nikhil.io

one hundred and forty-four things tagged “movies

note-0002

Perhaps not as incredibly astounding as this overlay of Spectre1 on the opening credits of the movie but this one of How to Disappear Completely over a few scenes from Lost in Translation just fits somehow. From the comments: “It was a wise decision to go with Sam Smith’s Writings on the wall. A med…

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

I will (a) watch the original and this prequel again soon and (b) name a lot of things “Furiosa” (starting with the tillandsia I’m going to get this weekend). A mad ride like the first one and I’m amazed again by how they managed to arrest my attention for 2.5 hours. Watched on the big screen with M…

Rating: A
Asteroid City

Tidy, as usual when it comes to his movies, but total rubbish. I imagine that I would get this shit if I guided ChatGPT to generate a parody of his most indulgent excesses. Meat for the most hardcore of his fans and a (meticulous) waste of the sheer amount of talent involved. How this has a 75% on R…

Rating: C-
Solace

Solace

(2015)

Decent background-watch. Whoever did the ‘visions’ knocked it out of the park. A waste of Anthony Hopkins and Colin Farrell, who play clairvoyants whose powers wax and wane in service of the utterly predictable plot. Like Next1 but slightly better. Which is a fantastic fucking movie if you love Mr.…

Rating: C-
Gargi

Gargi

(2022)

Saw with LD. Very heavy subject matter loosely inspired by harrowing real-life cases and I skipped watching a few scenes. Sai Pallavi was intense and excellent, of course, but we were very impressed with the raw vulnerability and menace Saravanan brought to his character (also called “Saravanan”, lo…

Rating: A-
Bheemla Nayak

Excellent cinematography and art direction. Bouncy background score by Thaman. Rana Daggubati stole the show, is magnetic in every scene he’s in, and we were all amazed by the ease with which he plays arrogant douchenozzles 💯 Could’ve been at least an hour shorter. Lovely poetry.…

Rating: B
House of Gucci

Tedious “I can make longass movies like Marty too!” stuff from Ridley Scott. Fascinating and tragic story in real life though. Adam Driver is reserved. Lady Gaga is outstanding. Jared Leto is a fucking clown and is either trying too hard or doesn’t give a shit anymore. Al Pacino is in this movie as…

Rating: B-
Clean

Clean

(2022)

Adrien Brody is a great actor and I love watching him act. I absolutely love good, easy revenge flicks. So this was an easy pick. Mr. Brody channels his inner Travis Bickle (for the most part.) This was Taxi Driver meets Taken meets John Wick, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Brody produced, wro…

Rating: B-
The Salesman

Saw with LD. This was our first Asghar Farhadi movie and it won’t be our last. Everything was magnificent: story, acting, screenplay, all of it. I remarked to LD that he managed to punch us in at least ten emotional centers in our hearts. So masterfully paced we didn’t feel two hours flow by. Here’s…

Rating: A+

The Eye: Calanthek

This is a short film done entirely with the Early Access version of Unreal Engine 5. It’s only around eight minutes long and took six weeks to make but its plot is more exciting and coherent than whatever the heck was happening in Prometheus1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kXWNfW9ia8 Some example…

Akhanda

Akhanda

(2021)

REALLY 📢 LOUD 📢 NOISES 📢. It’s really, really loud. This is Boyapati Srinu’s third movie with Balakrishna after Simha (loud) and Legend (louder.) Akhanda is the loudest and shittiest collaboration yet. The story is a complete afterthought and, very loosely, holds together punch dialogues, fight s…

Rating: D
The Matrix Resurrections

Saw with LD on Christmas Eve. I thought it was well-done millennial nostalgia porn. Nothing wrong with that. I loved the humor and digs at techbro culture and co-option of “red-pill” by the far-right (which led to my favorite set of Tweets.) Thought it could be a deconstruction of the original Matri…

Rating: B+
Dhamaka

Dhamaka

(2021)

Absolute shit that was thrice as long as it needed to be. A total waste of my time and Amruta Subhash’s talent. When I was done, I wished I’d spent my evening watching every available video on the Island Boys on YouTube.…

