‘social films’. Issues from dyslexia to terrorism have all taken massive beatings in the hands of our filmmakers who barely manage to get facts (symptoms?) right and parade their hysteria in the form of films that people love to love because they give us a warm, gooey, we-have-done-our-bit-for-society feeling.

Perhaps this is why Anusha Rizvi’s Peepli [Live] came as something of a shock, something that successfully turned the trajectory of the very texture of popular Bombay cinema. [Read more →]

In 2008, when I reviewed Oye Lucky Lucky Oye I referred to the director Dibakar Banerjee as a new dawn in Indian cinema. It was well-deserved then, but not so much any more. Certainly not with his latest venture Love, Sex aur Dhokha.

Love, Sex aur Dhokha or LSD as it is quirkily called, is a bunch of three stories that are not shot but rather captured – one on a digi-cam, one on CCTV and one with spy cameras. The first story is of a young man in film school who falls in love with his leading lady. Since her conservative father (who also features in the film) wants to marry her off to an NRI, the two decide to run away and get married secretly. All this and their tragic end is captured on his digi-cam. The second, and the longest story is of a store manager who needs to pay off his debt to some suspect, obviously dangerous characters. He seduces a store girl and captures their lovemaking on one of the store cameras and then sells it off. The final story is of a sting operation where a small town girl tries to avenge herself and expose a pop star with the help of the media. [Read more →]

An early review of Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, from its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival 2010. Written by Wide Screen editorial board member, Kartik Nair. Click here to read.

Embedding is disallowed by our friends at Eros Entertainment. But do watch this and be amazed (link).

2009 was indeed a bleak year for Hollywood, not so much in terms of box office returns, but when it comes to innovative, fresh work, definitely. The awards season is upon us, and the Golden Globes were truly dismal, predicting a similar fate for the Oscars that nearly always take fewer risks and are mostly quite predictable.

One of the films that has attracted what to me seems undue attention is Lee Daniel’s Precious Based on the Novel by Sapphire. I didn’t want to give in to the ominous feelings that came up when I saw the promos, but sadly, the film remains a collage of characters, moments and situations we have seen endlessly. It fails to move out of its self congratulatory sense of greatness, and is all too aware of its project of depicting a dark American reality. The fact, however, is that this reality has been depicted many many times before, and Precious does nothing new at all. In fact, I would say the carving out of characters is at times embarrassingly naive.

The film, however, has generated many positive reviews, because as always to speak out against a film about an African American character is perceived more as a socio-political stand rather than the aesthetic one that it is. Jim Emerson has however lashed out against the film, and has written a meticulous piece on the shortcomings of the film. I don’t agree with him on the film’s comic potential, but I do endorse his critique.

Click here to read it.

That Hollywood’s preoccupation with the Second World War, in particular the Holocaust, has resulted in an overflowing and now somewhat predictable kitty of films is something the industry is beginning to acknowledge. The past few years have seen significant interventions in the genre; the most recent example that comes to my mind is Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, the film that threw open the question ‘can we really know what happened in that history?’

A war we know even less about is the First World War. While cinema of the world hasn’t exactly ignored this ‘Great War’, it has generated far less interest in popular culture. Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke’s latest venture The White Ribbon may not quite be popular culture, but it certainly gives a haunting context to the First World War. [Read more →]

The last few months have seen much frenetic activity around Paresh Mokashi’s Marathi film Harishchandrachi Factory, primarily because it was picked as India’s official entry to the Oscars. While a lot of dinnertime conversation seems to revolve around this film and its supposed uniqueness, it is likely that most of this excitement in the air is based on some reviews about this film and its supposed archival value, because very few people have actually seen it. The question therefore is, is the film really the right choice to send to an international forum as our selection of the best film made in India this year. The answer, is, no. [Read more →]

Not too many people took the hint Quentin Tarantino was doling out at the Cannes Film Festival this year, when he arrived on the very prestigious, very formal red carpet doing an outrageous dance. The occasion: the world premiere of his Holocaust film, Inglourious Basterds. We think Holocaust and we stop thinking because images from the innumerous Holocaust films – all the way from Sophie’s Choice up to Life is Beautiful and beyond – come rushing back to us, and all we can think of is the cruelty man is capable of, and how that became apparent in the work of the Nazis under Hitler. We forget that the only thing we are really capable of knowing is what is told to us by history text books – six million Jews died, and Hitler killed them. Try as we might, and god knows cinema has continued to try ever since, we will never really know what happened. [Read more →]

Lars Von Trier’s latest offering, The Antichrist has generated interest, disgust, shock and applaud all at once, at every screening ever since the infamous premiere at the Cannes Film Festival where more than half the audience walked out, unable to digest the horrific violence of the film. Unfortunately, it is this curiosity value (“How much can the violence possibly be”) that has become the talk of the town, driving audiences to the film, more than Von Trier’s cinematic achievements in this venture. [Read more →]

Directors and film critics have always had a tenuous relationship. For every failed film, and every opinion that goes against them, filmmakers launch diatribes against critics who have panned their films. However, there is a trend to be noted in the recent past, especially as far as the language of criticism and the backlash to it is concerned. A recent blog post written by the ever controversial Ram Gopal Varma creates new heights in vicious words reserved for critics. From personal attacks to their integrity and a conspicuous attempt not to veil their identities, Varma has unknowingly brought to the fore some interesting developments in the relationship that has, almost literally, gone to the dogs. He calls Anupama Chopra ‘sweetie cutie Anupama’, Kaveri Bamzai ‘Buffalo Bumzai’ and traces how Khalid Mohammad was “kicked out and down the ladder from TOI to Mid-day to DNA, to HT to Asian Age, (and now) writes for some obscure website which (I) doubt even 5 people will read.”

It is a piece worth reading. Access it here.