Rating: F
Mersal

Mersal

(2017)

Saw with NN. At least twice as long as it needs to be. Didn’t care about the score. It’s three hours of Vijay doing Vijay things with gusto. Spoiler: I understand that mass Indian entertainers, particularly the South Indian ones, have a tenuous relationship with reality. But we are to be OK with two…

Rating: C
Candyman

Candyman

(2021)

Saw with BE and NN. Eh. Clear messages about creatives’ struggles and temptations, and the importance of continuing to tell past and present stories of horrific pain and suffering. I suppose I just lazily wanted to watch a well-made scary movie without actively engaging with it, without searching fo…

Rating: B+
I See You

I See You

(2019)

Academy Award-winning Helen Hunt is a pharma-stunned alien who doesn’t enjoy any screentime in a disjointed plot that prioritizes misdirection over coherence. Great cinematography. I loved the background score by William Arcane.…

Rating: B-
The Wolf's Call

Watched with LD. Nuclear apocalypse via submarines. At least as exciting as “The Hunt for Red October”. Watch on the largest screen you have and with a good sound system. The premise and last half hour were (I hope) pure flights of fancy. Excellent stuff by Francois Civil, Reda Kateb, and Mathieu Ka…

Rating: B+
W/o Ram

W/o Ram

(2018)

Watched because I’m a sucker for any movie that calls itself a ‘thriller’. A case-study in nepotism. She shouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near a camera. Good God. Vijay Yelakanti considers Lakshmi as one of the best female actors of this generation. While he was directing her for a commercial,…

Rating: D
Election

Election

(1999)

One of the best black comedies I’ve seen. Amazing attention to detail. Watched with LD. Reese Witherspoon was just perfect. Indeed, it was a breakthrough role for which she won a bunch of awards. Learned that Jessica Campbell who was also perfect as the angsty Tammy Metzler sadly passed away in Janu…

Rating: A

Stop Motion Love

Some surrealism: Jan Švankmajer - Lunch (Food 1992). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yM3uxZjdfo The shortest film ever nominated for an Academy Award: Fresh Guacamole by PES. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNJdJIwCF_Y Cooking utensil salad by Omozoc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da7iGPigiz4 And…

Homefront

Homefront

(2013)

Shit. Stallone wrote it. Background-watched because it looked revenge-y and Netflix listed it as a Top 10 movie in the US. Jason Statham is B+ as Jason Statham. This time, he growl-mumbles through this shit movie as an undercover DEA agent (with Special Forces training of course) who speaks with an…

Rating: D

The Work of Ron Cobb

Ronald Ray Cobb was “an American-Australian cartoonist, artist, and film designer” who passed away in September last year. He worked on movies like “Back to the Future”, “Jodorowsky’s Dune”, and “Alien”. An ornithopter! But it’s perhaps his cartoons that are more enduring and eeriely relevant afte…

Shadow of a Doubt

Watched with CK. This was Hitchcock’s favorite movie: This was my father’s favourite movie, and it was because he loved bringing the menace into a small town1, into a family that had never known any bad things happen to them. They adored this uncle. They just adored him. Yet they had no idea what h…

Rating: A
Tenet

Tenet

(2020)

Watched with CK. The plot doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. But very, very entertaining. Anyone who claims to understand what’s going on after the first 32 viewings is a damned liar. A perfect one-line review: So suit up […] for what may not be Nolan at his best, but is definitely Nolan at his mo…

Rating: B
The Nest

The Nest

(2020)

Watched with LD. Reminded me of “Hereditary” (it’s a slow burn) but with The Evil being this chimera of financial insolvency, really bad trust issues, childhood trauma, and severe affluenza. Jude Law was perfect, but Carrie Coon was so fucking good as the beleagured yet passively complicit partner a…

Rating: A-
Dream Team

Michael Keaton and Christopher Lloyd were excellent. But Peter Boyle steals the show as “Jack McDermott. Christ fixation. Megalomania.” BILLY Hey, Doc, isn’t it true that if even one of those tiles were to come loose, millions and millions of gallons of water would come pouring down on us and squas…

Rating: B+
Rashomon

Rashomon

(1950)

Saw this after about 18 years. Some assorted notes: Thought I heard “Boléro”. Every frame is a fucking painting. Just so wonderful: sunshine through the leaves and at the interrogation, characters walking into and out of the audience, the gate’s history and state of decay, and of course Tajomaru’s s…

Rating: A+
I'm Thinking of Ending Things

Saw with CK. Excited because Charlie Kaufman. Mostly self-indulgent tripe. The conversations in the car were interminably tedious1 and missing PBR hats and gauloises. The weirdness in the first third-to-a-half of the movie was excellent. Top-notch performances and camerawork. No, this is neither cle…

Rating: C

Shrek The Elder (Maybe)

Known as “The French Angel”, the wrestler Maurice Tillet is rumored to have inspired the look of Shrek. He suffered from acromegaly caused by a benign tumor on his pituitary gland (which regulates the synthesis of Human Growth Hormone - Wikipedia). Here’s a color video of him chilling 🤗…

The Rhythm Section

Am a sucker for a good revenge story. This one was very slow and kinda haphazard. But I didn’t think it was bad enough to deserve this: The film received negative reviews from critics and was a box-office bomb, having the worst wide opening weekend of all-time, the biggest drop in theaters, and is…

Rating: C+
Vivarium

Vivarium

(2019)

An entertaining, unsettling, dissatisfying Lovecraftian allegory for suburban life and child-rearing (esp the teenage years.) Dragged on for a bit: I imagine it would’ve worked great as a Black Mirror episode. Jonathan Aris and Senan Jennings were supremely creepy and magnificent and perfectly cast…

Rating: B+
Tanhaji - The Unsung Warrior

Another jingoistic saffron shitshow a la “Padmaavat”1. Quite the visual spectacle: like walking through a racist and revisionist Amar Chitra Katha. Saif Ali Khan’s Uday Bhan is the only interesting character. Of noble Rajput blood, he succumbs to eating crocodile meat, sexual assault (of chaste Hind…

Rating: C+
Arundhati

Arundhati

(2009)

“Hey Sonu, we’re gonna need you to do some PCP before you show up to the set. Certainly before the dubbing. Go for that Nandi bro.” Sayaji Shinde as Anwar was the MVP. Ode to The Exorcist and The Ring.…

Rating: C
The Foreigner

Ireland. Liam. Mick. Belfast. Mary. IRA. Patrick. Belfast. Liam Hennessy. Sean. Sinn Féin. “You should try a real whiskey. Two Jamesons, Single Malt.” Belfast. Belfast. Also Jackie Chan. But watch for Orla Brady 🇮🇪…

Rating: C
There Will Be Blood

Finally saw this with PLG. Daniel Day-Lewis’ best performance IMO. Astounding, really. Mr. Day-Lewis’s outsize performance, with its footnote references to Huston and strange, contorted Kabuki-like grimaces, occasionally breaks the skin of the film’s surface like a dangerous undertow. The actor see…

Rating: A+
Bad Genius

Slow start but gets pretty exciting towards the end. I couldn’t wait for Lynn to rid herself of her parasitic friends (especially the cloying Grace, played to perfection by Eisaya Hosuwan.) Cheating on standardized tests is big business in India and China. The Atlantic has a relatively recent articl…

Rating: A-
The Irishman

The last 15 minutes are the best depiction of old age, loneliness, and isolation I’ve ever seen committed to film. Two masters at their very best. I love all the memes about its length but (a) the pacing was brilliant and (b) I am someone who grew up watching 200-minute family-values extravaganzas a…

Rating: A
Midsommar

Midsommar

(2019)

Moody and plenty gruesome. Got tired of the commune’s many ‘rituals’. Florence Pugh is 💯, as is the creepy-ass soundtrack. Learned about senicide. First half is a bit of a slow burn like “Hereditary”.…

Rating: B+
Game Over

Game Over

(2019)

Entertaining, very nicely done, two-hour long desi “Black Mirror” episode1. Taapsee Pannu was 💯. You will want to hug Vinodhini Vaidynathan’s character. Saw with Deepu and we wondered what makes Tamil directors so good at this genre. “Presented” by Anurag Kashyap. Not sure what that means.↩︎…

Rating: B+

Anurag Kashyap on The Struggle

Kashyap on his journey to become one of India’s most important filmmakers. The cover picture is clickbait. No “shocking” revelations. Just a good story about pursuing one’s chosen vocation with grit and perseverance (with a bit of luck along the way.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYeaVyc1Krc On “…

Manmarziyaan

Watched with Paaji. Third Anurag Kashyap and Amit Trivedi film. Superb. Maybe a little too drawn out at times (gotta fit in all 14 tracks of that sweet Trivedi score) and was dismayingly Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam-predictable towards the end. “Gray Waala Shade” (with the accompanying opening scenes) is…

Rating: B+
Romeo Akbar Walter

Completely predictable plot and twists, ridiculous ending, cookiecutter songs (features the laziest, dullest, ‘You composed it the day before it was due didn’t you?’ qawwali I’ve ever heard.) Fantastic cinematography. Sikander Kher is great. Got a lot of digital errands done whilst watching it, so t…

Rating: C

The Titanic and Climate Change

Stumbled upon this nearly three-hour, real-time, annotated simulation of the Titanic sinking. Late night1. Which led me to James Cameron’s 2012 documentary Titanic: The Final Word, in which he assembles a group of engineers and historians to fix the simulation in the 1997 movie, which leads to this…

Us

Us

(2019)

Excellent stuff again from Jordan Peele. Thought the first half was about slavery and lost identity. Wisecrack has a great video on the movie’s various interpretations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDMgFplACaQ…

Rating: A
A Vigilante

The first two-thirds are brilliant. As for Olivia Wilde and her riveting performance: [. . .] it’s still good to see a cunning and capable actress rise above her usual projects, such as stupid fodder like Tron or Cowboys and Aliens, or labels like “Sexiest Vegetarian Celebrity of 2010.” After Enoug…

Rating: B+
Gurgaon

Gurgaon

(2016)

Captured the city’s many contrasts quite well. Felt like I was watching Mirzapur again. The excellent Pankaj Tripathi plays the same wealthy, powerful, morally bankrupt, declining patriarch as in the show. Pretty much the same deal if they’d cast a mannequin instead of Akshay Oberoi.…

Rating: B+
Aquaman

Aquaman

(2019)

Fell asleep about three times trying to finish this visual overload. Ended up taking a walk right after this exchange “You expect me to call you Your Highness?” “No, I expect you to call me… Ocean Master.”…

Rating: C+
The Wailing

Saw with LD. Long, slow, visceral, beautiful, gory. Kept me guessing. Excellent stuff. There’s a pervasive hush and sense of stillness that lingers over the region of Gokseong, and scenes of brazen, crazed madness are often preceded by shots of tranquil mountain vistas whose lush, thickly forested…

Rating: A
Chennakesava Reddy

“No really, why do you do this to yourself?” - KS Features, in my estimation, the greatest solo special ops scene ever committed to film. No expert, but the knee-pillow fire might be related to why Seal Team Six attempted to destroy one of their damaged choppers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgC6…

Rating: F
Crazy Rich Asians

I don’t understand the ratings and the hullabaloo over what was affluence porn with a tired Bollywood plot (Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham came to mind but I’m sure there’s something else that aligns better with CRA.) Might be a satirical, over-the-top take on new and old money in Singapore, though I wond…

Rating: C
Bird Box

Bird Box

(2018)

A slasher version of A Quiet Place except The Monster gets you when you open your eyes (but only at key moments that further the plot.) Snoozefest after the first half. Had no idea that the lanky, highly tattooed extra is a famous rapper. A few plotholes that bugged me: What exactly constitutes a s…

Rating: B-
Venom

Venom

(2018)

Venom goes from evil alien mastermind who wants to take over the planet to Toothless in “How to Train Your Dragon” in about five minutes. His new motivations make no sense whatsoever. But in the case of Venom, the action follows nothing. There’s no reason for Venom to risk his life because he does…

Rating: C+
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Dan Fogler is as awesome in this one as he was in the first. A role he was born to play: Did you feel like you had an advantage while auditioning because you’re actually from New York? I think I brought some real authenticity to it. I grew up in Brooklyn. When I read the part, I thought, “Oh, man,…

Rating: A-
Ratsasan

Ratsasan

(2018)

Decent thriller. Cannot get over the fact that the antagonist’s makeup was awful and kept reminding me of the coconut and turmeric Varalakshmi Puja heads from my childhood 1. Which looks like this in a cheap wig Source Which, in turn, remind me of Jivaro shrunken heads.↩︎…

Rating: B+
A Wednesday

Because I saw Naseeruddin Shah and Anupam Kher in the cast. And they were excellent. The climax is an absolute knock-out with an accolade-winning speech by Naseer who becomes a flag-bearer for all those nameless, ordinary people battling with this modern-day scourge, the world over. The highpoint o…

Rating: B+
Baaghi

Baaghi

(2016)

Terrible. Expected this, so not sure why I did this to myself. Thought it was a weird mashup of Varsham and Dredd. Features this ‘Grandmaster Shifuji’ who attempts to act like a Kung Fu/Kalari master in the movie and a combat veteran and “special forces trainer” in real life. Watching what they did…

Rating: D

Lutz Ebersdorf

As if I needed another reason to fall in love with Tilda Swinton Swinton penned a phony IMDb biography to keep the secret, and wore fake genitalia, created by makeup artist Mark Coulier, while in character. (“She did have us make a penis and balls,” Coulier told the paper. “She had this nice, weigh…

Predestination

Based on “–All You Zombies–” by Robert A. Heinlein. Sarah Snook is phenomenal. But “John Doe” is an extended, uncredited cameo by Leonardo Di Caprio and I won’t be convinced otherwise.…

Rating: A-
Hereditary

Deeply upsetting. One of the best horror movies I’ve ever seen. Anthony Lane of The New Yorker on what gives it its potency Should you want to measure the psychological disturbance at work here, try comparing “Hereditary” with “A Quiet Place.” That recent hit, for all its masterly shocks, is at bot…

Rating: A
Sicario: Day of the Soldado

This is the jingoistic view of American force so familiar from films like ‘Black Hawk Down.’ This is American power as an unstoppable beast. Yep. You would be forgiven for asking what religious extremists have to do with a film series that previously focused on Mexican drug cartels. You would als…

Rating: B+
Srinivasa Kalyanam

Watched with JS and LT. A solid 2.5 hours of Telugu Sampradayam-porn for the 50+ members of your family. Culture and Tradition are static and immutable constructs that are absolutely not subject to examination and revision, especially when it comes to gender roles. Features cameos by yesteryear sup…

Rating: D
Isle of Dogs

Michael Cavna at The Washington Post with a roundup of the cultural appropriation controversy around the movie. Steve Rose at The Guardian: Some critics are barking “appropriation!” on Twitter and online, but where Ghost in the Shell and Doctor Strange (and there are many more) took a Japanese stor…

Rating: A-
Mahanati

Mahanati

(2018)

One and two. Excellent production and performances. Sunita Chowdhary at The Hindu with a few vignettes from Savitri’s life.…

Rating: B+

Relativity

The 1.25s interval between each ‘tick’ in the background score of the water planet scenes1 in “Interstellar” indicates the passage of a single day on Earth. #theydidthemath See also: thalassophobia↩︎…

Game Night

Jesse Plemons steals the show even though he has very little screen time. In my book, he is no longer Todd from Breaking Bad, and is never to be referred to as “Meth Damon” or “Discount Matt Damon”…

Rating: B+
Inside Men

Longer than it should’ve been and unevenly paced. Predictable ending. Still very enjoyable, since I’m a sucker for a good vengeance flick. Lee Byung-hun was absolutely fantastic (first saw him in “I Saw The Devil”.) Found myself hating this guy’s character with the same bile as Imelda Staunton’s Dol…

Rating: B+